Frank Lloyd Wright's Historic Park Inn

Our destination for the night was the Frank Lloyd Wright Historic Park Inn in Mason City, Iowa.  It is the only remaining hotel designed by him. 

The Park Inn Hotel was the third hotel designed by Wright and served as the prototype for Midway Gardens in Chicago and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, which was torn down in 1968.

It was originally opened in 1910 as the City National Bank and Park Inn.  It is now a 27-room boutique hotel.  I love architecture!  I used to "design" houses as a kid and had thought seriously about going into architecture at one point.

 "Mason City’s architectural claim to fame began when leading citizens sought to build a bank and hotel. Attorney James Markley’s daughters attended a boarding school that Wright built for the architect’s aunts in Spring Green, Wis., and he was so taken by its design that he recommended Wright for the project. The combination City National Bank, Park Inn Hotel and law offices, done in Wright’s classic Prairie School style, opened in 1910."

 You can take a tour for $10 a person, but why would you not want to spend the night??




This was our room.

There are all kinds of nooks and crannies around the hotel.

 We heard piano playing.  We thought there was someone playing live piano, but in fact, it was this player piano. 

 Even the public restrooms were a neat design! 

 There was a tv monitor on the mirror.

My cousin from Mountain Lake, 2 1/2 hours away, came to see us!

Here we are some pictures for nostalgia sake.   A little rabbit trail -

At Grandma's house.  This was the first time we met  when our family had come to the States on furlough.  I was 18 mo. old.


On our next furlough, we were in 2nd grade.



In 1971, I stayed with Joie for a summer while my parents were packing up our house in Japan. 

And Joie was in my wedding too.

  Dennis and Joie, now and at their wedding.

 It was so good to catch up!  And of course, we took them on a tour of the hotel! 

We read something we didn't know about Frank Lloyd Wright that was sort of a downer. 

"Like the fictional Professor Howard Hill in The Music Man, composed by native son Meredith Willson, Wright displeased the good people of this “River City.” He abandoned his wife and six children in Oak Park and ran off to Europe with his neighbor’s wife, a scandal and a deal-breaker at the turn of the last century.  Frank Lloyd Wright wasn’t exactly run out of town, but he was asked never to return."   Chicago Tribune