“A row house in an early project designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and saved from ruin decades later is on the market in a historically significant section of Bronzeville known as the Gap.

“The four-bedroom, roughly 4,000-square-foot home is one of the four Roloson Houses. Built in 1894, they were declared city landmarks in 1979, as a rescue rehab was getting underway at the deteriorating set of tall-gabled row houses with a handsome band of decorative trim running across their fronts.

“Laura and John Bilson, who have owned the home on Calumet Avenue since 2016, are asking $799,900. The home came on the market June 2, listed with Vergis Eiland, an @properties Christie’s International Real Estate agent. In the photo above, it’s the second from left.

“‘It’s very wide open with so much light inside,’ thanks to broad bands of windows across the front, a large skylight hanging above the center of the interior, and rear windows, Laura Bilson said. Wright designed the main floor with a series of enclosures, not four-walled rooms, which adds to the daylit feeling inside.

“The swirly ornamental band and other details on the exterior ‘show the influence of Louis Sullivan,’ John Bilson said. Wright worked for that pioneering architect before going out on his own and was known to call Sullivan ‘Lieber Master,’ or “beloved master,’ in the ensuing years.

“The homes bear the name of Robert Roloson, a grain dealer who with his wife, Levanche, lived about a mile north on Prairie Avenue. A detailed history of the Roloson Houses says Roloson was the first client Wright signed when he went into practice on his own after being kicked out of Sullivan’s architectural practice for freelancing.

Wright was 27 years old and in the second year of working on his own when he completed the Roloson project in 1894.

“The Gap is a sliver of Bronzeville — bounded by 31st and 35th streets, Martin Luther King Drive and State Street — so named because it lay between ‘urban renewal’ zones of the South Side, a gap of sorts where historical architecture wasn’t torn down. Dozens of 19th-century houses and row houses line its blocks, particularly in the Calumet-Giles-Prairie landmark district.(Rodkin, Crain’s Chicago Business, 6/5/25)

“Robert Roloson commissioned Wright to remodel a group of four preexisting row houses in 1894. Concerned with ventilation, Wright devised a plan that incorporated a succession of courts and wells in order to allow light and air into the buildings’ interior rooms. A series of four high-pitched gables dominates the front facade of the row houses. Wright proposed eliminating these design elements, but the client rejected the idea. Their strict geometry is echoed in the rigid sequence of Sullivanesque spandrels and thickly mullioned windows below. The interiors of the houses, which were gutted after a fire and general deterioration in 1981, also featured Sullivanesque ornament, as did the bulbous balustrades that once encircled the terraces at the front of the houses. Similar balustrades remain intact at Wright’s Nathan G. Moore residence in Oak Park.” (Frank Lloyd Wright Trust website)

Read the full story at Crain’s Chicago Business and the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust website

• One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s first solo projects now for sale in Bronzeville, Dennis Rodkin, Crain’s Chicago Business, 4/11/25
• Four Houses for Robert Roloson, Frank Lloyd Wright Trust
• Roloson Houses, Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy
•  Roloson Houses, 1894, Frank Lloyd Wright, 3213-19 S. Calumet Avenue Designated Chicago Landmark 
• 3215 S. Calumet Avenue Listing, Redfin