JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Tucked into the woods of Pleasantville, New York, just 30 miles north of Manhattan, lies Usonia, a utopian cooperative community, or at least one that was intended as such by its creators, including famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright believed that the buildings we live in shape the kinds of people we become. NPR's Vanessa Romo visited one resident whose life has been defined by his home.
VANESSA ROMO, BYLINE: Roland Reisley turned 101 years old in May and is in remarkable health, but that's not the thing he likes to brag about.
ROLAND REISLEY: I am the last original client of Frank Lloyd Wright, still living in the home he designed for me.
ROMO: Reisley's sitting in the great room of the home on a recent Wednesday afternoon. It's sweltering outside, but you'd never know it looking through the floor-to-ceiling glass doors that make it feel like we're floating in a canopy of maple and oak trees. It's a view Reisley's taken in for 73 years, and he's eager to show me around. We start at the front door, which takes us into a narrow entryway, a typical Frank Lloyd Wright entrance.
REISLEY: The entries to his buildings always have a relatively low ceiling, provides a little bit of compression. And when you emerge into the living spaces, the compression is relieved, and you have the expansion and much greater sense of the space that you move into.
ROMO: The house has other signature Wright features. It's made with local materials, has a flat roof, big glass windows and concrete floors. The other thing that Wright did in his buildings, and has done here, is select a repeating geometric motif. In this case...
REISLEY: The house is based on a hexagon, which creates a grid of 60- and 120-degree angles.
ROMO: That means every room in the 3,200-square-foot house is made up of a combination of triangles. Reisley says it creates a rhythm and a harmony in the space that one feels intuitively.
REISLEY: So I'll explain something else about what you see here.
ROMO: The Roland Reisley House, as it's known, is one of 47 that make up Usonia. It was architect David Henken who came up with the idea for the co-op in the 1940s. A former student of Wright's, he enlisted the master to supervise the project. The goal was to build custom homes that integrated the surrounding landscape, and they were meant to be affordable, at $5,000 apiece.
REISLEY: It was a time when labor unions were flourishing and so on. And this was going to be an egalitarian, shoulder-to-shoulder cooperative, not an exclusive kind of a place.
ROMO: In 1951, Reisley was just 26, newly married and ready to put down roots. Then he and his wife heard about Usonia.
REISLEY: And we were greeted with such enthusiasm, the commitment of these people to what they were building and what they were doing.
ROMO: So they took their savings and honeymoon fund and bought a plot of land and waited to be assigned an architect. Reisley says they never dreamed they'd get Wright himself.
REISLEY: It's like talking to God (laughter). Pardon me for breathing up your air. That was my attitude.
ROMO: But the process wasn't exactly easy.
REISLEY: We gave him a budget of $20,000. His contract came back for $30,000. The actual cost was over 40,000.
ROMO: That was standard of a Wright design. His homes often ballooned in cost. But Reisley says he has no regrets. He's lived a wonderful life in the hexagon house, which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. And he means lived. Even raising three kids, he said they never treated it like a museum.
REISLEY: They did what they - what kids are going to do.
ROMO: In fact, Reisley credits his long life and good health in part to the house.
REISLEY: Well, the neuroscientists tell us that awareness of beauty in one's environment for a long time reduces stress, can have physiological benefits, perhaps even longevity. Ah, OK. That's my explanation. That's the secret.
ROMO: It's a secret he hopes to pass on. He plans to leave the home to his one surviving son and two grandchildren.
For NPR News, I'm Vanessa Romo.
(SOUNDBITE OF THEE SACRED SOULS SONG, "EASIER SAID THAN DONE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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