Massaro House

Massaro House is a residence on privately owned Petre Island in Lake Mahopac, New York, roughly 50 miles (80 km) north of New York City. Inspired by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, the home's design and construction have had a complex and controversial history. Wright's plan was initially known as the "Chahroudi House", for the client who commissioned it back in 1949, and for whom Wright designed and built a much smaller cottage on the island when his proposal for the main home proved prohibitively expensive for the local engineer.

In 1996 sheet metal contractor Joe Massaro acquired Petre Island and the long dormant drawings for the main home. In developing a plan to construct the home with numerous modifications, including some reflecting improved systems and technologies, a conflict arose over the project's authenticity with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which successfully legally disputed Massaro's right to refer to the structure as a Wright design.

Due to the subsequent out-of-court settlement between Massaro and the foundation the home can only be described as being "inspired by Wright" rather than a faithfully rendered, certified Wright design.

In 1949, architect Frank Lloyd Wright received a commission from engineer Ahmed Chahroudi to build a house on a 10-acre (40,000 m²) island he owned in Lake Mahopac, Petre (alternatively spelled "Petra", from the Latin for "rock", reflecting the prominence where the home was to be constructed). Chahroudi would later state that during a lunch meeting with Wright and Edgar Kaufmann, the owner of Wright's celebrated Fallingwater, the architect told Kaufmann: "When I finish the house on the island, it will surpass your Fallingwater".

Wright worked on designing a one-story, 5,000-square-foot (460 m²) house for three months, but the project was cancelled when Chahroudi realized he would not be able to afford either the $50,000 budget that Wright envisioned for the home or a second more modest version he requested. Instead, he had Wright build a three bedroom 1,200-square-foot (110 m²) guest cottage the architect had designed for the island (known today as the A. K. Chahroudi Cottage), later occupying it with his family as a summer retreat.

In 1996, Petre Island was purchased for US$700,000 by Joseph Massaro, a sheet metal contractor. Though he had seen the original Chahroudi commission drawings for the main home years earlier, he initially intended merely to restore the island's Wright-designed guest cottage.

Massaro received Wright's main house renderings as part of the purchase of the island. In spite of the three months that Wright had put into design work on the structure, all that survived were five drawings: a floor plan with ideas for built-in and stand-alone furniture, a building section, and three elevations. Massaro hired Thomas A. Heinz, an architect and Wright historian, to complete the unfinished design.

Heinz employed ArchiCAD building information modeling (BIM) software to model aspects of Wright's design not self-evident in the original renderings. His design also provided updated heating and cooling solutions such as air conditioning and radiant heating that were not part of the original Wright concept. The design has chimney caps—a feature to which Wright characteristically took exception—at each of the home's six fireplaces.