Robie House - History

History

Wright designed the Robie House in his studio in Oak Park, Illinois between 1908 and 1909. The design precedent for the Robie House was the Ferdinand F. Tomek House in Riverside, Illinois, designed by Wright in 1907-08. At the time that he commissioned Wright to design his home, Robie was only 28 years old and the assistant manager of the Exclesior Supply Company, a company on the South Side of Chicago owned and managed by his father. Although later drawings of the Robie House show a date of 1906, Wright could not have started the design for the building earlier than the spring of 1908 because Robie had actually purchased the property only in May of that year. He and his wife, Lora Hieronymus Robie, a 1900 graduate of the University of Chicago, had selected the property at 5757 South Woodlawn Avenue in order to remain close to the campus and the social life of the University. The property was a typical urban lot in Hyde Park, measuring 60 feet (18 m) by 180 feet (55 m).

The contractor for the project, H.B. Barnard Co. of Chicago, began construction on April 15, 1909. Wright did not supervise the construction of the house except in the earliest stages. He closed his Oak Park studio in the fall of 1909 and left for Europe to undertake the work which led to the publication of the Wasmuth Portfolio. He turned over his existing commissions to Hermann von Holst, who retained Marion Mahony, an architect in Wright's office, and George Mann Niedecken, an interior designer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin who had worked with Wright on the Susan Lawrence Dana House in Springfield, Illinois, the Avery Coonley House in Riverside, Illinois, and the Meyer May House in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to continue their work on the project. Niedecken's influence can be seen in the design of some of the furnishings for the house as well as the carpets in the entrance hall, the living room, and the dining room.

The Robie family—Frederick, Laura, and their two children, Frederick Jr. and Lorraine—moved into the home in May 1910, although all of the final details, including rugs and furniture, were not completed until January 1911. The final cost of the home was $58,500--$13,500 for the land, $35,000 for the design and construction of the building, and $10,000 for the furnishings. ($58,500 in 1910 is approximately equal to $1,300,000 in 2007.) Robie's original budget had been $60,000.

Robie's tenure in his home was short lived, however. As a result of financial problems incurred by the death of his father in July 1909 and the deterioration of his marriage, Robie was forced to sell the house after living in it for only fourteen months. David Lee Taylor, president of Taylor-Critchfield Company, an advertising agency, bought the house and all of its Wright-designed contents in December 1911. Taylor died less than a year later, and his widow, Ellen Taylor, sold the house and most of its contents to Marshall D. Wilber, treasurer of the Wilber Mercantile Agency, in November 1912. The Wilbers were the last family to live in Robie House, residing there for 14 years.

In June 1926, the Wilbers sold the house and its contents to the Chicago Theological Seminary, who used the house as a dormitory and dining hall although it was primarily interested in the site for purposes of future expansion. In 1941, a graduate student at the Illinois Institute of Technology accidentally discovered that the Seminary was moving ahead with a plan to demolish the Robie House and informed his instructors, including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The threat of demolition aroused a storm of protest. Although the Seminary's plans were subsequently postponed, the crisis was averted more by the onset of World War II than by acquiescence of the property’s owner.

The most serious threat to the existence of the Robie House arose 16 years later. On March 1, 1957, the Seminary announced plans to demolish the Robie House on September 15 in order to begin the construction of a dormitory for its students. This time an international outcry arose, and Wright himself, then 90 years old, returned to the Robie House on March 18, accompanied by the media, students and neighborhood organizers to protest the intended demolition of the house. Commenting on the threatened demolition, Wright quipped, "It all goes to show the danger of entrusting anything spiritual to the clergy." Fortunately, only weeks earlier, the Chicago City Council, led by Hyde Park alderman Leon Despres, had enacted an ordinance to create the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. On September 15, 1971, the newly formed Commission, with the support of Mayor Richard J. Daley, declared the Robie House a Chicago landmark. Moreover, two fraternities at the University of Chicago provided the Seminary with a realistic alternative to its plans of demolition. During his very brief tenure as a student at the University of Wisconsin, Wright had been a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. The University of Chicago's Phi Delt chapter house was located two doors north of the Robie house at 5737 Woodlawn Avenue, and the Seminary was already the owner of the lot between the two properties. The Phi Delts offered to vacate their house, and the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, located next to the Phi Delt house, offered to vacate their house as well. These offers were a turning point in the effort to save the Robie house since the three properties provided the Seminary with sufficient land for the dormitory they sought to build.

In August 1958, William Zeckendorf, a friend of Wright's and a New York real estate developer then involved in several development projects on Chicago's south side, acquired the Robie House at Wright's urging from the seminary through his development company Webb & Knapp. In February 1963, Zeckendorf donated the building to the University of Chicago. The University used Robie House as the Adlai E. Stevenson Institute of International Affairs, and later the building served as the headquarters for the University's Alumni Association.

In January 1997 the University moved their offices out and turned over tours, operations, fundraising and restoration to the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust on February 1. Beginning in March 2002, the Preservation Trust has undertaken the historic restoration of the Robie House, returning the building to its condition when completed in 1910. The entire restoration had an estimated cost of $10 million and was expected to be completed by the building's centennial in 2010.