Oak Park's Unity Temple is open six days a week for the rest of the summer under what the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust calls expanded hours at the UNESCO World Heritage Site on Lake Street.
The Trust announced on Thursday, July 2, that tours at 875 Lake Street now run Monday through Saturday, with the building open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and tours starting as late as 4:15 p.m. The schedule continues through August.
Three tour formats are available. A 45-minute guided interior tour costs $20. A 45-minute audio self-guided tour runs $18. A 90-minute in-depth tour costs $40 for general admission and $32 for Trust members. The in-depth tours run on Saturdays year-round and on Fridays from June through August.
The Trust recommends advance ticket purchases, citing limited tour capacity. Tickets are available at flwright.org or by calling the box office at 312-994-4000. Day-of tickets can also be purchased online, by phone, or in person at the front desk.
Unity Temple is Wright's only surviving public building from his Prairie period and the oldest Wright structure still in use for its original purpose. Wright designed it for his own Unitarian Universalist congregation after lightning destroyed the original wood-framed church on June 6, 1905. Working with a $45,000 budget and a tight urban lot, he used poured-in-place reinforced concrete to create a building with no steeple and no front entrance. The structure earned UNESCO World Heritage status in 2019 as part of "The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright," one of only eight Wright buildings worldwide with that designation. A comprehensive $25 million restoration was completed in June 2017.
"Unity Temple makes an entirely new architecture — and is the first expression of it," Wright later said, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. "That is my contribution to modern architecture."
Tours are not recommended for children under 8, and strollers are not permitted inside. All guests need a ticket regardless of age. Still photography is allowed on all tours.
