Wright, Frank Lloyd, House and Studio

About this property

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.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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