The Last Wright
A new documentary chronicles the recent construction of the last house Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed. The director of the Minnesota Design Center has a personal connection to the story.
By Thomas Fisher, Assoc. AIA | November 20, 2025
The Last Wright: Building the Final Home Design of America’s Greatest Architect debuted on September 3, 2025, on the Magnolia Network.
SPOTLIGHT
My high school art teacher, Lou Penfield, commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design two houses for him on land he owned in Northeast Ohio along the Chagrin River, a few miles from where I grew up. Lou and his wife built one of the houses in 1955, but they never managed to complete the second before they passed. Sixty-six years after Wright designed it, however, the current owner of Lou’s house, Sarah Dykstra, and her mother, Debbie, have finally built the second one. Their story is recounted in The Last Wright: Building the Final Home Design of America’s Greatest Architect, a four-part Magnolia Network documentary now streaming on Hulu and other platforms.
The mother-daughter duo followed Wright’s plans and specifications as closely as possible, finding substitutes for materials no longer available, such as Philippine mahogany. They also hired a local architect and engineer to update certain details—for example, adding flashing and steel beams to Wright’s dramatically cantilevered roof so that, unlike others he designed, it wouldn’t leak or sag. They made some choices Wright likely wouldn’t have endorsed, including serving as their own general contractor despite having no experience. Still, they pulled off the amazing feat of building the last house Wright designed before his death in 1959.
The documentary captures the construction process in all its messiness and misfortune. A mistake in the stone-faced concrete-block walls required changing the dimensions of all the cabinetry, and an unexpected rainstorm flooded the unfinished house, staining the concrete floors before they could be sealed. But Sarah and Debbie Dykstra show extraordinary grit—and a sense of humor—that carries them through the stress. They remind us that great architecture requires not only a great architect but also a great client.
Lou was certainly one. Although Wright, who was 5'7", typically designed low-slung houses, he created a tall house for Lou, who was 6'8", with eight-foot bedroom ceilings and a 12-foot living room. The Dykstras had no such height concerns, but their three-bedroom, two-bath, 2,000-square-foot house includes all the hallmarks of a late Wright design: a long, low metal roof; interior walls of stone or mahogany; continuous rows of wood-framed windows along the bedroom wing; radiant-heated, red-stained concrete floors; and a stone fireplace and kitchen core facing a tall living and dining space that opens to a garden.
One winter day, as I sat in Lou’s living room drinking hot tea by the fireplace with him and his wife Pauline, Lou joked that if you’re going to “get stuck with a mortgage, the house better be a good one.” I took his advice—and so, it seems, did Sarah and Debbie Dykstra.
Thomas Fisher, Assoc. AIA, is a professor and director of the Minnesota Design Center at the University of Minnesota.
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