It has since served as a bank and as offices. Too, it has undergone some minor alterations, but it retains its integrity and the majority of the styling given it by Mr. Wright.
Listed on the national register on August 14, 2012, the Lockridge Medical Clinic was the recipient, a couple of months later, of an article in the Kalispell Daily Inter Lake. The article relates the fact that it was listed in the register, as well as giving the reader some background on the extremely rare building. The article is reproduced in part below.
There appears to be some controversy over when the building was completed. It appears that it was
and served as a medical clinic for only one year, as Dr. Lockridge died in 1964 and his two partners weren't happy with the building, so sold it immediately after Dr. Lockridge's death.
Historic Whitefish building listed
on National Register
Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:30 pm
Story by Lynnette Hintze • Photos by Patrick Cote/The Daily Inter Lake
One of the last buildings designed by renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright is located in Whitefish, and now it’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Frank Lloyd Wright Building at 341 Central Ave. was designed by Wright in 1958 as a medical clinic, but Wright died in 1959 before the 5,000-square-foot Lockridge Clinic was finished. Today the building is owned by Sharon Morrison and Sean and Diana Frampton and is used for their law offices and other professional office space.
It was Sharon Morrison and her late husband, Frank Morrison, who saw the value of the building.
“In the small town where we grew up there was a Frank Lloyd Wright building, so we knew who he was,” Sharon Morrison said about the couple’s upbringing in McCook, Neb. “It was needing some TLC, so we thought, ‘Why don’t we restore it as best we can?’”
While some of the original interior features have been eliminated by remodeling through the years, the massive brick fireplace that served as a focal point of the original medical clinic waiting room is still attractive, with two built-in curved banquettes flanking the hearth to form an inglenook.
Natural light filled the original interior through a double clerestory window and 64-feet-long wall of floor-to-ceiling glass facing west. Part of Wright’s original design called for a landscaped garden of low bushes and perennials where a parking area now is located.
A lapped-board parapet on the roof once held flowers and plants, but now conceals the building’s air-conditioning unit.
Wright’s philosophy of organic architecture was his claim to fame. His idea was to promote harmony between human habitation and the natural world.
“Wright believed that good architecture could bring dignity and joy to everyday life,” a Western Work article about the Whitefish Wright building noted. “For the clinic’s patients, he demonstrated that this could be accomplished in a medical setting. In an atmosphere more reminiscent of a domestic living room than a doctor’s office, Wright used warm colors and natural materials to impart a sense of serenity and comfort.”
Wright designed the brick building for the medical practices of Drs. Lockridge, McIntyre and Whalen.
Read more at the Kalispell Daily Inter Lake