Charles A. Brown House, Evanston, Illinois, November 2009.
Willits House, Gardener's Cottage, Renovation underway, November 2009.
Willits House, Highland Park, Illinois, November 2009.
Emil Bach House, Rogers Park, side view, Chicago, Illinois, November 2009.
Emil Bach House, Rogers Park, front view, Chicago, Illinois, November 2009.
During his lifetime, Frank Lloyd Wright designed and supervised the construction of 532 architectural works of which approximately 400 are still standing. Of those, many are not open to the public and their interiors (and exteriors, in many cases) have not been seen for decades. The opportunity to see a privately-owned Wright-designed house from the inside out is a rare gift.
Last November, eighty members of FLWW were given that unique opportunity to tour three privately-owned Wright residences in the Chicago area. Members were also treated to the Art Institute of Chicago’s exhibition, Apostles of Beauty: Arts and Crafts from Britain to Chicago.
In response to the Industrial Revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Arts and Crafts movement sought to re-establish the great handcrafting movement in furniture and other household items. The movement’s credo was to integrate art into daily life and look to the natural world for inspiration in design. The movement’s chief practitioners were a who’s who of design and architecture and included such luminaries as Frank Lloyd Wright, Gustav Stickley, and William Morris. The Arts and Crafts movement had its beginnings in Great Britain but was soon widely embraced in the United States, most notably in New England and Chicago.
The Apostles exhibition highlighted a wide range of objects including furniture, paintings, photographs, metalwork, ceramics and textiles. Several objects designed by Wright were shown in the collection including his furniture, windows , building fragments, textiles and architectural plans.
The first home on the tour was the Emil Bach House in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. Built in 1915 for Emil Bach, the owner of a local brick-making company, the house is representative of Wright’s late Prairie house style. It is one of his few projects that was built in the period between Wright’s return from Europe in 1911 and his leaving for Japan to build the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. The house was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on January 23, 1979.
The style of the house is a geometric cube with a slab roof and is the only house of this style still extant in Chicago. Originally built on a piece of lake property with view of Lake Michigan, it is now surrounded by commercial development and apartment buildings. Fortunately, a historic preservation easement prevented the Bach house and its adjacent yard from being torn down and built over with commercial developments. The current owner of the house has made much progress toward restoring the house to Wright’s original vision and plans further work towards that goal.
The second home featured on the tour was the Charles A. Brown house in Evanston. Built in 1905, the house was originally designed as the “Evanston Model Home” (similar in concept to Wright’s Burnham Street model homes). The house originally occupied its own and the corner lot but is now completely surrounded by other residential lots. The present owners have completed renovations including a landscaped garden in the front of the home in keeping with Wright’s vision of building in harmony with nature. The owners have further plans to extend the home’s second floor on the exterior of the home.
While the Bach house showcased Wright’s late Prairie Style, the last home on the tour represented the first of the great Prairie houses. The Willits House in Highland Park has the distinction of being the first Wright home to be designed in the Prairie Style (although not the first one built). The two story house is laid out in the classic Wright design of a cruciform with four wings spreading out from a central hearth.
Wright also designed most of the original furniture for the home. Like most Wright homes, this furniture has been lost but the present owners have made a real effort to locate and return the original furnishings to their home. The present owners have also undertaken a very extensive renovation since their purchase of the home and future plans include a complete renovation of the adjacent gardener’s cottage with stables which stands directly behind the main house. The Willits home is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Frank Lloyd Wright Wisconsin and its membership would like to extend our thanks to the homeowners of these three residences for graciously inviting us into these amazing houses.
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