You won’t find this Frank Lloyd Wright-designed farmhouse (the one and only) by looking for it, the single roadside proclamation on a simple black mailbox: “Muirhead Farm.”
Leaving a small, country two-lane west of Elgin, my wife, son, and I pull onto a gravel driveway and duck beneath a B-Western movie wood-beamed railroad trestle before spotting a long cypress-sided house with lawn to flat-roof windows.
We join beneath a low eave Mike Petersdorf (married to Sarah Muirhead), our docent, and a group of about twenty. With the heat index over 95, we’re glad when he guides us inside where we’re asked to take off our shoes. The low ceilings (six feet, eight inches) would have our attention if it weren’t for the sweet, young family cat who sniffs one stockinged – or barefoot after another with more aplomb than a TSA canine.
I’ve toured Wright’s Oak Park home, Monticello, the Farnsworth House, and other fabulous sites, but Mike proves the best guide I’ve ever followed, his history and anecdotes insightful and witty, always leaving time for questions.
By 1860, he relates, the Muirhead family, among the earliest area settlers, built a farmhouse and outbuildings. By the 1940s, Robert and Elizabeth, with five children, wanted a house more suited to their needs; when no architects in Elgin or St. Charles lived up to Muirhead’s expectations, he drove to Taliesin, Wright’s Wisconsin home.
Finding the gate open, Robert drove up to the house where Eugene Masselink, the architect’s secretary, wondered what this crew was up to. When kids piled out of the car, Gene directed Robert to Wright’s drafting room where, after some time, he left with a directive to send specific needs delineating what he’d like in a farmhouse.
Robert’s six-page letter in 1948 led to Wright’s design two years later. The workhouse portion would include a kitchen with a high ceiling and many cupboards – some accessible only by ladder – and thin, soaring windows. The dining room offered chairs enough for family or farmhands or a party of twelve thanks to a 24-inch movable seat configuration along one wall. Finally, a study/garage accommodated Robert’s workload, whether perched before custom-made desk and cabinets or storing farm machinery through a gorgeous, wood-paneled garage door lifted on tracks.
The other unit, connected by a brick and floor-to-ceiling glass-enclosed hallway, contained a living room, master bedroom, a bedroom for each child, and four fireplaces. Each bedroom (reduced in number after a 2003 renovation) was relatively tiny, as work on a farm allowed for little more than sleeping. Tall, broad, wooden cabinets (today far fewer) in the hallway functioned as closets (Wright hoped cabinets would prevent clients from cluttering his interior designs with their feeble attempts).
The 1950’s family enjoyed a black and white TV stationed in the living room where they also enjoyed a gorgeous view of lawn, row crops, and prairie with floor-to-ceiling twelve-foot windows – or watched movies on a pulldown movie screen hidden in the ceiling!
Wright visited only once. Sarah’s father, then a boy, was the only one home when a red Lincoln Zephyr drove up. After looking around, a man chose the middle of a thriving apple orchard to stick in some flags. At dinner that night, long after Wright departed, asked how his day went, the boy mentioned someone came by and put flags –outlining where the farmhouse would stand.
Earlier in the tour, Mike read from letters to and from Wright. Dated Valentine’s Day, 1950, the architect answered Robert’s question(s) regarding the design’s slow progress; the letter read only, “Your patience will not go unrewarded.”
Indeed, it hasn’t.
For more information, email info@muirheadfarmhouse.com.
• Rick Holinger’s chapbook of poetry, Down from the Sycamores,is available at Amazon and http://finishinglinepress.com. His short fiction collection, Unimaginable Things, is forthcoming in winter, 2026. North of Crivitz (poetry), and Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences(essays) are available at local bookstores and Amazon. Contact him at editorial@kcchronicle.com.More information at www.richardholinger.com.