Frank Lloyd Wright house difficult to auction

CHICAGO -- If you think selling a house designed by the most famous architect in American history is easy, think again.\nAfter several months on the market, a 1915 Frank Lloyd Wright house on Chicago's North Side is going on the auction block, with bids starting at $750,000, less than a third of the original $2.5 million asking price.\nThe auction, to be held March 8, may be just the second time that a Wright house is being sold as if it were some of Jacqueline Kennedy's jewelry. \n"It's done in the taste of some sort of art sale," said Frank Diliberto, senior vice president of Inland Real Estate Auction, which is handling the sale of the Emil Bach House and an adjacent lot.\n"There was always a relatively small market for them," Ronald Scherubel, executive director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, said of Wright homes. "Even when he (Wright) was alive they weren't for everybody."\nThe problems of selling a Frank Lloyd Wright house begin with the fact that owners are often limited in what they can do with the homes.\nThe city designated the four-bedroom Emil Bach House a landmark in 1977, so both the city and the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois must now sign off on any substantial changes, Scherubel said.\nThat means no knocking down walls to turn two small bedrooms into a larger one or slapping on a coat of paint on the outside without permission. \n"That house is really intended to stay that house," Diliberto said.\nAnother thing that might discourage the modern buyer is the way Wright laid out his Prairie-style homes.\nUnlike modern homes, in which the kitchens are often the central part of the house and bedrooms are spacious, Scherubel said, Wright built homes in which the living room was central and the kitchens were simply places to prepare food before it was brought to the dining area and the bedrooms were just for sleeping.\nIn other words, they were small.\nEmil Bach House didn't appear to have those problems.\nThe problem the Emil Bach House might have is location.\nWhen it was built, it was a country home with an unobstructed view of Lake Michigan. Today, it is on a busy street lined with apartments and businesses in the city's Rogers Park neighborhood. And the view of the water has been drastically reduced by buildings that stand between the home and the lake.\nIf the home were in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb with a large concentration of Wright homes, it would have sold for about $2.1 million, said Ken Goldberg, a real estate agent who tried to sell the house for months before Inland Real Estate stepped in.\n"Nobody pays that in East Rogers Park," he said of the house. \nIt sold two years ago for $1 million.\nBut others say the neighborhood won't dissuade people who want to own one of just 380 Wright houses in the United States.\n"This is a chance to buy a piece of history," said Diliberto. He said the company had heard from prospective buyers across the country.\nJust the chance to walk through the Emil Bach House was enough to attract a steady stream of visitors this week.\n"An opportunity to see it before it goes off the market?" said Noreen Czosnyka, a Chicago real estate agent and fan of Wright's work. "I just had to do it"