Reaction to European Architecture
"The many rooms inside of the home, all separated by walls and doors that could be closed, enabled large families to use the house with minimal disruption. Many entrances and exits and inner staircases allowed individuals to come and go without disturbing others. Separate rooms for children recognized the adults' need for peace and quiet while allowing the children to play noisily." (Clark, p. 62)
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By the late 1800s, "the family's role in education, in
health care, and in care of the aged, poor, and the mentally ill had increasingly been assumed by specialists and institutions outside the family." (Mintz and Kellogg, pp. 107-108) In addition, women began to join organizations and work outside the home. The architecture of the period didn't accommodate these changes. |
In 1893 the United States celebrated the anniversary of Columbus' arrival in America with an Exhibition in Chicago. However, the architecture at the Exhibition imitated classical Greek and Roman styles. These buildings sparked a neo-classical revival in commercial architecture. Chicago architect Louis Sullivan complained: "[T]he virus of the World's Fair, after a period of incubation ... began to show unmistakable signs of the nature of the contagion. There came a violent outbreak of the Classic and the Renaissance in the East, which slowly spread Westward, contaminating all that it touched, both at its source and outward...." (Sullivan, p. 324) The time was right for a revolution.
Chicago Revolution
In the early 1900s, Sullivan led a group of architects in rejecting the historical architectural styles modeled after the Europeans. This "Chicago School" wanted to create truly American architecture that focused on clean, horizontal lines and little ornamentation. Members of the Chicago School, led by Frank Lloyd Wright, started an architectural revolution by applying those principles to home design.
"Away with fake facades, false styles, all impositions on the freedom and honest expression of the individual and his home. Which means abolishing the little boxes, the small cubicles, the cell-like spaces that have come about with the imitation of once-valid styles, the reduction of formerly fashionable mansions and manors to the average-size houses of today. Let the inner spaciousness of man be matched by a sense of spaciousness in his home. Let his house no longer be a box that confines, but rather one that opens to light, sky and nature, without ever losing its quality of being shelter and a place of withdrawal."
(Wright, House Beautiful, p. 244)
(Wright, House Beautiful, p. 244)