Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art acquires Bachman Wilson House

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has acquired a rare Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian house, known as the Bachman Wilson House, located in the Borough of Millstone in Somerset County, N.J.

Built in 1954 along the Millstone River, the house has been encroached upon by the river and surrounding landscape over the past decades. Due to repeated flooding, the house has sustained significant damage and relocation has been recommended as a means of best preserving the structure. The owners conducted a multi-year search for a purchaser that could provide an appropriate setting and context for the historic building. Crystal Bridges has now acquired the home, which will be disassembled and moved to Bentonville. There, it will be reassembled on Crystal Bridges’ 120-acre grounds.

At Crystal Bridges, the house will be available for study as well as for limited programming and tours. Crystal Bridges’ educational and public program offerings include an architectural focus that will be enhanced through the addition of the Bachman Wilson House to Crystal Bridges’ grounds. Thanks to an ongoing partnership with the University of Arkansas, Crystal Bridges anticipates additional development of educational programs specifically related to the university’s Fay Jones School of Architecture.

In 1954, Abraham Wilson and Gloria Bachman (husband and wife) commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design their home. Gloria’s brother, Marvin Bachman, was an apprentice in the Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin Fellowship.

Wilson and Bachman wrote to Wright, asking him to design a house for them, and later met with the architect at the Plaza Hotel in New York, while he was working on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The resulting design reflects Wright’s Usonian period: a work of art in simplicity and form, representing organic design principles.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
600 Museum Way
Bentonville AR, 72712
479-418-5700