Let's face it: the city of Kankakee, Illinois, needs all the help its Chamber of Commerce can provide.
Enter director/writer Thomas Desch. He has put together a fascinating centerpiece for reviving the city: its greatest single tourist and artistic point is the house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed at the turn of the 20th century.
An American Home has an unwieldy and ridiculous subtitle Frank Lloyd Wright's B. Harley Bradley House, but don't be daunted. You have here architectural history and how it is personally tied to the fates of real people who try to live and work within a building's architecture.
Wright was a genius and his first example of the Prairie Home was in Illinois where the well-to-do young Bradley's commissioned a house, stable, and accompanying residence for their family. Perhaps some places are benighted and cursed.
As amazing and beautiful as the house was-and now is again-it had a hard journey over 100 years. And, so did the cursed owners.
With its stunning stained glass, lead-lined windows, largely sold at auction, and its furniture and tables bought for exorbitant prices by celebs like Barbra Streisand over the years, the Wright house has been decimated.
The owners have variously committed suicide and been kidnapped and murdered (one during renovation of the structure).
Yet, generous patrons have thrown millions of bucks into refurbishing the Yesteryear Restaurant of 50 years (bankrupt in the 1980s) and fallen into disrepair, to save it from demolishing.
Its stable was an afterthought that was saved only by large protests. You may be shocked to learn 20% of Frank Lloyd Wright's designs have been destroyed.
So, we have no issue with the Kankakee people who are proud of the most impressive building and home of their city. Interesting history and biography.
