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Date: 1899
City: Chicago, Illinois
Category: Residential
Restoration Status: Demolished
The Husser house marks a turning point in Wright’s career because of its truly radical plan. The majority of Wright’s earlier residential designs were square in plan with porches, porte-cocheres, libraries, or towers projecting like auxiliary appendages from one or more of their sides. In his design for the Husser house, Wright employs polygonal architectural volumes that emanate in multiple directions from various points along a central axis…
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Date: 1906
Address: 715 West Washington Avenue, South Bend, Indiana
City: South Bend, Indiana
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
The K.C. DeRhodes house, which was built after Wright’s first trip to Japan, reflects the importance of this pivotal journey, as well as the great talent of Wright’s draughtsman, Marion Mahony, who played a major role in the design of the house. Mahony’s most celebrated contribution to the project…
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Wright at Home: Spaghetti Structures
Explore your engineering skills as you use spaghetti and marshmallows to build a sturdy structure. More >
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Wright at Home: Recycled Building Blocks
Experiment with form and color with these recycled building blocks. More >
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Wright at Home: DIY Nature Brushes
Be inspired by the world of nature and create DIY…
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Date: 1911
City: Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
Category: Residential
Restoration Status: Demolished in 1970
Located in southern Wisconsin, Lake Geneva became a popular summer retreat for residents of both Chicago and Milwaukee with the advent and increased use of automobiles. Businessman John Williams and developer Arthur L. Richards responded to its growing popularity by establishing the Lake Geneva Hotel Company and commissioning Wright to design a hotel. The plan incorporated a lobby with a large fireplace, dining facilities, and…
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Date: 1903
City: Buffalo, New York
Category: Commercial
Restoration status: Demolished, 1950
Established in 1875, the Larkin Company was a national mail-order business that sold soap products to middle class consumers. Its managers, including John D. Larkin, Elbert Hubbard, Darwin Martin, and William Heath ascribed to the belief that hard work was a moral imperative, and attempted to foster a familial office culture. The construction of a new headquarters was intended to ensure the highest levels of efficiency, productivity, and…
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Date:1907
City: Norfolk, Virginia
Category: Commercial
Restoration status: Demolished
Shortly after the completion of their headquarters in Buffalo, New York, the Larkin Company invited Wright to act as the architect of their pavilion for the Jamestown Tercentenary in Norfolk, Virginia. The Jamestown Tercentenary was organized to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the establishment of colonial Jamestown. Like other world’s fairs and expositions, which became hugely popular in the century following London’s Great Exhibition of…
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Date: 1909
Address: 6 Elizabeth Ct. Oak Park, IL 60302
City: Oak Park, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
The Laura Robeson Gale house is a simple, stucco and wood structure situated on a narrow lot on a quaint, winding street in Oak Park, Illinois. The entrance to the house, which is partially concealed by a tall pier, provides access to a hall. On the interior, a massive Roman brick fireplace separates the hall from the living room at the front of the house, while piers with built-in…
Date: 1909
Address: 5318, 5370, and 5380 South Shore Drive, Whitehall, Michigan
City: Whitehall, Michigan
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
Thomas and Laura Robeson Gale had a longstanding professional relationship with Wright. The architect renovated their Queen Anne-style home in Oak Park, Illinois in 1892, and in 1897, designed for them a two-story cottage on property jointly owned with Laura Gale’s brother-in-law, Walter Gerts, in Whitehall, Michigan. After her husband’s death in 1907, Laura Gale commissioned Wright to design three rental cottages on the same property, as well…
Date: 1905
Address: 101 East Laurel, Springfield, IL 62704
City: Springfield, Illinois
Links: www.sps186.org/schools/lawrence/?p=329&i=11196
Accessibility: Private
Category: Institutional
Restoration status: Partially demolished, restored in 1992
Susan Lawrence Dana commissioned the Lawrence Memorial Library in honor of her father, Rheuna Lawrence, the onetime mayor of Springfield, Illinois and a former president of the city’s school board. The library was located within a preexisting primary school named for Dana’s father, and Wright remodeled one of its rooms to…
"Robie House: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Revolutionary Idea," an FLWT exclusive Zoom Lecture with Author Kathryn Smith
Kathryn Smith is an author of numerous books, including Frank Lloyd Wright: Hollyhock House & Olive Hill, Wright on Exhibit: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Architectural Exhibitions, and a contributor to Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses and Frank Lloyd Wright: Prairie Houses.
Recorded June 4, 2024
Christian Witt-Dörring
By 1910 Vienna's architectural avant-garde was deeply divided into two irreconcilable camps. In contrast to Josef Hoffmann and…
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Date: 1908
Address: 1331 Sherwin Ave., Chicago, IL
City: Chicago, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
Restoration Status: Demolished 1952
The Lena Kent and Samuel Horner house was characteristic of Wright’s mature Prairie style. Finished in stucco with wood trim, the building featured a low, hipped roof. Two axes met to form an almost symmetrical cruciform floor plan with a long living room in its center. The living room opened…
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Date: 1890
City: Ocean Springs, Mississippi
Accessibility: Destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005
Category: Residence
Following the completion of the monumental Auditorium Building, Louis Sullivan purchased property in Ocean Springs, Mississippi on which to build a personal vacation cottage. Sullivan was especially enchanted by the verdant landscape he encountered there and wrote that flowering trees like azaleas, dogwood, and magnolia were “grouped and arranged as though by the hand of an unseen poet.” Wright likely drafted the…
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Date: 1895
Category: Building material
Wright designed and eventually patented 45 variants of the Luxfer Prism for the American Luxfer Prism Company. Typically installed in the upper registers of windows in both industrial and commercial spaces, these ribbed, 4-inch square sheets of glass used refraction to illuminate large, deep spaces with natural light. Wright’s many designs for Luxfer Prisms are distinguished by their geometric patterning. They feature abstract compositions made up of beading, squares, circles, and ovals that…
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Date: 1903
Address: 520 North East Avenue, Oak Park, Illinois
City: Oak Park, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
The Mamah Borthwick and Edwin Cheney house initially appears to be a single story bungalow. In fact, the tall wall of Roman brick that surrounds the terrace at its front conceals the structure’s basement, which Wright raised to ground level. In addition to artfully concealing the true two-story elevation, the wall gives the impression of privacy and impenetrability. This is…
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Date: 1902
Address: 5260 South Shore Drive, Whitehall MI
City: Whitehall, Michigan
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
The Mary Gerts summer cottage is executed entirely of board and batten construction. Although the structure is simple in plan, its relationship to the surrounding landscape is sophisticated. A deck and covered porch straddle a brook that runs through the property, demonstrating that the structure was built with respect for the irregularities of the natural topography of its site. Wide stairs lead from a…
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Date: 1905
Address: 1923 Lake Ave., Highland Park, Illinois
City: Highland Park, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
A moderately sized Prairie style house, the Mary M. W. Adams house stands in Highland Park, Illinois. One of its most distinctive characteristics are the thin piers that protrude diagonally from the corners of the structure’s central mass. They frame its enclosed porch and exaggerate the lateral extension of…
Mark your calendars for 20% savings on your entire purchase!
This is a double discount for Trust members in store and online at ShopWright.org. Members will receive discount codes via email prior to the day of the offer.
Redeem your member benefit online at ShopWright.org or in person at the Home and Studio Museum Shop, the Robie House Museum Shop, or The Rookery Shop. Present your member card in person to the guest representative at the shop.
MEMBER EXCLUSIVE: Zoom Conversation with Kevin Nute
Please join us via Zoom for an engaging evening with Kevin Nute, author of Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan Revisited: Traditional Japanese Culture as a Means to Modern American Architecture (2024). This new revised edition builds and expands upon Nute’s seminal 1993 book, Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan: The Role of Traditional Japanese Art and Architecture in the Work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Nute will discuss questions of cultural appropriation, the idea of Japan as viewed through a Western lens, and how Wright translated Japanese building forms…
In appreciation of member support, we are pleased to offer Trust members up to four complimentary Outdoor Historic Neighborhood Audio Tours at Wright's Home and Studio and Robie House from April 15-19.
Redeem your member benefit at the Home and Studio Museum Shop or the Robie House Museum Shop. No reservations required. Present your member card in person to the guest representative at the shop.
In appreciation of member support, we are pleased to offer Trust members up to four complimentary Outdoor Historic Neighborhood Audio Tours at Wright's Home and Studio and Robie House from April 16-19.
Redeem your member benefit at the Home and Studio Museum Shop or the Robie House Museum Shop. No reservations required. Present your member card in person to the guest representative at the shop.