ABSTRACT
The Prairie School was an indigenous Midwestern phenomenon. Beginning in the Chicago suburbs during the 1890s, it spread outward through the entire region in the first two decades of the 20th century. Many of its most distinctive achievements were in small towns, such as Mason City, Iowa, and Owatonna, Minnesota. Unquestionably, the spiritual leader of the movement was Louis Sullivan (1856-1924), who developed a philosophy that emphasized the organic quality inherent in a successful building. In his buildings, by his writings, and by the force of his charismatic personality, he passed this philosophy on to a group of young architects who became his disciples. Without doubt, the most gifted of these was Frank Lloyd Wright, who was with Adler and Sullivan for six years prior to his departure to found his own office in 1893. Wright saw the provision of well-designed houses for the newly affluent Midwestern upper-middle class as a great opportunity. His clients did not possess great fortune but were generally technological entrepreneurs. Many had a taste for music. Wright gave them dwellings that responded to the vision of Sullivan and that at the same time went beyond that vision to achieve a synthesis very much his own. For the next 15 years, he pursued his goals with remarkable vigor and great success. The first executed houses in which the new style was fully visible were the Bradley house (1900) in Kankakee, Illinois, and the Ward Willits house (1901) in Highland Park, Illinois. In the next few years, there followed a number of important works, notably the Davenport, Dana, Heurtley, Huntley, and Thomas houses, all finished by 1904. These houses had important elements in common: flowing interior space, directional or centrifugal lines, generous low roofs with pronounced overhangs, broad chimneys, reduced floor heights, rows of casement windows, geometric leaded glass, and an intimate relationship to the site. The interiors featured furniture and sometimes fabrics designed by the architect. Wright’s objective was to control every aspect of the architectural experience. All were designed on a unit system, meaning that they were based on a single module with a length equal to some specific architectural element, often, as in the Willits house, the distance between center lines of window mullions. None of these houses show any hint of historicism. Although most were located in suburbs, with varying kinds of topography, all reflected the horizontal lines of the prairie.
