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06 · Arts & Crafts to Art Deco

Prairie School

c. 1900–1920

Long horizontal lines: broad low roofs, deep overhangs, and continuous bands of windows hugging the ground.

Look for

Horizontal emphasis Hipped roof Deep eave overhang
Robie House, Chicago: an example of Prairie School architecture
Robie House, Chicago. Photo: Teemu08, CC BY-SA 3.0
Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois
Unity Temple Oak Park, Illinois · IvoShandor, CC BY 2.5
Dana–Thomas House, Springfield, Illinois
Dana–Thomas House Springfield, Illinois · Teemu008 from Palatine, Illinois, CC BY-SA 2.0
Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin
Taliesin Spring Green, Wisconsin · Raggedkompany, CC BY-SA 3.0
Purcell–Cutts House, Minneapolis
Purcell–Cutts House Minneapolis · Charles Walbridge, Public domain

what it is

Prairie School houses are built on long horizontal lines. They have low-pitched hipped or flat roofs with broad eaves that overhang the walls, casement windows (hinged at the side) set in continuous bands, and walls of long, thin Roman brick or stucco with horizontal trim. Ornament is limited to geometric patterns in leaded art glass, carved wood and stenciled plaster, often based on simplified plant forms. Inside, living spaces open into one another around a central fireplace instead of being divided into closed rooms.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House in Chicago's Hyde Park (1910) has cantilevered roofs, 175 art glass windows and an attached three-car garage. His Unity Temple in Oak Park (1905-1908) applied the same ideas to a poured-concrete church, and his Darwin D. Martin House in Buffalo (1903-1905) is a large Prairie house complex. Other examples include Purcell and Elmslie's Merchants National Bank in Winona, Minnesota (1912), and the Rock Crest-Rock Glen houses in Mason City, Iowa, by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin.

how to spot one

Horizontal emphasis A design that stresses long horizontal lines through low roofs, deep eaves (roof overhangs), bands of windows and continuous sills (window ledges). It defines Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie houses. Hipped roof A roof that slopes down to the walls on all four sides, with no gables (triangular wall ends). It is common on Georgian, Italianate, Prairie and American Foursquare houses. Deep eave overhang Roof edges, called eaves, that extend well beyond the walls. They shade windows and keep rain off the walls on Prairie houses, Craftsman bungalows and Italianate buildings.

Also look for

Ribbon windowProminent chimneyGeometric ornament

history

The Prairie School developed in Chicago and its suburbs around 1900, centered on Frank Lloyd Wright's studio in Oak Park, which he added to his home in 1898. Wright had worked for Louis Sullivan, and in 1901 the Ladies' Home Journal published his design 'A Home in a Prairie Town.' Architects who worked with Wright or in Sullivan's office, including Marion Mahony, Walter Burley Griffin, William Drummond and George Grant Elmslie, carried the style into their own practices across the Midwest.

Wright left his Oak Park practice in 1909. In 1911 the Berlin publisher Ernst Wasmuth issued a portfolio of 100 lithographs of his work, which architects in Germany and the Netherlands studied. The Griffins moved to Australia in 1914 after winning the competition to design Canberra. The style lost favor by the mid-1920s as Colonial Revival and other historical revival styles became popular. Wright returned to its low roofs and open plans in his smaller Usonian houses of the 1930s.

where to find it

The Robie House and Oak Park in Chicago, Unity Temple, and older suburbs across the upper Midwest.

architects

Frank Lloyd WrightLouis Sullivan

easy to confuse with

Gamble House, an example of Craftsman / Bungalow Craftsman / Bungalow Low, broad bungalows with deep porches on thick tapered piers, visible rafter ends, and angled roof braces. Stahl House, an example of Mid-Century Modern Mid-Century Modern Post-and-beam houses with walls of glass, flat or butterfly roofs, and easy flow between indoors and out.