Between 1893 and 1901, forty-nine buildings designed by Wright were built in Chicago and the mid-west. During this period he began to develop his ideas which would come together in his “Prairie House” concept. Into 1909 he developed, refined and founded the prairie school of architecture. While the Munger Place homes were influenced by Wright’s style, they were not the long expansive homes he built in and around Chicago. The one exception is the home at 5002 Swiss that is similar to those he built in Oak Park.
Wright was an amazingly talented man and no doubt rather arrogant. Some of his quotes indicate both parts of his nature.
“Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility; I chose the former and have seen no reason to change.”
“I feel coming on a strange disease – humility.”
“The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.”
“Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity.”
“Mechanization best serves mediocrity”
“Move the chair.” – Wright’s response to a client who phoned him to complain of rain leaking through the roof of the house while sitting at the dining table.
Already well-known during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as “the greatest American architect of all time”.
Although I was somewhat aware of his influence on Munger Place and the 5003 Tremont house, it was not until 2007 when I visited the home he built for himself in Oak Park that I realized the detail and the magnitude of it. As my wife Leslie and I walked through his home I continually remarked, “This is like the Tremont house”. As a young boy I recall walking toward the front door in the morning on the way to school with the room flooded with color from the cut glass prisms in the window panels surrounding the door. I realized it was no accident the front faced east to allow the low winter sunlight to spread its array of radiance from the transom and side lights across the hall and living room.
It also was no accident that the stained glass in the high west dining room windows colored the late afternoon light to highlight the early evening supper. The contour of the dining room was laid out with high walls to block the late afternoon sun with the stained glass panes high to color as well as restrain the hot sun. It is interesting that the bay contour effect blocked the heat with high walls while the two corners of the bay faced south and north away from the direct sun. These corners had large windows.
Wright was hardly the first to reject the idea of a house with box like rooms but he moved into a more pleasant arrangement of rooms rather than creating just a larger box.
He worked to achieve this effect by greatly expanding the size and number of windows. In Munger Place the builders copied his style of grouping windows in pairs or in threes and fours. In the 5003 Tremont house the wide French doors from the living room to the dining area and the double doors to the study were part of his influence. This was complemented by the open passage to the wide hall as well as the sliding door to the master bedroom. Further destroying the box effect, the dining room was offset from the living area and complemented by a door to the wide wraparound porch.
Probably the most noticeable characteristic of the Tremont house is the large Tudor gable with the ribbon of four windows. Behind the great stucco gable was a giant bedroom with two large walk in closets on each side. I believe the closets have been altered over time. In Wright’s own home in Oak Park a similar room exists on the front with a ribbon of six windows. The room was divided with a barrier down the middle to separate his boys’ and girls’ areas.
The large front gable with the four windows is unique in Munger Place but that elevation was used often by Wright in his early homes. Some of Wright’s designs with the same striking feature are shown below.
Since more interior walls held more heat, in the colder Midwest where most of his designs were built, it was necessary to offset the lack of interior rooms by extending the overhang of the roofs to protect from the harsh climate.
The Munger homes copied him in this as well as it provided more shade in our hot summers. Often times I recall my mother commenting we never have to close our windows when it rains due to the great wide overhang. While the coming of air conditioning no longer necessitates this, the pleasant long horizontal effect remains for the eye of the beholder that was, of course, Wright’s intent.
Of all the many features in a Wright house, the one I appreciated the most was the walkthrough pantry.
It was much like the one I remembered as a child that was the passage way from the dining room to the kitchen in the Tremont house.
In both the Wright house and the Tremont house was a long counter. I spent many days while growing up playing with my toys while my mother and others were working in the kitchen. As well as an inviting place for a child to play, it was an important use of space to combine a passage way and storage area.
During the visit to Wright’s home and studio in 2007, a quote of his was mentioned as follows:
“An instinct for the beautiful is acquired
when surrounded by it on a daily basis”
My thoughts immediately took me back to the room of colored light that I loved as a young boy and realized the effect an architect can have on humanity. I was familiar with the term architectural determinism and I knew that the homes in Munger Place carried some of Wright’s ideas but this seemed a personal touch that I had never fully appreciated. What I had remembered was the love I had for the house as a youth growing up and the reference awakened me to the influence the details of the house had on me.
I immediately asked the tour guide to repeat the quote and asked my wife Leslie to help me write it down correctly.