The 102-year-old Hills deCaro house is one of the homes selected for the Wright Plus house walk next spring. Residences designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and his contemporaries will be open for touring May 16, 2009.In 1906, William Gray commissioned 39-year-old Frank Lloyd Wright -- destined to become America's most celebrated architect -- to remodel an Oak Park house for his daughter, Mary, and her husband, Edward Hills, an attorney. By the time Wright was finished, the 1874 home didn't really exist anymore. This residence has been selected for the Wright Plus house walk next spring.
At the time of the remodeling, Wright was developing his Prairie style, featuring horizontal lines, such as long rows of windows.
Wright Plus 09
Group tickets: Groups of 10 or more can purchase tickets now through the Preservation Trust's Custom Tour department at (708) 848-1976, ext. 55.
Telephone sales: Begin Jan. 6, 2009. Call (877) 848-3559.
Information: Visit www.GoWright.org.
Wright disdained windows that opened via up and down motion. "I fought for outswinging windows," he wrote in his autobiography, which he uncharacteristically used little imagination in titling An Autobiography (1943). "But it was not used at that time in the United States. So I lost many clients because I insisted on it.
"The client usually wanted the double-hung, the guillotine window, in use then. I used it once, in the Winslow house [in River Forest] and rejected it forever thereafter," he said.
For Wright's Prairie style, the architect endorsed the notion of a flowing floor plan. "Dwellings of the period were cut up, advisedly and completely, with the grim determination that should go into any cutting process," Wright wrote. "The interiors consisted of boxes beside boxes or inside boxes, called 'rooms.' All boxes were inside a complicated outside boxing. Each domestic function was properly box to box.
"I could see little sense in this inhibition, this cellular sequestration that implied ancestors familiar with penal institutions, except for the privacy of bedrooms on the upper floor. They were perhaps all right as sleeping boxes," he said.
"So I declared the whole lower floor as one room, cutting off the kitchen as a laboratory, putting the servants' sleeping and living quarters next to the kitchen, but semi-attached, on the ground floor. Then I screen various portions of the big room for certain domestic purposes, like dining, reading, receiving callers," he said.
"There were no plans in existence like these at the time. Scores of unnecessary doors disappeared. Both clients and servants liked the new freedom. The house became more free as space and more livable too," he said. "Interior spaciousness began to dawn. Fewer doors, fewer window holes though much greater window area. "
A devastating fire swept through the Hills home in 1976, 70 years after Wright was hired for the remodeling. Much of Wright's early Prairie features burned, but first-floor built-in furnishings and the Roman brick fireplace survived. The fire started when an electric sander ignited cleaning fluids.
The owners of the home at this time, Thomas and Irene DeCaro, undertook a massive rebuilding project, using Wright's original drawings.
From the rubble rose the current home -- true to Wright's intent, with its stucco exterior, central hearth, miles of oak trim, strong Japanese influence and open floor plan, all showcasing the early (and still evolving) Prairie style.
Visitors will be treated to a tour of three levels of the Forest Avenue home -- including areas newly restored an an expansion since the home last appeared on the housewalk.
Bands of art-glass windows allow natural light to stream into the rooms. A grand staircase leads to a second-floor octagonal bay. Refinished woodwork gleams throughout. A lower-level retreat features a wine cellar and guest and recreation areas. Views from the many windows offer vistas of four nearby Wright homes.
Here are two more Wright homes selected for the tour:
The Laura Gale House was designed in 1909 for the widow of Thomas Gale, a Realtor.
"Laura Gale's new home for herself and her two children nearly shocked the neighbors, who should no longer have been surprised by what Wright built in their town," writes Diane Maddex in 50 Favorite Houses by Frank Lloyd Wright (Smithmark Publishers). "The second-floor front balcony and the ground-level terrace hover like open bureau drawers, injecting themselves into the landscape."
Wright enjoyed designing cantilevers, likening them "as free as a winged bird." In fact, the architect called the Laura Gale House "the progenitor of Fallingwater," his masterpiece house set over a waterfall in Pennsylvania.
"Wright may have planned to build the new Gale House of concrete," Maddex writes. "But the wood trim he used rhythmically outlines the stucco walls to further mark their upward thrust."
Inside, at the back of the house, the dining room and the living room are separated by two steps and built-in cabinets. Upstairs are four bedrooms, a bathroom and a maid's room.
Typical Prairie-style elements include a Roman brick fireplace, concealed radiators and extensive trim. The dining room light fixture is original. Widespread restoration work has been performed throughout, most recently in the kitchen, which was outfitted with original-style cabinetry and hardware in 2001.
Thomas and Laura Gale were repeat Wright clients. In 1892, the architect had designed a "bootleg" house from them (behind the back of Wright's boss at the time, Louis Sullivan). Wright also designed a summer cottage for the Gales in 1897 in Whitehall, Mich.
Laura Gale resided in the home until 1962.
Coal merchant George Furbeck, like his brother Rollin, apparently received his Wright-designed house as a wedding present from his parents.
"The exterior was altered in 1920 with the addition of an enclosed brick front porch built upon the retaining wall that originally surrounded a smaller open porch, and by the construction of a sizeable extension of the original third floor dormer," writes Paul E. Sprague in Guide to Frank Lloyd Wright & Prairie School Architecture in Oak Park. "Today, this splendid house is largely unchanged on the inside from its original design."
The facade's dominant elements are two octagonal towers. Inside, visitors will immediately encounter the floor plan's major axis, a clear sightline from the front entry to the dining room at the rear of the house. The library and stair hall, nestled within octagonal towers, comprise the home's minor axis.
