- 5/18/2025
Today, AD travels to Pleasantville, New York, to tour Toy Hill House, one of the architectural gems in Frank Lloyd Wright’s visionary Usonia neighborhood. In the 1940s, a group of New York City architects, guided by Wright himself, set out to build a modern, affordable utopia—a community rooted in design, nature, and innovation. This resulted in a stunning group of mid-century modern homes nestled in the woods, just an hour from Manhattan. Join us as we explore how Wright’s iconic design principles are brought to life in this small-but-mighty masterpiece.
2022 The Estate of Pedro E. Guerrero
2022 The Estate of Pedro E. Guerrero
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Frank Lloyd Wright designed these houses with the objective of making them out of natural
00:11products and providing people an opportunity to be close with nature. Fairly simple structures,
00:17and yet one that was special, not like a cookie cutter house that everybody else had.
00:23My name is Brian Renz. My family and I are owners of the Frank Lloyd Wright, Bertha, and Saul Friedman
00:33House, also known as Toy Hill, here in a community called Usonia, which is part of Pleasantville, New York.
00:39Usonia as a community started way back in the 40s when two architects in the city decided to be
00:48interested in a cooperative community. Frank Lloyd Wright assisted in this. He helped lay out the
00:53roads. He helped lay out plans for the properties. We've had the opportunity to meet the Friedman
00:59family, and as a matter of fact, we even have a video. It showed this house being built and other
01:05neighborhood houses, including Frank Lloyd Wright being present and active on the site. Not aware
01:11that this video has ever been published before, so getting the opportunity to see it and keep it was a
01:17tremendous gift from the Friedman boys. The New Yorkers who were interested in the project were largely
01:22people from the city, so it was people both from Manhattan and from Brooklyn in particular.
01:27Because of the peculiar nature of the community and the fact that it had the cooperative ownership,
01:32it was a very novel concept at the time. People in the surrounding community are said to have
01:38referred to it instead of Usonia, that they referred to it as Insania. Some aspects of Wright's
01:46plan for Usonia didn't end up happening just the way he expected, but there's no question that his
01:53interests and activity here live on with the current residents in Usonia.
02:01The first thing you'll notice as we walk up to the house is this most unusual carport.
02:08It's said that Frank Lloyd Wright was the first person to put car and port together, something he did
02:14throughout the country. His homes rarely had garages. This particular carport is most unique. It's a
02:21single pillar of concrete with a 20-sided polygon of concrete that some people have described as a
02:29mushroom. The experts on Wright will suggest that he probably thought of it as more of a tree. Other
02:36people look at it and see a concrete spaceship.
02:45The geometry of the building is peculiar in that it's two cylinders. It's not exactly
02:51circles. It's a 20-side polygon, which is called an icosagon. And indeed, I did have to look that up.
02:57The main material of the house is concrete along with locally sourced stone. There are a number of
03:03quarries near here. So as we head down the stairs, I'll warn anybody who's over six feet to really
03:10watch their head. This is compression that Wright uses. It's a standard thing in virtually all of his
03:16buildings. So as we enter, we're still compressed. We can already see that there's massive natural stone,
03:24just like in the exterior, on the interior also. One of those things he'll do to make the inside much like
03:31the outside. Welcome to the main living area in the house. What I'm going to show you first is the
03:38geometric center of the first floor of the house. So this is the exact center of it, all the way down
03:44to the floor and up to the ceiling. We have radial lines in the floor that go along with the 20-sided
03:52polygon. Each section is 18 degrees. That's the geometry throughout the house. My daughter will
03:59irreverently call the house pizza house. Everything in the house is laid out like a piece of pizza,
04:05and that includes the bedding upstairs. This little corner, this we call our library. Wright's idea on
04:12living determined very much how he designed the furniture in the built-ins. Very, very little
04:17furniture. Everything's built in. When I was speaking with the prior owner, his advice was only bring a
04:24toothbrush because there's no room for anything else. When we moved into the house, one of the
04:31first things I wanted to do was get these two chairs. They're a long-time personal favorite of mine.
04:37These were first designed at Frank Lloyd Wright's studio. They're called origami, and they're seen in
04:42a lot of Wright homes. To me, they were just perfect for the spot. Here we have an example of Frank Lloyd Wright's
04:48most famous chair, the barrel chair. Originally was at Taliesin. One of the prior owners added six of
04:55these chairs to the house, not part of the original furniture. These tables are red oak, and they're
05:04original to the house. They have part of the geometry of each room built into the table. Next, we have a
05:10classic floor lamp from Taliesin. This was purchased by a prior owner. It's been here for at least 25 years.
05:17It's present in very many of the homes in our community, but especially in Frank Lloyd Wright
05:23properties. It's a very popular lamp. My son designed this mirror. It's designed with the geometry of the
05:30house in mind and the color of the house in mind, and we find it so nice to be able to contribute to
05:36the art and the style of the house. When we were moving here from Florida, the reason I included our grand
05:44piano was that the original Frank Lloyd Wright plans for the house include a grand piano in the floor
05:52plan, and music was an important part of the story of the house. The community had a singing group that
06:00would meet here, and they would all sit on stools around. The community always felt that they had a
06:06stake in this house. One of the early clients in the cooperative was Roland Risely. He has recently
06:14turned 100, and he still lives in the same house that he hired Frank Lloyd Wright to build for him
06:21when he was just 26 years old, and he's the oldest living Frank Lloyd Wright client in the entire world.
06:27I'm Roland Risely, and I'm the owner of this house known as the Risely House, which was designed for
06:37me by Frank Lloyd Wright. My wife and I actually met at Cornell. In 1950, we married. At that point,
06:46we were wanting to build a home and put down roots for a family, and we were told there's a community
06:51building affordable homes supervised by Frank Lloyd Wright. Well, let's go take a look. And it was a
06:58cooperative that was really an idealistic, egalitarian cooperative. We liked that idea. We liked the
07:04land. We liked the community. The people who joined USonia, everybody accepted the idea of Wright and his
07:10disciples and Wright approving on the design. Now, it's not unusual for suburban families to sometimes form
07:18lifelong friendships, but for a whole community of people who grew up in this environment to continue
07:25to feel connected. And we have a gathering or reunion of some kind here every 10-15 years. And they come,
07:33and they want to show their spouses, their children, their grandchildren, where they grew up and how it was.
07:48Heading back to the center of the room, we have this very unusual built-in concrete table. It's built
08:00into the foundation of the house. It's surrounded by the original ottomans and stools with a very comfy
08:07area for seating. Again, this is the geometric center of the house, and the wooden tables across the room can
08:14actually attach to this where you can end up with seating for a banquet of 20 or more people.
08:21Heading back toward the kitchen, I'll point out that Frank Lloyd Wright wouldn't call this a kitchen.
08:27He would always call this workspace. So it's an area that wasn't meant for socialization.
08:35Normally now, the kitchen is part of the center of the house as far as socializing also. Almost all of
08:41the area here in the workspace is original. We have original cabinetry. Notice the peculiar shape
08:47of the cabinets. The peculiar shape of the cabinets is largely due to the fact that the walls
08:53are not vertical. They're not straight. So because of the walls being slanted,
08:58the cabinets also have a slant built into both sides to make them symmetric. One peculiar result of that
09:05is that on opening the cabinet doors, one needs to be careful because it will hit you in the face.
09:16To show you the second floor, we need to go up Frank Lloyd Wright's circular stairway. One of the key
09:21things here is always having a hold of the handrail. They do look a little bit dangerous.
09:27Welcome to the second floor. Here at the top of the stairs, there's a couple of interesting things. We have
09:32three vent holes that are very strange. They're at the top of each of the three bedrooms. They provide
09:40ventilation to be able to flow through, but they're one of the sources of one of the big problems in the
09:45house when we have guests. I always have to warn the guests that there are no secrets here because
09:51you can hear everything.
09:56Welcome to the second floor loft, right called this play space. And this is a favorite place for
10:02our granddaughter. So again, Wright named this play space and that's how we use it. It's a natural
10:09place for the family to get together in the evening, listen to music, watch TV, play a game. So it really
10:15works out quite nicely as Wright had laid it out. Here on the second floor loft, you have perhaps the
10:21best view of the outside of the house and you have a very dramatic view of the inside of the house.
10:27The beam here is actually structurally very important. It goes through both sides of the chimney. It supports
10:38the roof on this whole half of the house. Remember the edge of the roof here, like in the rest of the
10:45house is concrete. So it's quite heavy, be very difficult to support it with wooden frame. So it's
10:52supported by this massive steel girder. As we head back to the primary bedroom, compared to a typical
11:01suburban home, it is quite small, but you have to remember everything is built in. The double dresser
11:07is of particular interest because of some of the special things the cabinet maker had to think of.
11:12Notice the scroll cutting along the edge of the natural stone. The shape of the cabinet is an irregular
11:18piece of pizza. And all of the drawers have to be custom made to shape to fit that. Here's an example
11:25of that. So it's not rectangular. It's not square. And it would be something that they would definitely
11:32have to pay a lot of attention to. People are always shocked by the size and shape of the bed. Basically,
11:38it's the size of a queen mattress at the top. And it works out that it's the size of a twin bed at the
11:44bottom. Again, it has the same geometry as all of the rooms in the house. This bed has never been
11:51moved. The wooden boards in the base of the bed are nailed to the floor. It's always been here. It's
11:57always been the same size. And surprisingly, it works. When quizzed about this, Wright would respond,
12:06everyone he ever knew was wider at their shoulders than at their feet. So he didn't think it was a problem.
12:12But he didn't choose to have a bed like this himself.
12:19Most people, when you ask me anything about Frank Lloyd Wright, oh yeah, well, not a very nice guy.
12:24Arrogant, egocentric, his houses cost too much, left his wife and five children, ran over with the
12:29wife of a client, his roofs leaked. So after a conversation with Mr. Wright and had some correspondence,
12:34he sent us a set of preliminary drawings. And my wife looked and said, but look, there's no broom
12:40closet. And we told him we have a lot of books. He didn't provide the book space. And I decided I'll
12:45go down and see him. What ensued was a very, very good relationship. And Frank Lloyd Wright,
12:50in fact, became a mentor and ultimately a friend. He said, I'll redesign your house
12:56as many times as I have to until I've satisfied all of your needs. And that's exactly what happened.
13:01The relationship that I described was seen as very unusual. Even clients with whom he got along
13:07perfectly well had issues with him. I didn't.
13:19So welcome to the primary bathroom. It's by far the largest in the house, even though by modern
13:25standards, it's quite petite. We have a very interesting original makeup mirror, including
13:32a stool. So you could sit and take care of makeup. One of the most peculiar things that's really hard
13:37to get your head around is that the wooden shelf system actually goes through the shower and connects
13:44to the next room. And there's a radiator in the shower. The tile that's on the wall and on the floor is
13:51not original. And I'm not really sure how long they've been here. Next, we're going to head into
13:58the second bedroom. My daughter claims this as her space. So this is the original bunk bed. We took the
14:04bottom bunk bed and changed it into a larger bed, much like the primary bedroom.
14:14In this third bedroom, which is the second for the children, there was originally a bunk bed. The bed
14:21on the bottom was the size of a twin bunk bed with the pizza shape. We enlarged a little bit and my
14:28son has the same size bed as we have in the primary bedroom. When we make changes in the house, we do
14:34get input from other people in the community. There's a lot of history in the neighborhood. We would
14:40discuss it with neighbors, especially those who have a long historical stake in the community. The
14:45community feeling that they've had from the early part of the history of the community even continues today.
14:55We could not possibly have anticipated how the house would influence our lives. The whole experience
15:01would become a central part of my life, a long life. I just turned 100 and there's now widespread
15:07scientific belief. Beauty in one's environment does reduce stress. I realized that not a day of my life
15:14but I fail to see something beautiful here. The light off the stone. I look at the grain of the water.
15:19Little things are just, it's beautiful.
15:26The cooperative nature of the community back in the late 40s and the early 50s is hard to reproduce in
15:32modern America. There's no question about that. But here we still have much more than the normal
15:37commitment between residents.
15:51For about 10 years I've been doing architecture tours of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings at Florida
15:56Southern College. I found looking at his architecture every day and explaining it to people to be a
16:01tremendous inspiration. And now I get to live in this famous Frank Lloyd Wright home.
16:13From a personal perspective we've had a lot of interesting experiences. There are lessons to learn
16:19but we've enjoyed it a lot.
16:31Yeah.
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