Herbert and Katherine Jacobs First House
The Herbert and Katherine Jacobs First House, commonly referred to as Jacobs I, is a single-family home at 441 Toepfer Avenue in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright for the family of the journalist Herbert Jacobs, it was completed in 1937 and is cited as Wright's first Usonian home. The house is a single-story, L-shaped structure covering. It sits on a slope that descends toward Lake Wingra to the southeast.
The Jacobs First House was one of three major buildings that Wright designed in the 1930s, along with the Johnson Wax Building and Fallingwater. Prior to the Jacobs House's construction, most of Wright's clients had been wealthy; in contrast, Jacobs was a young newspaperman who worked for the Capital Times and earned no more than $35 a week. In August 1936, Jacobs asked Wright to design a house costing no more than $5,000; the architect devised the initial plans within two months. The structure ultimately cost $5,500 including land, and it became so popular that the Jacobses charged visitors admission. The Jacobses lived in the house only until 1942, when they moved to a farm in Madison, where they built their second house. The original house was then resold several times. The art historian James Dennis renovated the building after acquiring it in 1982; he continues to own the house as of 2025.
The Jacobs House is divided into two wings, which run near the western and northern boundaries of the site. It has a brick and board-and-batten facade facing west toward the street, as well as large windows and glass doors facing a garden to the southeast. The house rests on a concrete pad foundation, with a radiant heating system embedded into the floor, and it is covered by three levels of flat roofs with protruding eaves. There is a brick chimney mass at the corner of the L, as well as a carport to the north, which contains the house's main entrance. The house's western wing includes the living room and a dining niche, with a bathroom and combined workspace–kitchen inside the chimney core. In the northern wing are three bedrooms, in addition to a room known as a "shop".
When the house was finished, observers commented on its materials, proportions, and relationship to the surrounding landscape. The popularity of the Jacobs House prompted people from across the U.S. to ask Wright to design their houses, and Wright devoted his later career to Usonian designs. Several of its architectural features were later widely used, including its board-and-batten walls, radiant heating system, and modular floor grid. Over the years, the house has been detailed in several books and depicted in numerous photography exhibits. The Jacobs First House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2003. It was designated as part of The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, a World Heritage Site, in 2019.
Site
The Jacobs House is located at 441 Toepfer Avenue in Madison, Wisconsin, United States, about southwest of the Wisconsin State Capitol. The property consists of two land lots on the east side of Toepfer Avenue, measuring in total. The site is part of Westmorland, a subdivision of Dane County, Wisconsin, that was once politically separate from Madison. The southeast corner of the property slopes down slightly toward Lake Wingra several blocks away; the house itself sits atop a ridge that runs northwest–southwest through the area. The building itself rests on a platform overlooking the slope. The L-shaped structure occupies the northwest corner of its site, with one wing set back from the western boundary and the other wing set back approximately from the northern boundary. When the family of the journalist Herbert Jacobs acquired the site, it was undeveloped, overlooking Lake Wingra.The floor plan faces away from the street, partially surrounding a rear garden, which is geographically at the center of the site. The house's positioning maximized the size of the garden while also reducing the cost of the driveway from the street. The layout also enabled Frank Lloyd Wright, the house's architect, to treat the outdoor garden as an interior space. Wright had suggested flattening the land southeast of the house's platform and constructing the garden about below the house, but this idea was not carried out. The original plans had called for a row of trees on one side of the garden, as well as a section set aside for vegetable planting.
History
Frank Lloyd Wright mostly designed houses for wealthy clients until the 1930s, when he also began to design lower-cost Usonian houses for middle-class families. In general, his Usonian houses tended to have open plans, geometric floor grids, in-floor heating, and a carport, and they lacked a garage or basement; they also tended to be arranged in the shape of an "L" or a "T". For two decades, Wright had experimented with ideas for less expensive homes, such as the 1934 Willey House in Minneapolis. Initially, Wright designed his lowest-priced houses primarily for his friends and family. Over his lifetime, he designed more than 300 Usonian houses, including 140 that were ultimately constructed.Development
Commission
The Jacobs First House was one of three major buildings that Wright designed in the 1930s; the others were the Johnson Wax Building in Racine, Wisconsin, and Fallingwater in Stewart Township, Pennsylvania. The house was built for the family of Herbert Jacobs, who had recently come to work for Madison's Capital Times after working for the Milwaukee Journal. Herb was a Harvard University–educated journalist, while his new wife Katherine Wescott was a recent graduate of Ripon College. At the time, they were living at 1143 Sherman Avenue. The couple wanted to develop a residence where they could live with their newborn daughter, but they could not afford a grand house. Herb was 33 years old and just beginning his career. The family had a modest budget of $5,000 or $5,500 for their new house, while typical houses of the era were three times as expensive. Herb reflected that he and Katherine had initially wanted a white-brick house in the Dutch Colonial Revival style.By the time Herb decided to build the house, his weekly salary was no more than $35, and the family had $1,600 in savings. The Jacobses first heard of Wright's work through Katherine's cousin Harold Wescott, who had studied at Wright's architectural studio, Taliesin, for one summer. They were initially reluctant to hire Wright, perceiving him as an "architect for millionaires", even though he was only just starting to receive major jobs after several years of underemployment. After further encouragement from Katherine's cousin, the couple agreed to meet Wright at Taliesin; Katherine had reportedly been enticed by Wright's preference for open plan layouts.
In August 1936, the Jacobses drove to see Wright at Taliesin. Upon meeting the architect, Herb reportedly told Wright, "What this country needs is a decent five-thousand-dollar house", asking if Wright could design a $5,000 house for them. Wright warned Herb and Katherine that they might not be satisfied with a $5,000 design because "most people want a ten-thousand-dollar house for five thousand dollars", but the Jacobses nonetheless insisted that they still wanted him to construct a house for that price. Factoring in Wright's 10% commission, this meant that the house itself could be built for no more than $4,500 including land. At the time, Wright had just finished designing Fallingwater and the Hanna–Honeycomb House, both of which had cost tens of thousands of dollars apiece.
Design and site acquisition
The author Brendan Gill described the Jacobses as being "in a state of highly disadvantaged innocence" about the house's construction cost. For example, they initially thought that the $5,000 price included the land acquisition cost and that the house could be completed in three months. When Herb found that the price did not include land costs, he wrote to Wright, requesting that the house be downsized from three to two bedrooms. Wright also claimed that he could not begin designing the house unless a site was selected. The Taliesin team could not select a site themselves, as they were busy with other projects. Ultimately, the family had acquired a site in Westmorland. The site, on the west side of Toepfer Avenue, measured and cost $800, exactly half of what the Jacobses had available. Herb wanted the rooms to be tall enough to accommodate his stature, joking that he should be able to walk freely around the house without taking off his hat. The couple also requested large amounts of closet space, and they submitted long lists of demands that Wright largely ignored.Within two months of being hired, Wright had drawn up plans for the Jacobs House, reusing an unbuilt plan that he had drawn up for the Hoult family during 1935 or 1936. Wright designed an L-shaped structure with approximately, consisting of an open plan living space and three bedrooms. He suggested that the Jacobses install a radiant heating system, a highly experimental technology at the time, in addition to a flat roof and thin "sandwich walls". The design spanned the entire width of the 60-foot lot, which meant that there would be no setback from the surrounding lots. The family thus decided to obtain a larger site, possibly at Wright's suggestion. The Jacobses traded their original site for a site across the street at 441 Toepfer Avenue, using up all of their remaining savings. The family would use only the northern portion of the two lots and would be able to sell off the southernmost of the site, adjoining a street corner, if they wished. The land swap also affected how much sunlight the house would receive, since the orientation of the house was also rotated.
Construction
To finance the house's construction, the Jacobses applied to the Federal Housing Administration for a loan. The FHA rejected the Jacobses' request for a mortgage loan because regulations prevented flat-roofed structures from obtaining FHA loans. Ultimately, the couple was able to obtain a $4,500 mortgage from a banker who was also a fan of Wright's architecture. The Jacobses received the drawings for the house on November 15, 1936. The family hired P. Bert Grove as the general contractor, having briefly considered purchasing a site from him. Grove subcontracted much of the work to other firms, since he had no dedicated construction crew. The house's development briefly stalled in late 1936 after Wright caught pneumonia, rendering him unable to address any issues that arose. Additionally, to save money, Wright did not require Grove to adhere to a specific timeline; as a result, Grove and his subcontractors prioritized other projects. constructing the Jacobs House during their spare time.The official groundbreaking took place on June 2, 1937. The cellar and concrete foundation were poured within a month of groundbreaking, and the heating pipes were then embedded into the foundation. During the house's construction, the Jacobs family often sought ways to save money. For example, to save $35, they asked Wright to shorten one eave by. The Jacobses also obtained windows from department-store buildings so they only needed to pay for the window frames, and Herb salvaged gold leaf from store signage. The builders also used prefabricated wall sections, and two of Katherine's cousins were hired to create the furniture. Herb personally helped with some aspects of the construction, installing the soffits underneath the eaves, as well as the ceiling panels. Despite this, Herb was worried about not having enough money, especially because of increasing supply costs.
Wright made some changes to the design during construction, reducing the height of the roof above the bathroom and adjusting the window designs. At one point, Wright asked Grove to lengthen one of the eaves; when Grove complained about cost increases, Wright directed the contractor to reduce the height of the brick wall under it. In addition, Wright's original design did not adequately support the dining alcove's window, forcing Jacobs and some Taliesin apprentices to add brick piers for reinforcement. Herb also recalled that the middle layers of the wooden "sandwich walls" kept falling down.
By August 1937, the concrete pad above the heating system had been built, and workers were constructing the masonry walls. According to Herb, passersby often came to look at the house during construction and that most of his visitors were friendly. One such visitor was the architect Walter Gropius, who at the time was a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; Wright reportedly refused to give Gropius a tour because a local architect had invited Gropius to the house without Wright's permission. The Jacobses themselves went to Pennsylvania in August 1937 to see Fallingwater, whose owner Edgar J. Kaufmann invited them to tour that house and later gifted the Jacobses bronze lamp pedestals. Herb wrote that their visit to Fallingwater had solidified their opinion "that we had been fortunate to pick Wright as architect". The Jacobses and Wright remained friends for decades after the house was completed.