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The Rookery Building in the heart of Chicago’s financial district stands testimony to the resilience and creative spirit of late-nineteenth century Chicago. The rebirth of the city in the wake of the Great Fire of 1871 gave rise to the multi-storied office building that would transform the landscape of America’s cities. Amidst the atmosphere of experimentation and innovation that defined post-fire Chicago, the architectural firm of Burnham and Root rose to prominence. Daniel H. Burnham (1846-1912) and John Wellborn Root (1850-1891…
The Rookery Building in the heart of Chicago’s financial district stands testimony to the resilience and creative spirit of late-nineteenth century Chicago. The rebirth of the city in the wake of the Great Fire of 1871 gave rise to the multi-storied office building that would transform the landscape of America’s cities.
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Date: 1905
Address: 209 South LaSalle Street, Chicago, Il 60604
City: Chicago, Illinois
Links: www.flwright.org
Accessibility: Public
Category: Commercial
Completed in 1888, Burnham and Root’s eleven-story Rookery was one of the tallest buildings in the world at the time of its completion. In 1905, seeking to modernize the interior public spaces of The Rookery, Edward C. Waller, the building’s manager, hired Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright was familiar with the building before he was commissioned to update it. The architect…
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Date: 1892
Address: 1027 Chicago Avenue, Oak Park, IL
City: Oak Park, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
The Thomas and Laura Gale House closely resembles both the Robert Emmond and Robert Parker houses, all among the “bootleg” designs Wright produced independently while working for Adler and Sullivan. The high-pitched roof, octagonal dormers and bay, form a complexity of shapes that is evocative of the Queen Anne style, an architectural mode popularized by British architect Richard Norman Shaw. Despite its…
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Date: 1905
Address: 1319 S. Main St., Racine, Wisconsin
City: Racine, Wisconsin
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
Restoration status: restored 2013
Perched on a steep promontory above Lake Michigan, the Hardy house exhibits a complex and thoughtfully considered relationship with its surroundings. Wright fortified the structure’s western, street-side elevation, its most public façade, by surrounding it with a substantial stucco wall. Two entrances punctuate the wall and lead to…
Unity Temple (1905-08) is Frank Lloyd Wright’s only surviving public building from his Prairie period. Limited by a modest budget and an urban site, Wright created an innovative design and used unconventional materials to produce one of the most sophisticated accomplishments of his early career. The oldest Wright building still in use for the same purpose for which it was built, Unity Temple stands today as a masterpiece of modern architecture and design.
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Commissioned by the congregation of Oak Park Unity Church in 1905, Wright’s Unity Temple is the greatest public building of the architect’s Chicago years. Wright’s family on his mother’s side were Welsh Unitarians, and his uncle Jenkin Lloyd Jones was a distinguished Unitarian preacher with a parish on Chicago’s south side where Wright and his wife Catherine were married. Wright identified with the rational humanism of Unitarianism, particularly as influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalism, uniting all beings as one…
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Date: 1905-08
Address: 875 Lake Street, Oak Park, IL, 60302
City: Oak Park, Illinois
Links: www.flwright.org
Accessibility: Public
Category: Religious
Commissioned by the congregation of Oak Park Unity Church in 1905, Wright’s Unity Temple is the greatest public building of the architect’s Chicago years.
Approached from Lake Street, Unity Temple is a massive and monolithic cube of concrete, sheltered beneath an expansive flat roof. Wright’s bold concept for the church enabled a series of concrete forms to be…
Enjoy a virtual tour of the iconic Frederick C. Robie House, the consummate expression of Wright’s Prairie style.
Learn about the Prairie Style and the Midwestern architects who contributed to its development.
Explore the expansive living space at the heart of the Robie House on this Virtual Tour.
Take a Virtual Tour of Wright's Oak Park Studio, the birthplace of American architecture.
Take a Virtual Tour of the Children’s Playroom at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio in Oak Park.
Trust curator David Bagnall discusses the…
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Date: 1905
Address: 850 Sheridan Rd., Glencoe, Illinois
City: Glencoe, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
Restoration status: restoration by Vinci-Hamp Architects, completed 2011. Work included structural stabilization, reversal of unsympathetic modifications, refreshing the existing leaded glass windows, returning the landscape to its original descent into the ravine, and integration of new mechanical systems including geothermal heat pumps.
The William A. Glasner house is a one-…
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Date: 1903
City: Hinsdale, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residentia
The nature of Wright’s involvement in the design of the W. H. Freeman house is uncertain. The drawings in the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives at the Avery Library reflect the nineteenth century taste for compact, restricted interior spaces; a square plan; steeply pitched roofs; and double hung windows—design elements Wright had emphatically abandoned by 1903. It is possible that they show the proposed remodeling of a preexisting structure, one that was…
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Date: 1892
Address: 211 S La Grange Road, La Grange, Illinois 60525
City: La Grange, Illinois
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
Restoration Status: Restored in the late 1980s
The W. Irving Clark house has been attributed to both Wright and E. Hill Turnock, another draftsman employed by Adler and Sullivan. The inclusion of the building plans in the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives at the Avery Library, Columbia University, suggests a possible collaboration between the two. The house features an inglenook with a tiled…
Date: 1891
City: Chicago, IL
Accessibility: Demolished 1926
Category: Residential
The William Storrs MacHarg house was another of Adler and Sullivan’s residential commissions, which were typically assigned to Wright. Like Wright’s own home in Oak Park, it was built in the Shingle style. The design featured rounded arches, a steep roof, and dormers. In place of traditional double-hung sash windows, Wright used out-swinging casement windows, which became a defining feature of his later Prairie houses. The MacHarg house was demolished in 1926.
Back to The Buildings of Wright's Chicago Years
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Date: 1893
Address: 1031 Chicago Avenue, Oak Park, IL
City: Oak Park, IL
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
Restoration Status: 1977 – restoration to the porch
The Walter Gale house is among the first houses Wright designed after his departure from the firm of Adler and Sullivan in 1893. The façade is dominated by a large circular turret. The rounded turret on the right of the house is balanced on the left by a narrow, angular dormer that extends two stories from the building’s second floor to its attic. The second…
Date: 1902
Address: 5292 South Shore Drive, Whitehall MI
City: Whitehall, Michigan
Accessibility: Private
Category: Residential
Restoration status: Partially demolished
Like the cottage designed for Mary Gerts, the Walter Gerts summer home was finished in board and batten siding and exhibits a simple plan. In his early writings on architecture, Wright argued that residences required only a single “broad” and “generous” chimney, with a fireplace that justifies its great size. Accordingly, a wide, shallow chimney projected out from the gently pitched roof of the cottage, and a large brick-…