Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Smart Museum of Art Chicago

In 1889 Wright completed the construction of a pocket-size two-story residence in Oak Park on the Western edges of Chicago. The building was the first over which Wright exerted complete artistic command. Designed as a abode for his family unit, the Oak Park residence was a site of experimentation for the young builder during the 20-yr catamenia he lived at that place. Wright revised the design of the building multiple times, continually refining ideas that would shape his work for decades to come.

The semi-rural village of Oak Park, where Wright built his dwelling house, offered a retreat from the hurried pace of metropolis life. Named "Saint's Rest" for its abundance of churches, Oak Park was originally settled in the 1830s by pioneering East Coast families. In its early years farming was the principal business of the village, however its proximity to Chicago before long attracted professional men and their families. Along its unpaved clay streets sheltered by mature oaks and elms, prosperous families erected elaborate homes. Beyond the borders of the village farmland and open up prairie stretched as far every bit the eye could see.

The Oak Park Domicile was the product of the nineteenth century culture from which Wright emerged. For its design, Wright drew upon many inspirational sources prevalent in the waning years of the nineteenth century. From his family background in Unitarianism Wright absorbed the ideas of the Transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who encouraged an honest life inspired by nature. The English Arts and Crafts movement, which promoted craftsmanship, simplicity and integrity in art, architecture and pattern, provided a powerful impetus to Wright'due south principles. The household art movement, a distinct move in middle-grade habitation ornament, informed Wright's earliest interiors. Information technology aimed, as the name implies, to bring art into the abode, and was primarily disseminated through books and articles written by tastemakers who believed that the home interior could exert moral influences upon its inhabitants. These diverse sources were tempered by the lessons and practices Wright learned under his mentors, Joseph Lyman Silsbee and Louis Sullivan.

For the exterior of his home, Wright adapted the picturesque Shingle way, fashionable for the vacation homes of wealthy East Coast families and favored past his previous employer, Silsbee. The postage of Sullivan'south influence is apparent in the simplification and abstraction of the edifice and its plan. In dissimilarity to what Wright described as "candle-snuffer roofs, turnip domes [and] corkscrew spires" of the surrounding houses, his home'due south façade is defined by assuming geometric shapes—a substantial triangular gable gear up upon a rectangular base, polygonal window trophy, and the circular wall of the wide veranda.

Despite its minor scale, the interior of the home is an early on indication of Wright's want to liberate space.  On the footing flooring Wright created a suite of rooms arranged effectually a fundamental hearth and inglenook, a mutual feature of the Shingle way. The rooms flow together, continued by wide, open doorways hung with portieres that tin can exist drawn for privacy. To compensate for the pocket-size scale of the house, and to create an inspiring environment for his family, Wright incorporated artwork and objects that brought warmth and richness to the interiors. Unique article of furniture, Oriental rugs, potted palms, statues, paintings and Japanese prints filled the rooms, infusing them with a sense of the foreign, the exotic and the antique.

In 1895, to conform his growing family, Wright undertook his first major renovation of the Dwelling. A new dining room and children'southward playroom doubled the floor infinite. The pattern innovations pioneered past Wright at this fourth dimension marked a pregnant evolution in the evolution of his style, bringing him closer to his ideal for the new American home.

The original dining room was converted into a study, and a new dining room replaced the former kitchen. The dining room is unified effectually a fundamental oak table lit through a decorative panel above and with an apse of leaded glass windows in patterns of conventionalized lotus flowers. The walls and ceiling are covered with honey-toned burlap; the flooring and fireplace are lined with scarlet terracotta tile.

The new dining room is a warm and intimate space to gather with family and friends. The Wrights entertained often, and were joined at their tabular array by clients, artists, authors and international visitors. Such festive occasions, according to Wright'southward son, John, gave the firm the air of a "jolly carnival."

The 1895 playroom on the 2nd floor of the Home is one of the slap-up spaces of Wright'due south early career. Designed to inspire and nurture his six children, the room is a concrete expression of Wright's belief that, "For the same reason that nosotros teach our children to speak the truth, or improve still alive the truth, their environment ought to exist equally truly beautiful equally we are capable of making information technology." Architectural details pioneered by Wright in this room would exist developed and enhanced in numerous commissions throughout his career.

The high, barrel-vaulted ceiling rests on walls of Roman brick. At the heart of the vault's arc a skylight, shielded by woods grilles displaying stylized blossoms and seedpods, provides illumination. Striking cantilevered light fixtures of oak and glass, added after Wright's 1905 trip to Nihon, bathe the room in a warm ambient glow. On either side of the room, window bays of leaded glass with congenital-in window seats are at the height of the mature trees that surround the lot, placing Wright's children in the leafy canopy of the trees outside.

In a higher place the fireplace of Roman brick, a mural depicting the story of the Fisherman and the Genie from The Arabian Nights is painted on the plastered wall. An integral architectural characteristic within the room, the mural was designed by Wright and executed by his colleague, the artist Charles Corwin. It is a fascinating blend of decorative motifs; forms from exotic cultures—such as Egyptian winged scarabs—are combined with apartment, geometric designs that echo the work of Wright's international contemporaries, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Vienna Secessionists.

In 1898 Wright built a new Studio wing with funds secured through a commission with the Luxfer Prism Visitor. The Studio faced Chicago Avenue and was connected to his residence by a corridor. Clad in wood shingles and brick, the Studio exterior is consistent with the earlier home. However, the long, horizontal contour, a cardinal characteristic of Wright'south mature Prairie buildings, sets information technology apart. Adjacent to the entrance, a stone plaque announces to the world, "Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect." Decorative embellishments and figural sculptures prepare off the building's artistic graphic symbol and impressed arriving clients.

The reception hall serves equally the entrance to the Studio. A waiting room for clients and a place for Wright to review architectural plans with contractors, this low-ceilinged space connects the primary areas of the Studio—a library, a small-scale function, and the dramatic two-story drafting room, the creative middle of the edifice.

The studio staff worked on drafting tables and stools designed past Wright in rooms decorated with eclectic displays of artwork and objects. Japanese prints, casts of classical sculptures, equally well every bit models and drawings executed in the drafting room, filled the interiors of the Studio. In Wright's home the integration of fine art and architecture served to nurture and intellectually sustain his family. In the Studio, these same elements served a further purpose, the marketing of Wright's artistic identity to his clients and the public at big.

In September of 1909, Wright left America for Europe to piece of work on the publication of a substantial monograph of his buildings and projects, the majority of which had been designed in his Oak Park Studio. The event was the Wasmuth Portfolio (Berlin, 1910), which introduced Wright'southward work to Europe and influenced a generation of international architects. Wright remained abroad for a year, returning to Oak Park in the fall of 1910. He immediately began plans for a new home and studio, Taliesin, which he would build in the verdant hills of Spring Dark-green, Wisconsin. Wright's Oak Park Studio closed in 1910, though Wright himself returned occasionally to meet with his wife Catherine who remained with the couple's youngest children at the Oak Park Home and Studio until 1918. The Abode and Studio was the birthplace of Wright'due south vision for a new American architecture. Wright designed over 150 projects in his Oak Park Studio, establishing his legacy as a great and visionary architect.

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Living Room, Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio
Photography: James Caulfield