Fredrick C. Robie House
Virtual Tour of the Robie House
The Frederick C. Robie House is a U.S. National Historic Landmark on the campus of the University of Chicago in the neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago, Illinois, at 5757 S. Woodlawn Avenue on the South Side. It was designed and built between 1908 and 1910 by architect Frank Lloyd Wright and is renowned as the greatest example of the Prairie School style, the first architectural style that was uniquely American. It was designated a National Historic Landmark on November 27, 1963
[4] and was on the very first National Register of Historic Places list of October 15, 1966.[1]
Wright designed the Robie House in his studio in Oak Park, Illinois between 1908 and 1909.[5] The design precedent for the Robie House was the Ferdinand F. Tomek House in Riverside, Illinois, designed by Wright in 1907-08.
[6] At the time that he commissioned Wright to design his home, Robie was only 28 years old and the assistant manager of the Excelsior Supply Company, a company on the South Side of Chicago owned and managed by his father. Although later drawings of the Robie House show a date of 1906, Wright could not have started the design for the building earlier than the spring of 1908 because Robie had actually purchased the property only in May of that year.[7] He and his wife, Lora Hieronymus Robie, a 1900 graduate of the University of Chicago, had selected the property at 5757 South Woodlawn Avenue in order to remain close to the campus and the social life of the University.[8] The property was a typical urban lot in Hyde Park, measuring 60 feet (18 m) by 180 feet (55 m).
1. National Register Information System”. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2010-07-09.
2. Chicago Landmarks – Robie House”. 2010. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
3. Frederick C. Robie House”. National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Retrieved 2008-06-11.
4. Frederick C. Robie House, NHL Database, National Historic Landmarks Program. Retrieved February 9, 2007.
5. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House,” Hoffman, Donald, Dover Publications, Inc., 1984, p. 19-25. See also Robie House, Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust, Retrieved January 26, 2007.
6. Id., pp. 16-17. See “Down to Earth: An Insider’s View of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Tomek House,” Moran, Maya, Southern Illinois University Press, 1995. One commentator has suggested that Wright’s designs for the Yahara Boat Club of 1902 in Madison, Wisconsin, and the River Forest Tennis Club of 1906 in River Forest, Illinois, also served as design precedents for the Robie House. “The Robie House of Frank Lloyd Wright,” Connors, Joseph, University of Chicago Press, 1984, pp. 46-57.
7. Id., p. 6.
8. Id., pp. 5-6.