| Address | 12147 S. Harvard Avenue, Chicago, IL |
|---|---|
| Built | 1900 |
| Architect | Frank Lloyd Wright |
| Status | Designated Chicago Landmark |
| Designation Date | May 9, 1996 (Final) |
| Neighborhood | West Pullman |
| Type | House |
| Landmark ID | L-97 |
Direct quotes from the Chicago Landmark Designation Report
“Frank Lloyd Wright and the Influence of Japan In Frank Lloyd Wright to 1910: The First Golden Age (1958), Grant Carpenter Manson describes the Foster House and its barn, built "on a prairie in the remote regions of southwestern Chicago then known as West Pullman" as the most important of the small group of houses Wright designed with overtly Japanese detailing just after the turn of the century.”
“The Japanese influence on the Prairie school came most directly through the movement's progenitor, Frank Lloyd Wright. Seeing Japanese buildings and other materials in Chicago in 1893 led him to begin collecting Japanese prints and in 1905 to visit Japan for the first time.”
“Foster was a director, and in 1900 vice-president and treasurer, of the West Pullman Land Association, a syndicate of Chicago, Boston, and New York men formed in 1891 to develop a tract of some 480 acres of land southwest of the town of Pullman.”
“He goes on to say, "they belong neither to the transitional period [of the late 1890s] nor to that which followed; they are sports, in a class by themselves, but very revealing." Wright may have first encountered Japanese architecture as a nine-year-old boy visiting the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition with his family.”
“Wright certainly saw Japanese architecture in 1893 at the Chicago fair. Japanese products were displayed in several of the major fair buildings, demonstrating the nation's achievements in agriculture and industry.”
“The style takes its name from the wood shingles which covered most or all of the exterior of these houses. After leaving Adler and Sullivan in 1893, Wright designed other houses in the Shingle Style, as well as in the more formal Colonial revival style.”
“Wright's borrowings from the Far East were experiments that contributed to the development of his architectural thought and practice and through him to other architects whose work formed the Prairie school.”
“The Shingle Style came to Wright through the early years of his career. He came to Japanese design through its sensitivity to nature and its honest presentation of the products of nature.”