Wright Around Chicago: Community Enrichment Series
Join the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust for an ongoing series of presentations that engage our community with the life and work of Frank Lloyd Wright and the rich and varied histories of the neighborhoods in which he defined his visionary Prairie style.
With programs held citywide and centered around the Preservation Trust’s three main sites in Oak Park, downtown Chicago, and Hyde Park, Wright Around Chicago brings an expansive interpretation to Wright’s work, considering it within the context of the city that was his home.
From Country Hamlet to Urban Village: The Transformation of Oak Park in the Wright Years and Beyond
Frank Lipo, Executive Director, Oak Park Historical Society
In the two decades that Frank Lloyd Wright called Oak Park home, the architect grew his family and his professional reputation, influencing his hometown and leaving his mark on the community. In a similar way, Wright was influenced by the people and places he knew intimately for twenty years, particularly since there was tremendous growth and ferment in the village during 1889-1909. His hometown on the far edge of Chicago was transforming itself into a culturally sophisticated boomtown that aspired to re-invent itself as a new kind of suburb. Wright’s departure under a cloud in 1909 may have soured that legacy for some, but it also showed the durability and limitations of community pride, loyalty and identity. This lecture will trace the Oak Park of Wright’s day, overlapping the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, highlighting the changes in the community that influenced Wright and the changes wrought by Wright and his colleagues that still resonate today.
Photograph: Oak Park, 1873. Courtesy of the Oak Park Historical Society.
Date: Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Time: 6:30 pm
Location: Oak Park Public Library, Veterans Room, 834 Lake Street, Oak Park, IL 60301
Admission: Free - REGISTER NOW (space is limited)
Advance registration for members and volunteers begins February 7, 2013.
Public registration begins February 14, 2013.