This Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in Mount Pleasant is on the market for the first time

MOUNT PLEASANT — The Boyd Home (formerly known as the Keland House), designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is on the market for the first time ever.

Commissioned in 1954, 1425 Valley View Drive, Mount Pleasant, has been the largest Wright-designed Usonian house.

Keland House/Boyd Home — The living room of Boyd Home is cantilevered over the top of the ravine. It’s a home that embodies Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic architecture, built into the top of a ravine above the Root River and Colonial Park.

MARK HERTZBERG, Journal Times file photo

Usonian architecture is prevalent throughout the Boyd Home: flat roofs, a living room that hangs seemingly unsupported over a ravine below, overhangs that allow for the sun to heat the home and for it to be naturally cooled, and ample natural lighting. It also includes in-floor radiant-heating.

The nearly 5,000 square-foot home sits on 3.2 acres of property across from the Root River from Colonial Park.

According to the listing for the home, 1425 Valley View Drive is a lakeside property whose structure stands at 4978 Square Feet and comes with 3.2 acres of property. The house also contains six bedrooms, six full bathrooms and two half baths.

The property has received nationwide attention since being listed earlier this month. The realtor for the house, Tony Veranth, was unable to show a reporter the property due to the number of visits planned for the weekend.

“If I had a $1,000 for every architect that has reached out to look at the property, I would probably have $30-40K by now,” Veranth said.

The home’s listed sale price is $725,000.

1425 Valley View Drive, as seen from the driveway, is shown here Friday.

Alex Rodriguez

Karen Boyd Johnson, American Craft Magazine — Karen Boyd Johnson is shown in 2009 in her Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in this photograph for American Craft Magazine.

CAMEROON WITTING

The property was designed by Wright in 1954 and commissioned by Karen Johnson Boyd, an art dealer and heiress to the SC Johnson family. Karen Johnson Boyd lived in the house until her death in 2016. Her husband, Dr. William “Bill” Beaty Boyd, died at the home in 2020. In her teenage years, she had also lived in a home in Wingspread her father commissioned from Wright.

The home’s original name, Keland House, came from the name of Karen Johnson Boyd’s ex-husband, Willard Keland, as it was commissioned for the couple when they were still young. Upon divorce, the ownership of the home went to Karen Johnson Boyd.