Wilmette is a village in New Trier Township, Cook County, Illinois, United States. Bordering Lake Michigan, it is located 14 miles (23 km) north of Chicago's downtown district and had a population at the 2010 census of 27,087. In 2020, Wilmette was ranked by Niche.com as the best place to raise a family in Cook County based on a variety of factors including public schools grade, percentage of residents with a bachelors degree or higher, crime & safety grade, family amenities, walkability grade, percentage of households with children, and access to parks and other recreational activities. Wilmette is also home to Central Elementary School and Romona Elementary School, both recent recipients of the National Blue Ribbon award bestowed by the U.S. Department of Education.
The Near South Side is a community area of Chicago, Illinois, United States, just south of the downtown central business district, the Loop. The Near South Side's boundaries are as follows: North—Roosevelt Road ; South—26th Street; West—Chicago River between Roosevelt and 18th Street, Clark Street between 18th Street and Cermak Road, Federal between Cermak Road and the Stevenson Expressway just south of 25th Street, and Clark Street again between the Stevenson and 26th Street; and East—Lake Michigan.
Prairie School is a late 19th- and early 20th-century architectural style, most common in the Midwestern United States. The style is usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in horizontal bands, integration with the landscape, solid construction, craftsmanship, and discipline in the use of ornament. Horizontal lines were thought to evoke and relate to the wide, flat, treeless expanses of America's native prairie landscape.
Linden is an 'L' station and the northern terminus of CTA's Purple Line. It is the only 'L' stop in Wilmette, Illinois, and is located at 349 Linden Avenue.
Claude and Starck was an architectural firm in Madison, Wisconsin, at the turn of the twentieth century. The firm was a partnership of Louis W. Claude (1868-1951) and Edward F. Starck (1868-1947). Established in 1896, the firm dissolved in 1928. The firm designed over 175 buildings in Madison.
The Frank Lloyd Wright/Prairie School of Architecture Historic District is a residential neighborhood in the Cook County, Illinois village of Oak Park, United States. The Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District is both a federally designated historic district listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places and a local historic district within the village of Oak Park. The districts have differing boundaries and contributing properties, over 20 of which were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, widely regarded as the greatest American architect.
John Shellette Van Bergen was an American architect born in Oak Park, Illinois. Van Bergen started his architectural career as an apprentice draftsman in 1907. In 1909 he went to work for Frank Lloyd Wright at his studio in Oak Park. At Wright's studio he did working drawings for and supervised the Robie House and the Mrs. Thomas Gale House. Van Bergen designed prairie style homes in the Chicago area, mostly in the suburbs of Oak Park and River Forest. His home designs are recognized as excellent examples of Prairie style architecture and several are listed as local landmarks. A few of his homes are listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
The Frank W. Thomas House is a historic house located at 210 Forest Avenue in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, United States. The building was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1901 and cast in the Wright-developed Prairie School of Architecture. By Wright's own definition, this was the first of the Prairie houses - the rooms are elevated, and there is no basement. The house also includes many of the features which became associated with the style, such as a low roof with broad overhangs, casement windows, built-in shelves and cabinets, ornate leaded glass windows and central hearths/fireplaces. Tallmadge & Watson, a Chicago firm that became part of the Prairie School of Architects, added an addition to the rear of the house in 1923.
The William H. Copeland House is a home located in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, United States. In 1909 the home underwent a remodeling designed by famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The original Italianate home was built in the 1870s. Dr. William H. Copeland commissioned Wright for the remodel and Wright's original vision of the project proposed a three-story Prairie house. That version was rejected and the result was the more subdued, less severely Prairie, William H. Copeland House. On the exterior the most significant alteration by Wright was the addition of a low-pitched hip roof. The house has been listed as a contributing property to a U.S. Registered Historic District since 1973.
The Oscar B. Balch House is a home located in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, United States. The Prairie style Balch House was designed by famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1911. The home was the first house Wright designed after returning from a trip to Europe with a client's wife. The subsequent social exile cost the architect friends, clients, and his family. The house is one of the first Wright houses to employ a flat roof which gives the home a horizontal linearity. Historian Thomas O'Gorman noted that the home may provide a glimpse into the subconscious mind of Wright. The Balch house is listed as a contributing property to a U.S. federally Registered Historic District.
Edwin H. Cheney House (1903) located in Oak Park, Illinois, United States, was Frank Lloyd Wright's design of this residence for electrical engineer Edwin Cheney. The house is part of the Frank Lloyd Wright–Prairie School of Architecture Historic District. A brick house with the living and sleeping rooms all on one floor under a single hipped roof, the Cheney House has a less monumental and more intimate quality than the design for the Arthur Heurtley House. The intimacy of the Cheney house is due to the building not being a full story off the ground and being sequestered from the main street by a walled terrace. In addition, its windows are nestled between the wide eaves of the roof and the substantial stone sill that girdles the house.
The Harrison P. Young House is a home in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, United States. The 1870s era building was remodeled extensively by famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, early in his career, in 1895. The home's remodeling incorporated elements that would later be found in Wright's pioneering, early modern Prairie style. Some of the remodel work included setting the home back an additional 16 ft from the street and an overhanging porch over the driveway. The House is similar in some ways to Wright's other early work and was influenced by his first teacher, Joseph Silsbee. The house is considered a contributing property to both a local and federally Registered Historic District.
The Frank J. Baker House is a 4,800-square-foot Prairie School style house located at 507 Lake Avenue in Wilmette, Illinois. The house, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, was built in 1909, and features five bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, and three fireplaces. At this point in his career, Wright was experimenting with two-story construction and the T-shaped floor plan. This building was part of a series of T-shaped floor planned buildings designed by Wright, similar in design to Wright's Isabel Roberts House. This home also perfectly embodies Wright's use of the Prairie Style through the use of strong horizontal orientation, a low hanging roof, and deeply expressed overhangs. The house's two-story living room features a brick fireplace, a sloped ceiling, and leaded glass windows along the north wall; it is one of the few remaining two-story interiors with the T-shaped floor plan designed by Wright.
The Hiram Baldwin House, also known as the Baldwin-Wackerle Residence, is a Frank Lloyd Wright designed Prairie school home located at 205 Essex Road in Kenilworth, Illinois. Built in 1905, the house was part of Wright's primary period of development of the Prairie School. The house has a centrifugal floor plan with a north–south axis and wings containing the living room and stair tower. The exterior is stucco with wood stripping, and the roof is low-pitched, both typical features of the Prairie School. The living room uses its fireplace as a focal point and has curved walls with casement windows. The house's garden space is divided by wooden screens to form courtyards, an element inspired by Japanese architecture. The house is Wright's only residential work in Kenilworth.
The Warren Hickox House, also known as the Hickox/Brown house, is a 1900 Frank Lloyd Wright house in the Prairie School style in Kankakee, Illinois, United States. The house design is similar to two articles Wright published in the Ladies' Home Journal.
The Oak Circle Historic District is a historic district in Wilmette, Illinois, United States. The district covers 2.6 acres (0.011 km2) and includes twenty-two contributing properties and four non-contributing properties, all located along Oak Circle. It primarily consists of fifteen single-family homes representative of the Prairie School and Craftsman styles of architecture. The Oak Circle Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 21, 2001; it was the first historic district to be designated in Wilmette.
The B. Harley Bradley House is a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home, constructed in the Prairie School style, that was constructed in Kankakee, Illinois in 1900–1901.
The Alfred Bersbach House is a John S. Van Bergen-designed house in Wilmette, Illinois. Built in 1915, it is reflective of the Prairie School approach to house architecture. Architectural historian Carl W. Condit and others considered the house to be Van Bergen's masterpiece.
The Cattle Bank is a historic bank building located at 102 E. University Ave. in Champaign, Illinois. Built in 1858, it is the oldest documented commercial structure in Champaign. It opened as a branch of the Grand Prairie Bank of Urbana, Illinois. Champaign was the southern terminus of a railroad line to Chicago, so cattle raisers from the surrounding area drove their cattle to Champaign to ship them to the Chicago market. The Cattle Bank provided banking and loan services to these cattlemen. The building housed a bank for only three years. During that time, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is known to have cashed a check there. From 1861 to 1971, the building housed several commercial tenants. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and renovated in 1983. Since 2001, the Cattle Bank has been home to the Champaign County History Museum.
The Ouilmette North Historic District is a residential historic district in northeastern Wilmette, Illinois. The district includes 911 contributing buildings; all are houses except for two churches, Trinity United Methodist Church and the Community Church of Wilmette. The southern half of the district was originally part of the Ouilmette Reservation, an Indian reservation which was sold to developers and became the original village of Wilmette in 1872. Development in the district began after the village's incorporation and continued through World War II, with most new construction happening in the early twentieth century. The district includes examples of Queen Anne architecture from the late nineteenth century, Prairie School architecture from the first two decades of the twentieth century, and revival style architecture from the 1920s. Its Prairie School architecture is especially notable as it contains works by William Eugene Drummond and John S. Van Bergen, two early Prairie School architects who practiced with Frank Lloyd Wright.
