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Or they should have added an option to the sales contract that forbid the home from being torn down. But that option probably would have reduced the sales price, or prevented the sale.

But sadly they seem to think that they still own it and want to get the government to prevent the current owners from tearing down the home.

Yes, the Wright House is a beautiful home build by a world famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright, but if you sell it you can't control what the new owners do with it.

Source

Wrights' heirs are heartsick over home

by Kara G. Morrison - Oct. 12, 2012 03:37 PM

The Arizona Republic

In lower Arcadia, within walking distance of her grandparents' historic home, Anne Wright-Levi is trying to take life one day at a time and hope for the best.

In June, she found out that the David and Gladys Wright House -- a home her great-grandfather Frank Lloyd Wright built for his son -- was in jeopardy.

In the wrangling that has ensued, Wright-Levi has become a sympathetic figure to some as well as a lightning rod, blamed for not having the home designated a historic landmark when she and her two sisters inherited the property in 2008.

Preservationists united in June to try to get the property designated a historic landmark after its owners requested a lot split, signaling the home could be razed. Developers John Hoffman and Steve Sells of 8081 Meridian, who bought the home that month, have threatened to sue Phoenix for starting the historic-designation process. They also secured one demolition permit, which city officials said was a mistake.

Wright-Levi and her relatives are at a loss. Sitting at a table that belonged to her grandparents David and Gladys Wright, she explains why the couple's heirs didn't go through the historic-designation process before selling the home:

It simply didn't occur to them that anyone in their right mind would buy and bulldoze a Frank Lloyd Wright design -- any more than they would bulldoze signature Wright works like Fallingwater or the Guggenheim Museum.

"Who buys a house of that significance to tear it down?" Wright-Levi asks. "Who does that? Yes, we are stunned."

Tom Levi, Anne's husband, adds that the family never discussed the possibility that anyone would do something so rash. If anything, they worried only that someone would try to build an additional, incongruous structure on the 2.2-acre lot.

"Back East, they're probably laughing at us," Levi says about recent national media coverage of threats to raze the structure.

Why did the family sell the home by a man many consider America's best-known and most celebrated architect?

"One of the heirs wanted the property sold," Wright-Levi explains. "None of us could afford to buy each other out."

Wright-Levi said she always had a hard time envisioning anyone else living in the house. In an ideal world, she would have loved having the home turned into a Frank Lloyd Wright museum -- the feasibility of which her daughter Sarah Levi confirmed in a 2010 graduate thesis for Columbia College in Chicago.

In 2009, the heirs sold the home to Jean Tichenor of JT Morning Glory Enterprises in Paradise Valley for $2.8 million. Wright-Levi says Tichenor told the family she intended to renovate and live in the home and indicated she would seek the historic designation.

"We were all under the understanding that she was going to do that," Wright-Levi says, but no promises were made in writing.

Wright-Levi says she and her sisters took their time finding someone they thought was the right buyer and would never knowingly have sold the home to a developer.

Their estate lawyer recommended the historic designation be left to the new owner, who would need to handle legal details such as property easements.

Just before closing on the property, Wright-Levi says, Tichenor said she didn't want the iconic Wright-designed rug custom-made for the living room.

"A little flag went up for us," Wright-Levi says. "We had it appraised. It went to auction, and someone bought it for preservation."

The rug sold for $16,000 -- much less than the expected $40,000 to $60,000, but the family was glad it would be preserved.

Then, the home sat empty for three years. When Wright-Levi saw a for-sale sign on the property last year, she immediately dialed the listing agent. "I offered any (marketing) help to them, getting people to understand the history," she recalls.

Since then, she has helped gather signatures on a petition that would get the Wright house designated a historic landmark, making it harder for the current developer-owners to tear it down. More than 24,000 signatures have been collected; the petition is online at change.org.

She has attended all the public meetings but hasn't taken to a podium; admittedly, she gets too emotional. That will change Wednesday, Nov. 7, when the Phoenix City Council takes a final vote on the historic designation. Wright-Levi says both she and her sister Kimberly Lloyd Wright will speak.

"My grandparents were very private," Wright-Levi says. "I never was comfortable" bragging about being the great-granddaughter of Frank Lloyd Wright.

What would her grandparents think of what's happening? Wright-Levi pauses, choosing her words carefully.

"I think they would be very proud that we're standing up to fight for it," she says.

Her husband adds that he often imagines how the architect himself would handle the developers. It involves kicking them off the property with his cane.

She tries not to drive by the home every day but finds herself steering in that direction often for a reassuring glimpse of the circular concrete-block home, built as Wright designed the Guggenheim. If razed, it would be the first Frank Lloyd Wright structure intentionally torn down in four decades.

Valley real-estate agent Scott Jarson, who specializes in architecturally significant homes, is still working to find a buyer who would revere it. On Oct. 8, he presented 8081 Meridian with an as-is offer for $2.1 million. The owners, who bought the home for $1.8 million in June, rejected it within an hour.

Wright-Levi holds out hope that such a sale will come through. And she imagines a day when everyone who fought to save the home can gather there.

Republic reporter Jaimee Rose contributed to this article.