archie
Sign in Get the app

Isidore H. Heller House

Architect
Frank Lloyd Wright
Year
1897
Style
Prairie School
City
Chicago, IL
Collection
wright’s chicago
Isidore H. Heller House
Photo: Warren LeMay from Chicago, IL, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0
See it on the map

The Isidore H. Heller House at 5132 South Woodlawn Avenue in Hyde Park was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1896 for the family of merchant Isidore H. Heller. It's credited as one of the turning points in Wright's shift away from the ornamented style of his mentor Louis Sullivan and toward the geometric, horizontal Prairie School architecture that would define his career.

the building

A Prairie style still arriving. The Heller House shows Wright reaching for the horizontal lines, broad overhanging eaves, and banded windows that would define Prairie School design, built around a brick facade topped by a raised monitor roof section that pulls light and air into the upper floors.

Bock's plaster frieze. Sculptor Richard Bock, a frequent Wright collaborator, contributed ornamentation to the house, including a plaster frieze, one of several early collaborations between the two.

A house sorted by floor. The plan stacks function by level: the first floor holds the living room, dining room, kitchen, and pantry arranged around a stair and elevator; the second floor is bedrooms and bathrooms; the third, originally servants' quarters, has since been split into its own apartment.

the style

The Heller House belongs to the Prairie School, the horizontal, geometric idiom Wright developed as he moved past Sullivan's ornamented Chicago School manner. Its low, spreading profile, horizontal window bands, and deep eaves are meant to hug the ground rather than reach for it, evoking the flat Midwestern prairie itself.

More on Prairie School

the architect

Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Heller House in 1896, early in a career that would run through the Prairie School he helped invent. The house is documented as a turning point where he broke from the influence of his early mentor, Louis Sullivan, toward the horizontal, geometric style that became his signature.

More on Frank Lloyd Wright

significance

The Heller House is a Chicago Landmark (L-111), a National Historic Landmark, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, designated a Chicago landmark on September 15, 1971.

more by Frank Lloyd Wright

nearby

All 382 buildings in Chicago