Aug. 25 ‘Party at Frank’s House’ benefits Rockford’s Laurent House

Rockford’s Laurent House, 4646 Spring Brook Road, is the only Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in northern Illinois. (Photo provided)

Staff Report

Rockford’s new community treasure, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Laurent House, is holding its first major fund-raiser, “Party at Frank’s House,” an outdoor garden party Aug. 25 to raise money to fix the home’s roof, bricks and plaster work.

This is the only Frank Lloyd Wright home in northern Illinois, and the event is the first public viewing of the home and only chance to see the home before restoration begins to turn the house into a museum in 2013.

Rockford Area Realtors is leading a group of businesses donating food, drink and services to the event. Party festivities include appetizer flights by Mary’s Market, iced coffees and sunteas by Javamania, granitas by Zammuto’s, gourmet cupcakes by SugarJones, an outdoor sculpture silent auction and formal tours of the home by the Laurent House Foundation. Paul Cebar Tomorrow Sound, a 1930s and 1940s-influenced R&D band from Milwaukee, will provide music in their first Rockford appearance.

Wright is America’s best-known architect, who designed the house for the Laurents in 1949. This is Wright’s only home designed handicap accessible — Wright designed the optimal vantage points in the home from the seat of a wheelchair. It is also the first Wright design to use intersecting arches, this hemicycle design later employed in design of the famed Guggenheim Museum in New York.

“Rockford Area Realtors is excited to lead this community collaboration, helping build a museum of excellence in Rockford,” said Steve Bois, CEO, Rockford Area Realtors. “We wanted to put together a cultural event, but one that lets people socialize and have fun.”

The Laurent House was bought at auction last year from Phyllis and Kenneth Laurent, the home’s only owners and inhabitants. Kenneth has since died.

“Party at Frank’s House” will be held at the Laurent House, 4646 Spring Brook Road in Rockford, with shuttles to and from the house leaving from Rockford Guilford High School. The event from 5 to 10 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 25, is limited to 300 people and is close to selling out.

Tickets are $125 each and available at Rockford Area Realtors, Poska, SugarJones and J.R. Kortman Center for Design in Rockford, or through www.RockfordAreaRealtors.org/GardenParty

or by calling (815) 395-6752.

From the Aug. 8-14, 2012, issue