Prairie School

The Prairie School was an architectural movement that emerged in and around Chicago beginning around 1900, developing a home-grown American alternative to the historical revival styles that had dominated nineteenth century domestic architecture. Its buildings favor low, horizontal massing, broad overhanging eaves, ribbons of art glass windows, and open interior plans that dissolve the boundary between rooms, all conceived to echo the flat expanse of the midwestern prairie landscape rather than any inherited European precedent. The movement drew on the Arts and Crafts emphasis on honest materials and craftsmanship while rejecting its historicist ornament, and it flourished most fully in residential commissions across Illinois, Wisconsin and neighboring states before its momentum slowed after the First World War. Prairie School buildings are credited with establishing an architectural vocabulary that later American organic and modern currents drew on directly.