Frank Gehry's Historic Winton House Sells at Auction

The renowned Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry designed a guesthouse for the family home of commissioners Mike and Penny Winton in 1984. The sculptural style of various colors, textures and shapes is considered one of Gehry's early masterpieces.

The 2,300-square-foot project was completed in 1987 in Orono, Minn., and consists of metal, stone and plywood. The construction features a curved bedroom finished in limestone, a galvanized-steel loft and a 35-foot pyramid-shaped living room, along with a second bedroom finished in black-painted metal.

The cluster-like structure highlights each section of the home, each room is a designated function with the kitchen, living space, garage and three bedrooms. The design won awards from House and Garden, Time, Los Angeles American Institute of Architects and the National American Insitute of Architects.

The eccentric guesthouse was once valued at $4.5 million and was estimated to sell for up to $1.5 million. Just last week the house was auctioned off in Chicago and sold to a telephone bidder for $905,000.

The unidentified new owner, from outside of Minn., will have to have the building relocated from its present site outside of Owatonna at a substantial cost. The auctioneer, Richard Wright, stated, "It's a bargain for an architectural masterpiece."

Gehry currently resides in Los Angeles at age 86, he is a professor at his alma mater, University of Southern California and continues to be recognized and awarded for his work on an international scale. He won the Pritzker Architecture Award and his Guggenheim Museum was chosen as the most important architectural design in the world since 1980. In 2010, Vanity Fair described him as "the most important architect of our age."