INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM OF SURGICAL SCIENCE:
FAUX CHATEAU
The International Museum of Surgical Science's mansion was originally built as a single-family residence for Eleanor Robinson Countiss, her husband, and their children. At the lady of the house's request, famed architect Howard Van Doren Shaw designed the mansion to replicate Marie Antoinette’s chateau in Versailles, the Petit Trianon.
FRANCES WILLARD HOUSE MUSEUM:
PICTURESQUE GOTHIC
Built in 1865 and patterned after a design by Andrew J. Downing, the Willard House, called “Rest Cottage,” is the only building representative of the Gothic Revival style in Evanston. Its picturesque and irregular massing was one of the first influences that undermined the more formal Greek Revival style.
PLEASANT HOME:
MOTIF RHYTHM
Maher introduced his motif rhythm theory in Pleasant Home, creating unity by combining unique decorative elements and repeating them throughout the interior. Visitors discover lions’ heads, shields, and circle and square motifs in stained glass, carved wood, and mosaics throughout the home.
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT TRUST: THE ROBIE HOUSE:
PRAIRIE STYLE
Inspired by the expansive landscape of America’s Midwest, Wright's Prairie style was the first uniquely American architectural style of the 20th century. Completed in 1910, the house Wright designed for businessman Frederick C. Robie is the consummate expression of his visionary Prairie style. The house is recognized today as one of the most significant buildings of the 20th century.
ROGER BROWN STUDY COLLECTION:
MODERNISM AND CLASSICISM UNITE!
The 1888 brick storefront at 1926 North Halsted Street retains many original architectural features. Roger Brown’s partner, Modernist architect George Veronda, sensitively rehabbed the interior in 1974, creating a spacious studio and residence to house an extensive art collection. In Veronda’s design, vintage architectural details harmonize within a Modernist scheme, creating a comfortable historical continuity.
LOYOLA AT CUNEO MANSION AND GARDENS:
ITALY IN CHICAGO
Designed by Chicago architect Benjamin Marshall in the Italian Villa style, the Cuneo Mansion features an interior courtyard covered by a once-retractable skylight and surrounded by Ionic columns topped by an intricately carved frieze. Other features include a grand staircase, balustrade, and a second-floor colonnaded loggia with a painted wooden-panel ceiling.
CLARKE HOUSE MUSEUM:
STURDY TIMBER
Clarke House is a rare example of heavy timber framing and Chicago’s only surviving example of Greek Revival domestic architecture. The house retains much of its original 1830s exterior finishing and early 1850s Italianate belvedere. The temple-front porticoes have been re-created to appear as they did prior to removal in 1872.
CHARNLEY-PERSKY HOUSE MUSEUM:
SIMPLIFICATION
Embodying Louis Sullivan’s desire for a new form of American architecture, this house marks a significant departure from the prevailing Victorian aesthetic. Frank Lloyd Wright would call it “the first modern house in America.”
EVANSTON HISTORY CENTER AT THE CHARLES GATES DAWES HOUSE:
FRENCH CHATEAUESQUE
The Dawes House was built in 1894 and designed by architect Henry Edwards-Ficken. Its unusual apricot-colored brick masonry exterior is adorned with elaborate and unique red sandstone ornamentation. The interior is replete with intricately carved woodwork, magnificent stained-glass windows, soaring stairways, and intriguing galleries.
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT TRUST: WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIO:
ARTS AND CRAFTS
The English Arts and Crafts movement, which promoted craftsmanship, simplicity, and integrity in art, architecture, and design, provided a powerful impetus to Frank Lloyd Wright’s principles, and informed the design of the architect’s Oak Park home.
6018NORTH:
HOUSE AS INSTALLATION ART
The state of 6018North is not precious, but in continual artistic flux. Flood damage to the home exposed its original structure and bones, and artists are invited to create work in relation to this existing structure and its history. They can make changes, such as adding walls and disco balls, or removing layers of paint and debris.
PULLMAN HOUSE PROJECT:
QUEEN ANNE STYLE
The Town of Pullman is the earliest and largest-scale usage of Queen Anne architecture in the Midwest. Using primarily brick construction, architect Solon S. Beman favored this simple, yet elegant, style first popularized by English architect Richard Norman Shaw.
MAYSLAKE PEABODY ESTATE:
CHIMNEY POTS
Wide, tall chimneys are one of the identifying features of Tudor Revival-style architecture. Mayslake’s terracotta chimney pots are decorated with a fleur-de-lis, rope, and Tudor rose motif. The chimney pots above the servant quarters are unadorned, one of the ways architectural design reflects the occupants’ hierarchy within.
GLESSNER HOUSE:
H. H. RICHARDSON'S MASTERPIECE
The refined and sophisticated detailing of the Glessner House—a distinct departure from other homes of the period—combines with a unique floor plan to represent an extremely successful collaboration between Henry Hobson Richardson, a highly innovative architect, and his forward-thinking clients.
ADLAI E. STEVENSON II HISTORIC HOME:
ART DECO
The Adlai E. Stevenson Home and Stable Building were designed in 1938 by the Chicago firm of Perkins, Wheeler and Will in a streamlined Art Deco style. Symmetry, geometric shapes, and stepped and curved elements created a modern aesthetic on an exterior originally painted yellow, Ellen Borden Stevenson’s favorite color.
JANE ADDAMS HULL-HOUSE MUSEUM:
ARCHITECTURAL ENCOUNTERS
"Architectural Encounters," an exhibition of the historic site’s important architectural features, makes connections between the design aesthetic of the home and the social commitments of the resident reformers. A children’s activity called Preservation Detectives is available for kids to explore during their visit.
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT TRUST: WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIO:
SHINGLE STYLE
For the exterior of his Oak Park home, Wright adapted the picturesque Shingle style, fashionable for the vacation homes of prosperous East Coast families and favored by his first employer, the architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee.
MCCORMICK HOUSE AT ELMHURST ART MUSEUM:
VAN DER ROHE'S HORIZONTAL HIGH-RISE
The McCormick House is a one-story, horizontal version of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s high-rise towers, adapted to a row house form. A departure from the luxurious design work for which he was known, the McCormick House served as a lab for his design development and an exercise in space efficiency, moveable partitions and building systems, modularity, and the modesty of stock millwork.
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT TRUST: WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIO:
PRAIRIE STYLE
Developed at his Oak Park studio during the first decade of the 20th century, Wright’s Prairie style represented a bold new approach to domestic architecture. Inspired by the expansive landscape of America’s Midwest, the Prairie style was the first uniquely American architectural style of what has been called “the American Century.”
SCHWEIKHER-LANGSDORF HOME & STUDIO:
BRICK, WOOD, & GLASS
The Schweikher-Langdorf Home's Modernist design is constructed entirely of brick, wood, and glass. It features redwood siding, Douglas fir trim, large exposed beams, and cantilevered construction. Completed in 1938 on the rural boundary of Chicago in Roselle, now part of Schaumburg, it also features the early use of passive solar technology.
THE DRIEHAUS MUSEUM:
THE 'MARBLE PALACE'
The Nickerson Mansion was given the nickname “Marble Palace” due to the 17 different types of identified marble used in construction. In addition to onyx and alabaster, marbles from France, Italy, Belgian and the United States can be found throughout the museum.
GRAHAM FOUNDATION FOR ADVANCED STUDIES IN THE FINE ARTS:
PRAIRIE-STYLE DETAILS
Built in 1901-1902, the Madlener House is the work of architect Richard E. Schmidt and designer Hugh M. G. Garden. Recognized for the quality of its architectural design, the 9,000-square-foot Prairie-style mansion features compact, cubic massing related to German Neoclassicism in addition to details that reveal the influence of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.
THE ANSEL B. COOK HOUSE:
GREEK MAKEOVER
To transform the Cook House into a civic library in the early 1920s, the domestic Victorian exterior underwent a few “improvements”, including stucco and a Greek Revival-style portico. .However, the interior was preserved along with such original features as a lovely wooden staircase, pine floors, wood trim, and marble fireplaces.
RUDOLPH GLASNER STUDIO BY EDGAR MILLER :
THE HANDMADE HOMES
Edgar Miller’s genius reached its apex in four fully realized artistic studios that he built on Chicago’s North Side in the 1920s and ‘30s. Miller marked almost every inch of the studios with daring and surprise. He took rustic brick, crude stone, salvaged tile, found glass and recycled steel and wood and “Edgarized” the homes, packing them with stained-glass windows, frescoes, murals, mosaics and woodcarvings.