📍951 Chicago Avenue, Oak Park, IL 60302, USA
1889 – 1909“I grew up in Wisconsin, where my mother hung engravings of English cathedrals on my nursery walls and gave me a set of Froebel kindergarten blocks; I played with their maple cubes and triangles for hours and never stopped thinking in their shapes. Summers on my uncles' farms in the Wisconsin valleys taught me how buildings should sit on the land. In 1889, at twenty-two and newly married, I borrowed five thousand dollars from my employer, Louis Sullivan, and built a shingled house on Chicago Avenue in Oak Park for my growing family. I kept changing it. In 1895 I added a dining room and, upstairs, a barrel-vaulted playroom for my six children, with a high curved ceiling resting on walls of Roman brick, a mural and a balcony for performances — I believed rooms could shape a child's imagination. In 1898 I added a studio with an octagonal drafting room, and there, with my young team, I developed the Prairie style. In 1909 I walked away from it all, causing a scandal. The house is now a museum run by the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today