Louis Penfield, a painter and teacher at Mayfield High School in Ohio, was an acquaintance of Frank Lloyd Wright. He commissioned Wright to design a house that would accommodate his 6 ft., 8 inch frame. The house was built in Willoughby, Ohio in 1955. It has a "floating staircase" supported by ceiling beams, a bottleneck entryway, and several walls made almost entirely of windows, one of which gives a panoramic view of the outside. The Penfield house was restored over a period of four years by Paul Penfield. A second house, known as House #2 was designed by Wright for Penfield, but was never built. Louis Penfield made it his mission to preserve the original house and launched a campaign to build House #2, wrote a screenplay for a documentary on Wright, and was an advocate for the Wright houses built in Ohio.
From the guide to the Louis Penfield House Collection, 1952-1998, 1952-1998, (Cleveland Public Library)
