SEPTEMBER 2017 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 77
an expert on
Wright design.
“It’s about designing a place that
people live and work in. Architecture
is about designing a way
of life.”
Built as a cruciform, the $35,000
house features a two-story living
room and library with floor-toceiling
windows on either side, plus
a dining room, servants quarters,
two bedrooms and an open kitchen,
which Wright referred to as a “work
room.” A 28-foot couch is built
into the wall of the living room; the
room itself was built around an oak
tree, although it later died.
Red cypress board is used inside
and out, complementing the structure’s
brick and red roofing tiles.
The kitchen was remodeled in the
1970s after a fire that might have
claimed the entire residence save
for the heroic efforts of the local
volunteer fire department. Wright
acolyte Morton Delson supervised
the restoration.
Subsequent owners of the house
have said they set out to find a
home that met their needs but,
having encountered Wright’s
design, quickly succumbed to its
visual impact.
“The minute we walked in the
door, all those requirement went
out the window,” one owner told
The New York Times. “Aesthetically,
the house was in a class by itself.
Nothing else in Great Neck could
compare.”
He has spent the “cost of a college
education” repairing the roof.
“But it’s like living in a work of
art,” he added. “We would never
give it up.”
The Rebhuhn House is one of the
few modern movement homes on
Long Island that has been neither
renovated to the point of desecration
nor completely demolished.
Sadly, Wright did not continue to
build on Long Island, but took his
Usonian ideals north to Westchester
and a 95-acre planned community
near Pleasantville.
“We could only imagine what he
would have done with a site mid-
Long Island, like the Hempstead
Plains,” Zaleski said. “He would
have liked Long Island. It was a
place ripe for development.”