Walter Gale House

The Walter H. Gale House is located in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago and was designed and built in 1893 by Frank Lloyd Wright. The building is named after Walter H. Gale, a member of a known family of Oak Park and is the first residential house that Wright designed after he had left the company by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan. The building was enrolled on August 17, 1973 in the National Register of Historic Places.

History

The resulting 1893 building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Walter Gale. This was a local shopkeeper. It was the first draft Wright, after he had left the firm Adler & Sullivan. The architecture followed the suite of Wright's house and the house was a. In a series of modest homes that Wright designed in 1892 and 1893 Two of these homes were built for Walter Gale for speculative reasons, the other is the Robert P. Parker House, which stood some distance from Gale House at the Chicago Avenue. The Gale House, like all the houses in this series, has symmetrical sides, but they are difficult to detect because the adjacent buildings are too close. It seems small, but is spacious and pretty much follows the plans for the other homes that Wright designed in 1893 and built. Nevertheless, there are differences, especially in the shape of the roofing.

Architecture

The building is designed geometrically in Queen Anne Style and clarifies Wright's preference for informal planning. The Queen Anne style of the house shows how far Frank Lloyd Wright, influenced by his first teacher Louis Sullivan, had still to go, before he found his early modern style, which was fully developed as the Prairie Style. The Gale House is clearly a house in the Queen Anne style, transcripts of which can be found in the complexity of the structure, the dormer windows, the windows in the Palladium - style in the side gables and in the competitive nature of the shingles, cladding and bricks as well as the leaded glass. Despite the striking Queen Anne elements, the Gale House is evidence of a geometric simplicity that is unconventional. It represents the beginning of Frank Lloyd Wright's way to free themselves from the constraints of historical architectural styles. The truss structure of the house is set on a foundation of granite and covered on the outside with mostly narrow shingles. The original Rhombenfenster with the lead glass slide are intact. Inside, the ground floor houses the staircase, a reception room, living room, dining room, kitchen and pantry. The hall is lined with panels of oiled birch wood and the staircase is framed by an upwardly tapering balusters. On the 1st floor there are four bedrooms, one with a bathroom and open fireplace. On the 2nd floor there is a large space that is aligned with the east-west axis.

Importance

The house is the earliest independent work of Frank Lloyd Wright, making it particularly important in Wright's development for the connection of a more traditional style to the later drafts of his early modern style. The building also shows the influence of Louis Sullivan had on the young architects and on the disciplined geometric line, the Wright ultimately followed with his designs. When the building was registered in 1973 in the National Register, it has also registered as a local landmark, the Oak Park community.

Comments

41.893888888889 - 87.801666666667Koordinaten: 41 ° 53 ' 38 "N, 87 ° 48 ' 6 " W

• Residential buildings in Illinois
• Monument on the National Register of Historic Places (Illinois )
• Building by Frank Lloyd Wright
• Built in the 1890s
• Oak Park (Illinois )