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34-581: The Dana–Thomas House (also known as the Susan Lawrence Dana House and Dana House ) is a home in Prairie School style designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright . Built from 1902–1904 for the philanthropist Susan Lawrence Dana , it is located along East Lawrence Avenue in Springfield, Illinois . The home reflects the mutual affection of the patron and the architect for organic architecture ,

68-481: A leading philanthropic figure in Springfield, Dana decided to completely remodel her family's Italianate mansion located in the state capital's fashionable "Aristocracy Hill" neighborhood. Dana's search for an architect to match her aspirations ended when she was introduced in 1902 to Frank Lloyd Wright , the rising leader of the new Prairie School movement of "organic architecture" which stressed congruence between

102-478: A program of budget cuts, the state of Illinois temporarily closed the Dana–Thomas House to the public from December 1, 2008, until April 23, 2009. The Dana–Thomas House again closed for 11 months in 2011 for renovations to interior and exterior finish as well as mechanical and security systems. Prairie School Prairie School is a late 19th and early 20th-century architectural style, most common in

136-421: A uniquely modern and authentically American style, which came to be called Prairie. The designation Prairie is due to the dominant horizontality of the majority of Prairie style buildings, which echoes the wide, flat, treeless expanses of the mid-Western United States. The most famous proponent of the style, Frank Lloyd Wright , promoted an idea of " organic architecture " (p. 53), the primary tenet of which

170-565: Is mostly associated with a generation of architects employed or influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright or Louis Sullivan , though usually not including Sullivan himself. While the style originated in Chicago, some Prairie School architects spread its influence well beyond the Midwest. A partial list of Prairie School architects includes: Prairie School houses are characterized by open floor plans, horizontal lines, and indigenous materials. These were related to

204-470: The American Arts and Crafts movement and its emphasis on hand craftsmanship, simplicity, and function. Both were alternatives to the then-dominant Classical Revival Style of Greek forms with occasional Roman influences. Some firms, such as Purcell & Elmslie , which accepted the honest presence of machine worked surfaces, consciously rejected the term "Arts and Crafts" for their work. The Prairie School

238-594: The Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago World's Fair) of 1893 was supposed to be a heralding of the city of Chicago's rebirth. But many of the young Midwestern architects of what would become the Prairie School were offended by the Greek and Roman classicism of nearly every building erected for the fair. In reaction, they sought to create new work in and around Chicago that would display

272-495: The Midwestern United States. The style is usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves , windows grouped in horizontal bands, integration with the landscape, solid construction, craftsmanship, and discipline in the use of ornament. Horizontal lines were thought to evoke and relate to the wide, flat, treeless expanses of America's native prairie landscape. The Prairie School

306-727: The Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago . The house was featured in Bob Vila 's A&E Network 1996 production, Guide to Historic Homes of America. In celebration of the 2018 Illinois Bicentennial, the Dana Thomas House was selected as one of the Illinois 200 Great Places by the American Institute of Architects Illinois component (AIA Illinois). As part of

340-405: The occult . Suffering from increasing financial constraints in her later years, she closed the main house around 1928 and moved to a small cottage on the grounds. As Dana struggled with age-related dementia in the 1940s, her home and its contents were sold. Charles C. Thomas, a successful medical publisher, was the second owner and custodian of the home from 1944 to his death in 1969. A view of

374-545: The National Register of Historic Places in 1979. All of the buildings are houses designed in the Prairie School style, and are a part of a planned development. Mason City is also home to The Historic Park Inn Hotel and City National Bank , two adjacent commercial buildings designed in the Prairie School style. Completed in 1910, the Historic Park Inn Hotel is the last remaining Frank Lloyd Wright-designed hotel in

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408-503: The Prairie School and Craftsman styles of architecture constructed between 1917 and 1929. The Oak Circle Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 21, 2001; it was the first historic district to be designated in Wilmette. The Rock Crest–Rock Glen Historic District is a nationally recognized historic district located in Mason City, Iowa . It was listed on

442-559: The Prairie School movement and help preserve the designs associated with it. Some of these organizations and sites are listed in the External links section below. Ryerson %26 Burnham The Art Institute of Chicago's library collection commenced in 1879 as a service for students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and for members of the museum. Over time, two libraries developed:

476-531: The Ryerson Art Library, named after trustee to the institute and great contributor to the library collection, Martin A. Ryerson ; and the Burnham Library of Architecture, named after another trustee and nationally renowned, Chicago-based architect, Daniel Burnham . The current libraries are a merger of the two collections. The collection that comprised 200 books in 1884 has grown over one hundredfold as

510-607: The above categories may access the libraries, with a few restrictions. This is a noncirculating research library. Visitors can access the Libraries' Catalog online. Also available through the website are images, finding aids to archival collections, and digitized special collections. Selections from the archival image and text collections have been digitized and are searchable from the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries' website and Explore Chicago Collections . The archives include records on

544-433: The attention of someone within toward an awareness of the outside. Wright designed approximately 450 art glass windows, skylights, door panels, sconces , and light fixtures for the house, most of which survive. Much of the art glass, and the mural by George Mann Niedecken surmounting the dining room interior, centered on a sumac motif. A substantial west wing leads visitors through an interior Torii gate into two of

578-399: The building was featured on the title pages of some of his publications. His wife Nanette maintained in that role until her passing in 1975. The couple are credited with maintaining the house's original furnishings and design, and their estate with selling the home and its furnishings as a unit to the state of Illinois in 1981 for $ 1.0 million, significantly less than could have been earned had

612-523: The building's original courtyard. Elmer Garnsey designed the interior's decorative scheme and Louis Millet designed the central skylight. Both the interior and the stained glass ceiling fixture have been restored during the 1990s by the architect Johh Vinci, who was also responsible for work done on the Chicago College of Performing Arts . Included in the design is the inscription of significant writers in art and architecture on entablatures that circle

646-663: The collection of homes at Castlecrag , New South Wales, are fine examples of how the Prairie School spread far from its Chicago roots. Isabel Roberts ' Veterans' Memorial Library in St. Cloud, Florida , is another. The House at 8 Berkley Drive at Lockport, New York was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009. The Oak Circle Historic District is a historic district in Wilmette , Illinois, United States. It primarily consists of fifteen single-family homes representative of

680-414: The flamboyant personalities of the patron and the architect, particularly their love of Japanese prints and drawings. The structure was designed for both display and entertainment. An arched doorway admitted guests into a series of expanding spaces, transitioning from vestibule to the reception hall. The concept of "expanding space" was repeated throughout the house, with windows placed to continually draw

714-538: The household been broken up. The home became a state historic site under the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency (IHPA). The IHPA led a restoration effort in 1987–1990 that restored the structure and its contents to its appearance in 1910. It is believed to contain one of the most intact Frank Lloyd Wright designed interiors in the United States. Restoration plans and documents are held by

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748-570: The ideas and designs of the Prairie School artists and architects has grown since the late 1980s, thanks in large part to celebrity collecting habits and high-profile auction results on many of the decorative designs from buildings of the era. In addition to numerous books, magazine articles, videos and merchandise promoting the movement, a number of original Prairie School building sites have become public museums, open for tours and special interactive events. Several not-for-profit organizations and on-line communities have been formed to educate people about

782-554: The interior of a building and its surroundings. The Dana commission to plan the remodeling of the Lawrences' Italianate mansion was the largest Wright had received. Recognizing a kindred spirit in Mrs. Dana, he expanded the boundaries of his contract to design and build what was, in effect, an entirely new house showcasing his approach to the Prairie Style aesthetic. The new home reflected

816-536: The largest rooms in the house. The upper-level gallery was used for musical entertaining, and the ground-level library contains special easels, part of more than 100 pieces of free-standing Wright-designed white oak furniture in the house, created for Dana to display selections from her collection of Japanese prints,. Dana lived in the home from 1904 until about 1928. Once a successful hostess and leader of Springfield's social scene, she became increasingly reclusive over time and turned her attention to spiritualism and

850-724: The late 19th century in England by John Ruskin , William Morris , and others. Along with the kindred American Craftsman movement it shared an embrace of handcrafting and craftsman guilds as a reaction against the new assembly line mass production manufacturing techniques, which was felt to create inferior products and dehumanize workers. The Prairie School was also an attempt at developing an indigenous North American style of architecture that did not share design elements and aesthetic vocabulary with earlier styles of European classical architecture. Many talented and ambitious young architects had been attracted by building opportunities stemming from

884-522: The libraries continue to add about 10,000 new publications to the collection each year. The libraries’ reading room is located just inside the Michigan Avenue entrance of the museum, to the south of the grand staircase. The original Ryerson Library consisted solely of the Franke Reading Room. Design in the 1880s by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, the Franke Reading Room was built at the site of

918-448: The reading room. Throughout the space are artworks from the Art Institute's permanent collection. In alcoves surrounding reader workspace are shelves of reference books, indexes and select current periodicals. The Libraries are open to museum staff, members, volunteers, School of the Art Institute faculty and alumni, visiting curators and scholars, college and university students, faculty, and staff. Researchers who do not fall into any of

952-515: The relatively flat landscape of the U.S. state of Illinois , and the Japanese aesthetic as expressed in Japanese prints . Susan Lawrence Dana (1862–1946) was an independent-minded woman and heiress to a substantial fortune, including silver mines in the Rocky Mountains . Widowed in 1900, Dana enjoyed complete control over her household and fortune. Eager to express her personality and become

986-452: The structure itself and its building materials. Architectural historians have debated the reasons why the Prairie School went out of favor by the mid-1920s. In her autobiography, Prairie School architect Marion Mahony suggests: The enthusiastic and able young men as proved in their later work were doubtless as influential in the office later as were these early ones but Wright's early concentration on publicity and his claims that everybody

1020-570: The world, of the six for which he was the architect of record. The Dr. G.C. Stockman House is another example of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School style found in Mason City, Iowa. Built in 1908, the Stockman House was the first Wright-designed Prairie School-style house in Iowa. Today, the house functions as a museum welcoming visitors and architectural enthusiasts from all around the world. Interest in

1054-600: Was also heavily influenced by the Idealistic Romantics who believed better homes would create better people, and the Transcendentalist philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson . In turn, Prairie School architects influenced subsequent architectural idioms, particularly the less is more ethos of Minimalists and form following function in Bauhaus , itself a mixture of De Stijl grid-based design and Constructist emphasis on

Dana–Thomas House - Misplaced Pages Continue

1088-466: Was an attempt at developing an indigenous North American style of architecture in sympathy with the ideals and design aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts Movement , with which it shared an embrace of handcrafting and craftsman guilds as an antidote to the dehumanizing effects of mass production. The Prairie School developed in sympathy with the ideals and design aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts Movement begun in

1122-675: Was his disciple had a deadening influence on the Chicago group and only after a quarter of a century do we find creative architecture conspicuously evident in the United States. An example of Prairie School architecture is the aptly named " The Prairie School ", a private day school in Racine, Wisconsin , designed by Taliesin Associates (an architectural firm originated by Wright), and located almost adjacent to Wright's Wingspread Conference Center. Mahony's and Griffin's work in Australia and India, notably

1156-411: Was that a structure should look as if it naturally grew from the site. In the words of Wright, buildings that appeared as if they were "married to the ground." (p. 53) Wright also felt that a horizontal orientation was a distinctly American design motif, in that the younger country had much more open, undeveloped land than found in most older and highly urbanized European nations. The Prairie School

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