From Endangered to Enlivened, A Wright Man's Journey to Preserve His Landmark

If you'd like to know when Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie-style period prevailed, you may not find an easy answer.

Some argue his early years in the late 1800s display characteristics of the style.

Others put their stock in the period that flourished from 1900 to the end of World War I. And still some contend his genius just continued to grow, showing up in his Usonian homes, built for middle-income America during the Great Depression and after.

Regardless of when it took place, his signature period is alive and well in Glencoe, thanks to Wright homeowner Jack Reed.

Earlier:

Since 2003 Reed has invested roughly $4 million in buying and preserving Wright's Glasner House, 850 Sheridan Rd., which was recognized as a national historic place in 2005. Reed paid $1.5 million for the house and put $2.5 million toward its restoration.

“It's been a pleasure in making it a more pure experience,” Reed said of the renovation process. “People say that I'm a purist. They're right. I want the experience pure, undiluted and strong, and I want that experience available to others. I want it to look the way Wright left it.”

To do so, he hired Chicago-based Vinci Hamp Architects, Inc., which specializes in museum and exhibition installations, as well as historic preservation.

Further Recognition

In late September, the Glencoe Historic Preservation Commission recognized Reed with a 2011 preservation award for restoring the 4,300 square-foot house, including two octagonal rooms, stained-glass windows resembling trees and a spacious living room with a vaulted ceiling.

“This is truly a gift to architecture in the community,” said commissioner Peter Van Vechten at the ceremony. “The winner this year went beyond any reasonable definition of restoration.”

The house—one of several prairie-style homes built by Wright on the North Shore, including the Baker and Burleigh Houses, both in Wilmette—is nestled above a ravine that the architect just couldn't overlook in his plans, Reed said.

“I think an ordinary architect would have plopped it in the middle of the flat part [of the lot],” he said. “Wright realized immediately that the most interesting part of the property was the ravine."

"That's where you should live," he continued, "make the most of it—make your life there.”

And that's just what banker William A. Glasner and his wife Cora did. Cora even wrote about it in a 1907 article by The Chicago Tribune, headlined, "Keeping House in Bungalow: Why We Eat in the Parlor."

"Do away, dear friends, with your dining room if your family is small—not over two or three,” she said, having used a two-shelf cart, for wheeling out hot and cold dishes, instead of servants.

Wright, then 38 years old, with seven children to feed, likely understood the significance of appealing to his clients' sensibilities. 

In a 1901 essay for the Ladies' Home Journal, he formed certain tenets for the prairie style, which came to encompass low, horizontal foundations and ceilings that blend in with their flat surroundings. Broad and open, living spaces flow into each other and serve to unite their inhabitants, unlike many Tudor- or arts-and-crafts style homes of the day—in which rooms are compartmentalized.

As an architect, Wright thought a "building should be not on the ground of it, each the happier for the other," Reed wrote in response to follow-up questions after the tour of the house.

Reed aims to recover some of the flat part of the property lot sold off in the 1930s, but said that he needs a partner to contribute more funds temporarily.

Seed to Stem

By 1909 the Robie House, which many argue is Wright's quintessential prairie-style home, had been built in Chicago. And by 1910, in a series of lithographs entitled The Wasmuth Portfolio, he further outlined his philosophy.

“To thus make of a dwelling place a complete work of art...lending itself freely and suitably to the individual needs of the dwellers,” was its purpose, Wright wrote. “...an harmonious entity, fitting in color, pattern and nature [of] the utilities, and in itself really an expression of them in character—this is the modern American opportunity."

More than 100 years later, his age-old premise still resounds in the youngest of minds.

While leading a group of Winnetka school children on a tour of the house, Reed listened to students interpret the symbolism behind certain elements of Wright's design.

“Their teacher asked them if they'd like to talk about the windows,” which resemble trees standing above small squares, Reed said. “[One student] described what he saw looking out the window: 'That little box is the seed from which the whole organic thing springs.'”

“I think that's brilliant, frankly.”

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