How is Usonia, the utopian people created by Frank Lloyd Wright, the “best American architect in history”

Roland Reisley's house, in pleasantville, state of New York. — Photo foot, Frank Lloyd Wright's designs are characterized by unusual geometric patterns and their integration with the landscape around them.

- Author, Let Bressan
- Author's title, Senior journalist, BBC News
- Author, Rafuel ABUCHAEL
- Author's title, Periodist, BBC News World
19 julio 2025

Frank Lloyd Wright's dream – the architect that many consider as the best in the history of the United States – was always to get their designs to connect in such a way that they formed the city of the future. He called her Broadacre City.

Wright imagined a type of democratic city in which people were owners of their home and their farm and their own workplace, one in which services and transport were public goods, and in which the community and art had more relevance than in the cities built until then.

It was his way of using architecture to express democratic ideas that his contemporaries, pragmatist thinkers such as John Dewey and William James or economist Henry George, were outlining towards the end of the 19th and early twentieth centuries, according to author Lionel March in his book “Written about Wright.”

“Maybe Wright's most pragmatic contribution to architectural theories in the urban form is that he accepts that, above all, a city is not just a set of roads, buildings and spaces, but it is a society in action. The city is a process, rather than a form,” explains the author.

And although the idea of Wright's utopian city was never fully executed, there was a group of young New York couples in the 40s that hired the architect to try.

Frank Lloyd Wright poses next to a scale model of the Guggenheim Museum, in 1953. — Photo foot, Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed iconic works such as the Guggenheim Museum, of NY, is considered by many as the best architect in the history of the United States.

Today, the Historical District of Usonia, one hour north of New York City, is the closest that exists in reality to the City Broad that Wright visualized: a small refuge, far from the view of the people, in which the houses seem to be part of the landscape and are interconnected seeking to encourage the sense of community.

¿USA or USONIA?

Round roofs of the Reisley house — Photo foot, Geometric shapes are an essential part of the Usonia style.

With 100 years of age, Roland Reisley is the last survivor of a group of couples – some Wright students – who in the 1940s bought a land in Westchester County, New York state, and hired the famous architect to build its utopian Broadacre City.

“It all started in the 30s, in the years of the Great Depression,” Reisley told the BBC. “An engineer who worked in New York City named David Henken began to speak with family and friends about the possibility of creating a community.”

The community would be created based on three fundamental ideas, Risley told the BBC: “One, they should be affordable houses, houses that cost US $ 5,000 (about US $ 66,000, adjusted today).”

“The second is that it had to be a socially connected cooperative, and the third was that it required Frank Lloyd Wright.”

Since the 30s, Wright had been playing with the idea of building houses at an affordable cost for the American middle class, maintaining some of the ideas and concepts about beauty that they had made it so famous in their career.

From there the Usonia style was born, a term that Wright coined to refer to something that was “of these United States”, replacing the descriptive “American“That is usually used in the northern country.

The concept

Some houses in Usonia, NY, seen from above. — Photo foot, Usonia -style houses should be affordable, encourage social life and be harmonic with the landscape around them.

The Usonia style is based on a design philosophy that Wright called “organic architecture”: the houses were built using natural materials such as stone or wood, and were designed in such a way that they were harmonious with the nature that surrounded it.

In addition, the houses have some design elements that characterize them, as explained by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation: “These houses with a single plant have flat ceilings, wide eaves and cantilever garages -wright preferred them above the garages for their efficiency-, furniture and pre -constructed shelves.”

House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright — Photo foot, Wright built several houses with his USONIA style in different parts of the country, such as Lakeland, Florida.

The catwalk that leads to the main door of the Maynard Buehler house, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, in Orinda, California. — Photo foot, Wright believed to use local materials that helped the house to join the landscape.

“High windows that soften the barrier between interior and exterior, heating that is radiated through a grid inserted in the floor concrete block, windows on the roof, and a sense of fluidity of one room for the other.”

For houses that, usually, were built far from urban centers to achieve better access to land, Wright sought to use local materials, including stone and wood, to merge better with the environment.

“He believed that the outside had to be brought,” Roland Reisley told BBC, “he believed that the buildings should be from the earth, and not to be on it, they had to imitate the contours of the landscape, they should be seen as if they were growing from the earth.”

The Pope-Leighey House Room in Alexandria, VA, designed by Wright. — Photo foot, Housing by designed by Wright.

Live in beauty

Although Franklin Lloyd Wright designed more than 1,000 USONIA -style houses, 60 were barely built and the 47 original houses that were built in the community of pleasantville, NY, only 3 were designed by Wright himself.

One of them is Roland Reisley's house, who still lives in it.

“People tell me 'it doesn't seem that you were 100 years old, you seem much younger,” Reisley told the BBC, “and living in beauty really contributes to physiological benefits, and the best, helps longevity … I don't know, it's something I like to think.”

Roland Reisley poses at home in Usonia, NY. — Photo foot, Roland Reisley, 100 years old, is the only survivor of the original group that settled in Usonia, NY.

Wright summarized his ideas in a phrase: “The more lively, the more beautiful life becomes silly. If you ignore beauty, you will find it very quickly without it. Your life will be impoverished.”

“But if you invest in beauty, the rest of your life will remain with you.”