He told the auction house that he bought the doors in West Liberty in the 1980s and for nearly 30 years they sat undiscovered just a stone’s throw from their original home. He has since moved from that East High Street home.
“I’m thrilled that thousands of people can now enjoy them,” said Westcott Center for Architecture and Design board member Rita Lane, who is one of three board representatives who placed the winning bid on the doors.
As she and fellow board member Tess Spencer recall, it was a nerve wracking adventure to secure the pieces.
The auction house alerted the Turner Foundation about the pieces, which then told the museum with just three days to spare.
“We had no idea what they were going to go for,” said Marta Wojcik, executive director and curator of the Westcott House Museum.
The museum got to look at the doors ahead of the Aug. 13 auction to confirm their authenticity.
Replicas of the doors are currently installed on the ground floor of the house and were made based off of a photograph and original drawings of the cabinets and matching bookcase.
Those records were used to confirm that these were in fact original pieces from the home, which was constructed in 1908 and is one of about 260 Wright houses remaining in the world.
Lane, Spencer and Debbie Hill attended the auction, where bidding began at $200 per door and quickly rose to more than $1,000 a piece.
They were bidding against an anonymous buyer on the phone, but were able to secure the doors with a winning bid of $2,350 per door.
“Did we jump up and down in front of everyone? Yes we did,” Lane said.
The auctioneer said the doors were going back to where they belong as the group yelled, “They’re going home!”
The cabinets need to be slightly altered to fit the original doors because the replicas were built a slightly different size, Wojcik said.
The doors will be in place in time for the museum’s 10th anniversary in 2015, by which time the board hopes to have more original furnishings back in the home.
Furniture and other items became scattered after the house’s third owner split the structure into multi-family units more than 70 years ago.
“I’m convinced there are more out there somewhere,” Wojcik said.
At the auction, the group even got several tips about other items that possibly came from the house.
“Someone said, ‘I think my brother has a light fixture from the Westcott House in his house in Dayton,’” Spencer said.
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