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Date: 1903
Address: 636 North East Avenue
City: Oak Park, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
President of the Martin and Martin Stove Polish Company in Chicago, and brother to Darwin Martin, it was William Martin’s search for a suitable suburban location to build a home, that sparked Wright’s relationship with the Martin family.
In his design for William Martin’s Oak Park home, Wright responded to the compact size of the lot by including a subterranean basement and building vertically. The three-story house is…
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Date: 1901
Address: 540 Fair Oaks Avenue, Oak Park, IL
City: Oak Park, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
Commissioned in 1901, the Fricke house was designed during Wright’s brief partnership with the architect Webster Tomlinson. The client, William G. Fricke, was a partner in the school-supply firm of Weber, Costello, Fricke. The house exhibits many key elements of Wright's mature Prairie style, including its stone water table, horizontal banding, overhanging roof eaves, shallow hipped roof, and stucco…
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Date: 1903
Address: 76 Soldiers Place, Buffalo, New York
City: Buffalo, New York
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
William Heath, a former resident of Chicago and attorney at the Larkin Company, contracted Wright to design his home around the same time that Darwin Martin commissioned the George and Delta Barton house, Larkin Administration building, and his own residence. Although smaller in scale, the Heath house is similar in design to the Martin House. Both structures are faced with Roman brick, and…
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Date: 1893
Address: 515 Auvergne Place. River Forest, IL 60305
City: River Forest, IL
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
A landmark building in Wright’s career, the Winslow house was his first major commission as an independent architect. While the design owes a tremendous debt to the earlier Charnley house, Wright always considered the Winslow house extremely important to his career. Looking back on it in 1936, he described it as "the first 'prairie house’.”
Defined by an overriding sense of simplicity and a mastery…
Of the great cities of the nineteenth century, none embodied the spirit of the modern age like Chicago. Its rise from a frontier village in 1827 to the world’s sixth-largest city in 1893 was unparalleled. From the soaring multi-storied steel frame office buildings of Chicago’s business district, the Loop, to the highly industrialized production lines of the city’s stockyards, Chicago offered indisputable proof of the forces shaping modern American life.
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Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural principles were forged in the pioneering…
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Pervasive and revolutionary, the Arts and Crafts movement originated in England in the 1880s. Evolving from the theories and practices of the English Aesthetic movement and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, it would become one of the most influential design movements of the modern age. Its impact was felt across Europe and America. Promoted by key figures including the artist-designer William Morris, and the great Victorian critic and writer, John Ruskin, it offered an artistic and philosophical reaction to the ostentatious,…
“Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city in the world...”
- Frank Lloyd Wright
Let us introduce you to Wright’s sites in and around Chicago on an exclusive small group tour, traveling in the comfort of a chauffeur-driven, air-conditioned, small-scale bus with expert commentary by a Trust interpreter.
Your day begins in the magnificent Rookery Light Court, originally designed by Burnham and Root and redesigned by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1905. One of the earliest skyscrapers in Chicago, The Rookery is a nominated World Heritage site.
Your next…
Our most comprehensive tour of Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park is an all-inclusive tour limited to ten persons.
Begin your Oak Park experience with an expanded tour of Wright’s Home and Studio, the birthplace of Wright’s vision for a new American architecture. Step ahead of the crowd and trace Wright’s early years, from his Studio where the Prairie style was conceived, to Oak Park’s beautifully preserved private Prairie homes. Witness the evolution of Wright’s architectural design philosophy in the neighborhood where the architect lived and worked.
Wright Around Oak Park includes:…
The Trust’s Education Department offers both on-site and virtual tours, during which students experience Wright’s designs firsthand and are encouraged to ask questions and share their observations.
Each tour can be tailored to classroom themes and partnered with activities and lessons from teachingbydesign.org.
At this time, tours are intended for groups of 30 students (grades K-12) or fewer and are available at the Frederick C. Robie House, the Home and Studio and its surrounding historic neighborhood. Please check our booking form for our monthly availability. Please note, field…
This tour offers a unique day tour of Wright’s Chicago sites in conjunction with the exhibition Photographing Frank Lloyd Wright on view at the Driehaus Museum through January 5, 2025. The tour is a collaboration between the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust and the Driehaus Museum.
This tour offers a unique day tour of Wright’s Chicago sites in conjunction with the exhibition Photographing Frank Lloyd Wright on view at the Driehaus Museum through January 5, 2025. The tour is a collaboration between the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust and the Driehaus Museum.
Travel in the architect’s footsteps and into the heart of Japanese culture, discovering what Wright loved about Japan and the ideas from “that great East” which proved influential throughout his career. Fall in love with Japan, as Wright did, on this 11-day, 10-night journey.
Join us for the spectacular Wright Plus Architectural Housewalk on Saturday, May 17, 2025. Tour the interiors of eight private residences designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and his contemporaries. For one day only, homeowners invite guests into their private living spaces, which retain the original exterior features with interiors designed to suit their individual tastes. Guides will be on hand to enhance the tours with details about the history and the beautiful architectural elements that give each home its unique character.
Saturday, May 17, 2025
Oak Park, Illinois
Groups of 10+ are welcome to join us for Wright Plus, the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust’s internationally renowned annual architectural housewalk. Wright Plus features rare interior tours of private homes and landmark public buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and his contemporaries. It is the country’s premier housewalk, held in historic Oak Park, a Chicago suburb that has more Wright buildings than anywhere in the world and where the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio is also located.
This popular event is an extraordinary experience celebrating…
Summer Design Camps
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Monday, July 7, 2025
In Wright's Studio Design Camp Grades 3-5
Design, build, and innovate in the drafting room of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Oak Park Studio.
Learn More >
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Monday, July 21, 2025
In Wright's Studio Design Camp Grades 6-8
Design, build, and innovate in the drafting room of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Oak Park Studio.
Learn More >