The Gordon House in Silverton, Oregon, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
My friend Caroline Hatton, a children’s writer and frequent contributor to this blog, took these photos in April 2025 when she visited the Gordon House in Silverton, Oregon.
The Gordon House.
If you like houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), consider visiting the Gordon House the former home of the late Conrad and Evelyn Gordon, which is now a museum. In the above photo, the ground floor window on the right is the same one as the ground floor window on the left in the top photo in this post.
Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright with supervising architect Burton Goodrich, the house was completed in 1963 in Wilsonville, Oregon, with a breathtaking view of snowy Mount Hood on one side and of the rushing Willamette River on the opposite side. After the deaths of the Gordons the house had fallen into disrepair before it was rescued from demolition and painstakingly moved 20-some miles to Silverton, Oregon, in 2001.
As the only house in Oregon designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, it offers a nice opportunity to see real life examples of some of his signature architectural concepts, such as horizontal lines stretching smoothly from exterior to interior spaces and an open interior plan (with no physical separation between the living and dining room). This house was his idea of a middle-income family home, Usonian (uniquely of the U.S.), small (yes), built in part from local natural materials (it was), and inexpensive (well… not really).
Helping to distinguish the Gordon House from other Wright designs, its geometry is based on squares (not triangles or hexagons) and 15-degree angles reflecting something personal to late owner Conrad Gordon that is explained during the guided tour.
Living room.
The above photo shows the living room as seen when emerging from the entry. As usual, Wright designed a relatively smaller, darker entry to make people feel compressed before releasing them into the big bright living room where they can’t help but be wowed.
Dining room fretwork and built-in cabinets.
In contrast to the big living room, where floor-to-ceiling glass lets natural light pour in, and the outdoors and indoors don’t feel separate, cozy spots are smaller and dimmer, with sunlight filtered by decorative fretwork of a design unique to the Gordon House and featuring 15-degree angles.
Kitchen.
The docent (in the blue shirt in the photo) giving the guided tour led visitors into the small kitchen. With blinding sunlight flooding straight down, it felt like the bottom of a sinkhole.
Kitchen.
This vintage kitchen was the state of the art in 1963.
Upstairs bedroom.
In addition to the ground floor master bedroom, I got to see the two upstairs bedrooms. Between those two, the staircase landing was owner Evelyn Gordon’s creative space where she weaved the designs and garments she envisioned on her loom. In the bedroom in the photo, the desk predictably triggered in me delusions of grandeur as a writer.
Same bedroom.
In the same bedroom, the docent opened both of the unusual corner glass doors. He then led visitors out onto the roomy L-shaped balcony.
I liked the exterior better than the interior, because on the outside, the simplicity of the horizontal lines makes this small house look supremely serene and elegant. Inside, I didn’t like the floor-to-ceiling windows in the bedrooms, because they prevented the room from feeling cozy to me. This was despite the fact that tight quarters with small spaces (such as the nooks and crannies of built-in desks and shelves) made me feel like a guest welcomed in a mouse house, warm and safe in the perfect spot to read, write (travel blog posts) and hand-craft a miniature (such as a mouse house).
The Gordon House (G) is located at the Oregon Garden in Silverton, Oregon, about an hour-drive south of Portland (P). The guided tour takes a little less than an hour. I especially enjoyed the docent’s many stories about the owners and their interactions with Frank Lloyd Wright.
For more info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_House_(Silverton,_Oregon)
