History
The Anderson House was probably designed sometime around 1913 by Oak Park, Illinois native John S. Van Bergen, the house was not built until 1916. The history of the property, on Augusta Avenue in DeKalb, and Prairie style began in 1901 when another Oak Park architect, E.E. Roberts, was commissioned to design a home on the site for A.W. Fisk. Fisk was a business manager for the Ellwood Green Percheron horse business. Local news reports hyped the project, scheduled to be built in 1902, because Roberts was a well-known architect and probably the first of the Prairie School to receive a commission in DeKalb. The project never began, and the property stood empty until 1916.
In 1916 the lot was purchased by a local clothing merchant, Andrew O. Anderson, a Swedish immigrant. Anderson lived in several locations around DeKalb including the Glidden House Hotel before he and his brother Frank decided to build homes for their respective families. Oral tradition has held that the two brothers, and business partners held a friendly wager based on which brother found a better design for their home. Anderson sought out a noted Prairie style architect after being impressed by such a home in Maywood, Illinois. The home in Maywood that had impressed Anderson was designed by Van Bergen who had worked and studied under Solon S. Beman, Roberts, and Frank Lloyd Wright. By 1916, Van Bergen would become the best "imitator" of Wright and was noted for his residential work.
Read more about this topic: Andrew O. Anderson House
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The basic idea which runs right through modern history and modern liberalism is that the public has got to be marginalized. The general public are viewed as no more than ignorant and meddlesome outsiders, a bewildered herd.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)