Frank Lloyd Wright's Burnham Block

I had the pleasure of touring Frank Lloyd Wright's Burnham Block, a collection of model homes from his American Home Build System that never fully materialized due to WWI. The nonprofit currently owns all six homes, including four duplexes and two single-family units. They've recently restored one single-family home beautifully, preserving over 90% of the original wood and incorporating period-appropriate furnishings. This tiny gem, Wright's smallest design, offers a rare glimpse into his vision for affordable housing. It was an incredible experience, and I can easily imagine living there. A must-visit for architecture enthusiasts and/or Wright fanatics!

Hidden gem in a slightly rundown neighborhood. Always love to see the care and preservation taken with these properties.

If you are a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright, I would definitely recommend taking this short tour of the Burnham Block in Milwaukee. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and happy to answer our questions, and even though we have visited other FLW homes, we learned plenty of new info! The other homes I have toured have been large, more glamorous homes but the Burnham Block was FLW's attempt to design homes in mass for average suburban families. Very interesting and still very beautiful!

What a gem! It's not often you get to see not only a finished restoration but one in the midst of being restored. Unlike other Wright places photos are welcome (and encouraged) .Our guide Dave was outstanding and his knowledge and passion was evident throughout the tour.

This is a great example of the American architecture of the beginning of XX century. There are more of his buildings in Chicago. Anyway, it is worth it to stopping by here.

I've been on a few tours of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings and homes. This tour was different. FLW was interested in affordable housing, and he designed a series of "system-built" homes now know as American System-Built Homes. Six examples of these homes were constructed and are still standing on Burnham Street. The tour takes you into two, one that is a duplex and one that is a single-family home. The duplex that you can tour is completely gutted. The single-family home (about 800 square feet) has been renovated and restored. There is no place to buy tickets or wait for a tour to start. So our tour group just waited on the front porch of the single-family home that is part of the tour until a tour guide arrived. (We bought tickets online prior to the tour, but people who didn't had to wait for the single-family home to empty of its current hour to get a ticket from a woman inside the house. The architecture and the theory behind American System-Built Homes are interesting. However, the tour was kind of all over the place, and we spent more time on the street looking at the buildings than we did in any of the homes. (Not sure what they do when it rains!) All in all, it was an okay tour, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it except to the most serious FLW-philes.

Being big fans of FLW we needed to catch this tour. Having seen some of his grand houses in other parts of the country it was very interesting to see some of his smallest creations. Our docent did a great job of laying out the story and walking us through the system houses on this block. Though not grand and audacious as some of his other designs the B1 is really well done. The $15 admission is in line for a FLW tour given the scale of this one. Worth the hour of our time especially to support them in their mission to save these houses. Make sure to check the days and hours for tours since it is limited.

Brief tour of 850 sq foot home, sidewalk in front of houses and a duplex that is waiting to be remodeled (striped to floorboards). We went on a cold day and struggled to stay warm on sidewalk and in the bare duplex. Not worth $15 for a tour.

This was a very cool tour on the Doors Open Milwaukee list today. It is quite small (800 sq. ft.), so it only takes about 15 minutes to see the place and learn all about Frank Lloyd Wright's design of these American-System Built homes for lower income folks.I learned a lot about F.L.W. as I had no idea he designed his homes very early in the 20th century. I always thought he was working in the 50's and 60's. He was definitely way ahead of his time. There are 6 F.L.W. homes all in a row on West Burnham Street. The Foundation has purchased 3 of the 6 and completely restored this one at 2714. As Mike said, this Model B1 is the only one known to exist. There are only 13 American System-Built Homes in existence and 6 of them are right here in Milwaukee! That is pretty darn cool!Of course, his flat roofs were not a very good design and these homes, like many of his, leak badly. Fortunately, the Foundation has done an outstanding job of restoring Model B1 and have raised quite a bit of money to start working on the next one, a duplex.This is an excellent place to bring out of town guests if they are at all interested in history or architecture.

Model B1, B for the floor plan and 1 for the style of roof, this is a system built house, not a pre-fab one. What does that mean? Pre-fab homes have walls and roof gables, etc., constructed off site and then the homes are assembled on site. The system built homes had the wood needed for the build cut to specification off site. That's it. All construction was done on the job site.This home is one of a grouping of 6 homes built on Burnham street, and the only B1 in existence. These 6 homes were built to show prospective customers what their future home could look like, with the roof and interiors pretty much interchangeable from one unit to the next. This particular house has been completely restored and is owned by Wright in Wisconsin, a preservation group that currently owns 4 of the 6 houses and plans (read HOPES) to buy the remaining two when/if they come up for sale. Their plans are to restore all the homes and then use them as the group's headquarters/offices, a museum and then also for tours. One is currently available for rent, very much the same as the Seth Peterson Cottage in Mirror Lake State Park is, and that may continue after restoration, as well.Back to THIS house. It looks very nice from the outside and is as nice inside with all the restored woodwork. Frank was very smart in his design in that he had the dining room table as well as the dressers in the bedrooms built into the walls. The windows bring in lots of light and give very expansive views (imagine before all the other houses were there). Would I have wanted to purchase this house back in the day? Perhaps. People were shorter in stature and didn't have as much stuff then, in comparison to today. Would I live there today, if given a chance? I'd have to do some serious thinking about that, but I'm leaning towards no. The bedrooms are tiny, with scarcely any room, and this model only has two. At most, a double bed and POSSIBLY a desk would fit. The kitchen can only accommodate one person cooking, and the seating area for eating looked to only hold 4 people, so this would not be the best house for entertaining. The living room could only house one sofa and a coffee table. You might be able to squeeze a chair in, but it definitely couldn't be a recliner.This is a great place to visit to get up close and personal with Frank's design. Both Taliesins are wonderful, but rooms are roped off and you only get to see them as what you are: an outsider. Here, you get to fully walk into each room and look around, but, like both Taliesins, no photography is allowed.69/2015