But the Ennis, as noted, is in bad shape. It's now owned by a private conservancy, the Ennis House Foundation, that has at least succeeded in making it stable. But far more remains to be done. Ten million dollars is the estimate.

The Ennis is, as far as I'm concerned, the poster child for a problem nobody seems to be interested in solving: How do we protect our great works of architecture?

How is it, for example, that a buyer will spend $135 million for a painting by Gustav Klimt, but nobody will foot the bill to save a masterpiece of architecture? Wright's best houses are certainly, in my view, greater total works of art than all but the most remarkable of individual paintings.

The problem, I suppose, is that a plutocrat can't hang a building on the wall to impress his or her friends. The United States needs to find a way, as so many European countries have, to find a permanent solution for our great architecture.