When built, 1908-10, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, broke from the static tradition of a domestic box, to create a dramatic spatial exercise that echoed the dynamic hum of modern transportation that knitted together the growing metropolitan grid of Chicago. Like the raised steel rails of Chicago’s elevated railroad, the Robie House raised paired steel beams on brick piers to support the aggressive thrusts of the building’s cantilevers and to open up the plan within. The low horizontal of a hipped roof with broad sheltering eaves, had become the leitmotif of numerous railroad stations during this age of rail stretching across the prairies. Even the living room of the Robie House evokes a train-like demeanor with its long narrow living space flanked on three sides by generous walls of repeating glass windows. Unlike several of Wright’s earlier homes, the Robie House did not have a horse stable, but a three-car garage. The client, Frederick Robie, was the manufacturer of the Excelsior Auto Cycle and an experimental motor car. In Robie, the architect had found a kindred spirit; Wright was one of the first in Oak Park to own a motor car, a runabout called the “Yellow Devil.” Wright referred to the Robie House as the “first ‘Dampfer House,’” in reference to a German word for steamship, another prominent feature of mechanized transportation in this city along Lake Michigan. The audacity of the cantilevered roofs even evoked the nascent flying machines of the Wright Brothers. In his seminal Toward an Architecture (1923), Le Corbusier lambasted architects with “eyes that do not see” for ignoring the talismans of modern design: liners, airplanes, and automobiles. Wright had engineered a profound essay on the nexus of modern transportation and architecture several years before Le Corbusier’s rather different response to this challenge for modern design.
About the presenterCraig Zabel
Dr. Craig Zabel is an Associate Professor of Art History at Penn State, where he teaches courses on modern architectural history. His recent research has explored American modern architecture and popular culture, from the Flatiron Building to the cinematic Emerald City of Oz. He is a recipient of the Penn State Teaching Fellow Award. Dr. Zabel served as Head of the Department of Art History at Penn State from 1996 to 2017.