FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND THE PRAIRIE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

"True ornament is not a matter of prettifying externals. It is organic with the structure it adorns, whether a person, a building, or a park. At its best it is an emphasis of structure, a realization in graceful terms of the nature of that which is ornamented"

-Frank Lloyd Wright

BEGINNINGS

Frank Lloyd Wright was just twenty years old when he came to Chicago in 1887. He had only seven dollars in his pocket. He had no fancy college degree. He had been to college at the University of Wisconsin for only two semesters, studying civil engineering. Nobody would have guessed at the influence he would have on American architecture.

Wright took a job with the architectural firm of J.L. Silsbee. The firm was designing Queen Anne and Shingle Style homes for newly rich Chicagoans. Chicago was enjoying a prosperous era. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 had destroyed 17,000 buildings, so there was plenty of work for architects, builders, and construction workers.

Wright moved on to a drafting job at the prestigious firm of Adler & Sullivan later in 1887. Wright was on the payroll at Adler & Sullivan at the historic moment when Louis H. Sullivan capitalized on the cutting-edge technology of steel framing to invent the modern skyscraper (The Wainwright Building in St. Louis, Missouri, completed in 1891, is considered the prototype of the modern steel skyscraper.) Wright was profoundly influenced by Sullivan's use of decorative geometric patterns based on natural forms.

Adler & Sullivan did little residential work, and Wright wanted to design homes. Wright quit his job with Sullivan in a tiff in 1893, at the age of twenty-six. His first great contribution to American architecture was the development of the Prairie School of architecture at the turn of the century.

CREATION OF THE PRAIRIE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

Wright was not the only architect involved in the creation of the Prairie School. Many other architects (mostly based in Chicago) helped to develop the style. But Wright was a genius who went on to greater things as the Twentieth Century passed. And so it is Wright who is most remembered in connection with the Prairie School.

INFLUENCES FROM THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT

Wright was not working in a vacuum. The Arts and Crafts Movement was a big influence on all architects a the turn of the century, and Wright was no exception. His designs incorporated the emphasis on unpainted wood, natural materials, and harmonious integration of painting sculpture, lighting, and furniture, which was a central precept of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

ELEMENTS OF THE PRAIRIE SCHOOL

Frank Lloyd Wright felt Americans deserved something fresh and new to replace the imitation of European styles which had been customary throughout the nineteenth century. He sought to develop an honest new style of American architecture which would be an expression of the new and powerful American democracy. To him, his homes were a symbol of the freedom to move around in America's great open spaces.

Wright's houses hugged the earth in unity with nature. They did not have basements. Without a basement to separate it from the earth, each house appeared to be planted in the ground. They did not have attics. Without an attic, the low roof hugged the top of the house and pushed out beyond the walls as though it was reaching down to touch the earth. The use of hipped roofs rather than gabled roofs helped to minimize the mass of the roof, and emphasize the long, low line of the eaves.

Wright emphasized the long look of the prairie by using strong horizontal lines on the outside of the houses. Bands of horizontal windows looked like ribbons made of glass that had been wrapped around the house. Wright designed textured stained glass windows, almost always using casement windows, based on simple geometrical shapes and patterns found in nature. The brickwork employed patterns which emphasized the horizontal line.

The visible surfaces of Wright's houses were constructed with simple, harmonious building materials. Wood looked like wood, and brick was the color of the clay it was made from. The natural colors of the building materials were never hidden under colored paint. However, beneath the natural surface materials, structural steel was often used to give strength to the deeply cantilevered roof overhangs. (The Robie House, pictured above, had roof overhangs which extended 20 feet beyond the wall of the house!). The use of structural steel also made possible the long, ribbon-like bands of windows, without sacrificing structural integrity.

The main living areas of a prairie house opened up into one large space. Divisions between rooms were kept to a minimum, often with one huge fireplace in the center and walls that did not quite touch the ceilings. Today we like to talk about "open" floor plans, but few people realize it was Wright who transformed the concept of interior space in the American private home.

The outside walls of a prairie house reached out beyond the house to the surrounding open spaces. Patios and terraces planted with flower gardens, bushes, and trees helped to blend the house with the landscape.

ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO AN END

Ideas evolve in architecture just as they evolve in other fields of human intellectual endeavor. The influence of the Prairie School reached a zenith just before World War I, but the war introduced new ideas into American thought and culture. By the end of World War I, the Prairie School lived on only in the homebuilders' planbooks and in the continued popularity of some of its key concepts.

Interested in more information about Frank Lloyd Wright? Visit the All-Wright Site.