Stutton, H. P., House

About this property

The Harvey P. Sutton House, also known as the H.P. Sutton House, is a six-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot (370 m2) Frank Lloyd Wright designed Prairie School home at 602 Norris Avenue in McCook, Nebraska. Although the house is known by her husband's name, Eliza Sutton was the driving force behind the commissioning of Wright for the design in 1905–1907 and the construction of the house in 1907–1908. Harvey P. Sutton was born in Naples, New York on July 17, 1860, the son of Joel C. and Sarah (Robinson) Sutton. Educated in Michigan, he became a successful musician in Chicago, but suffered such poor health that he decided he needed to leave. Flipping a coin to determine whether to travel east or west, he moved to Ainsworth in north central Nebraska. There he courted Elizabeth B. "Eliza" Munson, and married her on August 4, 1886. Harvey had left Chicago not long before Frank Lloyd Wright arrived in that burgeoning metropolis, yet 20 years later he and Eliza would become Wright's clients. The Suttons relocated to McCook in southern Nebraska in 1889, soon after their son Harold was born. Part of the lure of McCook was an opportunity for Harvey to lead the prestigious C.B.& Q. Railroad Concert Band, headquartered there but known throughout the state. The Pawnee Native Americans who had previously occupied the land had been forced to give up the Republican River valley in 1833, but McCook was not founded on its banks until 1882 when the railroad came through. The choice of McCook as a major point on the railroad, and as the headquarters of the concert band, were both due to its being midway from Omaha to Denver. Mr. Sutton led the band from 1889 to 1924, but although he enjoyed his musical career, he needed to earn more money. He followed the example of his brother, Benjamin, who had previously established a successful jewelry business in Dexter, Michigan. Harvey prospered as McCook's only jewelry store proprietor, later taking his son Harold into the business as his partner in 1908. The couple acquired a small house seven blocks north of the railroad on the hill overlooking downtown, at what was then known as 602 Main Street. They eventually decided that the house needed to be enlarged. Rather than hiring an informal remodeling job, the Suttons opted to pursue Frank Lloyd Wright as their architect. The connection to Wright was through Eliza's friends, Rose Barnes and Mary S. Marlan. Barnes saw the two designs of Wright's published in the Ladies Home Journal in 1901, and showed them to Marlan, who had grown up in Wisconsin and known Wright. The 1901 Ladies' Home Journal designs were influential and have become famous. "A Home in a Prairie Town" was published in February, followed by "A Small House with Lots of Room in It" in July. These were part of a series of designs sponsored by Journal editor Edward W. Bok in a crusade to update US housing designs to better fit the way families were living. Bok was looking for a simplified, functional house, and required designs he published to replace the fussy parlor with a living room, to include at least one bathroom, improved ventilation, and no "senseless ornament". Architectural historian Gwendolyn Wright observes that the publication of these two articles "provided the first opportunity for Frank Lloyd Wright to show his alchemy, converting a simple programme into architectural gold.... The [first] design contains virtually every revolutionary theme he would employ for the next two decades."

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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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