Florida’s Only Private Home Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright Is Officially on the Market

Built in 1954, the Spring House is located on the outskirts of Tallahassee. The 2,040-square-foot residence is a rare example of the renowned architect’s hemicycle design

Sonja Anderson | Daily Correspondent

September 3, 2025

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A Tallahassee house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright is on sale for $2.1 million. The three-bedroom, two-bathroom home is Florida’s only private residence by the renowned 20th-century American architect.

Built in the wooded outskirts of the state capital in 1954, the house was commissioned by George Lewis II, the CEO of Lewis State Bank, and his wife, the social activist Clifton Lewis. George called their home the Spring House because the property featured a natural spring, according to the Spring House Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the property. Today, it’s known as Lewis Spring House.

Byrd Mashburn, George and Clifton Lewis’ daughter, recently decided to sell the 2,040-square-foot home after more than 70 years of family ownership. “It’s just the right time for me,” she tells the Tallahassee Democrat’s TaMaryn Waters. “It’s the right time for the family.”

Wright’s career as an independent architect kicked off in the suburbs of Chicago in the late 19th century. As his profile rose in the decades that followed, he began receiving commissions for structures across the country.

According to the real estate listing, Wright designed the Spring House in the shape of a ship to reflect the Lewis family’s love of the ocean. The Spring House’s interior is open and well-lit, with a large second-story balcony overlooking the first floor. The living area features a sprawling wall of large windows across from two rounded fireplaces, smaller circular windows and a long built-in bench.

“One of the most beautiful things at Spring House is on a full moon, the light in the house … changes in the shadows of the roof, on the terrace, in the yard, changes as the Earth moves,” Mashburn tells the Tallahassee Democrat.

The Spring House is one of just 11 semicircular homes Wright called hemicycles, a shape he favored later in his career. As Architectural Digest’s Katie Schultz writes, the house’s curved glass wall lets residents “enjoy the full arc of the sun throughout the day.”

Clifton Lewis asked Wright to design a house for her family in 1950. Four years later, the couple moved into their new home, where they raised four children. When George Lewis died in 1996, Clifton Lewis established the Spring House Institute. She died in 2014, the same year the National Trust for Historic Preservation included the Spring House in a list of the most endangered historic places.

The Lewis family wanted the Spring House to become a public institute, reports the Tallahassee Democrat. They imagined teachers would reside and conduct classes in the home, and tuition would support property maintenance.

“That’s still what we want,” Mashburn explains to the Tallahassee Democrat. “That’s what I want. That’s what the institute wants. That’s what my parents wanted.”

Unfortunately, decades of Florida weather have taken a toll on the Spring House. Per the National Trust for Historic Preservation, hurricanes and wind storms have caused water to leak into the house, and its cypress columns have deteriorated.

The Spring House is one of nine Wright-designed buildings currently on the market, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. The most expensive property—the Lykes House in Phoenix—is listed at nearly $9 million.

Gina Demirel, an architect at the local firm Conn Architects, tells the Tallahassee Democrat that she visited the Spring House during graduate school. She says Wright represented the “rise of ‘starchitects’ in the United States.”

“He’s one of the originals that, I think, turned architecture into a profession that many people aspired to,” Demirel adds.

Though the Spring House is Wright’s only private residence in Florida, it’s far from his only mark on the Sunshine State. He designed more than a dozen buildings for the campus of Florida Southern College. Built between 1938 and 1958, they make up the world’s largest single-site collection of Wright architecture.

Sonja Anderson | Read More

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in Chicago.