I find the home most interesting because of its relationship to the site and its integration with a landscape that extends from the north berm all the way to the southern sun. The entry procession cuts through the ground and bleeds sunlight on the other side.

The post includes two photos of the rarely seen house.

The Jacobs II house demonstrates Wright’s mastery of siting and the use of simple, passive energy saving features that are rare even today.

Mark is a photographer, so he is an appropriate commentator on the exhibit of Teske’s photographs (I saw the exhibit a year ago in Michigan, and we’ve established that I’m no photographer — though I did enjoy the exhibit, I suspect the artistry that went into the creation of the images was largely lost on me).

Some of Wright’s drawings for Hollyhock House and the larger, unbuilt arts complex are also part of the exhibit, and are just as interesting as you would expect.

The exhibit, while modest, is well-done, but Mark is a far better judge of these things, so go check out his post.

From the Price Tower website :

In 1919, Aline Barnsdall commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to assist with her plans for Olive Hill, her property in Hollywood that was to be a grand performing arts center. The scheme was never realized, yet Wright’s sketches and plans provide the only evidence of the patron’s ambitions vision. This exhibition presents more than two dozen drawings for the Olive Hill project, which includes the famed Hollyhock House, as well as two dozen photographs by Edmund Teske, a Chicago native who lived and worked on the Olive Hill property during the late 1940s. Teske’s ability to manipulate photographic printing to produce atmospheric images stretches the medium and helps to define both artist and architect

The Westcott House also its own page on Flickr.com, and, in case you don’t have enough friends, accounts on Facebook and MySpace (where they pathetically have only three friends).

One of his homes, the Searing House, still owned by the original client, has a remarkable website. Photos, plans and drawings are on-line, with links to other sites with Goff-related information. 

Bruce Goff, like Alden B. Dow, is one of the sadly under-appreciated artists (Goff was a composer as well as an architect) whose lives and work intersected with that of Frank Lloyd Wright.

The whole site is a real find for every fan of Wright or the Prairie School. It’s also a massive time sink, but an educational one.

I had stopped visiting the site because it had become ruined by a minuscule minority of perpetual juveniles. It’s nice to have it back.

[Burnham’s work even influenced the the very street I live on — then Park Avenue, Toledo’s attempt to enact the City Beautiful philosophy. The ultimate fate of Toledo’s attempt can be deduced by the fact my street was later renamed after the the company, Willys-Overland, that made the very first Jeep. (In fact, there exist some promotional films for early Jeeps that show my house in background).

So, to fill the lonely hours, there is the Encyclopedia of Chicago, an amazing web-based collection of articles on every aspect of the history of our favorite city. As the website puts it: ” a dynamic and unprecedented metropolitan history. Thousands of historical resources-including articles, photos, maps, broadsides and newspapers-related to Chicago’s colorful and complex history are at your fingertips”. The site is a collaboration between The Chicago History Museum, the Newberry Library and Northwestern University.

Serendipity is usually the best guide to this type of site, but if you are looking for a place to get started, try the extensive “digital essay” on Daniel Burnham’s The Plan of Chicago. If, like me, you are a map geek, here is a page that links to all of the historic maps on the site (the Souvenir Map of the World’s Columbian Exposition is especially cool). The site also has historic photos (here’s one of the Rookery, and another, here’s one of the interior of the Auditorium Building, here’s one of Unity Temple taken in 1913). There is even a copy of the Treaty of Greenville, important not only in the history of Chicago, but also the result of a battle fought just a few miles from my house. There is even a video clip from the Century of Progress Exposition (watch carefully, and you’ll see an airship or blimp taking off in the background).

Neither Frank Lloyd Wright nor Louis Sullivan leave much of a mark, but there are a number of entries that might be of interest. Articles on the City Beautiful Movement (written by Thomas S. Hines), the Prairie School written by H. Allen Brooks and Oak Park are nicely done. Even the Cracker Jack Co. and my former employer (a great company, prior to being attacked and absorbed by jackals) have brief entries.