The architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed 1141 buildings, but only 532 were actually completed during his lifetime. Many have since been demolished with only 400 buildings still standing. But did you know he designed a cat house? In the early 1950s, Gerald Tonkens commissioned Wright’s office to design and build his family’s residence in Cincinnati, Ohio. Mr. Tonkens’ daughter, Nancy, had a cat named Felinus and she requested an appropriate residence for the family pet. So the office designed a modern cat house in Wright’s favorite color, Cherokee Red. This important piece of feline design, along with the original rendering shown above, has passed through the hands of various auction houses and antique dealers over the years until it was recently acquired by the Feline Historical Museum in Alliance, Ohio, which I bet you didn’t know even existed. The museum not only displays the Wright-designed cat house but a large collection of historical feline artifacts like an early 1900’s wooden cat carrier, a 19th century scrapbook of cat memorabilia and over 1,400 cat-related books as well as real, live cats like Maine Coons and Ragdolls.
Feline Historical Museum in Alliance, Ohio
