Prairie school

rairie School was a late 19th- and early 20th-century architectural style, most common to the Midwestern United States.

The style is usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in horizontal bands, integration with the landscape, solid construction, craftsmanship, and discipline in the use of ornament

Horizontal lines were thought to evoke and relate to the native prairie landscape.

the term was coined by H. Allen Brooks,

one of the first architectural historians to write extensively about these architects and their work

The Prairie School developed in sympathy with the ideals and design aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts Movement begun in the late 19th century in England.

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The Prairie School was also an attempt at developing an indigenous North American style of architecture that did not share design elements and aesthetic vocabulary with earlier styles of European classical architecture.

Many talented and ambitious young architects had been attracted by building opportunities stemming from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871

The World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago World's Fair) of 1893 was supposed to be a heralding of the city of Chicago's rebirth.

n reaction, they sought to create new work in and around Chicago that would display a uniquely modern and authentically American style, which came to be called Prairie.

The most famous proponent of the style, Frank Lloyd Wright, promoted an idea of "organic architecture"

the primary tenet of which was that a structure should look as if it naturally grew from the site

he Prairie School is mostly associated with a generation of architects employed or influenced by Louis Sullivan or Frank Lloyd Wright, but usually does not include Sullivan himself.

Although the Prairie School originated in Chicago, some Prairie School architects moved away spreading the influence well beyond the Midwest