Modern American Homes: Prairie & Craftsman Architecture

As a collection of homes -- mostly from the Chicago area from the first two decades of the 20th century -- this book is a wonderful piece of architectural history. At the time of its original publication, it became a pattern book for contractors and a source of ideas for architects across the United States and beyond. It contains a collection of examples of built residences and numbers among the architects therein Frank Lloyd Wright and others noted for their introduction and use of the prairie style. Bungalows and American Four-Squares are represented as well as some early Spanish, Colonial and Tudor Revivals. If you have a house from that time period it may be "in here" or inspired by what appeared in these pages.Wright biographers ought to be more aware of this book than they are. It appeared just after Wright's midlife crisis abandonment of his family and sojourn in Europe with Mamah Cheney. Wright had contracted with von Holst to take over the Oak Park Studio. Architectural historians have downplayed the connections between Wright and von Holst preceding that move, and they have almost universal missed the fact that von Holst was much more aware of and sympathetic to the prairie style than has been credited him by the "experts". This book goes a long way to counteract that.Hermann V. von Holst (1874-1955) was an American architect practicing in Chicago, Illinois and Boca Raton, Florida, from the 1890s through the 1940s, best remembered for agreeing to take on the responsibility of heading up Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural practice when Wright went off to Europe with Mamah Cheney in 1909. von Holst was born in Freiburg, Germany on June 17, 1874. von Holst graduated from the architecture program at the University of Chicago in 1893 and the architecture program at MIT in 1896. He found employment as a draughtsman at the prestigious architectural firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, in their Chicago office, one of the successor firms of the celebrated architect Henry Hobson Richardson. By 1900, von Holst was head draughtsman at the firm. Following extensive travels, von Holst opened his own practice in Chicago in 1905, with offices in The Rookery Building, Chicago. In 1909, he moved his office to Chicago's Steinway Hall, where he was among a collegial group of Prairie School architects.Active in professional organizations, von Holst served as Treasurer of the Architectural League of America in 1905. He published several books on architectural subjects, including `'Cyclopedia of Drawing'' (1907). He served as professor of architectural design at the Chicago School of Architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago. He also taught design in the Department of Architecture at the Armour Institute of Technology (later IIT). He took over and successfully headed Wright's Oak Park Studio when Wright and Mamah were off in Europe and excellent prairie style houses emerged from that arrangement. Later, he removed to Florida and work in the development he nursed into being called "Floresta" near Boca Raton (that is now mistakenly attributed by realtors to Addison Mizner) sells for millions.So, there is more than houses in this fine, thoughtful collection.