Fayban Villa

Last weekend we wanted to do some exploring but it had to be free/cheap, close and kid friendly. I did some googling of nearby cities and looked into the city of Batavia. I found that there was a Frank Lloyd Wright house there and that in the neighboring city of Geneva there were two more FLW houses. So we thought we would check out downtown Batavia and then drive up to check out the houses. We ended up only seeing two of the houses, but the second house we saw made the trip a good one.

Enter George Fabyan, his father was the owner of a large and wealthy textile company. When George was young, around 17, he ran away from home and was cut off from the family and inheritance. He got a job in Chicago at his dad's company under another name and eventually worked his way up to the point where his supervisor wanted to introduce him to the boss. The boss was his father, they reunited and George was back in the family. He received a huge inheritance and bought a bunch of land west of Chicago. (This was all from Wikipedia, so if it's off, I blame my source.)

George approached Frank Lloyd Wright to redo the farm house that they lived in on the land. He also had a windmill disassembled from another location and reassembled on his land. He had a menagerie, bears, a Japanese tea garden, a boat house and a laboratory that specialized in cryptology and is still used today. There were many other ruins on the land that I am sure were marvelous structures. The Kane County Forest Preserve bought most of the land and has done a great job in maintaining it. Among all of the century old structures were picnic tables and people barbequeing and tossing frisbees. It was amazing that everyone seemed unfazed by all of this history around them and that all of the old structures were in good shape considering the fact that they were surrounded by the public.

Even though it was hot and our kids were dressed for the wrong season, we had so much fun exploring. We really want to go back and take a tour inside of the house, maybe when it's cooler or when we have guests. Hint, hint.

Here are the pictures of our day.

The boat house.

The Japanese Garden.

The bear cage. I respect history, but I can't fight that I am a mom and a tourist.

Leading up to the main house.

The view from the main house.

That tourist and mom comment applies here as well.

That seat is really old and she shouldn't have been sitting in it, so I told her to get off, but first I needed to take a picture, same with the duck in the background. Where is my culture? Don't take us to Rome. 

Picture from this site.
You can look at all of the Frank Lloyd Wright houses for sale on this site and then think about how cool it would be to own one.

This house is for sale and it is down the street. The first owner was a friend of the Fayban's and had FLW build it. It is only $1,100,000. I was thinking that we could get two or three other families to go in on it with us and we could all live in it. After all, it has fourteen bedrooms. Just think about it.