Kraus House, Saint Louis

The Kraus House is a unique house in Kirkwood, designed by renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Originally designed for Russell and Ruth Goetz Kraus, the house features a distinctive parallelogram blueprint and a range of other unusual geometric features.

Construction of the brick and cypress house began in 1950 and continued until at least 1960. Despite the challenges posed by the unique design, the house was eventually built by a former Seabee named Lee Patterson, after numerous contractors declined the job.

The house features a carport, attached shed, and a workroom for Kraus, who was a glass work artist. The only right angles in the house are found in the bathroom, while even the bed is a parallelogram and requires custom-made sheets.

In 1997, the house was recognized with listing on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 2001, it was sold to a non-profit organization that aimed to preserve it. The title was later transferred to the St. Louis County Parks and Recreation Department, which now maintains the 10.5-acre (42,000 m2) grounds as Ebsworth Park. The house and park are open to the public by appointment only, and tours are available for a small fee, though visitors are not allowed to take pictures inside the house.

The Kraus House is located on a tract of woods and rolling meadowland on the east side of Ballas Road, south of Dougherty Ferry Road. Visitors reach the house by driving up an 800-foot-long private driveway, which crosses a small branch of Sugar Creek and winds up a hillside through a deciduous woods. The house is located in the center of a grove of tall, slender persimmon trees and is a masterpiece of geometric design. Wright used the 60-degree/120-degree parallelogram as the design motif.

As of 1996, the cedar roof shakes roof had been replaced by asphalt shingles, and the house was experiencing spalling problems with the bricks. This was thought to be due to the unusually hard and dense nature of the bricks, which were laid in Wrightian fashion with the vertical joints flush and the horizontal joints deeply raked to accentuate the horizontal lines of the building.