At Harrison Avenue and Eagle Street sit two historic homes designed by the world-famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In his book "The Vision of Frank Lloyd Wright," architect and history scholar Thomas Heinz writes "The building that signifies the beginning of the first great period of Wright's career is the B. Harley Bradley House." There are many other architectural scholars who have also "waxed poetic" about these homes, one as recently as March 18, when Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin wrote, “the Bradley House is an under-recognized treasure, with a ground-hugging exterior; dazzling interior spaces and more than 100 of Wright's iconic art glass windows.”

Where will you find the treasures? The first treasure is history. In nearly 400 national parks and every hometown in America, historic registries cover everything from the remnants of early civilizations to the childhood homes of U.S. presidents, to the stirring sagas of hard-fought wars. Local and national historians have acknowledged the importance of these Kankakee houses when they were registered with the National Trust for Historic Places in 2009. The Trust is the premier keeper of places of national historic importance, including landmarks as famous as Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. In Illinois, we also have Lincoln's Home & Tomb, Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House, The Sears Tower, Starved Rock, and Chicago's Auditorium Theatre.

I believe that these two homes are the single most important buildings in Kankakee County, and are very important to architectural historians world-wide.

The second treasure is architectural culture. The Bradley and Hickox houses are widely regarded as Wright's first executed prairie style homes, following the development of his prairie house concept published as a model home in the Ladies? Home Journal, for the Curtis Publishing Company of Philadelphia in 1901.

In her book "Frank Lloyd Wright," Maria Constantino says "The first of the real houses was to be erected for brothers-in-law Harley Bradley and Warren Hickox in Kankakee, Illinois. Following these houses came a succession of Prairie House commissions." Clearly, the houses on south Harrison Avenue are an architectural treasure worthy of preservation and sharing with a worldwide audience.

The third treasure is financial. Every year, other homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright attract thousands of tourists from around the world to touch, tour and photograph his house museums such as Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, the Robie House in Chicago, his own home and studio in Oak Park, and the Dana Thomas House in Springfield. It is recorded that more than 500,000 visitors toured U.S. Wright house museums in 2008, and continue that pilgrimage year after year. These tourists will be welcome visitors in Kanakee.

While I am acutely aware of the historic, cultural and intellectual treasures, having spent more than 30 years of my architecture career working amidst the grandeur of Wright homes and their tourists in Oak Park, I am focused now on the financial treasure that these homes represent to our city. Not only in slow economies, but also in strong ones, thousands of tourists come to tour the works of Frank Lloyd Wright. And there is good reason to believe that they will come to Kankakee County to do the same, if the Wright in Kankakee Committee (www.WrightInKankakee.com) achieves its goal of acquiring the Bradley house for public access as a house museum.

Just imagine the financial treasure to be mined, when busloads of tourists arrive in the city to tour our houses, dine in our restaurants, lodge in our hotels, and shop in our stores.

Having lived in Oak Park where I contributed for the last 30 years to that beautifully balanced community full of Wright landmarks, I share the vision with others here for world-wide interest in the Wright homes of Kankakee. I believe that we should share our national treasures with the world-wide audience by purchasing them, and making them available to the public. When my wife and I first began driving around the community, we found much to our delight, the Riverview Historic District and not one, but two Frank Lloyd Wright houses of significant importance to the history of American architecture.

And now we have a unique opportunity, thanks to the vision of Gaines and Sharon Hall, the current owners of the famed Bradley House, to make a public museum, a true treasure for all to enjoy. I believe that any community in the nation would relish the chance to move a Frank Lloyd Wright structure from private hands into the public domain. And ours has already been restored by the Halls!

Granted, this will take a fair amount of money and time. But the hard work of restoration is already nearly complete at the Bradley House. By contrast, years of hard work and fundraising were necessary for the restoration of Wright's Unity Temple and Ernest Hemingway's Birthplace, which I helped restore for public visitation in Oak Park. The same was true in my experience restoring the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. At the Bradley House, we just need to purchase, maintain, and manage its magnificence!

Thomas Kapusta has over 35 years of experience restoring important architectural treasures. He currently sits on the executive board of Wright in Kankakee.