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Date: 1908
Address: Rochester, NY 14610
City: Rochester, New York
Category: Residential
Accessibility: Public
Designed for Edward E. Boynton, a widower and lantern salesman from Rochester, New York, and his daughter, Beulah, the Boynton house is an excellent example of Wright’s mature Prairie style.
The first-story fenestration is abundant, especially in the dining room where dropped skylights, a band of clerestory windows, and a bay with casement windows, meet to create dazzling tiers displaying distinct abstract patterns. The…
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Date: 1909
Address: 2 Millikin Place, Decatur, Illinois
City: Decatur, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
The Edward P. and Florence Bernice Irving house, a sumptuous residence with an exhaustive program of interior furnishings, was the product of an intermingling of creative intellects. Wright prepared preliminary sketches of the house just before departing for Europe to work on the Wasmuth Portfolio in the fall of 1909. In preparation for his trip, Wright relinquished his unfinished…
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Date: 1909
Address: 196 Hot Springs Road
City: Montecito, California
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
The Emily and George C. Stewart summer cottage was Wright’s first design and only Prairie style residence realized in California. Wright prepared and delivered a number of blueprints for the Stewart house before closing his studio and embarking on a trip to Europe in the fall of 1909. Because it was constructed after his departure and without his direct supervision, the overall plan varies slightly…
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Date: 1906
Address: 1100 N. Main St., Belvidere, Illinois
City: Belvidere, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Religious
The Pettit Memorial Chapel is a small structure on the grounds of Belvidere Cemetery in Belvidere, Illinois. Emma Glasner Pettit, the sister of William A. Glasner, for whom Wright designed a home Glencoe in 1905, commissioned the chapel in honor of her deceased husband, William H. Pettit. The chapel consists of a long narrow porch and an adjoining, rectangular room for memorial services. Raised above…
Date: 1907
Address: 540 Fair Oaks Avenue, Oak Park, IL
City: Oak Park, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Utilitarian
Shortly after purchasing the Wright-designed house formerly owned by William Fricke, Emma Martin commissioned Wright to design a garage on the property. In harmony with the existing house, Wright designed the garage in his characteristic Prairie style. Its first floor was designed to accommodate a car and its second story featured a single room with a fireplace on one end and doors opening onto a balcony on the other.
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Our first Evenings for Educators session covers the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. This event features a lecture given by the Trust’s Curator and Director of Interpretation Sarah Holian, who will discuss the enduring architectural legacy of Burnham and Root, the World’s Fair, and the Rookery. Included in this event is an in-depth tour of the Rookery Light Court, a behind-the-scenes look at the Burnham Library, and a hands-on workshop featuring design thinking and Chicago’s architectural history. Educators are encouraged to arrive between 5 and 5:30 pm to enjoy refreshments,…
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Date: 1895
Address: 333 Forest Ave. Oak Park, IL
City: Oak Park, IL
Accessibility: Public
Category: Residential
The design innovations pioneered by Wright at his Oak Park home in 1895, marked a significant development in the evolution of his style, bringing him closer to his ideal for the new American home. The modifications to his home responded not only to the growing size of his family, but also Wright’s concern for the intellectual development of his children. Wright converted the first floor dining room to a study, while the…
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Date: 1894
Address: 3213 - 3219 Calumet Ave., Chicago, Illinois
City: Chicago, IL
Accessibility: private
Category: Residential
Restoration Status: interior gutted by fire in 1981
Robert Roloson commissioned Wright to remodel a group of four preexisting row houses in 1894. Concerned with ventilation, Wright devised a plan that incorporated a succession of courts and wells in order to allow light and air into the buildings’ interior rooms. A series of four high-pitched gables dominates the front facade of the row houses. Wright…
Date: 1907
Address: n/a
City: Geneva, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
Restoration status: Destroyed by fire in 1910
Colonel George Fabyan commissioned Wright to remodel an Italianate house on his estate as a private country club around the same time that he commissioned the renovation of his own home. The structure included fourteen guest rooms, and visitors could divert themselves with recreational activities like canoeing, swimming, croquet, bowling, cards, and pool. A large dance hall featured exposed wooden beams and stringcourses, and a long porch shaded by…
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Date: 1895
City: Chicago, IL
Category: Apartment complex
Links: Ornamental fragments in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago
Restoration Status: Demolished 1971
The four-story Francis Apartments building, which was constructed for the Terre Haute Trust Company, comprised one, two, and three bedroom residential units on its upper floors, and commercial storefronts on its first floor. Thick limestone served as the building’s foundation and bands of cast stone ran horizontally around the ground floor periphery of the…
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Date: 1893
Address: 1030 Superior Street Oak Park, IL
City: Oak Park, IL
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
Restoration Status: Covered with vinyl clapboard siding in 1987
Located in Oak Park, the Francis J. Woolley house abuts the Robert Parker residence. On the building’s exterior, Wright carried thin clapboard siding from the first floor to the sill of the second. From there, wood shingles extend to the soffit line. This bipartite division of the façade subtly distorts the scale of each story. Wright employed a…
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Date: 1903
Address: 1505 W. Moss Avenue, Peoria, IL.
City: Peoria, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
With its ribbon windows, low-pitched roofs, projecting eaves, and walled terraces, the Francis Little house is typical of Wright’s mature Prairie style designs. The Little house windows are similar in design to those found at the E. Arthur Davenport, William Fricke, F.B. Henderson, and Edwin H. Cheney houses. The glass designs found on the interior of the house, which include a variety of skylights and built-in…
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Date: 1895
Address: 253 North Francisco Street, Chicago, IL
City: Chicago, IL
Category: Residential, multi-family apartment complex
Restoration Status: Demolished 1974. In 1977, the original entrance arch was reinstalled in apartment complex on Lake Street at Euclid Place in Oak Park.
Francisco Terrace was among several Wright designs commissioned by Edward C. Waller, a wealthy real estate speculator and close friend of William Winslow, another of Wright’s early patrons. Located on Chicago’s near West Side, the two-story…
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Date: 1901
Address: 301 S Kenilworth, Elmhurst, IL 60126
City: Elmhurst, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
In his architecture, Wright sought to integrate his buildings with the natural landscape on which they stood. He wrote of his desire to emphasize the building’s horizontal planes in an effort to “grip the whole to earth.” The Frank Henderson house is among Wright’s early Prairie designs that rely on the accentuation of horizontal elements to achieve a visual harmony between the built and natural…
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Date: 1909
Address: 507 Lake Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois
City: Wilmette, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
The Baker house utilizes many of the same design devices found in Wright’s Isabel Roberts house of the previous year. A dramatic cantilevered roof projects over a two-story living room with a bay of tall windows that create a screen-like effect. Long porches extend from the sides of the house, creating an emphatic horizontality that makes the structure appear to hug the ground. The shallow, hipped roofs of…
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Date: 1889
Address: 333 Forest Ave. Oak Park, IL
City: Oak Park, IL
Accessibility: Public
Category: Residential
Links: www.flwright.org
Restoration Status: Restored to its 1909 appearance by the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, 1974 - 1987
With a loan from Adler and Sullivan, Wright purchased a plot of land in the semi-rural village of Oak Park, on the western edges of Chicago. It was here he constructed a home for his first wife, Catherine Tobin, and himself. Built in the Shingle style, the structure draws on conventions Wright adopted…