Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie Houses

Categories: Travel , Arts & Crafts

Last fall, when my husband went to Chicago on business, I came along and roamed the city on my own.  Since I love architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s work,  I made sure to visit his famous Robie House near the University of Chicago.

Later, we stopped in Oak Park, Illinois for a tour of Wright’s home and studio, where he lived with his family and designed his early work.  My husband and I, guidebook and umbrella in hand, found some of his other houses that reside here and admired their simple elegance from the sidewalk.

What ties several of these houses together is his Prairie style of architecture.  I recently discovered a book by Alan Hess called Frank Lloyd Wright: Prairie Houses, which beautifully showcases the exteriors and interiors of Wright's Prairie homes in Chicago, Oak Park, and elsewhere.   

Wright often designed every aspect of his houses—furniture, fabrics, lighting fixtures, and leaded-glass doors and windows--to help bring nature indoors.  The photographs in this book highlight all of these, and make you jealously long for a space like this of your own!  

 

If you aren’t able to take a Frank Lloyd Wright trip this summer, (or you can’t spare millions to buy a Wright home yourself!) there are plenty of good titles available at the library for the armchair traveler.  For an overview of his life and work, I recommend the biography Frank Lloyd Wright by Ada Louise Huxtable, Wright-Sized Houses by Diane Maddex, and Ken Burns’ PBS documentary Frank Lloyd Wright.