What i find surprising is that the world-renowned architect worked on projects as simple and cheap as that.
https://beltmag.com/frank-lloyd-wright-affordable-housing-ch...
> Capitalizing on Wright’s Prairie style, regarded as the first truly American style of architecture, the houses—of which there were seven to choose from—were promoted as the quintessential American home. Sherwood Anderson, the nationally acclaimed novelist who at the time was an unknown copywriter, wrote in 1917 for a Tribune ad, “We want you to understand how the genius of this man has made it possible for every home builder to build beautifully without spending more to achieve beauty than he now spends on senseless ugliness.”
Here is what Rand said in 1937 prior to The Fountainhead being published in a correspondance with Wright about her book (from an LA Times piece in 2009, linked [2] below):
> In 1937 a little-known author named Ayn Rand wrote to revered modernist Frank Lloyd Wright. “Dear Mr. Wright,” her letter of Dec. 12 began, “I am writing a novel about the career of an architect. ... I should like to have the privilege of meeting you and discussing it with you.”
> In “The Fountainhead,” modern architecture provided a convenient vehicle for her views. In her 1937 letter, she told Wright that her new novel “is to be the story of an architect who follows his own convictions throughout his life, no matter what society thinks of it or does to him. . . . A man who has an ideal and goes through hell for it. So you can understand why it seems to me that of all men on earth you are the one I must see.”
> But she added: “My hero is not you. I do not intend to follow in the novel the events of your life and career. His life will not be yours, nor his work, perhaps not even his artistic ideals. But his spirit is yours -- I think.”
> Unsure of how to hook such an architect for their modest home, the Jacobses put it to him as a challenge: could he build them a nice house for $5,000 (around $85,000 in today’s dollars)? According to Jacobs, Wright responded that he had waited for decades for someone to ask him just that question.
It's worth noting that an $85,000 house back then would be much more extravagent than an $85,000 house today as housing inflation has exceeded official inflation rates. Probably more like a 3-400,000 house if I had to guess. Still, an average house.