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A house in Cloquet, Minn., designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright has been dismantled and is being shipped to its new location in western Pennsylvania. 

Ray and Emma Lindholm built the house in 1953. They also owned the gas station in Cloquet designed by Wright. But the current owners had struggled to sell the house since 2008. 

"It's only 200 feet off Highway 33, which has become an incredibly busy four-lane highway with a Walmart across the street," said Tim Quigley, a Minneapolis architect and longtime member of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. "All that noise, and all that disruption, has not made it very viable as a place to live." 

Wright was one of the most influential American architects of last century. The Cloquet house was one of dozens of "Usonian" houses he built for middle-class families around the country in the 1940s and 1950s. 

"As soon as you see it, you realize, this is a thoroughbred Frank Lloyd Wright house," Quigley said. "It's got wonderful drama inside, huge window walls and 11-foot-high glass doors that just bring the outside in." 

The house will be moved to Polymath Park in Acme, Pa., where it will be accessible to the public. The park includes other houses designed by Wright and his apprentice. 

The house has been dismantled and is being shipped out east. Quigley said one of the challenges staff faced was keeping track of the exact location of thousands of pieces of the house, including interior walls made of hundreds of individual boards. 

Quigley said the concrete block exterior, concrete floor and the roof will be constructed this fall. The innards of the house will be installed through the early spring. It should open to the public in the spring of 2017.

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The house stood for more than 60 years in Cloquet. But it's now been dismantled and is being shipped to its new location in western Pennsylvania.

Workers this fall will begin the painstaking process of reconstructing a house designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The house stood for more than 60 years in Cloquet, Minnesota. But it's now been taken apart, piece by piece, board by board, and shipped to western Pennsylvania.

Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house in Minn. moved piece by piece to Pa.

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