History
Charles E. Roberts was an engineer, inventor and an important early client of Frank Lloyd Wright. Roberts was an influential member of the building committee of Unity Temple in Oak Park. For Roberts, Wright also developed the Quadruple Block Plan of 1900-1903. Many architectural historians have mistakenly identified Charles E. Roberts as the father of Oak Park Studio architect Isabel Roberts. As has been well documented, Isabel's father was James H. Roberts of South Bend, Indiana.
In 1896 Charles E. Roberts, an established patron of Frank Lloyd Wright, commissioned two jobs by the architect. One was the Charles E. Roberts House, which Wright executed an interior remodel on and the other was the Charles E. Roberts Stable. Wright redesigned the structure from an old barn into a garage for Roberts' electric car. The building was eventually converted into a residence by architect Charles E. White, Jr., Roberts' son-in-law and an employee in Wright's studio in the years 1903-1905. Sources greatly vary on the date of White's conversion. The village of Oak Park's landmark nomination form for Wright's other Roberts project, the patron's home, puts White's conversion of the garage into a residence at in 1929, at the same time the structure was physically moved from its original location to its present location. Historian Thomas O'Gorman, while noting the 1929 move, stated that the Wright-redesigned barn conversion was altered into a dwelling between 1903 and 1904. O'Gorman connects White's remodel to the sheer overhaul the building experienced under Wright's creative thumb.
Read more about this topic: Charles E. Roberts Stable
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)