The George W. Smith House is a home in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, United States designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1895. It was constructed in 1898 and occupied by a

Marshall Field & Company Marshall Field & Company (commonly known as Marshall Field's) was an upscale department store in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in the 19th century, it grew to become a large chain before Macy's, Inc acquired it in 2005. Its eponymous founder, Mar ...

salesman. The design elements were employed a decade later when Wright designed the

Unity Temple Unity Temple is a Unitarian Universalist church in Oak Park, Illinois, and the home of the Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation. It was designed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and built between 1905 and 1908. Unity Te ...

in Oak Park. The house is listed as a

contributing property In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic distri ...

to the Ridgeland-Oak Park Historic District which joined the National Register of Historic Places in December 1983.

History

The George W. Smith House was designed in 1895 by architect Frank Lloyd Wright as one of a series of low-cost homes for engineer and inventor Charles E. Roberts. However, like several others for Roberts, the Smith house was not built at the time of its design.Oak Park Landmarks Commission, Village of Oak Park: 1986, (). Retrieved 4 June 2007. The home's eventual owner and namesake, George W. Smith, was a salesman for the Chicago firm

.Heinz, p. 70.

Architecture

The home is cast in Shingle style, a variation on Queen Anne, and predates the full maturation of Wright's early Prairie style architecture.Frank Lloyd Wright Architectural Guide Map, ''Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust''. The Smith House's most striking feature is the angled break in the roofline. The home's detailing would probably be more appropriate on a

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

clad house than shingle clad home such as the George Smith House.Heinz, p. 67. However, no early photographs exist to determine if the home's exterior was ever altered. The "wall and pier trim" defines a folded plane by continuing around corners. Wright employed this same effect ten years later when he designed the

, of which George W. Smith was a member.Siry, Joseph.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple and Architecture for Liberal Religion in Chicago, 1885-1909
" (

JSTOR JSTOR (; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library founded in 1995 in New York City. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of j ...

), ''The Art Bulletin'', Vol. 73, No. 2. June 1991, pp. 257-282. Retrieved 4 June 2007. The Smith House is similar to the Harry Goodrich House through its high pitched and double sloped roof. The Goodrich House, an 1896 Wright design, may have also been one of the unbuilt homes Wright designed for Roberts. The shingles stand in contrast to the style Frank Lloyd Wright was using by the time the house was built in 1898. By that period he began to employ horizontal boards with batten siding, which emphasized the linear, horizontal effects of his later work. The design for the G.W. Smith House, very stylistic, is clearly an example of Wright's early period. The home features elements from Shingle style and demonstrates early experimentation by Wright which ultimately led to his unique Prairie style. The shingled cladding is a give away of Shingle style and it is meant, in general, to unify the irregular outline of the house. The house also lacks corner boards, allowing the shingled cladding to wrap continuously around the building as well as hip roof

dormer A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the usable space ...

s, both elements are typical to Shingle style.McAlester, pp. 289-290. Wright's early experimentation with elements that became hallmark to Prairie style can also be seen in the Smith House. The broad, flat

chimney A chimney is an architectural ventilation structure made of masonry, clay or metal that isolates hot toxic exhaust gases or smoke produced by a boiler, stove, furnace, incinerator, or fireplace from human living areas. Chimneys are typic ...

that dominates the front elevation as well as minimal horizontal banding are both evident elements found in the home and within the Prairie School of architecture.McAlester, pp. 439-440.

Significance

The house is an early example of Frank Lloyd Wright's work. It is included as a contributing property within the Ridgeland-Oak Park Historic District which was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on December 8, 1983. The house is one of two Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings within the Ridgeland Historic District; the other structure is the Unity Temple. The Smith House is the only example of residential architecture by Wright found within the boundaries of the Ridgeland Historic District. The

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...

, overall, lacks examples of Wright's full-fledged

Prairie style Prairie School is a late 19th- and early 20th-century architectural style, most common in the Midwestern United States. The style is usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hip roof, hipped roofs with broad Overhang (architecture), ove ...

that are found in abundance in the nearby

Frank Lloyd Wright-Prairie School of Architecture Historic District Frank or Franks may refer to: People * Frank (given name) * Frank (surname) * Franks (surname) * Franks, a medieval Germanic people * Frank, a term in the Muslim world for all western Europeans, particularly during the Crusades - see Farang Cur ...

.Ridgeland-Oak Park Historic District
," (

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

), National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, HAARGIS Database, ''Illinois Historic Preservation Agency''. Retrieved 4 June 2007.

References

*Heinz, Thomas A. The Vision of Frank Lloyd Wright, Chartwell Books, Inc., Edison, New Jersey: 2006, (). *McAlester, Virginia & Lee. A Field Guide to American Houses, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, New York: 1984, (). * Storrer, William Allin. ''The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion''. University Of Chicago Press, 2006, (S.045).

Notes

External links

Video showing the building's exterior from the front and side.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith House, George W. Frank Lloyd Wright buildings Historic district contributing properties in Illinois Houses completed in 1898 Houses in Cook County, Illinois Ridgeland-Oak Park Historic District Shingle Style houses Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Cook County, Illinois Shingle Style architecture in Illinois