Sweet Home Chicago

A Small House with "Lots of Room in It' By Frank Lloyd Wright NINTH DESIGN IN THE JOURNAL'S NEW SERIES OF MODEL SUBURBAN HOUSES AT MODERATE COST

THE average home-maker is partial to the gable roof. This house has been designed with a thorough, somewhat new treatment of the gable with gently flaring eaves and pediments, slightly lifted at the peaks, accentuating the perspective, slightly modeling the roof surfaces and making the outlines "crisp."

The plan disregards somewhat the economical limit in compact planning to take advantage of light, air and prospect, the enjoyable things one goes to the suburbs to secure. With modern systems of heating a distinct freedom in arrangement, denied to earlier builders, is made not only possible, but may be made comfortable with modest outlay. Two large rooms, with an entry performing the function of a little, formal social office, or a waiting-room, to relieve the living-room of undesirable pressure, together with a simple arrangement of stairs and a working department, make up the scheme of the main floor.


IN THIS case the dining-room is made the '' feature," with a little indoor garden closing the perspective at its farther end. The dining-table commands the outdoor garden at the rear, and the low windows on the gallery to the street front, the whole countering upon a simple fireplace of brick which combines with the comfortable breadth of fireplace in the living-room. The dining-room is so coupled with the living-room that one leads naturally into the other without destroying the privacy of either.

The living-room is still the heart of the house, and hap access to both gallery and terrace, and gives an interesting glimpse of entry and stair landing.
The working department is roomy and convenient. The range is set within a brick-lined, brick-floored alcove, formed by the two fireplaces, the space overhead ventilated into a chimney flue. The servants' stairway reaches the landing of the main stairway, and the servants' room and bath are situated over this landing, midway between the second and attic floors. The kitchen entry is from the side, and combines with the cellarway to avoid unsightly excrescences.

As the house is free in arrangement, and the main rooms large, a simplicity of material and treatment is necessary. The exterior is plastered with cement plaster. The interior, trimmed with Georgia pine, without mouldings, put on over rough plaster, together with the Georgia pine floors, is to be stained one coat. The outside woodwork, except shingles, is also to be stained. Paint and varnish are not used.

A COMBINATION hot-water apparatus would serve to heat the house perfectly, hot air in the main body of the house, and radiation in the dining-room and entry.
The cost of the house proper, exclusive of grading and walks, would approximate:
Masonry and Stone Water-Table . .$1100.00
Plastering........... 600.00
Carpentry and Hardware..... 2950.00
Heating........... 375.00
Plumbing, Sewer and Gas Fitting . . 450.00
Staining and Glass....... 300.00
Electric Wiring......... 60.00
Total.......... . . $5835-00
The block plans at the lower corners of the page show two schemes for placing the house upon an inside, one-hundred-foot lot. One, as shown in perspective view, broad side to the street; the other alongside the depth of the lot.

Editor's Note — As a guarantee that the plan of this house is practicable and that the estimates for cost are conservative, the architect is ready to accept the commission of preparing the working plans and specifications for this house to cost $5835.00, providing that the building site selected is within reasonable distance of a base of supplies where material and labor may be had at the standard market rates.

The above advertisement is from the Ladies Home Journal Vol.XVIII, No. 8 July, 1901. I found it while researching on the Harvard University Library site, Women Working, 1800-1930. It includes digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library and museum collections that explore women's roles in the US economy between the beginning of the nineteenth century and the Great Depression.

I find this ad intriguing.

According to J. H. Delmar's Wright on the Web: A Virtual Look at the Works of Frank Lloyd Wright, "Through the turn of the century, Wright's distinctively personal style was evolving, and his work in these years foreshadowed his so-called "prairie style," a term deriving from the publication in 1901 of "A Home in a Prairie Town" which he designed for the Ladies' Home Journal.

"Prairie houses were characterized by low, horizontal lines that were meant to blend with the flat landscape around them. Typically, these structures were built around a central chimney, consisted of broad open spaces instead of strictly defined rooms, and deliberately blurred the distinction between interior space and the surrounding terrain. Wright acclaimed "the new reality that is space instead of matter" and, about architectural interiors, said that the "reality of a building is not the container but the space within." The W.W. Willits house, built in Highland Park, Illinois in 1902, was the first house that embodied all the elements of the prairie style. His masterpiece of the prairie style is the Robie House, built in Chicago in 1909."

Wright built about 49 homes similar to the one in the ad between 1893 and 1901. And his open concept was an off shoot of the open space theory of the City Beautiful movement.

But, Chicago was an extremely socially polarized city at the turn of the century that had rapidly expanded with the arrival of the railroads, expansion of industry and the wave of immigrants who flooded the city seeking a better life and the American dream.

The typical immigrant in 1901 would definitely not have been able to afford Wright's house. Their home buying experience was described in Upton Sinclair's muckraking novel The Jungle (link to the text at right).

In Chapter 4, the immigrant working class Lithuanian family of Jurgis Rudkus contemplates buying a home:

Their good luck, they felt, had given them the right to think about a home; and sitting out on the doorstep that summer evening, they held consultation about it, and Jurgis took occasion to broach a weighty subject. Passing down the avenue to work that morning he had seen two boys leaving an advertisement from house to house; and seeing that there were pictures upon it, Jurgis had asked for one, and had rolled it up and tucked it into his shirt. At noontime a man with whom he had been talking had read it to him and told him a little about it, with the result that Jurgis had conceived a wild idea.

He brought out the placard, which was quite a work of art. It was nearly two feet long, printed on calendered paper, with a selection of colors so bright that they shone even in the moonlight. The center of the placard was occupied by a house, brilliantly painted, new, and dazzling. The roof of it was of a purple hue, and trimmed with gold; the house itself was silvery, and the doors and windows red. It was a two-story building, with a porch in front, and a very fancy scrollwork around the edges; it was complete in every tiniest detail, even the doorknob, and there was a hammock on the porch and white lace curtains in the windows. Underneath this, in one corner, was a picture of a husband and wife in loving embrace; in the opposite corner was a cradle, with fluffy curtains drawn over it, and a smiling cherub hovering upon silver-colored wings. For fear that the significance of all this should be lost, there was a label, in Polish, Lithuanian, and German – "Dom. Namai. Heim." "Why pay rent?" the linguistic circular went on to demand. "Why not own your own home? Do you know that you can buy one for less than your rent? We have built thousands of homes which are now occupied by happy families." – So it became eloquent, picturing the blissfulness of married life in a house with nothing to pay. It even quoted "Home, Sweet Home," and made bold to translate it into Polish – though for some reason it omitted the Lithuanian of this. Perhaps the translator found it a difficult matter to be sentimental in a language in which a sob is known as a gukcziojimas and a smile as a nusiszypsojimas.

Over this document the family pored long, while Ona spelled out its contents. It appeared that this house contained four rooms, besides a basement, and that it might be bought for fifteen hundred dollars, the lot and all. Of this, only three hundred dollars had to be paid down, the balance being paid at the rate of twelve dollars a month. These were frightful sums, but then they were in America, where people talked about such without fear. They had learned that they would have to pay a rent of nine dollars a month for a flat, and there was no way of doing better, unless the family of twelve was to exist in one or two rooms, as at present. If they paid rent, of course, they might pay forever, and be no better off; whereas, if they could only meet the extra expense in the beginning, there would at last come a time when they would not have any rent to pay for the rest of their lives.

The family scrapes together the down payment and moves in. By Chapter 10 Jurvis is beginning to find out about the hidden costs - taxes, insurance, city improvements - that will steal more from his meager income. And, by Chapter 18 the family has lost the house and their money. It was a typical result due to the precarious position that the immigrants held;they could loose their income for any number of reasons and there were hundreds of fresh immigrants who would gladly take their place in the packinghouses or factories.

So, when I see this ad - and the others like it by Wright's contemporaries - I think of the two Chicago's. You can get a lot of history from one little magazine advertisement...

(Photo:From Wikipedia article on Frank Lloyd Wright)

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For anyone interested, I'd like to recommend City of American Dreams: A History of Home Ownership and Housing Reform in Chicago, 1871-1919 by Margaret Garb. I have also added links on the right side of the page to some excellent sites on Frank Lloyd Wright.