Patrick Kinney and his wife, Margaret, built the house to raise their three children in. They hired Wright as the architect because Margaret had worked for Wright's sister, Jane Porter, while a college student. Patrick Kinney, a prominent lawyer, worked as the general contractor on the building in order to cut down on costs. Additionally, while Wright suggested the building should be made out of concrete blocks, the Kinneys decided on using stone. Every day Patrick Kinney "would be up at the crack of dawn and quarry two loads of stone and deliver them to the site... before heading off to court or the office."[4]
The building is set on a grid of 30-and 60-degree equilateral parallelograms with the master bedroom as a hexagon at the head, with the children's bedrooms coming off of it. It was originally designed with two, instead of three, children's bedrooms because Wright misunderstood how many children the Kinneys had. Therefore, his apprentice, John H. "Jack" Howe, later enlarged the building.[5]
