This American House

07/03/2025

Despite my humidified and windswept hair, I was so pleased and proud to accept a 2025 George Mills and Louise Noun Popular History Award from the State Historical Society of Iowa in Des Moines last Thursday! I received an unexpected certificate of recognition for my article, “The Hope Rogers Story,” which was originally published last year in The Iowa Source. You can read the article on the THIS AMERICAN HOUSE blog (see link in bio).

It was an absolute honor and joy to know the remarkable Hope Sankot Rogers (1924-2023) in the final years of her long, extraordinary life. The grandniece of Frank Lloyd Wright, Hope rose from being a hardscrabble Iowa farmwife to a trailblazing politician who bravely, publicly revealed her journey through a past mental health crisis. I am working now on publishing a newly expanded version of Hope’s powerfully and beautifully-written memoir TIME AND THE HUMAN ROBOT. This little award provides some mighty encouragement!

My deepest thanks to for this wonderful honor!

01/03/2025

Yesterday marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of William Cary Wright—composer, music teacher, minister, lawyer, doctor, AND Frank Lloyd Wright’s father. You can learn more about William’s extraordinary life story in an excellent biography written by his great-granddaughter, Hope Sankot Rogers, and published exclusively on our THIS AMERICAN HOUSE website: https://thisamericanhouse.com/the-architects-father-a-reconsideration-of-william-cary-wright-the-father-of-frank-lloyd-wright/

Images of the Wright family musical tradition: 1. Portrait of William Cary Wright with some of his compositions; 2. Hope Sankot Rogers with a portrait of her grandmother, Elizabeth Wright Heller, daughter of William and half-sister of Frank; 3. Frank Lloyd Wright at the piano.

07/17/2023

A few days after we gave a “virtual talk” for the Iowa Architectural Foundation in February 2021 in support of our book, we received a lovely congratulatory note from Mary Rogers, great-grandniece of Frank Lloyd Wright, who had tuned in for our presentation. To our absolute delight, we became fast friends, exchanging a flurry of emails and calls that soon looped Hope, Mary's mother, into the good fun of conversation among us all. Mary and Hope soon graciously and generously gifted us rare copies of "Grandpa Wright" and "The Architect’s Sister," and shared with us a bounty of family photos, all of which we instantly devoured. We quickly pledged our support in helping them bring these incredible stories and images to light at long last. With Hope and Mary Rogers’s enthusiastic encouragement and permission, we’re honored to be presenting "Grandpa Wright," Hope Rogers’s biography of her great-grandfather, here on This American House, along with a treasure trove of family photos, many of them never before seen. https://thisamericanhouse.com/the-architects-father-a-reconsideration-of-william-cary-wright-the-father-of-frank-lloyd-wright/ -3934

05/20/2022

What are you doing Sunday night? Dealing with the Sunday scaries, you say? Reminiscing about old episodes of Murder, She Wrote? Drinking alone in the bathtub? Here's a better way to spend the evening! Join us as we chat with Amber LeMay and Dixie Longate on Amber Live! Sunday night at 8ET/7CT.

05/19/2022

After almost nine years and hundreds of thousands of miles on our cars' odometers, it's time to pass off the Meier House to the next stewards. Read all about this bittersweet decision on the blog: https://thisamericanhouse.com/its-time-to-pass-the-meier-house-to-new-stewards/

05/06/2022

Ah springtime. It always inspires us to bring a little bit of the outdoors inside. Even if it does end in us picking up lots of little yellow leaves.

04/11/2022

Our thanks to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation for this wonderful post!

03/12/2022

Ice crystals + vintage casement window = 😍🥶😍 Sometimes all the windows become art glass windows at the Meier House.

03/08/2022

Thank you to Little Village Mag for reviewing This American House! We love this paragraph from the review: "This American House is not a story about Wright, the previous families who called the Meier House home or even the authors. Instead, the house itself emerges as the main character. We learn about the changes it’s been through, the reason it was built in the first place and the interesting history it brings to Monona, and Iowa for that matter." So true!

As a woman in her mid-20s who has dedicated her life to the arts, owning any sort of house feels like a fantasy, much less one with as much historical significance as the Meier House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Monona, Iowa. But even for a person who doesn’t know much about architecture or [...