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In 1889 Wright completed the construction of a small two-story residence in Oak Park on the Western edge of Chicago. The building was the first over which Wright exerted complete artistic control. Designed as a home for his family, the Oak Park residence was a site of experimentation for the young architect during the twenty-year period he lived there. Wright revised the design of the building multiple times, continually refining ideas that would shape his work for decades to come.
The semi-rural village of Oak Park, where Wright…
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Date: 1911
City: Spring Green, Wisconsin
Accessibility: Public
Category: Residential
Links: http://www.taliesinpreservation.org/
After their extended tryst in Europe, Wright and Mamah Borthwick returned to Chicago where Wright had plans to build a townhouse in the city’s Gold Coast neighborhood. The project proved too costly, so the couple relocated to Wright’s family lands in Spring Green, Wisconsin. In the spirit of Wright’s Oak Park Home and Studio, Wright would again create a complex of buildings that…
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Oak Park is best known for its unsurpassed concentration of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings and for the place where they were created – the Architect’s Studio.
The Frank Lloyd Wright Trust’s Learning Center expansion will focus on creating a comprehensive environment for lifelong learning that welcomes local and area residents into the site for expanded educational programs.
The Learning Center project comprises a 25,000 sq. ft. campus site, east and adjacent of the Home and Studio, which includes:
- 925 Chicago Avenue Arts…
No other architect or designer of the modern era transformed the use of leaded glass in architecture as Frank Lloyd Wright. Creating ribbons of uninterrupted glass casement windows and doors in his Prairie style buildings, Wright conceived his windows as an integral part of his organic design. Known for their extensive use of clear glass with touches of color, the glass designs are all geometric abstractions unique to each building for which they were created. Wright called them “light screens.”
The sources for Wright’s glass designs range from the Froebel gifts of his childhood to Louis…
Frank Lloyd Wright: The Lost Works brings Wright’s demolished and unrealized structures to life through immersive digital animations reconstructed from Wright’s original plans and drawings, along with archival photographs.
Two years in the making and based on a Japanese publication of original plans and historical photos, Frank Lloyd Wright: The Lost Works - The Imperial Hotel is a comprehensive digitally-animated recreation of the exterior and interior of this masterpiece.
Designed for the Larkin Company of Buffalo, New York, and built from 1904 to 1906, the…
The Trust’s collection includes furnishings, decorative arts and architectural designs. In the Wasmuth Portfolio (Berlin, 1910), Wright described his goal as such: "To thus make of a dwelling place a complete work of art… this is the modern American opportunity.” Bold, innovative and architectural, Wright’s furniture and decorative works were conceived as an integral element of his architectural interiors, designed in harmony with each specific commission.
Much of the Trust’s collection is on permanent display in its original context at Wright’s Oak Park Home and Studio. Signature works in…
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust’s June 17, 1974, Founding Day please join us for two days of welcoming walk-in activities June 14 and 15 at Wright’s Oak Park Home and Studio Campus on Chicago Avenue.
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust’s June 17, 1974, Founding Day please join us for two days of welcoming walk-in activities June 14 and 15 at Wright’s Oak Park Home and Studio Campus on Chicago Avenue.
World Heritage is a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) designation of worldwide historic sites recognized for their outstanding universal value. These sites are worthy of perpetual conservation for their important place in cultural heritage. Adopted by UNESCO in 1972, 192 countries are parties to the World Heritage Convention, which enhances worldwide understanding and appreciation of sites and encourages international cooperation for heritage conservation. The World Heritage designation establishes Wright’s place on the international stage of…
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Date: 1901
Address: 210 Forest Ave., Oak Park, Illinois
City: Oak Park, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
The Frank W. Thomas house was the first of Wright’s mature prairie-style residences constructed in Oak Park. In his description of the house, Wright evoked the organic unity of a blossoming flower to suggest the complexity with which the structural components were integrated as a cohesive whole. Nature served as a continual source of inspiration, and Wright stated that the Thomas house, “flare[s] outward,…
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Date: 1900
City: Delavan Lake, Delavan, Wisconsin
Category: Recreational
Restoration status: Burned to ground in 1978, rebuilt from original plans ca.2005
Wright designed the Fred B. Jones boathouse in in harmony with the Jones’ summerhouse. Located on the edge of Delavan Lake, it was constructed of fieldstone and had a gabled roof with outward flaring ridges. A wide arch supported by columns made of chunky boulders framed the area designated for boat storage and a squat chimney poked out from the pavilion on the structure’s…
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Date: 1900
Address: 3335 South Shore, Lake Delavan, WI
City: Lake Delavan, Delavan, Wisconsin
Category: Residential
Accessibility: Private
A wide archway connects the second story of the Fred B. Jones summerhouse to a tower in which Jones and his guests played poker. The gently graduated arch and adjoining tower, as well as the waterside orientation and recreational function of the vacation home, suggest the lingering influence of McKim, Mead, and White’s Agricultural Building, which Wright encountered at the 1893 World’s…
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Date: 1894
Address: 121 S. County Line Road, Hinsdale, IL
City: Hinsdale, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
Restoration Status: original dark stained shingles were replaced with white siding; south living room window expanded to a picture window by subsequent owners; enclosed porch and pergola added at rear
The dormered gambrel roof and columned veranda, as well as the dark stained shingle siding that originally covered the Frederick Bagley house, were typical features of American domestic architecture by the…
Completed in 1910, the Robie House (1908-1910) is the consummate expression of Wright’s Prairie style. Robie House sparked a revolution in residential architecture that still reverberates today and is considered one of the most important buildings in architectural history. The house is a masterpiece of the Prairie style and a forerunner of modernism in architecture.
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Completed in 1910, the house Wright designed for Frederick C. Robie is the consummate expression of his Prairie style. The house is conceived as an integral whole—site and structure, interior and exterior, furniture, ornament and architecture, each element is connected. Unrelentingly horizontal in its elevation and a dynamic configuration of sliding planes in its plan, the Robie House is the most innovative and forward thinking of all Wright’s Prairie houses.
On the exterior, bands of brick and limestone anchor the building to…
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Date: 1908-10
Address: 5757 Woodlawn Ave., Chicago, IL
City: Chicago, Illinois
Accessibility: Public
Category: Residential
Links: www.flwright.org
Restoration Status: From 2000 to 2009, the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust completed Phase I of the restoration of the Robie House, including comprehensive stabilization of the foundation and steel frame structure, restoration of exterior brick and masonry, construction of a new tile roof and gutters, and new electrical, climate and fire control systems.…
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Date: 1904
Address: 150 Nuttall Road, Riverside, Illinois
City: Riverside, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
The Frederick F. Tomek house is prototypical of Wright’s suburban Prairie style residences. Its design prefigures that of the Frederick C. Robie house and, as in that scheme, its main entrance opens onto the ground floor, which features a billiard room. From there, a central staircase leads to the primary living spaces on the main level of the residence. A second flight of stairs leads to bedrooms on…
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Date: 1906
Address: 1136 Brassie Avenue, Flossmoor, Illinois 60422
City: Flossmoor, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
The Nichols house was designed as a vacation home for Frederick Nichols, the superintendent of the Bitter Root Valley Irrigation Company. Built in Flossmoor, Illinois, the residence is similar in plan to the “Fireproof House for $5,000” Wright published in the Ladies Home Journal, and “Tan-y-deri,” a house he designed for his sister, Jane Porter, both of which were built in 1907. The Nichols…
As Wright worked to define his vision for American architecture and design, the currents of Modernism coursed at home and abroad. Architects and designers in Europe, Great Britain and America integrated exterior and interior design principles to achieve a level of visual unity never seen before. From paintings and prints to light fixtures and furniture, the Modern style was pervasive, synthesizing every aspect of design as a Gesamtkunstwerk, a “total work of art.”
Wright’s ideology, like that of his international contemporaries, focused on the complete integration of the house ̶ site and…