Although Evanston Alderman Anne Rainey called the Harley Clarke Mansion a “bundle of bricks,” the house is so much more than that. It is a National Historic Landmark, a part of the Northeast Evanston Historic District, and a lakefront jewel that perfectly symbolizes Evanston’s community, character, and history. It is also a piece of many people’s childhoods, mine included. Nearly thirty years ago, I attended art classes there when the mansion housed the Evanston Arts Center. I’d like to think spending time in the Clarke Mansion is what influenced my love of architecture and old houses.

Now, the mansion faces demolition at the hands of a short-sighted Evanston City Council and a secretive, possibly self-serving group of nearby residents who want to see it obliterated. A tenacious group of local activists continue to organize to save it.

Continue reading »

In the final installment of this three-part series examining the relationship between the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his mentor Louis Sullivan and the controversy surrounding the James Charnley House (1891-92), I will closely examine the remarkable interior of this landmark design, the first house anywhere in the world to embrace modernism in its complete elimination of historical detail and emphasis on abstract forms and geometric simplicity, anticipating the architecture of the twenties and thirties. The inside spaces are just as avant-garde as the home’s exterior, which was discussed in Part 2. In An Autobiography Frank Lloyd Wright called it “the first modern house in America.” 

Continue reading »

In this three-part series, I will be examining the relationship between the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his mentor Louis Sullivan, specifically in the controversy surrounding one of the most important designs in early modern architecture: the James Charnley House, constructed between 1891-92, in Chicago’s Gold Coast. Although Adler & Sullivan were the architects of record at the time of construction, since the 1930s Frank Lloyd Wright has been routinely listed alongside them (or sometimes alone) since he wrote in An Autobiography in 1932 that he solely designed the home. No one challenged this assertion, especially Adler & Sullivan, as both were long dead by the time Wright’s memoir was published. Although the commission was widely published in architectural journals of the time, like the August 1891 issue of Inland Architect and the January 1892 issue of Architectural Record as one of Sullivan’s most important works, Sullivan’s name was mostly omitted from discussions of the Charnley House for the next half century. Even Hugh Sullivan’s 1935 monograph on Louis Sullivan, the first detailed assessment of the architect’s work, validated Wright’s claims first made in An Autobiography. No sketches, no plans, no furnished interior photos survive of the home. Because of this lack of concrete contemporary evidence and the fact that scholars never conducted a detailed investigation over the years, one can see how easy it was for Wright to claim this ground-breaking design as his own.

Continue reading »

“Behind every great man there is a great woman” might just be the perfect expression to use for someone like Marion Mahony Griffin. Although the second female graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in 1894 and one of the first female licensed architects in the United States, Mahony Griffin was completely overshadowed by the men in her life. As Frank Lloyd Wright’s first employee in 1895, she worked as senior designer and lead draftsman until Wright closed down his Oak Park architectural studio in 1909.

Continue reading »