George W. Smith House (Oak Park, Illinois)
The George W. Smith House is a house in Oak Park, a western suburb of Chicago, Illinois in the United States, which was designed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1895. It was built in 1898 and was inhabited by a merchant of the Marshall Field Company. The design elements were also used when Wright designed a decade later in Oak Park Unity Temple. The house has been listed as a contributing property of the Ridgeland - Oak Park Historic District and registered with this on the National Register of Historic Places in December 1983.
History
The George W. Smith House was designed in 1895 by architect Frank Lloyd Wright for Charles E. Roberts. It was one of a series of low-cost houses for Roberts Wright designed, but which were not recognized at the time of their design. The final owner and namesake of the house, George W. Smith, was a businessman for the Chicago firm Marshall Field & Company.
Architecture
The house is in the " shingle style " ' (English: shingle style), a variant of the Queen Anne Styles run and precedes the full development of Wright's earlier Prairie style architecture. The most eye-catching feature of the Smith house is angled bend the headliner. The details of the house would probably be more appropriate for a plastered house, as for a shingle- clad façade. There are no early photographs of the building to determine if the external facade was ever changed. Wall and ornamental pillars form a folded surface by continued over the corners of time. Wright used the same effect ten years later, when the Unity Temple designed, whose parishioner George W. Smith was. The Smith House is similar to the Harry Goodrich House, in spite of the raised roof with the double ridge. The Goodrich House, a Wright design from 1896, could be as been one of the unrealized houses. Wright had drawn for Roberts. The shingles are in contrast to the style that Frank Lloyd Wright otherwise used at the time, which was built to house 1898. In this period he began using horizontal boards with battens, which scored the linear, horizontal effect of his later work. The design for the George W. Smith House is clearly an example of Wright's earlier period. The House also missing corner panels that allows the shingle cover to lie continuously around the sides, and hipped - roof dormers, both elements that are typical of the shingle style. Wright's early experiments with the elements that were later identification of the Prairie Style, are also at the Smith House recognizable. The wide, flat chimney, which dominates the front, as well as the minimalist horizontal border strips are both obvious elements of the house that are actually present in the Prairie Style.
Importance
The house is an early example of Frank Lloyd Wright's work. It is a part of the Ridgeland - Oak Park Historic District and was enrolled on 8 December 1983 in the National Register of Historic Places. The house is one of two Frank Lloyd Wright's designs within the Ridgeland - Oak Park Historic District - the other building is the Unity Temple - but is the only example of a residential house draft Wrights within this range. This Historic District lacks any examples of fully developed Prairie Styles Wright, which is available in abundance at the nearby Frank Lloyd Wright - Prairie School of Architecture Historic District.