Prairie Weight
[Arthur Heurtley House (1902) Frank Lloyd Wright, architect /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
The Heurtley House, which sits a few doors south of Frank Lloyd Wright's Oak Park home
and studio was a groundbreaking design for Wright, one among many in the architect's 70 year career.
[Heurtley House, 318 Forest Avenue, Oak Park, IL. /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Arthur Heurtley was a Chicago banker and may have met Wright through mutual social
connections. When Heurtley purchased this Forest Avenue lot in 1902, Wright was still living and working from his house and studio up the block and had already designed a few other houses nearby, so he wouldn't have been unknown to Heurtley.
[Heurtley House, September 30, 2009 /Images & Artwork: designslinger]
The innovation for Wright at his point in his very successful career was to move the major
public rooms of the house to the second story. There was no longer any more house above that floor, no bedrooms and most definitely no attic. The ground level contained rooms for sleeping and a playroom while the upper floor was given over to the living room, dining room, porches and a master bedroom. Since there were no rooms above, the finished ceiling of the second floor was created by the underside of the roof pitch, and by eliminating unneeded walls and including bands of window openings, Wright further exploded the interior boxiness found in residential architecture of the era. It made for great views out the living and dining room windows and became a signature design element in many of Wright's most famous Prairie style houses.
I was in the house years ago on a Wright Plus tour. It was a remarkable space but kind of
sad and worn. A few years ago we saw a documentary about a couple who purchased the house in 1997 and did a top to bottom 5-year restoration returning the house back to its FLW roots.
Ironically Wright's original intent to have the house serve as a new way to live in a
residential building was compromised by, of all people, his sister Jane. She and her husband Andrew Porter bought the house in 1920 from Grace Heurtley after her husband's death that same year. In the 1930s, maybe because of the financial effects of the Great Depression, the Porters turned the single family home into a duplex.
This has always been one of my favorite Wright projects. I love the massing of the
structure and the color changes and projections in the brick courses which help emphasize Wright's use of ground-hugging, horizontality. Throw in that big hip roof and it's a mighty weight of a building sitting on the Chicagoland prairie.
See a not so Prairie looking house by the architect, and the last one he built in Oak Park at:
Wright A Wrong, The Last Prairie House.
Posted by designslinger at 8/3/2010 1:04 AM 
Categories: Architecture, History, Architects, Preservation
Tags: Heurtley House Prairie Style Oak Park Frank Lloyd Wright
Categories: Architecture, History, Architects, Preservation
Tags: Heurtley House Prairie Style Oak Park Frank Lloyd Wright
I love this house. My husband and I traveled from upstate NY to attend the Wright Plus House Tour in 2007 mainly because the restored Heurtley House was on the tour. We bought the DVD that documents the restoration project. I believe it was available through the FLW Home & Studio gift shop; I could find out more info on it. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the house.
Now that's dedication!! Would have loved to have seen the interior of the Heurtley again after all these years. How was the Tour overall?
My first one was way back in the 70s when the tours first started and the crowds - well there really weren't any. Imagine that's certainly not the case any longer.
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. (I was writing a final paper for a course I took this summer.) The WrightPlus tour was great that year, and very well organized. We got started as early as possible so the crowds weren't a factor until the afternoon. Then the waits to get into homes were around 1/2 hour to 45 minutes later on. We definitely plan to attend another tour sometime in the future.
Hm, not too bad on the wait times. May just have to go in 2011. It's been something like 25 years! How time flies. And we keep getting older but feel younger!!