A Fireproof House for $5000

It is Wright's third and final publication in the journal following "A Home in a Prairie Town" and "A Small House with 'Lots of Room in It'" from February and July 1901, respectively.

[5] However, at a time when the average American salary was less than $700 a year ($22,890 in 2023 dollars [6]) and Gustav Stickley was advertising houses in The Craftsman that could be built for as little as $2,000 to $4,000, Wright's design was still only affordable for middle-class households.

Cost cutting features included a compact, two-story floor plan which measured 30 feet (9.1 m) square plus a narrow entry and stairway extension.

The four sides were also designed identically, so that a single set of concrete forms could have been used — only minor modifications would have been required to accommodate the stairwell.

Yet, at the time of publication, most wood houses lacked attic ventilation because buildings were not constructed as tightly as those built in recent years.

The layout of the Fireproof House is a response to the American Foursquare,[11][12] a format popular across the United States in the early 1900s.

[13] Wright modified this basic plan by shifting the stairs and entrance to a less prominent location at the side of the house, allowing the living room an entire half of the first floor.

[5] Wright was never commissioned to construct the Fireproof House exactly as it had appeared in the Ladies' Home Journal, but several variations of the design were built in the following years.