Heller House

The Isidore H. Heller House is a house at 5132 South Woodlawn Avenue in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago in Illinois, United States. Constructed in 1896 for the family of the merchant Isidore H. Heller, the house was designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The design is credited as one of the turning points in Wright's shift to geometric, Prairie School architecture, which is defined by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in horizontal bands, and an integration with the landscape, which is meant to evoke native Prairie surroundings.

The work demonstrates Wright's shift away from emulating the style of his mentor, Louis Sullivan. The facade is made of brick and is topped by a roof with a raised monitor section. Richard Bock, a Wright collaborator and sculptor, provided some of the ornamentation, including a plaster frieze. The house's first floor includes a living room, dining room, kitchen, and pantry, arranged around a stair and elevator. The second floor was devoted to bedrooms and bathrooms, while the third floor (originally used as servants' quarters and a bedroom) has been split into its own apartment.

The Heller family owned the house only until about 1913. Over the years, the building has been sold numerous times; the Goldstein family has owned the house since 2004. The Heller House is designated as a Chicago Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark.

Little is known about Isidore H. Heller and his family, except through interviews, census records, and county records. Isidore Heller, an Austrian immigrant born in 1847, later married Ida, who came from Wisconsin and was ten years younger than him. After moving to the United States, Heller worked at Wolf, Sayer, and Heller: Packers and Butcher's Supplies on the northwest side of Chicago. The Hellers had three children, including Walter Heller, a Chicago investment banker.

Heller purchased land in the Hyde Park area of Chicago from Jonas Hamburger on January 2, 1895, and commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design the house in 1896. A building permit was issued on July 13, 1897; the total cost of the work is estimated at $12,500 (equivalent to $484,000 in 2025). William Adams is credited as the builder. In 1906, Heller purchased an additional 25 feet (7.6 m) to the north of his original plot.

The Hellers lived in the house for about 16 years. Ida Heller died at the home on October 11, 1909, after falling there by accident; she had had heart disease. The house was sold to Frances Bickett in June 1913 for $27,000–27,500 (equivalent to $880,000–896,000 in 2025). Records indicate that by 1915, Heller had been living in Silver Lake for some years. Charles McFarlane acquired the house from the Bickett family by February 1914 for about $27,500 (equivalent to $884,000 in 2025). From 1924 to 1939 the Heller House was owned and occupied by Joseph Mayer and his wife, and the house became known as the "Joseph Mayer House" to local residents. Joseph died in 1936 and bequeathed most of his estate to his wife. The Mayers sold the home to the family of Wilfred Fox in 1939, who reportedly made alterations to the home's third floor.

In 1948, George Watson purchased the home from Fox and owned it for the next 25 years, becoming the owner with the longest tenure. The Watsons converted the third-story servant rooms into an apartment during the 1950s; by the following decade, two college girls occupied that apartment. Lewis Bradford then bought the house in 1972, and had the exterior sandblasted. In 1977, Victor and Danielle Barcilon bought the house. They occupied it until 1987, when it was sold to David and Catherine Epstein. After Serafino Garella and Judith Bromley bought the house in 1995, they restored a bathroom and restored the master bedroom's fireplace. The house was resold in 2004 to Steve Goldstein, a cardiologist at Loyola University Chicago who described the house as "an investment in art and history".

Steve Goldstein was hired by Brandeis University in Massachusetts in 2011, and he and his wife Emily Novick placed the house for sale in January 2012. Though the house was initially listed for $2.5 million, the asking price was ultimately reduced to $2.425 million. The house remained unsold three years later; at the time, it often took longer for Wright–designed houses to be sold, and Goldstein did not want to lower the asking price. In 2014, tourists began visiting the house as part of the Wright Housewalk, which includes several Chicagoland buildings designed by Wright. After withdrawing the house from the real-estate market, Goldstein and Novick listed the house for sale again in 2016 for $2.4 million. The Goldstein family then renovated the house, updating the original elevator and repainting the rooms in their original colors. The family again attempted to sell the Heller House in May 2019, this time for $2.2 million; it still had not been sold by the next year.