Inside the Robie House: Frank Lloyd Wright's Quintessential Prairie Style Home

    The Robie house stands as the quintessential example of the prairie style. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1908, the Robie house is considered one of the most important buildings in American architecture and was named one of the 10 most significant structures of the 20th century by the American Institute of Architects.
    However, you wouldn't know it if you're not an architectural buff. Situated on the busy University of Chicago Campus, the Robie house is sandwiched between multiple other buildings with barely any grass to call its own. When you look at the house, it seems terribly out of place, and many other people agreed. In 1941, the house was threatened to be demolished, but a letter writing campaign that included Frank Lloyd Wright kept the building safe from being flattened. The Robie house was threatened a second time in 1957, but again Frank Lloyd Wright came to its defense. Despite his age, Wright traveled to the Robie house in an effort to protect it. Wright's involvement helped to save the Robie house, which was designated a Chicago Landmark in that same year.
    But that makes you wonder, why was the Robie house so important to Wright? It was the only house Wright ever traveled to save. Why? That question intrigued me more than anything else about the expertly designed home, and the only way to understand was to visit the Robie house.</p>
While I was prepared to experience many feelings during my visit, I did not expect to feel flustered. I had viewed pictures of the Robie house a few times before traveling to see it, but it had never dawned on me to look for a front door. Most homes and buildings for that matter have front doors that are easy to access and find. But the Robie house appeared to be just a mass of walls and windows - no doors - and with an interview I couldn't be late for, a slight panic began to set in.
   Battling the thoughts that told me it was rude to walk around the back of a home, I made my way down a very private path to find the front door hidden as if it were meant to be a secret. Once inside, I learned that Wright planned it that way on purpose. He valued privacy and felt that your friends should know where your front door is and strangers just don't need to know. He did a good job communicating that. I, the stranger, felt as if I shouldn't use the door. That's just one of the details that makes the Robie house so intriguing.
    On the other side of the front door you are met with a greeting room that feels dark and small due to the low ceiling and lack of windows. Immediately when you enter the room, you want to leave and walk up the stairs, where you see a glimmer of light  - another one of Wright's genius design tricks. By making the greeting room feel slightly uncomfortable, Wright directs you to the main event - the living and dining room - while lowering your expectations only to leave you more amazed when you see it.
    And you are amazed. Nothing could prepare you for the feeling you experience when you reach the top of those stairs. Light floods in from the art glass windows and doors that occupy the majority of wall space - but you don't feel exposed. You feel comforted and at ease. Another one of those Wright tricks. The designs on the glass create the illusion of a barrier between you and the outside world, which makes you feel like you're in a private, intimate space, while the glass lets light in to fill the room with the suns beautiful glow.
    There are numerous other genius design tactics Wright employs in the Robie house, and it's those subtle details that make the home so important as I learned during my conversation with Karen Sweeney, the Director of Restoration for the Robie House. Karen's stories and information about the Robie house were so intriguing, that rather than weave her quotes into a neat, little story, I've listed the entire interview below so as not to miss a bit.

Meghan Carter: When I look around here, it's really easy to tell that this place is grand. I mean, it's stunning. But what makes this place so important to American architecture, why do people flock here, why is it written about so much?

Karen Sweeney: Well, a lot of it has to do with literally the architecturally massing of the building. I mean when you read architecture history books you read about the Robie house because of the way Wright has moved the Prairie Style to point where he really has a modern building. When you look at the massing, not only the massing, but the negative massing of the building and the negative interplay of spaces.

M: Now what does that mean for somebody who's not in architecture.

K: What that means is, when you're looking at a building, it's almost like the way he recesses things as much as the way he projects things on the façade. And if you look at the outside of the building it looks very simple, but if you look really closely, he has all these little four inch recesses here and there that may go up two stories. And it's that interplay of space that really makes it a very dynamic building.

M: So it's basically, it's that levels protrude and ...

K: How they protrude and it is also very important because of this architectural style that he develops during this time, the Prairie Style that we now all it. And it really is kind of the culmination of that because you see the long horizontal lines. It really kind of takes it to the end. The long cantilevers where he uses steel in this building to make sure their nice and stable and horizontal.

M: Was that normal to use steel?

K: Not for that time period in a residential building. People were using steel in buildings and this isn't the very first building Mr. Wright used it in, but he used an extensive amount of steel in the Robie house, and he does that so that you have these big large open spaces. He literally tucks the roof. In this room, see how the roof goes up like that. That goes right up into the attic space there. He uses all the space so that you have an open feeling in here and it feels tall but you have that minimum ground floor to the roof peak and you have that low flat, He even takes the tiles and spaces them and overlaps them so you have a long horizontal line of the tiles. So, he takes every little detail and works it together, kinda makes it the ultimate Prairie House.

M: So, basically what made this house such a good Prairie House is that fact that he made all of the details so perfect.

K: Yes and he made them all work together and that the client was willing to do that with him because you know in any building when you're building it, you're dealing with a client who always wants one thing and an architect who's looking for a different goal. This site helps that. It's a long, narrow site. And he's really building to the perimeter of the site really here. So, that helps in it, and the fact that he was able to build it like that with the long overhangs and the bands of windows. Of course sitting here that's what's so dramatic is the way the windows wrap around. He is also working with a lot of other concepts in it. He has that central hearth that he really wanted. He builds that all the way up through the building so you can see it on the outside. He also has these windows that you really kind of wonder are we inside, are we outside when you're looking at it. And the long band of windows on the south so you can go right out onto decks.

M: Now we're sitting in the living room [of the Robie house] right?

K: We're in the prow of the living room as we call it. It's kind of a prow because when it was first built people referred to it as like a ship with the prows at either end.

M: Because both of them are pointing out?

K: This room actually has three separate balconies off of it, or three separate places you could go outside. Outside onto the prow here under the overhang, on the south, and then over on the north side, and it gives you a different outdoor space depending on what the climate would be. Whether you would want to be in the shade outside, whether you wanted to be out in the sun on a day like today where its winter but it's a nice warm day and you want get the sun, you'd go onto the south.

M: That's extremely clever. From what I understand [the Robie house] was incredibly ground breaking because it was an open floor plan. You had the dining room and the living room coming together with an opening in the fireplace, and was that a big deal at that time?

K: It certainly was. At that time, I mean, his contemporaries would have been the Victorian buildings that would have been in the neighborhood here. So they were very segmented. Each room was a separate room and in this room Mr. Wright was really trying to open up the spaces that he even does it above the fireplace.

M: Did [the Robie House} have a big impact on the way other architects designed houses in the future? Is this like the house where the open floor plan started?

K: In some ways it probably did. One thing that really helps with the Robie house is after Mr. Wright leaves here he publishes the Wasmuth Portfolio. So that the information actually gets all over Europe and the United States. Other architects see his work, and that usually is the most dramatic way that things actually change. Many historians have said that this is really the forerunner to early American architecture here that you later see in the 50s, even the ranch house with that open plan and the long narrow, you know that long narrow, horizontal ranch house. I mean it's always an opinion, and it's historians and how they look at it, but it certainly did have, in fact, I know I studied it when I studied architecture history.

M: Does everybody have to study it?

K: I think everybody does. At least if you study here in the United States. But even, we have a lot of visitors from around the world that really feel this building is the building in the United States as architects they want to come and see when they visit the United States.

M: Why? What is it that they come to see?

K: Because it's the book they studied in architecture history. You know, they study Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and they study the Robie House. So, this is American architecture to a lot of Europeans especially who come here to look at architecture in the United States.

M: Are there any special features about this house other than the way it was structurally built that makes it so integral to American architecture?

K: Mainly it is that massing and all those things. It's also being the quintessential Prairie House. So, that really makes it, and why it is a quintessential Prairie House is because it takes all those concepts Mr. Wright was working on. He takes the main level and puts it up above the ground floor so you don't have a basement. You look out over the prairie even though today we have buildings out there. This building did look out over the prairie. It's built in a prairie shape, very horizontal. And he really has taken, he felt like he had, this was a culmination of taking very organic forms, but putting them into rigid architectural detailing. So, he's taking, he doesn't even tie it to a specific thing, but as you can see the windows you can really imagine all the different natural forms that could have been, that he was bringing into this building.

M: When he built this did he know that this was the perfect example of a Prairie house?

K: He certainly highlighted it in his Wasmuth Portfolio and the building wasn't even really completely built when he was working on the drawings for that. So, it was obviously very important to him. And I don't know that if at that point whether he stated that. He certainly, it is the one building that he came back and tried to save.
M: Why did he do that? Why was it so important to him?

K: Who knows? We don't really know. We just know that it was important to him, that he did come back and visit the family even when it wasn't targeted for demolition, he visited the family. In the diary of the Wilburs they talk about Mr. Wright coming and visiting the family. So, he really felt a connection to this building.
M: Why do you think he did?

K: I think because, part of it probably, Mr. Wright liked acclaim, and he was already getting it for this building. So, I think that would probably be part of it. One can't say he didn't have an ego. There's no doubt about that, and also just the fact that the building is just a really dynamic building inside, and I think he probably got done with it just really liked the building.

M: Because it's something to be proud of.

K: Yeah I think he was very proud of it. You know, things you are proud of are things you want to save. So, that's what he did.

M: So [the Robie house] was almost demolished twice. Why?

K: It was almost demolished because individuals that owned the building thought they were moving forward. They were using it as married student housing and wanted to build a modern dormitory, and they were going to tear down this building to build a modern dormitory. They just didn't understand the historical significance of the building. Luckily other people in Chicago did and moved to save it.

M: And now how are you guys saving it now? He came back 47 years later. You're here now, what, 50 years later trying to save it.

K: Actually we're going on 100, so. We're back here because that's our mission as an organization, a not for profit, is to save and present historic structures to the public. So, we're here working on the restoration, trying to raise lots of funds to do that, to restore the building. And we're about half way through that fund raising effort. We've restored the exterior. So, we no longer have water pouring into the building, which is very important.

M: Oh wow. That's good

K: Yeah, when we started the water was pouring in. Now, we're working on tightening up all the windows on the exterior, and also getting. Another reason it was really exciting is that it had colors and furniture and drapes and carpets and everything designed for the building.

M: So, he designed that all?

K: All of that was designed by Mr. Wright in connection with George Mann Niedecken. So they were all built for the building. Our goal of course is to bring all the originals we can back, and anything we can't get original we'll put direct reproductions of it, so.

M: So in many ways, Wright wasn't just an architect, he was also an interior designer. He did every detail.

K: Oh yeah, he never saw the line between an architect and an interior designer. Unless he involved an interior designer, like George Mann Niedecken, to get the details done. But he liked to design the interior, the furnishings. In this house we have linens that sat on the tables, that sat on the entry hall. They all have a design that is hand embroidered that matches the art glass design in the building. So, that's our goal. To bring all that back so you really understand that when you come and visit the building, that connection.

M: Are there any fascinating or really cool stories about this house?

K: Hmm, let me see. I don't know if there is any real. I mean some houses have. I guess the one story that a lot of the visitors think is interesting is that it really wasn't used as a house very long. It was only used as a house until 1926 and it had three separate owners, and the people that built it only really stayed in the house for 18 months, and you can imagine how much energy went into making all the decisions along with the architect and your builder to build a house like this. And then to leave that shortly is kind of sad.

M: That is really sad. So there is nothing like with Falling Water where he designed it in three hours or anything like that.

K: Not that we know of. But one interesting thing is that the builder obviously knew how important the building was when he was building it. They took 26 photos of construction, they saved the original drawings and the original specifications and had them put in the special collections here at the University of Chicago. So, obviously the builder knew the significance of the building even while he was building it because he was, at that time period to take 26 photos while you're under construction and then, well, you know, because people didn't just have cameras like we have now a days, and run and take digital pictures all the time. They really, they had to make an effort to take those photos, and then the fact that they had saved them really means that the firm, which actually is still a construction firm here in Chicago, really kind of knew the significance of it when they were working on it.

M: That's fascinating.

K: In fact they had the original steel shop drawings and the only set or original blueprints because the Taliesin archives because of the time period and with Mr. Wright leaving the country and coming back, those blueprints, those copies of the drawings were lost. But the blueprints were available because the contractor had saved them.

M: Do you have any last comments about the Robie House?

K: I guess just that people should come visit it. We are a museum. We're open to the public and we're open seven days a week. So, I think it's a great tour and come see it while we're in construction and then you can come back and visit it when we're all done.