Courtesy of Google Trends, here is some news that should warm the heart of every Frank Lloyd Wright fan: the great architect's Unity Temple, which has been crumbling into pieces for years, has just been named one of the eleven most endangered historic places in the country by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

This is, you might argue, a dubious honor. But Wright's creation in Oak Park, Illinois, has been steadily self-destructing since it first opened in 1909. The Chicago Tribune summed up the problems very nicely: "It is one of the earliest-dated public buildings to feature exposed concrete--which became one of Wright's signature architectural elements. But problems emerged within a few years of construction. The temple has 16 flat roofs and a drainage system that funnels water down internal metal drains embedded in concrete columns. There are no gutters. Water has been seeping into the concrete. Cracks have appeared in the shotcrete, or sprayed concrete, that was used in the 1970s in an attempt to cover the exterior walls."

Being added to the endangered list will surely help the building to find funding for a thorough restoration. But who will foot the bill? Over on the Tribune site, at least one reader objected to the idea of another taxpayer-funded bailout. "It's a religious structure & no public money should ever go to it!" argued Garry. "Not a cent, they've never paid anything in real estate taxes on it & I'm sure the landmark loonies will be out begging for government money to fix it up!"

On Twitter, the reactions were a little more sentimental. Said @jackyrun: "Sad to hear my beloved Unity Temple in Oak Park is on the endangered list. Lots of peak life moments occurred there for me." In another tweet, @slushfundbaby noted that she was "nearly heartbroken that the cost to save the Unity Temple will be more than $20 million, and grateful for having seen it once." Still a third tweet, by @dailybungalow, included a link to the Flickr feed below, which consists of images from a 2007 visit to the building.



Incidentally, Wright's cubical sanctuary is by no means the oddest structure to make the list. As you can read in this Veterans Today dispatch, a dilapidated aircraft hangar has also gotten the nod from the NTHP.

"The Enola Gay hangar," reports Jill Serjeant, "which housed the B-29 bomber that dropped the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, is in a critical state of disrepair at the remote Wendover, Utah, airfield, the Trust said. A federal grant of $450,000 was recently approved for work on the massive hangar, but the Trust said it believed that about $5 million was needed to restore the building, whose history has generated controversy. 'We are not getting into interpretation. The site itself is of great historic importance. It led to an action that some people felt was totally necessary to end the war but everybody agrees was horrendous,' said Peter Brink, senior vice president of programs at the Trust."

A few other non-glamorous structures on the list were mentioned in a New York Times piece, including an 85-year-old bridge connecting Portsmouth, N.H., and Kittery, Maine, Miami Marine Stadium, and the Ames Shovel Shops, a 19th-century industrial village in Easton, Mass.