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Prairie -- In suburban Chicago in 1893, Frank Lloyd Wright, America's most famous architect, designed the first Prairie-style house, and it's still a common style throughout the Midwest. Prairie houses come in two styles--boxy and symmetrical or low-slung and asymmetrical. Roofs are low-pitched, with wide eaves. Brick and clapboard are the most common building materials. Other details: rows of casement windows; one-story porches with massive square supports; and stylized floral and circular geometric terra-cotta or masonry ornamentation around doors, windows, and cornices. The Robie House is one of the best known examples of Prairie Style architecture, a style in whose creation and popularization Wright played a major role. The term was coined by architectural critics and historians (not by Wright) who noticed how the buildings and their various components (e.g. doors, windows, furniture, tapestries, etc.) owed their design influence to the landscape and plant life of the midwest prairie of the United States. "Reprinted from REALTOR® Magazine January, 2004  (http://www.realtor.org/realtormag) with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®. Copyright 2004. All rights reserved." The Edna Purcell House of 1913 clearly exhibits the neutralized surfaces and abstraction of form characteristic of Prairie architecture.  The Edna S. Purcell House is located at 2328 Lake Place in Minneapolis, Minnesota         The Blythe House of 1912-14 by Walter Burley Griffin showing the  interpenetration  of house and garden by using stone in both the foundation level of the home and in the low wall surrounding the property. Visit the Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney web site     Robie House by Frank Lloyd Wright The Frederick C. Robie House or simply the Robie House is a Registered Historic Place in the city of Chicago, Illinois. The Robie House joined the Register the year it began in 1966. The home is renowned for its architectural significance. It was designed in 1908 by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in his Oak Park, Illinois, studio. Built in 1910, it is located near the campus of the University of Chicago in Hyde Park (a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago), and was given to the university by developer William Zeckendorf in 1963. It was designated a National Historic Landmark on November 27, 1963. The Robie House was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1908, in his Oak Park Studio.[4] The contractor for the project, H.B. Barnard Co. of Chicago began construction on April 15, 1909. The home's construction however was largely complete in May 1910. Even after the Robie family moved into the home in late September/early October 1910, a few minor finishing touches were performed on the building with the last work on the home being completed by January 1911. Due to financial probelms incurred by the death of Frederick's father George T. Robie, the family had to sell the house after only 14 months of residence. Two other families lived in the home until June 1926 when a seminary purchased the property with the intention of demolishing the building for a larger dormitory. The house was saved from demolition mostly due to the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean War. At one point, Wright appeared in person, at the age of 90, to protest the intended demolition of the house. In 1958, William Zeckendorf took ownership of the building and five years later donated it to the University of Chicago who used it for the Adlai Stevenson School of International Studies and later for the headquarters for the university's Alumni Association. Since 1997, it has served as an architectural house museum operated by the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust, the same non-profit museum organization that was created in 1974 (as "The Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Foundation") to save Wright's Oak Park home and studio from demolition and redevelopment. Beginning in March 2002, the building has undergone an $8 million historic restoration that is expected to be completed by the building's centennial in 2010. For information on buying or selling east bay homes, please contact me at 510-429-4800 or send me a note on the Contact Joanne form. Thank you, Joanne P.S.  Be sure to add us to your favorite places. ~ Joanne L. Gardiner, Broker, e-PRO Realtor Advantage Realty 3205 Whipple Road - Union City, California 94587 (510) 429-4800 San Francisco Bay Area  ~ San Francisco East Bay Real Estate web site: http://www.joannegardiner.com   Our primary realty service areas in the San Francisco Bay Area: Hayward, Castro Valley, Fremont, Newark, Niles, San Leandro, San Lorenzo, San Ramon, Sunol, Oakland, Foster City, Burlingame, and San Mateo. The types of real estate in which we specialize are:  single family homes, detached homes, attached homes, duets, condominiums, townhomes, garden homes, PUDs, manufactured homes, mobile homes,  income property, investment property, tri-plexes, four-plexes, apartment property, and special use properties such as churches for sale.

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