PRESERVATION Wright home moves from Illinois to Pa.

Moving the house will cost more than $100,000.
LISLE, Ill. (AP) -- If it seems a bit excessive to tear down a rundown-looking prefabricated house on the outskirts of this town, load the pieces on trucks and drive them to Pennsylvania for reassembly, consider the designer was a guy named Wright.
Frank Lloyd Wright.
So, the house that came to this Chicago suburb in pieces in 1957 was taken apart and shipped 540 miles away last week to Johnstown, Pa. There, a local high school teacher and Wright admirer plans to put it back together.
"We're pretty pleased with [the preservation]," said Ron Scherubel, executive director of the Chicago-based nonprofit Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. "There hasn't been a Wright building torn down for over 30 years. It would've been hard to say, 'Well, now there is one."'
The story of how the house was saved from the wrecking ball begins when Wright, one of the nation's greatest architects, designed a prefabricated house for the masses. Materials were precut in Madison, Wis., and shipped out for assembly.
This one went to Lisle. After the owner, Donald Duncan, died in 2002, a developer wanted the land underneath it, but not the house itself. The house was slated for demolition.
Passed it along
But the developer, Danic Custom Homes, recognized the significance of the house and donated it to the Wright Conservancy. The conservancy then gave it to Tim Baacke, a band teacher, under the condition that he restore and preserve it.
This is no free house, though. Baacke said the price tag of taking the house apart and moving it will be more than $100,000 and restoring it will cost as much as three times that amount. He said corporate sponsors are helping to defray some of the cost.
Baacke said the house itself, a three-bedroom, two-bath single story structure, made the move possible.
"It is a project that can be done only because of the style of Wright's design to begin with," he said. "It really lent itself well to be moved to Pennsylvania."
The project took a crew of four Pennsylvania carpenters and a crane operator two weeks to complete. It involved tearing down and throwing away such common materials as shingles and carpet that could be easily duplicated and keeping and taking to Pennsylvania whatever was unique to Wright's design.
That means loading onto trucks such historically significant items as Philippine mahogany paneling and windowsills, cabinetry and cinder blocks cut at an angle that defined the base of the house.
Now Baacke hopes he can make the house a place tourists will want to visit and compliment three other Wright works -- including the famed Fallingwater -- in the region.
XOn the Net: Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy: http://www.savewright.org/