Great Houses of Chicago, 1871–1921

In the period after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, a burgeoning economy and fortunes led to a building boom. This latest volume in the Urban Domestic Architecture series charts the changing architectural tastes and steady migration of the part of Chicago society that one early 20th-century commentator referred to as “the sifted few” to their enclaves on Prairie Avenue and Lake Shore Drive. The mansard roofs and restrained exteriors of the French-style mansions built by such Chicago leaders as Marshall Field, Cyrus McCormick and Henry Pullman masked lavish and eclectic interiors. This was a period that saw some of the earliest designs of Frank Lloyd Wright as well as two of H.H. Richardson's final Romanesque structures. The authors often spend as much time on the families that commissioned a specific home as they do on the architecture itself. This combination of social and architectural history places both the most traditional and the more advanced houses in the context of their times, while paying due attention to such acknowledged masterpieces as Wright's Robie House of 1908–1910. Benjamin and Cohen (coauthors, North Shore Chicago, 1890–1940 ) include brief biographies of 25 architects and their firms, along with 350 b&w photos, drawings and floor plans. (Mar.)