Exclusive | Owning a rare Frank Lloyd Wright home often comes with headaches of constant and costly maintenance

Frank Lloyd Wright remains a major figure in the history of American architecture.But when it comes to maintaining his surviving homes — well, that remains a major pain in the neck.Take Petra Island in upstate New York, with a 5,000-square-foot wood and concrete main house built from Wright’s original plans.The house was completed in 2007, decades after Wright died in 1959 at age 91, and yet it inherited many of the same quirks as the homes Wright built himself — including a flat roof that leaks and oversized fireplaces that smoke as much as they impress.“The house is magnificent, but it has some faults in the design,” owner Joe Massaro, 80, a former sheet metal industrialist, told The Post as he stepped into its foyer — where a centuries-old boulder forms one of the walls.

“He was not a great engineer, but he wanted what he wanted.”Frequent, painstaking maintenance is a constant for owners of Wright’s roughly 400 still-standing houses, many of them concentrated in the Midwest.As stewards of the architect’s uncompromising vision, they preserve designs that often prioritized artistry over practicality — an effort that can require serious work.After all, things were different in Wright’s day.

In 1920, while Wright was rising to fame, just 20 states required architects to be licensed, according to the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards. Wright founded his own firm in 1893, before Illinois established its law requiring licensing for architects without earning an architecture degree.Instead, he entered the profession through apprenticeship.Still, what Wright lacked in formal academic training, he made up for with abundant creativity. “He wanted a more organic structure, for people to feel like they were more tied to nature,” said Dan D’Agostino, principal and founder at New Jersey-based PLAN Architecture, who’s spent decades studying Wright and his structures.

“The idea of bringing stone into a house, that wasn’...