Gerald B. and Beverley Tonkens House, Frank Lloyd Wright residence in Amberley Village, United States.
The Gerald B. and Beverley Tonkens House is a single-story home in the Amberley neighborhood of Cincinnati, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1954. The building is made of concrete blocks and features a low, wide-spreading roof along with large window walls that connect the interior to the surrounding garden.
Gerald Tonkens approached Frank Lloyd Wright asking for a modern home that his family could afford to build. Wright designed it according to the principles of his late Usonian period, using simple construction methods and low-cost materials to make thoughtful home design available to middle-class families.
The house follows the idea that living spaces should flow into one another without division. Walking through the rooms, visitors notice how the kitchen, living area, and dining space form a single open floor, placing shared daily life at the center.
The house sits in a residential part of Amberley and is most easily reached by car. Visits are only possible on certain days, so it is worth checking in advance when the property is open to the public.
The concrete blocks used to build the walls were not purchased ready-made but cast on site using a method Wright developed, so that the owners could take part in building their own home. This approach was meant to lower costs and give the people living there a closer connection to the place they had built.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 60,000 contributors worldwide.
