The Acres

Michigan, United States

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

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The Acres, a 71.25-acre residential development in Charleston Township, Michigan, represents an ambitious mid-century experiment in planned community design. Developed starting in the late 1940s by scientists from the Upjohn pharmaceutical company, the site features 21 or 22 circular land lots of which five contain houses, surrounded by 50 acres of open land including a pond. Four houses were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright between 1948 and 1953—the Pratt, Weisblat, Eppstein, and Meyer residences—while a fifth, the Fonken House, was designed by Taliesin Associated Architects fellow Francis Wilsey after Wright's death in 1959. All five houses share concrete-block and mahogany exteriors but vary significantly in design: three adopt Wright's Usonian style with open-plan layouts, radiant heating, and carports; the Fonken House is built into a hill with a T-shaped plan; and the Meyer House is a solar hemicycle. The entire complex is accessed through a single road, Hawthorne Drive. Originally planned for up to 22 homes, the project never reached full realization, though the historic district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.