The Robie House Hides in Plain Sight

Woodlawn Avenue in Hyde Park, across from the University of Chicago. Frank Lloyd Wright, 1910. The finest Prairie School house ever built. It looks like a ship — long, low, cantilevered roof extending twenty feet beyond the walls without visible support, reaching toward the street.

Inside, Wright eliminated walls and replaced them with screens of leaded glass and ceiling height changes. Living and dining spaces flow into each other around a central fireplace massive enough to anchor the whole house. The 174 art glass windows are geometric prairie wildflowers — wheat, sumac — in amber and green glass that filters afternoon light into a warm golden haze. Stained glass in cathedrals has moved me less.

Wright designed everything — furniture, fixtures, rugs, even flower urn placement. The dining table has integrated lamp posts at each corner creating a room within a room. Controlling, brilliant, slightly mad. Go outside after the tour and look at the roofline from the south — horizontal layers echoing the flat Illinois prairie. He wasn't building a house. He was building a landscape. Tours Thursday through Monday, book ahead.