Wright wasn’t supposed to be designing houses on the side, but he did anyway. This is one of them, a great example of a small Wright composition sitting on a quiet dead-end street in the middle of the street grid.
Tag: Chicago
Unity Temple, Oak Park
Revolutionizing the field of architecture, the Unity Temple in Oak Park is one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most important commissions. Rejecting historical revival styles, Wright creates one of the first modernist buildings in the world.
Arthur Heurtley House
One of the earliest examples of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School, the Heurtley House has a hulking, low presence on a broad, treeless yard.
Nathan G. Moore House, Oak Park
A fascinating mix of Tudor Revival and Wright’s distinctive style, this house has had two iterations: the first, more pure Tudor Revival house, and the second, more distinctively Wright decorative redesign after a fire. It’s interesting in that Wright chafed under the original design he created, and obviously saw some vindication when he was allowed…
Frank Lloyd Wright Studio, Oak Park
The Frank Lloyd Wright Studio and Home was so expensive that I didn’t have the money to go in. That’s too bad, as I’m sure people of all economic levels deserve to see it. I guess art history is becoming the realm of the elite and wealthy. Well, enjoy these pictures of the outside.
Chicago, Revisited
Update: I revisited Marina City in September of 2023. I looked at the Jewelers’ Building on the left left in June of 2008; I photographed the Trump Tower under construction in May of the same year. Update: I looked at the Cook County Building in greater depth in September of 2023.
First Haymarket Monument, Chicago
For generations, the Haymarket Riot was commemorated in Chicago in a memorial to the police officers. After years of being attacked, blown up, and otherwise vandalized, it was replaced with the current memorial, which memorializes the workers executed after the riot. The old statue sits safely behind a barricade outside of Chicago’s police headquarters in…
Carson Pirie Scott: A Solution for the Railway Exchange Building
What will we do with the giant empty hulk of the Railway Exchange Building? It seems that the age of the august department store in downtown is over, because, despite angry nostalgia when they close, nobody shops at them. My heart sunk when I walked in to buy a wedding gift at the downtown Macy’s…
Chicago and St. Louis: Differences in Ecclesiastical Architecture
Recently, while in Chicago, Rob Powers and I drove around looking for all of the churches that I’ve always seen from the interstates and wondered what they were like. One in particular, right down in one of the oldest parts of the city is this church, which I suspect is a Jesuit church since their…
Louis Sullivan Mausolea in St. Louis and Chicago
I’ve looked at Louis Sullivan’s masterpiece, the Wainwright Tomb in Bellefontaine Cemetery in the past, but a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit the other two mausolea designed by the great architect in Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery. The first one, the Ryerson Mausoleum is relatively conservative, though even in the Egyptian Revival…