Origins

Change was in the air at the turn of the 20th century. The Arts & Crafts movement was making its way from the East Coast to the rest of the country and spawning regional variations as it went. In Chicago and the surrounding Midwest, a group of architects started to develop what would eventually be called Prairie School style.

Frank Lloyd Wright, the style's most famous proponent, championed the idea that American architecture should reflect American landscapes—particularly the endless horizontal sweep of prairie grasslands. This philosophy resulted in buildings that seem to grow organically from their sites, with low-pitched roofs, deep overhangs, and ribbon windows that emphasize the horizontal plane.

Architects working in the Arts & Crafts movement and the architects working in what became the Prairie School both rejected the previous century's Victorian excess in favor of honest materials, functional design, and harmony with nature. A key difference you might pick up lies in their sources of inspiration: the Arts & Crafts movement ascribed to romanticized utopian ideas they drew from medieval European guilds of the past, while Prairie School proponents sought inspiration from the American landscape and the search for a utopian future.

Open Floor Plans

• Flowing spaces with minimal wall divisions for seamless transitions between rooms
• Central hearths serving as focal points that anchor the living spaces
• Built-in furniture and cabinetry that might appear to grow from the structure itself

Furniture and Lighting Integration

• Built-in seating, bookcases, and storage that maintains clean horizontal lines
• Art glass lighting fixtures with geometric patterns that complement window designs
• Strategic mixture of both natural and artificial light sources throughout the home

You can think of the Prairie School as a multi-decade development. In the early days around the turn of the century, architects were just starting to experiment—you'll see simpler, boxier buildings with a traditional hipped roof where they were figuring out how to make horizontal lines work. These early homes have clean proportions but not much decoration.

By the second decade of the century, Prairie School hit its stride. Horizontal lines lengthened and proportions started to look deliberately new. Roman brick started to dominate the structures and the indoor-outdoor connections created by the long banks of windows hit new heights.

The name 'Prairie School' wasn't used by the architects themselves; it was applied later by historians and critics who recognized the common philosophy and design principles shared by this circle of architects. Wright himself preferred terms like 'organic architecture', but Prairie School stuck because it captured the literal and philosophical inspirations—long horizons and the idea that American architecture should reflect American geography rather than copying European style.

Pictured are Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony, two architects with lasting influence in the Prairie School. They helped spread the style outside American shores with large commissions in India and Australia.