Frederick C. Robie House

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Save America’s Treasures sites.

Exterior of the Frederick C. Robie House.  Photographer: Tim Long.
Photo courtesy of the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust.

Frederick C. Robie House

5757 South Woodlawn Avenue

Chicago, IL

Website:  Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust

and

Visit Wright’s Robie House

The Treasure:  Considered by many to be the culmination of his Prairie style phase, the Frederick C. Robie House is a key architectural masterpiece in the Frank Lloyd Wright canon.

Accessibility:  The Frederick C. Robie House is open Thursday through Monday, with a variety of tour options available.

Background:  There’s spiritual power in a fully-realized Frank Lloyd Wright building. Time after time, Wright found ways to take his observations of nature, his knowledge of his clients’ needs, his own aesthetic ideals, and his endless urge to push the envelope on the latest engineering science—and emerge with spiritual statements eloquently expressed through form, space, and light.

Frank Lloyd Wright in 1926.
Source:  Wikimedia Commons

When 41-year-old Frank Lloyd Wright accepted the commission to design a house for Frederick C. Robie and his wife in 1908, he had already spent nearly a decade developing and implementing the radically new ideas behind his Prairie style. Although Wright’s ever-restless mind was ready to move in new directions, Robie House provided an opportunity to showcase the Prairie style on a grand scale.

The exterior and the interior of Robie House offer a near-complete catalog of Wright’s Prairie style themes. Its strong horizontality places it in harmony with its original flat landscape setting. American political and social freedom is embodied in the flow of large open spaces within the house. Stylized Wright-designed art glass panels suggest natural forms, linking the interior with the world outside and bathing the living spaces in natural light.

Responding to American architect Louis Sullivan’s famous dictum that “form follows function,” Wright elaborated, “Form follows function—that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.” Wright’s response has often been quoted simply as “form and function should be one,” leaving out his dedication toward creating that spiritual union. Looking for inspiration in nature and art, Wright’s holistic architectural designs always move toward the spiritual.

During the checkered history of the Robie House, one-time owners the Chicago Theological Seminary sought to tear down Wright’s masterpiece in 1957. Wright himself joined the efforts to save the house. Referring to the seminary leaders, he revealingly quipped, “It all goes to show the danger of entrusting anything spiritual to the clergy.” There’s never a division in Wright’s world—even the domestic setting of a house needs to be respected as a spiritual space.

The living room of the Frederick C. Robie House, showing Wright's characteristic
use of open space and art panel windows.  Photographer: Tim Long.
Photo courtesy of the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust.

The Robie House has been hailed as a masterpiece from the start. Within a year of the house’s completion in 1910, Wright promoted the Robie House in the Wasmuth Portfolio, a publication that spread Wright’s revolutionary architectural ideas throughout Europe. The American Institute of Architects named the Robie House as one of the ten most significant structures of the 20th century. In 1956, the Architectural Record cited it as “one of the seven most notable residences ever built in America” and it was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1963.

Other Recommended Sites:  When my family visited Chicago a couple of years ago, we didn’t get to the Robie House but we had a truly wonderful time touring the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, another important site managed by the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust. Located in Oak Park, the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio is where Wright developed his Prairie style. Advance tickets are recommended, so check their site in advance for availability.

After our docent-led tour of the Home and Studio, we enjoyed the self-guided walking tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District. It takes you past many Wright-designed homes and even up into town to see his famous Unity Temple, designed for his own Unitarian Universalist congregation. The Unity Temple Restoration Foundation offers interior tours of the church.

The Frederick C. Robie House, bedroom level, showing work on the roof.
The Save America's Treasures grant was used toward a roof restoration project,
involving removal of non-historic clay tiles, stabilization of the roof structure,
and installation of historically correct clay shingles.
Photo courtesy of the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust.

Tour America's Treasures Itinerary

Thursday’s destination:  Chicago Botanic Garden

© 2013 Lee Price