On my first birthday I received a gift from a couple I did not know. The couple had asked, “Dear Mr. Wright: Would you design a house for us?” I found the gift 71 years later, a thousand miles from its origin.

Driving south on spanking new Interstate 49, we arrived at Bentonville, Arkansas. Interestingly, the forty mile drive south from Missouri into Arkansas had absolutely no services at the interchanges, the longest service desert we have seen this side of Death Valley. Suppressing strong feelings about the Walmartization of small town America, we headed straight for Crystal Bridges, a critically acclaimed Museum of American Art, where Alice Walton shows a sliver of her vast collection, at any time about five percent of the pieces she owns. Winslow Homer. Gilbert Stuart. Georgia O’Keeffe.

There, I found my birthday present, and opened it in the form of a door leading to the interior of Frank Lloyd Wright’s mind.

The Bachman-Wilson House is an example of Wright’s Usonian architecture. “The word Usonian was derived from an abbreviation of United States of North America. Wright created this term to describe a distinctly American style of residential architecture he developed during the Great Depression to be within the reach of the average middle-class American family,” according to the new owners.

Even though the house has been transplanted from New Jersey to the Midwest, it highlights the natural surroundings In a manner that makes inside seem like outside.

The footprint is small, maybe a thousand square feet. Bedrooms allow just enough room for sleeping. And some of the hallways are so narrow they resemble the passageway of a submarine.

(sunset and interior photos by Nancy Nolan).