John and Syd Dobkins House

Canton, United States

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

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One of three Usonian houses that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for Canton, Ohio, the John and Syd Dobkins House exemplifies the architect's distinctive modernist approach to modest residential design. Developed from 1953 to 1954, the two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath home employs a geometric design module based on equilateral triangles with a four-foot unit size, while deep red bricks with deeply raked mortar emphasize horizontal lines across the façade. Construction was overseen by Allan J. Gelbin, a Taliesin Fellowship apprentice whom Wright sent to supervise this house and the two other Canton commissions. Set back from the road on land that had once been a cornfield, the house was originally accompanied by Wright's carefully conceived landscape plan featuring fourteen pin oak trees positioned in precise relationship to the structure. The residence is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.