Robie House

Infobox nrhp
name = Frederick C. Robie House
nrhp_type = nhl

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caption =
location = 5757 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, USA
nearest_city =
lat_degrees = 41
lat_minutes = 47
lat_seconds = 23.4
lat_direction = N
long_degrees = 87
long_minutes = 35
long_seconds = 45.3
long_direction = W
area =
built = 1910
architect =Frank Lloyd Wright
architecture = Prairie style
designated= November 27, 1963cite web|url=http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail.cfm?ResourceId=206&ResourceType=Building
title=Frederick C. Robie House |accessdate=2008-06-11|work=National Historic Landmark summary listing|publisher=National Park Service]
added = October 15, 1966 [ [http://www.nr.nps.gov/nrloc1.htm NRIS Database] , National Register of Historic Places, retrieved January 25, 2007.]
visitation_num =
visitation_year =
refnum = 66000316
mpsub =
governing_body = University of Chicago

The Frederick C. Robie House or simply the Robie House is a U.S. National Historic Landmark in the city of Chicago, Illinois. It was designed in 1908 by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in his Oak Park, Illinois, studio. The house was designated a landmark in 1963 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places when the Register began in 1966. The home is renowned for its architectural significance. It is one of the four Chicago Registered Historic Places from the original October 15, 1966 National Register of Historic Places list (along with Chicago Pile-1, Hull House & Lorado Taft Midway Studios).cite web|url=http://www.nr.nps.gov/|title=National Register Information System|date=2007-01-23|accessdate=2008-07-18|work=National Register of Historic Places database download |publisher=National Park Service]

Built in 1910, it is located near the campus of the University of Chicago in Hyde Park (a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago), and was given to the university by developer William Zeckendorf in 1963. [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/habs_haer/placeI.html Illinois Places] , Frederick C. Robie House, Data Pages, Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress. Retrieved January 26, 2007.] It was designated a National Historic Landmark on November 27, 1963. [Frederick C. Robie House] , NHL Database, National Historic Landmarks Program. Retrieved 9 February 2007.]

History

The Robie House was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1908, in his Oak Park Studio. [http://www.wrightplus.org/robiehouse/robiehouse.html Robie House] , Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust, Retrieved January 26, 2007.] The contractor for the project, H.B. Barnard Co. of Chicago began construction on April 15, 1909. The home's construction however was largely complete in May 1910. Even after the Robie family moved into the home in late September/early October 1910, a few minor finishing touches were performed on the building with the last work on the home being completed by January 1911.

Due to financial problems incurred by the death of Frederick's father George T. Robie, the family had to sell the house after only 14 months of residence. Two other families lived in the home until June 1926 when a seminary purchased the property with the intention of demolishing the building for a larger dormitory.

The house was saved from demolition mostly due to the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean War. At one point, Wright appeared in person, at the age of 90, to protest the intended demolition of the house. In 1958, William Zeckendorf took ownership of the building and five years later donated it to the University of Chicago who used it for the Adlai Stevenson School of International Studies and later for the headquarters for the university's Alumni Association.

Since 1997, it has served as an architectural house museum operated by the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust, the same non-profit museum organization that was created in 1974 (as "The Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Foundation") to save Wright's Oak Park home and studio from demolition and redevelopment. Beginning in March 2002, the building has undergone an $8 million historic restoration that is expected to be completed by the building's centennial in 2010.

Architecture

The Robie House is one of the best known examples of Prairie Style architecture, a style in whose creation and popularization Wright played a major role. The term was coined by architectural critics and historians (not by Wright) who noticed how the buildings and their various components (e.g. doors, windows, furniture, tapestries, etc.) owed their design influence to the landscape and plant life of the midwest prairie of the United States.

The building has a low-proportioned, horizontal profile which gives it the appearance of spreading out on the flat prairie land. Steel-framed cantilevered roof overhangs, continuous bands of art-glass windows and doors, and the use of natural materials are typical Prairie Style features which emphasizes this "horizonal line" of the building. A chimney mass containing the house's four fireplaces rises through the center of the house acting as the anchor to which the house is designed around on all three levels. The exterior walls are constructed of a Chicago common brick core with a red-orange iron-spotted Roman brick veneer. The planter urns, copings, lintels, sills and other exterior trimwork are of Bedford limestone. The fireplaces and chimneys are constructed of the same brick and limestone as the exterior and have a sense of an artistic sculptural shape of their own as opposed to being a part of a wall. The design of the art glass windows and doors is a sharp-angled multicolored pattern whose geometry Wright also used for designs of tapestries inside the house and for gates in some of the porches and garden walls outside. The structural steel framing that support the cantilevered roof overhangs also creates interior spaces that are absent of posts, walls, and other typical obstructions which results in the open flowing interiors that symbolizes the openness of the American prairie.

Architectural significance

The Robie House was one of the last houses Wright designed in his Oak Park, Illinois home and studio and also one of the last of his Prairie Style houses. According to the Historical American Buildings Survey, the city of Chicago's Commission on Chicago Architectural Landmarks stated: "The bold interplay of horizontal planes about the chimney mass, and the structurally expressive piers and windows, established a new form of domestic design." Because the house's components are so well designed and coordinated, it is considered to be a quintessential example of Wright's Prairie Style architecture and the "measuring stick" to which all other Prairie Style buildings are compared.

The house and the Robie name were immortalized in Ernst Wasmuth's famous 1911 publication "Ausgefuhrte Bauten und Entwurfe von Frank Lloyd Wright" (a.k.a. "The Wasmuth Portfolio"). This publication featured most of Wright's designs, including those unbuilt, during his Oak Park years and brought them to the attention of European architects of the 1920's, especially students of the Bauhaus school in Germany and the De Stijl school in Holland. Many of these architects who later became some of the 20th century's greatest such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe claimed Wright to be a major influence on their careers.

Photo gallery

Robie House

Notes

External links

* [http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/wrightrobie/robie.html Pictures of Robie House]
* [http://frank.lloydwright.info/architectural/robie-house.html Robie House] Architectural review
* [http://www.richardnickelcommittee.org/ The Richard Nickel Committee and Photographic Archive] Photographer of the Robie House
* [http://www.wrightplus.org/robiehouse/robiehouse.html FLLW Preservation Trust website]