211 S LaGrange Road

211 South La Grange Road: is an 1892 Victorian designed by Frank Lloyd Wright which was built for J. Irving Clark, a La Grange builder and contractor. It was among the first houses that Wright designed and is considered one of the best of his ten “bootleg” houses.- so called because Wright designed them on a moonlighting basis while he worked for Adler & Sullivan, the Chicago architectural design firm.

The similarities between the Clark house and Wright’s own house in Oak Park are particularly striking. Comparable features include the pronounced intersecting gable roofs and the front gable with palladian window over twin bays.

The house has had eight owners, including C.S. Bentley, a Civil War general who was a member of the Board of Trade and Village trustee from 1908-1910; and Joel Daly, a Chicago TV newscaster. The present owners are restoring the house to the way it looked in 1892. In 1988 they removed aluminum siding and restored the original clapboard siding and trim. A side porch, enclosed in the 1950’s was restored. The paint colors were determined by a historic paint analysis to be the original ones. Future plans include the restoration of the original front porch.