When nature-loving Ohio dentist Richard M. Sprang bought a past-its-prime building to renovate for his first solo practice, he looked to America’s most celebrated architect for inspiration.
Mount Vernon, Ohio, is named for the famous Virginia plantation owned by George Washington. It’s therefore fitting that the town, northeast of Columbus, makes maintenance and preservation of its old buildings a priority. Still, a gut renovation is an occasional necessity, and one of Mount Vernon’s finest happened at the hands of general dentist Richard M. Sprang.
He’d had his eye a century-old edifice right across the street — an old auto-parts place, among other things, that was decaying into an eyesore. “I wanted the location due to heavy traffic and a short distance to relocate,” says Dr. Sprang, 36, who has practiced in the area since 2008. He bought it for $240,000 in June 2015 and immediately set to work.
His architectural inspiration might seem unlikely: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, the iconic home near Pittsburgh, finished in 1937, that “brings the outdoors indoors,” Dr. Sprang notes approvingly. With Wright in mind, Dr. Sprang saw to it that every design element exuded the natural world: rich wood, organic colors, environmental photography. (Dr. Sprang incorporates green into some aspect of his wardrobe every day.) “I feel at ease in nature, and I wanted to provide that to my patients and staff,” he says.
The overhauled space opened this past January, after seven months and $1 million spent on renovations and dental equipment. “Many people laughed when they found out what I was trying to do,” Dr. Sprang says of his Fallingwater ambitions. “But they’ve come back amazed at what we were able to accomplish.”
View his impressive overhaul in the Incisal Edge Fall edition: https://viewer.zmags.com/publication/884087ef#/884087ef/84