In the period after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, a burgeoning economy and fortunes led to a building boom. This latest volume in the Urban Domestic Architecture series charts the changing architectural tastes and steady migration of the part of Chicago society that one early 20th-century commentator referred to as the sifted few to their enclaves on Prairie Avenue and Lake Shore Drive. The mansard roofs and restrained exteriors of the French-style mansions built by such Chicago leaders as Marshall Field, Cyrus McCormick and Henry Pullman masked lavish and eclectic interiors. This was a period that saw some of the earliest designs of Frank Lloyd Wright as well as two of H.H. Richardson's final Romanesque structures. The authors often spend as much time on the families that commissioned a specific home as they do on the architecture itself. This combination of social and architectural history places both the most traditional and the more advanced houses in the context of their times, while paying due attention to such acknowledged masterpieces as Wright's Robie House of 1908–1910. Benjamin and Cohen (coauthors,
North Shore Chicago, 1890–1940) include brief biographies of 25 architects and their firms, along with 350 b&w photos, drawings and floor plans.
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...illuminating new book...The heart of the book consists of in-depth profiles of the 34 houses, which are portrayed with drawings, restored archival photographs, floor plans and text. The profiles are sharply drawn and richly detailed. Together, they reveal broad stylistic shifts, from the dark, cluttered, European-influenced houses of the 1870s, to the bright, open Prairie Style houses at the turn of the century, to the graceful, tradition-minded eclecticism of the Teens and '20s as rendered by such talents as Howard Van Doren Shaw. --Chicago Tribune, April 12, 2008
This delicious feast of a book is the fifth in the admirable Acanthus Press series on urban domestic architecture in the U.S. The present book examines 34 Chicago houses in detail and appends a portfolio of single images of 40 or more. Of the whole group, 45 have been destroyed and only 12 are still private residences, so the emphasis is necessarily - an nostalgically - on what once was. Just as informative and interesting as the images, the text tells us much about why the owners lived as they did. --Interior Design, March 2008
Three dozen vintage mansions - including 28 landmarks - are examined in the book. The publication, loaded with hundreds of photographs, visits residences on such city streets as Astor, Prairie, Lake Shore Drive, Drexel, lakeview, Greenwood and Woodlawn. --Chicago Sun-Times, March 23, 2008
Three dozen vintage mansions - including 28 landmarks - are examined in the book. The publication, loaded with hundreds of photographs, visits residences on such city streets as Astor, Prairie, Lake Shore Drive, Drexel, lakeview, Greenwood and Woodlawn. --Chicago Sun-Times, March 23, 2008
...illuminating new book...The heart of the book consists of in-depth profiles of the 34 houses, which are portrayed with drawings, restored archival photographs, floor plans and text. The profiles are sharply drawn and richly detailed. Together, they reveal broad stylistic shifts, from the dark, cluttered, European-influenced houses of the 1870s, to the bright, open Prairie Style houses at the turn of the century, to the graceful, tradition-minded eclecticism of the Teens and '20s as rendered by such talents as Howard Van Doren Shaw. --Chicago Tribune, April 12, 2008
