Robie House

The Frederick C. Robie House is a U.S. National Historic Landmark on the campus of the University of Chicago in the neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago, Illinois, at 5757 S. Woodlawn Avenue on the South Side. It was designed and built between 1908 and 1910 by architect Frank Lloyd Wright and is renowned as the greatest example of the Prairie School style, the first architectural style that was uniquely American. It was designated a National Historic Landmark on November 27, 1963 and was on the very first National Register of Historic Places list of October 15, 1966.

History

Wright designed the Robie House in his studio in Oak Park, Illinois between 1908 and 1909. The design precedent for the Robie House was the Ferdinand F. Tomek House in Riverside, Illinois, designed by Wright in 1907-08. At the time that he commissioned Wright to design his home, Robie was only 28 years old and the assistant manager of the Excelsior Supply Company, a company on the South Side of Chicago owned and managed by his father. Although later drawings of the Robie House show a date of 1906, Wright could not have started the design for the building earlier than the spring of 1908 because Robie had actually purchased the property only in May of that year. He and his wife, Lora Hieronymus Robie, a 1900 graduate of the University of Chicago, had selected the property at 5757 South Woodlawn Avenue in order to remain close to the campus and the social life of the University. The property was a typical urban lot in Hyde Park, measuring 60 feet (18 m) by 180 feet (55 m).