The Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio is a historic house museum in Oak Park, Illinois, United States. It was built in 1889 by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who lived there with his family for two decades and expanded it multiple times, and consists of two interconnected structures. The house to the south was designed in either the Shingle style or the Queen Anne style, while the studio to the north was designed in the Prairie style. The museum is managed by the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust, which has restored the building to its appearance in 1909, the year Wright moved out. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark, and it is a contributing property to the Frank Lloyd Wright–Prairie School of Architecture Historic District.
Wright bought the site in 1889, shortly after marrying Catherine "Kitty" Tobin, and developed a cottage there, where they raised six children. Wright added rooms to the house in 1895, and he built the studio annex in 1898, where he and his associates designed dozens of buildings. Wright moved out of the house in 1909, and the home and studio sections were divided into separate residences two years later. Kitty lived in the studio until 1918. After Frank sold the building in 1925, the house and studio became an apartment building and was resold multiple times in the mid-20th century, being split into six residences by the 1940s. The Oak Park Development Corporation bought the building in 1974 and resold it the next year to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Foundation renovated the building over the next decade. The foundation later became the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust, which bought the house in 2012 and continues to operate it as a museum.
In designing the building, Wright often experimented with various architectural features, and he generally used details that were functional rather than purely decorative. The facades are made of brick, stone, battens, and shingles. Both sections of the building are wood-frame structures arranged around central fireplaces. The sparsely ornamented rooms contain objects designed by Wright. The house's first floor includes an entry hall, living room, dining room, study, and kitchen, the latter three of which date from 1895. The attached studio has a reception hall, library, office, and double-height drafting room on the same story. The second floor has several bedrooms, a dayroom, and a children's playroom, while the basement was built during the 1980s. The building has received extensive architectural commentary over the years, and it has been the subject of many media works, including books and films.
Site The Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio complex is located in Oak Park, Illinois, United States. The house and studio occupy a plot measuring , bounded by Chicago Avenue to the north and Forest Avenue to the west. The house carries the address of 428 Forest Avenue, while the studio is located at 951 Chicago Avenue. Despite the relatively large size of the lot, the house is placed near the southern end, away from Chicago Avenue. A driveway east of the studio leads to a two-car garage, and a driveway south of the house leads to a one-car garage. Both garages were added in 1911. A concrete wall on Forest Avenue, and a taller brick wall on Chicago Avenue, were also built after 1911.
When the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright built the house and studio, there was a ginkgo tree east of the house, as well as a tulip tree and Kentucky coffeetree in its front yard. The original ginkgo tree, planted in the early 19th century, was still there . The property also contained a black willow and may have also included butternut, walnut, sugar maple, and honey locust trees, in addition to forsythia bushes. The building is surrounded by a low garden wall, which was designed to blend in with the surrounding trees. There are also various planters, urns, and vegetation.
Just east of the Wright Home and Studio is a house that belonged to Wright's mother Anna, which is located at 931 Chicago Avenue. The house was built in the Gothic Revival style. Also on the same block to the south are the William H. Copeland House and Arthur Heurtley House, along the east side of Forest Avenue. The Walter Gale House, Francis J. Woolley House, and Robert P. Parker House are located on the block to the west, while the Nathan G. Moore House and Edward R. Hills House are on the west side of Forest Avenue, one block to the south.
Residential and studio use
Wright use
Development Frank Lloyd Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, in 1867 and moved to Illinois in 1887 to pursue an architectural career. Wright first worked for Joseph Lyman Silsbee before joining the Chicago–based architectural firm of Adler & Sullivan in early 1888. Soon after, he moved to Oak Park (then part of the town of Cicero) in Chicago's suburbs. Wright initially lived alone before his mother Anna and two sisters joined him. In June 1889, the 21-year-old Wright married the 18-year-old Catherine Lee "Kitty" Tobin, whom he had met at a local church. With his mother's assistance, Wright obtained a house and barn at the southeast corner of Chicago and Forest avenues in Oak Park. This site was occupied by a gardener named John Blair, who had obtained the site from the developer John Austin. At the time, most of Oak Park's residents lived further south, and the site overlooked a prairie to the north. Wright's mother moved to an adjacent house on Chicago Avenue.
Wright borrowed $5,000 from one of his bosses, Louis Sullivan, who took title to the land. In exchange, Wright had to repay the loan within five years. Excluding the land cost, Wright eventually spent $5,300, which included $1,200 from his own savings and $3,500 from Sullivan's loan. Wright designed the house without regard to what anyone else thought; for example, he carved adages into the walls despite his wife's opposition. Wright was 22 years old when the house was finished in 1889. As built, the house was little more than a cottage, with five rooms on the first floor (including an entry hall) and three rooms on the second floor. The original design included a large gable roof inspired by two of Bruce Price's cottages in Tuxedo Park, New York. Wright also designed clothing for Kitty so it would match the interior color scheme.
Initial modifications Wright began modifying the house almost immediately after its completion, when he replaced the windows. Six of his children were born in the Oak Park house: Frank Jr. (better known as Lloyd; 1890), John (1892), Catherine (1894), David (1895), Frances (1898), and Robert (1903). Kitty bemoaned the fact that her husband focused more on the house's design than on his own family, and Wright himself reflected that he did not feel like a father figure to his children. Additionally, the family frequently spent outside their means while living in Oak Park. They hosted extravagant dinner parties and musical performances, and in the meantime Wright fell into debt. To support his family, Wright took on additional jobs, even though his employment contract with Adler & Sullivan forbade it. Wright worked in the second-floor studio–bedroom, creating ten "bootleg houses" without his bosses' authorization from 1891 to 1893. When Sullivan learned of Wright's secondary jobs, Wright was either fired or quit. Sullivan's partner Dankmar Adler transferred ownership of the Oak Park house to Wright, who started his own architectural practice.
The house was first expanded in 1895. On the first floor, the original kitchen was expanded into a dining room, and the original dining room became a study.; ; In addition, a kitchen was added at the rear. On the second floor, Wright's studio–bedroom was split into two rooms (one each for the Wrights' sons and daughters), while the nursery became a dayroom and was expanded. Kitty used the dayroom for reading, sewing, and taking care of the children, A playroom was also built on the second floor, where Kitty hosted a Froebel-game kindergarten class. Though the playroom was ostensibly built for the children, the historian Brendan Gill writes that the space probably would have been constructed in some other fashion even if the Wrights had had no children. After a house was built to the south in 1897, Wright filled in parts of the dining-room windows for privacy.
Studio expansion
After Wright moved his firm's Chicago headquarters to the top story of Steinway Hall in 1897, he drew up plans for an architectural studio at his own house. He did not have money to build the studio until the Luxfer Prism Company hired him to design a building. Construction was finished by February 1898, when Wright's official letterhead was changed to mention his Oak Park studio, and Wright and his associates began working out of the studio that year. The building advertised Wright's architectural practice, and he frequently showed the interiors to potential clients.
Wright's firm designed Prairie style buildings en masse after the studio's completion, though sources disagree on how many buildings they designed. Their designs included the Dana-Thomas House, Darwin D. Martin House, Coonley House, Willits House, Laura Gale House, Thomas H. Gale House, Robie House, Unity Temple, and Larkin Building. Typically, Wright had five to seven associates, some of whom worked on designs of their own while working for him. These associates included Richard Bock, Barry Byrne, William Eugene Drummond, Walter Burley Griffin, Marion Mahony Griffin, George Mann Niedecken, Isabel Roberts, John S. Van Bergen, and Charles E. White Jr. Generally, many of Wright's associates stayed only a few years before founding their own firms. Many of the architects were members of arts groups in Chicago, and they frequently traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago or relaxed in the house's playroom. Wright's Oak Park associates formed a close-knit group, in a similar manner to the Taliesin Fellowship decades later.
Even after the studio structure was completed, Wright continued to tinker with his design. He seldom removed things outright, instead adding decorations on top of existing ones. His assistants quipped that he made modifications to the house even when his other projects were behind schedule. In 1905, Wright added a low wall in front of the studio wing's entrance loggia. The rear wall of the studio's reception hall was remodeled, and skylights were added to the studio rooms' ceilings. More clerestory windows were added to the studio's drafting room and library during that time. In addition, Wright added ledges below the drafting room's balcony,; ; and the studio was redecorated with branches and grasses collected by Wright's associates.
Subdivision of interiors
By 1908, Wright had become disillusioned with the Oak Park studio, and his associates recalled that he was spending less and less time in the studio. Wright traveled to Europe in 1909 to work on his Wasmuth Portfolio, and he ran off with Mamah Borthwick, a client's wife. John Van Bergen and Isabel Roberts finished up his works-in-progress and then closed the Oak Park studio. This marked the end of what was known as his "Oak Park era". Upon his return to the U.S., Wright built his Taliesin studio in 1911 near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Kitty and the children remained in Illinois. A news article that Christmas reported that Wright "did not feel any regret he was not present in the Oak Park house where his lawful wife and their six children were spending their Christmas".