After Frank Lloyd Wright’s death, in 1959, Usonia went into mourning. Nevermore would his organic volumes and prairie horizontals grace our sad, entropic little planet. That is, until 2004, when enterprising contractor Joe Massaro happened upon the blueprints for a Wright residence designed for his recently purchased island on Lake Mahopac in Putnam County, New York. Joe “didn’t know who this Frank Lloyd Wright guy was,” but upon reviewing the drawings, “realized he was pretty smart.”
Thus began the Massaro House. Joe dragged construction equipment across the frozen lake to build it and used the property as a getaway for fifteen years, attempting (unsuccessfully) to sell it for much of that period. After Covid, daughter and ex-restaurateur Donna Massaro decided instead to recoup losses by opening the home to the public.
The tours answer everything you’d want to know about a Frank Lloyd Wright–conceived masterpiece: how Joe built it, when Joe built it, how Joe’s startling ascent through the sheet metal industry brought him to his curren…