See more photos in the gallery below.
 

Two Prairie-style homes about 25 miles apart have undergone significant green upgrades in the past few years. This month, the owners of the Highland Park house, a Frank Lloyd Wright design from 1905, moved in after a year of renovations. And in River Forest, the owners of a house designed as a women’s club in 1913 by William Drummond, Wright’s former chief draftsman, put their residence on the market priced at $1.575 million.

Both structures needed rescuing before their most recent purchases. The Highland Park house was in foreclosure, and the River Forest building had been in limbo as the club’s membership shrank. Along with salvation, both homes also got geothermal conditioning systems and other eco-friendly technology. The green upgrades are “in the spirit of the original,” says Paul Coffey, who, with his wife, Ellen, restored and is now selling the River Forest house. Like Wright, Drummond used window placement and large overhanging eaves to work with the sun’s position in different seasons; in the women’s club, he also used a then-innovative heating system.

Click through the photos below for more on both homes.