{"id":193546,"date":"2025-11-22T01:22:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T01:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/193546\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T01:22:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T01:22:07","slug":"after-nearly-50-years-frank-lloyd-wrights-fountainhead-home-changes-hands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/193546\/","title":{"rendered":"After Nearly 50 Years, Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s Fountainhead Home Changes Hands"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Parker Adams, who died on July 3, did everything he could to make sure that his Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house in Jackson, Mississippi, ended up in the right hands. A preservation architect, Adams had owned the house, called Fountainhead, for nearly half a century (twice as long as its original owner, oil speculator J. Willis Hughes). <\/p>\n

Adams spent the early 1980s years restoring it, with the help of his first wife, Mary, and then decades showing it off, giving tours that sometimes lasted two hours or more. As he told The Wall Street Journal <\/a>earlier this year \u201cI love educating people about Wright.\u201d When guests asked the square footage of the house, he pointed to its many acute and obtuse angles. \u201cThere aren\u2019t any square feet. Just triangular feet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

MORE:<\/strong>\u00a0One of the Few Private Islands off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Hits the Market for $10.9 Million<\/a><\/p>\n

In June, only weeks before he died, he listed the house for $2.5 million. But the price was guesswork. \u201cThere were no comparables,\u201d says Douglas Adams, of Crescent<\/a> Sotheby\u2019s Realty, who co-listed the house with Crescent\u2019s David Abner Smith, of New Orleans.<\/p>\n

Was it more like other houses in Jackson\u2019s Fondren neighborhood, where the highest asking price recently was $445,000, or more like other Frank Lloyd Wright houses, which sometimes command more than $10 million?<\/p>\n

It turns out it was somewhere in between. The house has sold for $1 million\u2014just 40% of asking but enough for Adams\u2019s widow, Sherri Mancil.<\/p>\n

The buyer is the Mississippi Museum of Art, which plans to open the house to the public, fulfilling Adams\u2019s dream. Betsy Bradley, the director of the museum for 24 years, says Fountainhead is the first house it has ever acquired: \u201cThis is all new territory for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mancil says she was pleased with the price because \u201cnow we know the house will be preserved in perpetuity.\u201d She says her husband met with Bradley before he died and was hopeful that the deal would happen.<\/p>\n

A number of things had to fall into place before it could.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, members of the Woodland Hills Conservation Association had to vote to amend the association\u2019s covenants, exempting the house from the requirement that it be used as a single-family residence. That permission, in effect as long as the house is owned by the Mississippi Museum of Art, required \u201cyes\u201d votes from 75% of the association\u2019s members. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had two afternoons with wine and cheese and a notary so people could come by and sign,\u201d says Douglas Adams, who also represented the museum.<\/p>\n

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Once the Conservation Association approved the change in its covenants, the zoning board had to approve the museum\u2019s plan to host small tours and other events at the house. That permission was given on October 22. Finally, in mid-November, the City Council gave its stamp of approval, the last formality before the closing.<\/p>\n

Bradley says two donors had covered the cost of the house and necessary repairs. \u201cI am excited that the community has risen to make the resources available and eliminate the barriers to the purchase,\u201d she adds. <\/p>\n

But, she says, she is still in fundraising mode.<\/p>\n

Even when perfectly restored the house will need ongoing maintenance. For one thing, Bradley says, \u201cIt sits on Yazoo clay.\u201d The movement of that porous material caused damage that Adams repaired. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t only shift once,\u201d she says of the clay. \u201cIt shifts constantly.\u201d <\/p>\n

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It will be at least a year, Bradley says, before the house will be ready to welcome visitors. But when it does open, she says, Adams will be there. \u201cHis stories will be incorporated into the interpretive materials.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robert Parker Adams, who died on July 3, did everything he could to make sure that his Frank…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,43360,362,363,364,86458,86471,366,18,117,3334,19,17,107624,107626,19177,1539,9436,44285,82636,107625,107627,26243,384,86474],"class_list":{"0":"post-193546","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-entertainment","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-content-type-content-type-article","14":"tag-content-type_content-type-article","15":"tag-design","16":"tag-eire","17":"tag-entertainment","18":"tag-general-news","19":"tag-ie","20":"tag-ireland","21":"tag-location-market-mississippi","22":"tag-location_market-mississippi","23":"tag-mississippi","24":"tag-north-america","25":"tag-political","26":"tag-political-general-news","27":"tag-southern-u-s","28":"tag-subject-subject-sales","29":"tag-subject_subject-sales","30":"tag-synd","31":"tag-united-states","32":"tag-wsj-pro-mansion-global"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115590735017516706","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}