The Winslow House is a
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed List of Frank Lloyd Wright works, more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key ...
-designed house located at 515 Auvergne Place in
River Forest,
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...
. Built in 1894–95, it was his first major commission as an independent architect. While the design owes a debt to the earlier
James Charnley House, Wright always considered the Winslow House extremely important to his career. Looking back on it in 1936, he described it as "the first 'prairie house'."
The original owner, William Winslow, was exemplary of Wright's Chicago clients, which the architect described as, "American men of business with unspoiled instincts and ideals." A manufacturer of decorative ironwork, Winslow later worked with Wright on a number of publishing projects, specifically for
Keats
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tub ...
's ''
The Eve of St. Agnes'' (1896), and William C. Gannett's ''The House Beautiful'' (1896–97). The men were first introduced through Winslow's dealings with Adler and Sullivan, Wright's former employers. He was in the ornamental iron business and his firm had done the facade on the Carson Pirie Scott building for Wright's previous employer. Adler and Sullivan were not interested in performing residential architectural assignments so Winslow turned to Wright. The house's design is inspired by the works of Wright's mentor
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 (architecture), Chicago ...
and anticipates Wright's mature
Prairie School
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 hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped i ...
buildings of the next decade. Sheltered beneath a low-pitched roof with wide
eaves
The eaves are the edges of the roof which overhang the face of a wall and, normally, project beyond the side of a building. The eaves form an overhang to throw water clear of the walls and may be highly decorated as part of an architectural sty ...
, the home is symmetrical and horizontally divided into a stone section, a golden Roman brick section, and a
terra cotta
Terracotta, also known as terra cotta or terra-cotta (; ; ), is a clay-based Vitrification#Ceramics, non-vitreous ceramicOED, "Terracotta""Terracotta" MFA Boston, "Cameo" database fired at relatively low temperatures. It is therefore a term used ...
frieze
In classical architecture, the frieze is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic order, Ionic or Corinthian order, Corinthian orders, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Patera (architecture), Paterae are also ...
of Sullivanesque ornament. In contrast to the calm and balanced front facade, the rear is a mass of irregular geometric forms. The interior echoes both Wright's own home and the
Charnley House, with the fireplace at the center facing the entry with rooms on either side and a hidden main staircase.
The house was added to the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
on April 17, 1970.
In 2016 the house was sold for $1.375 million. The family of its previous owner, the general manager of a local television station, had owned the house for 57 years.
See also
*
List of Frank Lloyd Wright works
References
* (S.024)
External links
A site about Winslow HouseArchive of photographs and drawings
''New York Times'', June 8, 1986
Photos on Arcaid
{{Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright buildings
Houses completed in 1894
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Cook County, Illinois
River Forest, Illinois