Oak Park + Mr. Wright

Unfortunately Mr. Wright was definitely not a “Mr. Right” kind of guy (hardiharhar) — what an egotistical ladies man he was! But, that aside, you can’t take away from him that he was an incredible visionary when it came to architecture.

We took a tour of his personal home + studio on our first day of our Chicago trip. The fascinating thing is how his own home is decidedly not prairie style, which is the movement he was so much a part of and is so prevalent in Oak Park. Instead, his home was very much his laboratory…he added and changed and tweaked over the 20 years he lived there.

If you know anything about FLW, you have to know the importance of the hearth. For a guy with many wives and affairs and not a great track record, he somehow still recognized the importance of the hearth as a family gathering place.

especially in those times, the hearth was a source of all the important things: warmth, fuel for the cooking fire, and consequently, socializing and fellowship.

The living room that you see when you first walked in. One of the more traditional spaces as it was the first part of the house he built, but definitely not Victorian, which is what his contemporaries would have been doing more of.

This was the original dining room, which he later turned into the children’s study room. So when he did, he scaled everything in the room down to be child friendly.

The light in the dining room is intricately designed. He never left any details to chance or mail order catalog. A total control freak.

The master bedroom has a bit more feminine feel because, in fact, it was partially a woman’s space too. It also has some native influence which is kind of interesting and reflects some of his Wisconsin roots.

The playroom is crazy awesome. It was an addition on the house, and can you imagine having a space like that for your playroom as a kid?

Ahh the studio. Be still my heart.

What an incredible space this is. We could get into all sorts of details about how the roof holds up the balcony, etc., but really, it just comes down to visual impact. The light is lovely, the space feels open and welcoming and inspiring. And that’s really what matters, isn’t it?

Visiting Chicago? Set up a tour at gowright.org. I highly recommend!