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Prairie School

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the school in Wisconsin, see The Prairie School (Wind Point, Wisconsin).

Chicago Avenue side of architect Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois, showing post-1911 changes to studio building
The Prairie style Robie House in Chicago, 1910
Harold C. Bradley House, Madison, Wisconsin, by Louis Sullivan and George Grant Elmslie
Woodbury County Courthouse, Iowa, by William L. Steele and Purcell and Elmslie (associate architects)

Prairie School is a late 19th and early 20th-century[1] architectural style, most common in the Midwestern United States.[2] The style is usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves,[1] windows grouped in horizontal bands, integration with the landscape, and solid construction and craftsmanship. It reflects discipline in the use of ornament, which was often inspired by organic growth and seen carved into wood, stenciled on plaster, in colored glass, veined marble, and prints or paintings with a general prevalence of earthy, autumnal colors.[3] Spaciousness and continuous horizontal lines were thought to evoke and relate to the wide, flat, treeless expanses of America's native prairie landscape, and decoration often depicted prairie wildlife, sometimes with indigenous materials contributing to a sense of the building belonging to the landscape.[4]

The Prairie School sought to develop an indigenous North American style of architecture,[1] distinguishing it from historical revivals that were popular at the time. It shared many ideals and design aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts Movement, though it embraced the machine[5] and also shared ideals with modernist movements.[6] Many architects were also part of the Chicago School, but Prairie School buildings were seen less in the commercial skyscrapers of Chicago and more in the suburban residences, though the style can be seen in throughout a variety of building types, including banks, schools, and churches.[1] Japanese architecture and prints, interests of Frank Lloyd Wright in particular, inspired the focus on simplicity and openness[7] in addition to the prairie landscape.

History

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The Prairie School was influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, a decorative and fine arts movement led by John Ruskin, William Morris, and others in late 19th century England. Along with the kindred American Craftsman movement, it embraced handcrafting and craftsman guilds as a reaction against the new assembly line mass production manufacturing techniques, which was felt to create inferior products and dehumanize workers. A major arbiter of this link was Joseph Twyman, who moved from England to Chicago, promoting Morris's work and philosophy by doing things like writing papers and delivering lectures to the Chicago Architectural Club.[8] Elements of the philosophy like focus on the nature of a material worked well with the Prairie School, but they discarded the ubiquitous disdain for the machine, incorporating thoughtfulness and reflectiveness in the design process, not strictly the handicraft process.[9]

The Prairie School attempted to develop an indigenous North American style of architecture that did not share design elements and aesthetic vocabulary with earlier styles of European classical architecture. The World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago World's Fair) of 1893 was intended to herald the city of Chicago's rebirth after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Unlike the Greek and Roman classicism widely seen in buildings at the fair, many of the Midwestern architects of what would become the Prairie School sought to create new work in and around Chicago that would display a uniquely modern and authentically American style inspired by the American landscape.[10]

The name reflects the dominant horizontality of Prairie style buildings, which echoes the wide, flat, treeless expanses of the Midwestern United States. The most famous proponent of the style, Frank Lloyd Wright, promoted an idea of "organic architecture," (p. 53)[11] asserting that a structure should look as if it naturally grew from the site; in Wright's words, buildings that appeared as if they were "married to the ground." (p. 53)[11] Wright also felt that a horizontal orientation was a distinctly American design motif since the younger country had much more open land than many highly urbanized European nations.

The second institution offering a college degree in architecture, after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was the University of Illinois.[12] Professor Nathan C. Ricker believed that students learning by doing and being exposed to difference architectural practices such as theater design, developing a cultural and technical understanding of architecture, could help overcome of limitations of formal academic study and foster a sense of design.[13] Earlier graduates like Clarence Blackall, Joseph Llewellyn, and Henry Bacon followed the more popular academic approach and historicist design aesthetic, but later graduates like William Drummond, William L. Steele, and Walter Burley Griffin contributed to the emerging Prairie School style. Ideas were shared by and with Prairie School architects in the Architectural League of America and the Chicago Architectural Club. At a Chicago convention in 1900, Louis Sullivan spoke about the power of mental logic and the study of nature to inspire stylish and logical buildings. One League convention introduced the idea of pure design - composing a building by analyzing parts that could be expressed as simple geometric shapes - to Wright, who incorporated the idea into his designs.[14] Prairie School architects Wright, Elmslie, and Maher worked for Jospeh Silsbee, who instilled a sense of informality, irregularity, and complexity through planning and rough, organic surfaces in these architects, Wright especially, giving a picturesque and dynamic quality to the Prairie School style.[15]

By the early 1920s, "Tudor and Mediterranean Revivals were popular for suburban houses and shopping districts, and Georgian was favored for large city houses; even the middle-class Arts and Crafts bungalow had been dipped in Renaissance or Spanish Colonial frosting. Church and university architects employed the academic Gothic of Ralph Adams Cram” (p. 544).[16] The Prairie School was in conversation with other modernist movements like Art Nouveau,[14] Bauhaus, Expressionism, and Constructivism.[16]

Architectural historian H. Allen Brooks identifies works built in or before 1902 as being part of "the Sullivan Phase," - emphasizing simplification, structured ornament, and a new uniquely American architecture - buildings built from 1902-1909 as the "Wrightian" phase - spanning from when Wright reached maturity as an architect to his departure from Oak Park to Europe, rural Wisconsin, California, and Japan - and the Prairie School's full maturity in 1909-1914/16.

Architects and Designers

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The Prairie School is mostly associated with a generation of architects employed or influenced by Wright or Sullivan.[17] While the style originated in Chicago, some Prairie School architects spread its influence well beyond the Midwest, like Barry Byrne's church designs in Europe and Mahony's and Griffin's work in Australia and India.[18] A Prairie School work considered harmony with interior decor and landscape architecture as part of the total design,[17] so some architects, like Wright, also designed interiors, and sometimes partnered with craftspeople like Richard Walter Bock. A partial list of Prairie School architects and designers includes:[17][19][20]

Influence

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Prairie School houses are characterized by open floor plans, horizontal lines, and indigenous materials. These were related to the American Arts and Crafts movement and its emphasis on hand craftsmanship, simplicity, and function. Both were alternatives to the then-dominant Classical Revival Style of Greek forms with occasional Roman influences. Some firms, such as Purcell & Elmslie, which accepted the honest presence of machine worked surfaces, consciously rejected the term "Arts and Crafts" for their work. The Prairie School was also heavily influenced by the Idealistic Romantics who believed better homes would create better people, and the Transcendentalist philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In turn, Prairie School architects influenced subsequent architectural idioms, particularly the less is more ethos of Minimalists and form following function in Bauhaus, itself a mixture of De Stijl grid-based design and Constructist emphasis on the structure itself and its building materials.

Architectural historians have debated the reasons why the Prairie School went out of favor by the mid-1920s. In her autobiography, Prairie School architect Marion Mahony suggests:

The enthusiastic and able young men as proved in their later work were doubtless as influential in the office later as were these early ones but Wright's early concentration on publicity and his claims that everybody was his disciple had a deadening influence on the Chicago group and only after a quarter of a century do we find creative architecture conspicuously evident in the United States.[21]

Buildings

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The Meyer May House in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Built between 1908 and 1909, this Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home is considered "Michigan's Prairie masterpiece."[22]

An example of Prairie School architecture is the aptly named "The Prairie School", a private day school in Racine, Wisconsin, designed by Taliesin Associates (an architectural firm originated by Wright), and located almost adjacent to Wright's Wingspread Conference Center. Mahony's and Griffin's work in Australia and India, notably the collection of homes at Castlecrag, New South Wales, are fine examples of how the Prairie School spread far from its Chicago roots. Isabel Roberts' Veterans' Memorial Library in St. Cloud, Florida, is another.[23] The House at 8 Berkley Drive at Lockport, New York was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.[24]

The Oak Circle Historic District is a historic district in Wilmette, Illinois, United States. It primarily consists of fifteen single-family homes representative of the Prairie School and Craftsman styles of architecture constructed between 1917 and 1929. The Oak Circle Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 21, 2001; it was the first historic district to be designated in Wilmette.

The Rock Crest–Rock Glen Historic District is a nationally recognized historic district located in Mason City, Iowa. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. All of the buildings are houses designed in the Prairie School style, and are a part of a planned development. Mason City is also home to The Historic Park Inn Hotel and City National Bank, two adjacent commercial buildings designed in the Prairie School style. Completed in 1910, the Historic Park Inn Hotel is the last remaining Frank Lloyd Wright-designed hotel in the world, of the six for which he was the architect of record. The Dr. G.C. Stockman House is another example of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School style found in Mason City, Iowa. Built in 1908, the Stockman House was the first Wright-designed Prairie School-style house in Iowa. Today, the house functions as a museum welcoming visitors and architectural enthusiasts from all around the world.

Modern interest

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Interest in the ideas and designs of the Prairie School artists and architects has grown since the late 1980s, thanks in large part to celebrity collecting habits and high-profile auction results on many of the decorative designs from buildings of the era. In addition to numerous books, magazine articles, videos and merchandise promoting the movement, a number of original Prairie School building sites have become public museums, open for tours and special interactive events.[25] Several not-for-profit organizations and on-line communities have been formed to educate people about the Prairie School movement and help preserve the designs associated with it. Some of these organizations and sites are listed in the External links section below.

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d Brooks, H. Allen (1976). The prairie school: Frank Lloyd Wright and his midwest contemporaries. The Norton library. New York: Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-00811-1.
  2. ^ Spencer, Brian A., ed. (1979). The prairie school tradition: the prairie archives of the Milwaukee Art Center. New York, NY: Whitney Library of Design. ISBN 978-0-8230-7432-7.
  3. ^ Sprague, Paul E. (1986). Guide to Frank Lloyd Wright & Prairie school architecture in Oak Park (4th ed ed.). Oak Park (Ill.): Oak Park Bicentennial Commission of the American Revolution. ISBN 978-0-9616915-0-9. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
  4. ^ Brooks, H. Allen, ed. (1975). Prairie School architecture: studies from "The Western architect". Toronto ; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-2138-0.
  5. ^ Barter, Judith A. (1995). "The Prairie School and Decorative Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago". Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies. 21 (2): 112. doi:10.2307/4102820.
  6. ^ Michael, Vincent L. (December 1, 2010). "Expressing the Modern: Barry Byrne in 1920s Europe". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 69 (4): 534–555. doi:10.1525/jsah.2010.69.4.534. ISSN 0037-9808.
  7. ^ Roberts, Ellen (2013). ""Ukiyo-e in Chicago: Frank Lloyd Wright, Marion Mahony Griffin and the Prairie School."". Art in Print. 3 (2): 3–10 – via JSTOR.
  8. ^ Brooks, H. Allen (1976). The prairie school: Frank Lloyd Wright and his midwest contemporaries. The Norton library. New York: Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-00811-1.
  9. ^ Barter, Judith A. (1995). "The Prairie School and Decorative Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago". Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies. 21 (2): 112. doi:10.2307/4102820.
  10. ^ Barter, Judith A. (1995). "The Prairie School and Decorative Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago". Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies. 21 (2): 112. doi:10.2307/4102820.
  11. ^ a b Jones, Cranston (April 27, 1959). "The Finale at 89 For a Fiery Genius: Death Ends Wright's Flamboyant Career". LIFE Magazine. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
  12. ^ Creese, Walter L.; Garner, John S., eds. (1991). The Midwest in American architecture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-01743-8.
  13. ^ Bannister, Turpin (August 1953). "Nathan Clifford Ricker". Journal of the American Institute of Architects. 20: 77–78.
  14. ^ a b Brooks, H. Allen (1976). The prairie school: Frank Lloyd Wright and his midwest contemporaries. The Norton library. New York: Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-00811-1.
  15. ^ Sprague, Paul E. (1986). Guide to Frank Lloyd Wright & Prairie school architecture in Oak Park (4th ed ed.). Oak Park (Ill.): Oak Park Bicentennial Commission of the American Revolution. ISBN 978-0-9616915-0-9. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
  16. ^ a b Michael, Vincent L. (December 1, 2010). "Expressing the Modern: Barry Byrne in 1920s Europe". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 69 (4): 534–555. doi:10.1525/jsah.2010.69.4.534. ISSN 0037-9808.
  17. ^ a b c Wilson, Richard Guy (1995). "Prairie School Works in the Department of Architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago". Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies. 21 (2): 92. doi:10.2307/4102819.
  18. ^ Michael, Vincent L. (December 1, 2010). "Expressing the Modern: Barry Byrne in 1920s Europe". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 69 (4): 534–555. doi:10.1525/jsah.2010.69.4.534. ISSN 0037-9808.
  19. ^ Spencer, Brian A., ed. (1979). The prairie school tradition: the prairie archives of the Milwaukee Art Center. New York, NY: Whitney Library of Design. ISBN 978-0-8230-7432-7.
  20. ^ Brooks, H. Allen (1976). The prairie school: Frank Lloyd Wright and his midwest contemporaries. The Norton library. New York: Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-00811-1.
  21. ^ Griffin, Marion Mahony, The Magic of America, p. 580
  22. ^ Storrer, William A. (2002). The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. University of Chicago Press. p. 146.
  23. ^ Roberts, Isabel (June 28, 2010), Works (photograms), Florida{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link).
  24. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
  25. ^ "Unity Temple Tours | Frank Lloyd Wright Trust". cal.flwright.org. Retrieved June 28, 2024.

General and cited references

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  • Brooks, H. Allen, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School, Braziller (in association with the Cooper-Hewitt Museum), `New York 1984; ISBN 0-8076-1084-4
  • Brooks, H. Allen, The Prairie School, W. W. Norton, New York 2006; ISBN 0-393-73191-X
  • Brooks, H. Allen (editor), Prairie School Architecture: Studies from "The Western Architect", University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Buffalo 1975; ISBN 0-8020-2138-7
  • Brooks, H. Allen, The Prairie School: Frank Lloyd Wright and his Midwest Contemporaries, University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1972; ISBN 0-8020-5251-7
  • Brooks, H. Allen (editor), Writings on Wright: Selected Comment on Frank Lloyd Wright, MIT Press, Cambridge MA and London 1981; ISBN 0-262-02161-7
  • Visser, Kristin, Frank Lloyd Wright & the Prairie School in Wisconsin: An Architectural Touring Guide, Trails Media Group; 2nd Rev edition (June, 1998). ISBN 1-879483-51-3.
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