The Chahroudi Cottage
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Original Petra Island Design
The closest original Frank Lloyd Wright home open for tours near New York City.
The Chahroudi Cottage on Petra Island. Originally envisioned as a guest house for a much larger estate Wright designed for the island (the future Massaro House), the cottage was completed by Wright and personally overseen during his lifetime.
Frank Lloyd Wright and his wife, and Ahmed Chahroudi and his wife, sitting on the lawn at Petra Island.
Frank Lloyd Wright Comes to Petra Island
In the late 1940s, engineer Ahmed Chahroudi purchased Petra Island on Lake Mahopac and commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design “his masterpiece.” Frank asked if Chahroudi could afford his masterpiece and Chahroudi gave him the go ahead to design exactly what Wright wanted.
Wright envisioned an extraordinary compound integrated directly into the natural landscape of the island. His plans for the main residence were carefully positioned among the rock formations, trees, and shoreline. After much trouble with the town building permits, it was decided that Wright would design the guest cottage first and once completed, the Chahroudi family would convince the town to let them build the main masterpiece.
The guest house, now known as the Chahroudi Cottage, was completed during Wright’s lifetime and remains an authentic Frank Lloyd Wright design personally connected to the architect himself.
Meet Mr. Chahroudi
Mr. Chahroudi reflects on conversations with Frank Lloyd Wright.
The Chahroudi Cottage Interior
The Chahroudi Cottage Terrace
The Original Frank Lloyd Wright Cottage
The Chahroudi Cottage embodies many of Frank Lloyd Wright’s signature architectural principles:
• Harmony with nature
• Organic materials
• Horizontal lines
• Compression and release
• Integrated indoor and outdoor living
Despite its smaller scale, the cottage reflects Wright’s extraordinary attention to detail and his belief that even intimate spaces should feel deeply connected to their environment.
Visit Petra Island to experience this original Wright structure firsthand.
Read the original letters to and from Mr. Chahroudi and Frank Lloyd Wright during the planning and building of the cottage.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s original sketch of the future Massaro House
The House That Was Never Built
While the cottage was completed, Wright’s much larger main residence for Petra Island was never built due to financial limitations and Frank Lloyd Wright’s death in 1959.
For decades, the plans remained unrealized.
But the vision for Petra Island never disappeared.
Joseph Massaro, Building the unrealized main home (known now as the Massaro House), and the Preservation of Petra Island
Then came Joe Massaro: sheet metal contractor, businessman, grandfather of four, poker enthusiast, and ultimately the man who refused to let Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision for Petra Island disappear into history. After purchasing the island in 1991, Massaro spent years studying Wright’s original drawings, collaborating with Wright historian Thomas Heinz, navigating complex approvals, and eventually bringing the unrealized main residence to life decades after Wright’s passing. The result is one of the most ambitious Wright-inspired residential undertakings in the country - a dramatic cantilevered home overlooking Lake Mahopac, built with extraordinary attention to Wright’s original concepts, materials, proportions, and spirit. Today, Petra Island stands not only as an architectural destination but also as the story of one man’s determination to preserve and continue a remarkable piece of American design history.
Joe Massaro
The Massaro House
On the Massaro House:
"This is the house that Frank Lloyd Wright said would surpass Edgar Kaufmann’s Fallingwater, but for seventy-five years, the plans slept in a closet on the island cottage. Then one determined man with a sheet metal business and a WaveRunner decided the world had waited long enough – and wow is it spectacular!”
George Smart, CEO, USModernist.org
The Massaro House Completed in 2006
The Massaro House on Petra Island
The great CBS newsman Walter Cronkite, who knew Wright, visited the property and said, “I feel Frank in this house.”
Joe Massaro
Experience Petra Island Today with the Massaro Family
Today, guests visiting Petra Island experience:
The original Frank Lloyd Wright Chahroudi Cottage
The dramatic Massaro House is inspired by Wright’s unrealized plans
A guided tour led personally by Joe Massaro and his family
A rare opportunity to experience architecture, nature, and history together on a private island setting
No ropes or barriers - Visitors move through both spaces with an unusual degree of freedom. After the guided portion of the tour, there’s time to wander, to double back into rooms, to photograph details that might otherwise be glimpsed only briefly.
‘It’s not like going on a tour, it’s like going to a friend’s house,’” - Tour guest
Fewer than 2,500 people outside the family have toured Petra Island to date. That makes each visit an unusually intimate architectural experience. The Massaro family looks forward to seeing you!
Explore two extraordinary Frank Lloyd Wright homes on a private island in Mahopac, NY, in the
Historic Hudson Valley, 50 miles from New York City.
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