The Haynes House: Frank Lloyd Wright Comes to Fort Wayne
Near Fort Wayne, Indiana
At thirty-nine oh one North Washington Road in Fort Wayne sits one of the rarest things in northeast Indiana: a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The John D. Haynes House was completed in nineteen fifty-two, commissioned by John and Dorothy Haynes, and it represents Wright's Usonian philosophy in compact form. Usonian was Wright's term for his small, affordable houses designed for middle-class American families, built without basements or attics, with flat or low-pitched roofs and an integration of indoor and outdoor space.
The Haynes House covers thirteen hundred fifty square feet, finished in red tidewater cypress, glass, and Chicago common brick on a red concrete slab. The plan forms an outside T shape, with the great room facing southwest and southeast to capture afternoon light, and three bedrooms and a music room dropping off an interior gallery.
Wright designed approximately a hundred and forty Usonian houses between the nineteen thirties and nineteen fifties, scattering them across the country. The Haynes House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in two thousand four and declared a Local Historic District by Fort Wayne in two thousand eight.
