The Wright Home & Studio

In my post yesterday, I mentioned the influence Frank Lloyd Wright had upon my hometown of Stafford, Kansas.  Yet, I believe I may safely say that this renown architect has touched us all.

If you favor...
- a room where your family gathers informally instead of an elegant parlor,
- an "open" floor plan where rooms to flow into one another,
- a built-in desk or cabinet over a piece of separate furniture,
- geometrically designed stained glass,
- lots of windows to bring natural sunlight into your home,
- porches and verandas that merge interior spaces with the outdoors,
- water features in your garden,...
thank Frank Lloyd Wright for his innovative designs.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Home with his Studio to the left
951 Chicago Avenue, Oak Park, Illinois

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, my husband, my daughter and I visited Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois, just west of the city of Chicago.  There we discovered how Wright borrowed $5,000 from his mentor, Louis Sullivan, to design a home for his family in 1889 that would display his emerging Prairie style of architecture.

In the March 1908 issue of the Architectural Record, Frank Lloyd Wright described his Prairie style when he wrote, "We of the Middle West are living on the prairie.  The prairie has a beauty of its own and we should recognize and accentuate this natural beauty, its quiet level.  Hence, gently sloping roofs, low proportions, quiet sky lines, suppressed heavy-set chimneys and sheltering overhangs, low terraces and out-reaching walls sequestering private gardens."(1)  The characteristics listed by Wright typlified his Prairie style of architecture.

Front Entrance to the Wright Home

I found Wright's Oak Park home where he and his wife Catherine Tobin raised six children fascinating.  I wish I could have snapped photos to highlight Wright's innovations.  Unfortunately, inside photography is prohibited.  However, you might wish to browse the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust Digital Image Collection to see photos and 1898 plans of the first and second floors used to restore the home to the way it was when Wright lived there.   I've tried to include links to photos from that collection in my description here.


The front entry was a fitting introduction to Wright's home.  Embellished with a Greek frieze of the Trojan War, this entrance welcomes guests by setting a tone of intellectual curiosity.  Moving next into the living room, we found the fireplace and its inglenook to be the focal point of that space.  For Wright, a centrally-placed hearth symbolized the heart of a home.

Believing that the human spirit was suppressed by the then-popular Victorian style of small rooms stuffed with heavy furniture and knick-knacks, Wright preferred much more open spaces.  Consequently in his home, he designed built-in furniture such as the long padded couches constructed underneath the living room's north and west windows or the china cupboard in the dining room to free space so humans could live more comfortably in each.  

The ways Wright used both natural and artificial light to beautify his buildings is certainly apparent in his home.  Even though electricity was not yet available in Oak Park (though it was in Chicago) when he built his home in 1889, Wright had it wired for electrical power.  He designed a light box in the dining room's ceiling that mirrored the exact dimensions of his dining room table.  Ever the perfectionist, Wright fashioned the chairs that surrounded his table with tall backs in such a way that guests seated at the table have the feeling that the table itself becomes a room inside the dining room. 

Upstairs, closet cupboards lined the walls of the children's bedroom where Wright installed a divider to separate the boys' room from that of the girls.  However, this divider did not reach the ceiling which rises to the roof line.  Luckily, none of the three Wright daughters were named Annie; otherwise, the frequent games of "Annie, Annie Over" that the Wright children played in this space might have been truly life-threatening.  

Ceilings and doorways in the home might feel low to today's visitors, but Wright used his own height for his scale. "I took the human being, at five feet eight and one-half inches tall, like myself, as the human scale.  If I had been taller, the scale might have been different." (2) 

Wright applied compression and release to his designs, making an area feel tight and snug around the occupants just before releasing them into a soaringly open and dramatic space.  The narrow upstairs hallway with its arched ceiling feels like a small tunnel as it leads from the front bedrooms into the children's playroom.  This airy playroom has large windows on two sides where sunlight streams in and ascends to a ceiling high enough to accommodate the three rising rows of seats built into the loft over the adjoining hall and back stairway.  Wright even figured out a way to install a grand piano into the loft's wall so that the piano keyboard is accessible to the room but the horizontal frame containing its strings is hidden behind the wall, lying suspended above the back stairway.  Visitors who take the back stairs may thump the piano's body on their way down to the first floor.  Undoubtedly, the Wright children loved to perform dramatic plays and music often in such a setting!   

North Facade of Wright's Studio
Note the left side main entry.  A corresponding entry is to the right.

Octagon-shaped Workroom for Wright's Draftsmen

Even more intriguing than his home was Wright's studio which was composed of two octagon-shaped rooms connected by an entry hallway that serves as a reception area.  The studio's entrance was typically Wright for instead of placing the door prominently in view, Wright created two side doors leading into the narrow reception room.  Against the front window, Wright placed a built-in sideboard table large enough for his draftsmen to spread architectural drawings for their clients' review.  The largest octagon room to the left of the entrance was the workroom where draftsmen drew their plans.  Wright added a floating balcony to accommodate additional draftsmens' desks on a walkway suspended above the octagon-shaped room.  This balcony is secured by ball and chains.  Across the reception entryway is the smaller octagon that Wright used as his library office.

So the next time you notice a Wright-inspired innovation in a home, mentally say "thank you" to Frank Lloyd Wright.  And, be grateful that you don't have to cook in his tiny kitchen.  Despite his love of open spaces, Wright considered his minuscule kitchens more than adequate.  In my opinion, Wright must have hated cooks!


Sources
1.  Wright, Frank Lloyd.  "In the Cause of Architecture."  Architectural Record, vol. 23 (3), March 1908.
2.  Cecil Adams, comment on "Do Frank Lloyd Wright's Buildings Have Low Ceilings Because He Was Short?," The Straight Dope, entry November 16, 1984, http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/867/do-frank-lloyd-wrights-buildings-have-low-ceilings-because-he-was-short [accessed on November 30, 2011]