Bethesda now belongs to architect's grandson

But the house in the sketch wasn't to be Wright visited the site in the 1950s and spoke with the lot's owners. The husband was a lawyer with the Justice Department; he and his wife had come to Washington during the second Roosevelt administration.

Some time later, Wright sent them a color rendering of a possible house. The message on the drawing: "Dear Llewellyn & Betty et al. How's this? Dad."

The house Wright suggested for his son Robert Llewellyn Wright and his wife, Elizabeth, was oval with pointy ends, plopped atop a curved pedestal, somewhat like a layer cake sitting on a footed stand -- or the mushroom-like columns in Wright's 1939 building for Johnson Wax in Racine, Wis. The prow-like end of the house was cantilevered over the ravine below and stared straight across to the trees on the other side.

But the house in the sketch wasn't to be. The design was too costly, and so the man who wanted to create modest homes for people on middle-class budgets adjusted his vision to meet his son's financial limitations. Away went the pedestal; the almond-shape house was planted firmly on the ground, a modest cantilevered balcony off the master bedroom a reminder of the original plan. The house was think completed in 1958, the year before the famed architect's death.