Prairie

Prairie style or Prairie School style architecture was common in the midwest in the late 19th and early 20th century. The term "prairie" is used to describe this style of house because of the way it looks. These houses are long, flat roofed houses, with no objects sticking above the roof, much like a flat prairie with no tall landscape features. These houses were to look as if they had grown out of the ground. Frank Lloyd Wright thought this style to be directly related to America, as it had more undeveloped land than the overdeveloped European countries.

Features

 * Low-pitched roof
 * Overhanging eaves
 * Horizontal lines
 * Central chimney
 * Open floor plan
 * Clerestory windows

History
The first Prairie styled houses (built in the 1890s) were usually plaster with wood trim and/or board and batten. As technology advanced, concrete blocks were soon used for the siding of these houses. These houses came in a variety of shapes, the most populars being L- and T-shaped. Soon, the popularity of these houses grew. There were Prairie home pattern books that made the building of one of these homes easier.

The Prairie style spawned many other styles of housing, one of the most popular being the American Foursquare (also known as the Prairie Box). Later, during the Great Depression in 1936, Frank Lloyd Wright created a more simplified version of the Prairie house called the Usonian, which was a less ornate style that represented the democratic ideals of the United States.By the mid 1920s, the Prairie style had fallen out of favor.

Architects
Notable architects associated with this style include:
 * Frank Lloyd Wright
 * Percy Dwight Bentley
 * John S. Van Bergen
 * Barry Byrne
 * Alfred Caldwell
 * William Drummond
 * George Grant Elmslie
 * Marion Mahony Griffin
 * Walter Burley Griffin
 * Henry John Klutho
 * George Washington Maher
 * Dwight Heald Perkins
 * William Gray Purcell
 * Claude and Starck
 * William LaBarthe Steele
 * Andrew Willatzen