Robie House
The Frederick C. Robie House is a historic house museum on the University of Chicago campus in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright in the Prairie style, it was completed in 1910 for the manufacturing executive Frederick Carlton Robie and his family. George Mann Niedecken oversaw the interior design, while associate architects Hermann von Holst and Marion Mahony also assisted with the design. The Robie House has been described as one of Wright's best Prairie style buildings and was one of the last structures he designed at his studio in Oak Park, Illinois.
The house is a three-story, four-bedroom residence with an attached three-car garage. The house's open floor plan consists of two large, offset rectangles or "vessels". The facade and perimeter walls are made largely of Roman brick, with concrete trim, cut-stone decorations, and art glass windows. The massing includes several terraces, which are placed on different levels, in addition to roofs that are cantilevered outward. The house spans around, split between communal spaces in the southern vessel and service rooms in the northern vessel. The first floor has a billiard room, playroom, and several utility rooms. The living room, dining room, kitchen, guest bedroom, and servants' quarters are on the second story, while three additional bedrooms occupy the third floor.
Fred Robie purchased the land in May 1908, and construction began the next year. The Robie, Taylor, and Wilber families lived there in succession until 1926, when the nearby Chicago Theological Seminary bought it. The seminary used the house as a dormitory, meeting space, and classrooms, and it attempted to demolish the house and redevelop the property in both 1941 and 1957. Following an outcry over the second demolition attempt, the developer William Zeckendorf acquired the house in 1958. He donated it in early 1963 to the University of Chicago, which renovated the house. The Adlai E. Stevenson Institute of International Affairs, and later the university's alumni association, subsequently occupied the Robie House. The National Trust for Historic Preservation leased the building in 1997, jointly operating it as a museum with the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust. The mechanical systems and exterior were renovated in the early 2000s, followed by parts of the interior in the late 2000s and the 2010s.
The Robie House was highly influential, having helped popularize design details such as picture windows, protruding roofs, and attached garages in residential architecture. The house has received extensive architectural commentary over the years, and it has been the subject of many media works, including books and museum exhibits. The Robie House is designated as a Chicago Landmark and a National Historic Landmark, and it forms part of The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, a designated World Heritage Site.
Site
The Robie House is located at 5757 South Woodlawn Avenue, on the northeast corner of Woodlawn Avenue and 58th Street in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago in Illinois, United States. The lot measures wide and long, the larger dimension extending west–east parallel to 58th Street. The house itself measures across. Due to an existing covenant on the site, the Robie House and neighboring residences are set back from Woodlawn Avenue.At the time of the Robie House's construction, the block immediately to the south was vacanl; the nearest building in that direction was away, across the Midway Plaisance park. Due to the flat topography of Chicago's South Side, the site was also not particularly prominent. The houses to the north, along Woodlawn Avenue, were set back from the street and were above the sidewalk. These houses were largely made of brick. Although the Robie House's architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, characterized the house as a "city dwelling", it was more akin to a suburban house in a streetcar suburb full of single-family homes. To the west are the Rockefeller Chapel and the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures. To the south is the University of Chicago Booth School of Business building designed by Rafael Viñoly.
History
The house was commissioned for Frederick Carlton Robie, a manufacturing executive who, in the 1900s, worked at his father's Excelsior Supply Company. Robie married Lora Hieronymus in 1902. They moved to Hyde Park, Chicago, in 1904, relocating again within the same neighborhood in 1907. Robie wanted a residence that would incorporate the latest architectural innovations, rather than the old-fashioned details of conventional buildings. He had sketched tentative plans for a house of his own, showing them to several builders, who told him, "You want one of those damn Wright houses." At the end of 1906, Robie and Wright discussed the house for the first time.Development
Site acquisition and design
Robie decided to build his house at 5757 South Woodlawn Avenue, at the corner with 58th Street. This site was close to Lora's alma mater, the University of Chicago, where she was still socially active. In April 1908, he agreed to obtain the site from the mining-machinery executive Herbert E. Goodman, on the condition that the site be used exclusively for residential purposes. Robie bought the site on May 19. As a condition of his purchase, he was required to spend at least $20,000 on a house there.Robie hired Wright to design the house, saying that "he was in my world" when it came to the design. Robie recalled in 1958 that he had wanted a house illuminated by natural light, with uninterrupted living space, simple fixtures, and minimal bric-à-brac. He also wanted several bedrooms, a nursery, and an enclosed yard for his children, and he wanted to be able to see outward without having passersby look in. Robie eschewed older architectural styles such as the Cape Cod style, and he also did not want a monumental building or dark closets. In addition, he wanted a fireproof house, particularly one made of steel and concrete. The historian Joseph Connors wrote that Robie's recollections may have been tainted because he had lived in the house and read Wright's autobiography, while the historian Donald Hoffmann wrote that Robie came to adopt many aspects of Wright's design philosophy as his own. According to Hoffmann, the house was to be "radical and masculine", as Wright had designed the structure mainly around Robie's needs, not those of his wife. Robie's original budget had been $60,000, up to ten times the cost of a typical house at the time.
Wright designed the Robie House in his studio in Oak Park, Illinois; since he was preoccupied with several other projects, the design of Robie's residence was not a particularly urgent matter. Wright first devised the plans for the Robie House mentally; unlike his contemporaries, Wright would focus on the building's symmetry and proportions rather than on its exact dimensions. One night, he sat down with a blank sheet of paper and sketched three diagrams for the house. Wright paid so much attention to the house's architectural details, he drew up blueprints just for the carpets. The original plans for the house may have been discarded or destroyed, but blueprints and renderings of the house remain extant. Robie signed the working drawings for his house in late March 1909, and construction began soon after.
Construction
H. B. Barnard Co. of Chicago was hired as the contractor. Robie recalled that the house did not need to use deep foundations and that the structural core—the chimney—was built rapidly. According to Robie, H. B. Barnard personally inspected the house's brickwork every time laborers laid two or three courses of bricks. Robie's son Frederick Jr. recalled playing with piles of sand and walking on the catwalks that contractors had set up. During construction, some of the brickwork had to be disassembled after stonemasons accidentally built five brick piers, rather than two piers and three bollards, underneath the house's southern balcony.Interior work continued through late 1909, and Wright left for Europe around that time. He hired the interior designer George Mann Niedecken to furnish the Robie House. Niedecken oversaw the interior decoration and the color scheme. Also involved in the project were the architect Hermann V. von Holst, as well as one of Wright's draftswomen, Marion Mahony Griffin. By early 1910, the house was nearly complete. The furniture arrived in February, followed by curtains in March and carpets in April.
Use as residence
The house was used as a residence for less than 20 years. During this time, it was used by three families: the Robies, Taylors, and Wilbers. The Robie family—Frederick, Lora, and their two children, Frederick Jr. and Lorraine—moved into the home in May 1910, although interior decorations were not completed for several more months. Robie said in 1958 that the house had cost about $59,000; the land cost $14,000, the design and construction cost $35,000, and furnishings cost $10,000. This was far more than Wright's studio in Oak Park, which cost $4,700 in 1889; the Winslow House, which cost $20,000 in 1892; or the Willits House, which cost $20,000 in 1903.Despite the house's high cost, the Robies owned the site for only two and a half years, and they lived in the house for just over a year. Frederick Robie's father died soon after the family had moved in. Robie offered to pay his father's debts, which reportedly totaled roughly $1 million. Lora Robie, who claimed that her husband had been unfaithful, moved out of the house in April 1911 and subsequently filed for divorce, which was finalized the next year. Frederick Robie moved to New York City, while Lora and their children moved to Springfield. Frederick Jr. later recalled that the family had taken just one bed when they moved out. When the elder Frederick declared bankruptcy in 1913, he reported having $25,672 in assets, nearly all of which consisted of a $25,000 mortgage loan that the Union Trust Company had placed on the house. Despite Robie's personal issues, Wright would later call the residence "a good house for a good man".
The Robies sold the house in December 1911 to David Lee Taylor, president of the advertising agency Taylor-Critchfield Company. The final sale price was approximately 20% less than the construction cost. David's son Phillips, who was 10 years old when his father bought the house, recalled that he frequently ran half-mile laps between the living and dining rooms, although his siblings did not join him. David Taylor died in the house on October 22, 1912, less than a year after he bought the house. Taylor's widow, Ellen Taylor, sold the house and most of its contents to Marshall Dodge Wilber, treasurer of the Wilber Mercantile Agency, that November. Marshall reportedly paid $45,000 for the house; he, his wife Isadora, and their two daughters lived nearby on Dorchester Avenue at the time. According to Phillips, the only objects his mother took with them were a lamp, a chair, and a humidor.
The Wilbers were the last family to occupy the house, moving in on December 3, 1912, and living there for fourteen years. The billiard room became a music room, and the living room became a parlor. The Wilbers employed a cook and a "second girl", who lived on site, and a handyman, who came to the house every day. The house sometimes hosted events, such as meetings of the Chicago Dramatic Society and the Quadranglers of the University of Chicago. Marshall also constructed a machine shop near the garage, while Isadora hired three men to restore the facade. The roof and three windows were replaced in 1916, and the Wilbers decorated the house with several photographs of their 25-year-old daughter Marcia after she died that year. The original coal-fired boiler was ineffective at warming the house during winter, so the Wilbers added an oil-fired furnace in 1919, replacing it in 1921. The Wilbers' surviving daughter, Jeannette, recalled that Wright often visited their house on short notice. By 1926, Jeannette had moved out. Marshall was in his sixties and wished to sell the house, as he was not in good health.