Gauler Twin House
- Architect
- Walter Burley Griffin
- Year
- 1908
- Style
- Prairie School
- City
- Chicago, IL
Walter Burley Griffin designed this pair of mirror-image Prairie houses in 1908 for John Gauler, a Chicago land speculator, at 5917 and 5921 North Magnolia Avenue. The twin houses are a rare surviving piece of Griffin's Chicago residential work from before he left the city to design the Australian capital, Canberra.
the building
Mirror-image plan. Griffin gave the two houses the low, horizontal Prairie School vocabulary, but the defining move is the mirroring itself: each house is built as the specular reflection of its twin next door, a doubled composition rather than one design simply repeated.
the style
The facts identify the houses as Prairie School work; the notable detail the record supports is that they were designed as a specular pair, so the pairing and mirroring is the style feature most specific to this building rather than any general Prairie ornament.
More on Prairie Schoolthe architect
Walter Burley Griffin designed the Gauler Twin Houses in 1908, early in a career that would take him well beyond Chicago residential work — he later designed Canberra, the capital of Australia, making him one of the era's few Chicago-trained architects to leave a mark on international city planning.
significance
The Gauler Twin Houses were listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 17, 1977, and designated a Chicago Landmark on June 28, 2000, protections that recognize them as an intact pair of early Griffin residential work.
nearby
- Perkins-Nordine House
- Edwin Colvin House
- Senn High School
- Episcopal Church of the Atonement and Parish House
- Belle Shore Apartment Hotel
- Bryn Mawr Apartment Hotel