The Thomas H. Gale House, or simply Thomas Gale House, is a house located in the

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

suburb of

Oak Park, Illinois Oak Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, adjacent to Chicago. It is the 29th-most populous municipality in Illinois with a population of 54,583 as of the 2020 U.S. Census estimate. Oak Park was first settled in 1835 and later incorporated ...

, United States. The house was designed by famous American architect

Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...

in 1892 and is an example of his early work. The house was designed by Wright independently while he was still employed in the architecture firm of

Adler & Sullivan Adler & Sullivan was an architectural firm founded by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan in Chicago. Among its projects was the multi-purpose Auditorium Building in Chicago and the Wainwright Building skyscraper in St Louis. In 1883 Louis Sullivan was ...

, run by engineer

Dankmar Adler Dankmar Adler (July 3, 1844 – April 16, 1900) was a German-born American architect and civil engineer. He is best known for his fifteen-year partnership with Louis Sullivan, during which they designed influential skyscrapers that boldly addr ...

and architect,

Louis Sullivan Louis Henry Sullivan (September 3, 1856 – April 14, 1924) was an American architect, and has been called a "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism". He was an influential architect of the Chicago School, a mentor to Frank Lloy ...

; taking outside commissions was something that Sullivan forbade. The house is significant because of what it shows about Wright's early development period. The Parker House is listed as

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 distric ...

to a U.S. federally Registered Historic District. The house was designated an Oak Park Landmark in 2002.

History

The Thomas H. Gale House is one of three houses along

Chicago Avenue Chicago Avenue is a major east–west street in Chicago, Illinois that runs at 800 north from 385 east to 5968 west in the Chicago street address system from which point it enters the suburbs and goes into several different suburban address ...

in Oak Park, two of which belong to a group known as American architect

's "Bootleg Houses". This trio of houses, also including the Robert P. Parker House and the

Walter Gale House The Walter H. Gale House, located in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and constructed in 1893. The house was commissioned by Walter H. Gale of a prominent Oak Park family and is the first home Wright d ...

, were designed by Wright independently while he was still employed by Adler and Sullivan. Architect Louis Sullivan loaned Wright money during the construction of his own home and studio, and Wright was working it off at the firm; independent work was forbidden by Sullivan. The Thomas Gale house is especially similar to the Robert P. Parker House. In all, Wright designed at least eight "bootleg houses" moonlighting while still under contract with Sullivan. When Sullivan found out about the side projects, in late 1892 or early 1893, Wright was dismissed. The Thomas Gale House is one of at least four which still stand; sources vary as to the exact numbers. The three bootleg houses were part of a series of homes which had small differences but nearly identical plans. They include the aforementioned Walter Gale House and Parker House, the Francis Woolley House, also located in Oak Park, and the Robert G. Emmond House in

La Grange, Illinois ''(the barn)'' , nickname = , motto = ''Tradition & Pride – Moving Forward'' , anthem = ''My La Grange'' by Jimmy Dunne , image_map = File:Cook County Illinois Incorporated and Unincorporated areas La Grange Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 26 ...

.Heinz, Thomas A. ''The Vision of Frank Lloyd Wright'', Chartwell Books, Inc., Edison, New Jersey: 2006, pp. 55-56, (). Thomas H. Gale, a prominent Oak Park citizen, purchased six adjacent lots on Chicago Avenue from his father, Edwin, in 1891 when he married Laura Robeson. He selected Wright to design his home and construction began in July 1892 at a cost of US$3,000. During the summer of 1892, the Gales lived with Thomas Gale's parents until their home was complete at the end of the year. The next year, Thomas' brother Walter purchased the lot adjacent to the Thomas Gale House and commissioned Wright to design his home, as well; the commission was Wright's first after leaving Adler and Sullivan.

Architecture

The design for the Thomas Gale House and the Parker House, and to some extent the Walter Gale House, were derived from the more expensive Emmond House in La Grange. The homes all feature irregular roof composition with high pitches and

polygonal In geometry, a polygon () is a plane figure that is described by a finite number of straight line segments connected to form a closed ''polygonal chain'' (or ''polygonal circuit''). The bounded plane region, the bounding circuit, or the two to ...

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 spac ...

s. The Thomas Gale House reflects the style of Wright's first teacher Joseph Silsbee. Sullivan's influence can also be seen in the taut masses of the house, his philosophy of "geometric simplification" is evident in the Parker House's design. While generally cast in the Queen Anne style, the Parker House has more ample rounded forms than the common Queen Anne homes being built at the time. The small size is deceiving as the Thomas Gale House is spacious. The

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * M ...

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a na ...

s have walls that are more than half consisted of windows. The

fireplace A fireplace or hearth is a structure made of brick, stone or metal designed to contain a fire. Fireplaces are used for the relaxing ambiance they create and for heating a room. Modern fireplaces vary in heat efficiency, depending on the desig ...

is set in the center of the house which allows it to heat and service two rooms, the

parlor A parlour (or parlor) is a reception room or public space. In medieval Christian Europe, the "outer parlour" was the room where the monks or nuns conducted business with those outside the monastery and the "inner parlour" was used for necess ...

and the

dining room A dining room is a room for consuming food. In modern times it is usually adjacent to the kitchen for convenience in serving, although in medieval times it was often on an entirely different floor level. Historically the dining room is furnis ...

. The side elevations of the Gale House are symmetrical but adjacent buildings are built too close for the design to be seen clearly. The house is designed in a rectangular plan and is supported by a stone foundation. The exterior is clad in wooden clapboard. The building has a high-pitched,

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus ...

which features polygonal dormers, a brick chimney and overhanging eaves (a feature that would later become common to Wright's Prairie style). On the northeast and southeast corners of the building are polygonal

tower A tower is a tall structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting structures. Towers are specific ...

s with

conical A cone is a three-dimensional geometric shape that tapers smoothly from a flat base (frequently, though not necessarily, circular) to a point called the apex or vertex. A cone is formed by a set of line segments, half-lines, or lines c ...

roofs. The tower windows, arranged in horizontal bands (another common Prairie element), are a mix of

casement windows A casement window is a window that is attached to its frame by one or more hinges at the side. They are used singly or in pairs within a common frame, in which case they are hinged on the outside. Casement windows are often held open using a cas ...

and fixed windows. The current front

porch A porch (from Old French ''porche'', from Latin ''porticus'' "colonnade", from ''porta'' "passage") is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance of a building. A porch is placed in front of the facade of a building it commands, and form ...

replaced a non-original porch with iron railings. The non-original porch is seen in illustrations in the architectural guide map published by the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust. The front elevation also has a dormer with a pair of casement windows.

Significance

Though small in size and adorned with inexpensive detailing the Thomas Gale House, along with the Parker House, are of significance because of what they reveal about Frank Lloyd Wright's development as an architect. The house is listed as a

to the

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 ...

. 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 cer ...

was added to the U.S.

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

on December 4, 1973. The Thomas Gale House was declared a local Oak Park Landmark on November 18, 2002.Oak Park Historic Landmarks
," (

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. ...

), ''Village of Oak Park'', official website, November 8, 2006. Retrieved June 9, 2007. At first glance, the Thomas Gale House, along with the other bootleg houses, appear to devolve from the early promise of Wright's

James Charnley House The James Charnley Residence, also known as the Charnley-Persky House, is a historic house museum at 1365 North Astor Street in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. Built in 1892, it is one of the few surviving residential work ...

by including such historical styles as

Colonial Revival The Colonial Revival architectural style seeks to revive elements of American colonial architecture. The beginnings of the Colonial Revival style are often attributed to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which reawakened Americans to the archit ...

, Queen Anne and

Dutch Colonial Dutch Colonial is a style of domestic architecture, primarily characterized by gambrel roofs having curved eaves along the length of the house. Modern versions built in the early 20th century are more accurately referred to as "Dutch Colonial R ...

. However, the houses illustrate Wright's burgeoning individuality as he adapted the styles to fit his own vision. The Thomas Gale and Parker Houses in particular represent a more streamlined version of the traditional Queen Anne style design. The houses incorporate rectilinear features which would later become hallmarks of Wright's fully mature Prairie design.

References

*McAlester, Virginia & Lee. ''A Field Guide to American Houses'', Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, New York: 1984, pp. 439–451, () * Storrer, William Allin. ''The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion''. University Of Chicago Press, 2006, (S.016)

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gale House, Thomas H. Frank Lloyd Wright buildings Houses completed in 1892 Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie School of Architecture Historic District Houses in Cook County, Illinois Historic district contributing properties in Illinois Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Cook County, Illinois