ANDREW FH ARMSTRONG HOME-43 CEDAR ROAD
This home is one of eight homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Indiana between 1906 and 1956, mostly in northern Indiana. Officially known as the Andrew Armstrong house, it was designed in 1939 for Chicago advertising director Armstrong in the Usonian style that Wright pioneered, recognizing the need for quality, affordable housing during the Depression. An extension of the Prairie design, Usonian houses possess a similar horizontality, but with simpler features like flatter rooflines, built-in furniture, no art glass windows, and carports instead of garages. The Armstrong home also includes Wright’s signature detail of staggered fireplace bricks in the corners.
The home features traditional board-and-batten walls of mahogany and expansive windows integrated into a design of three plats staggered at 30 degrees, all of which ensconce the owner in nature and maximizes the sloping nature of the lot. In keeping with the Usonian style, the house includes a carport rather than a garage.
Pat and John Peterson expanded the house in the 1960s, adding two bedrooms, a family room and a garage. In the 1970s, the kitchen was expanded and a screened-in porch added, bringing the home to its current size of 3,700 square feet, encompassing four bedrooms and four bathrooms, one of which includes a sauna. The Petersons used architect John Howe, who had served as the chief draftsman at Taliesin to maintain the Usonian continuity. John Peterson built some additional furniture for the house, based on Wright’s drawings.
The home’s most recent owner is Brian Bobek, purchased the home in 2021.
