Arthur L. Richards Houses

Arthur L. Richards Houses

Lawrence Technological University

February 26, 2015

American System-Built Homes

Wright, Frank Lloyd

O’Connor, Thomas (photograph)

American

Single Built Works

July, 1965

Wisconsin (state)

Milwaukee (inhabited place)

Prairie School

houses

prefabrication

Exterior view of the front of house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built by Arthur L. Richards in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1916. "Crafted between 1915 and 1917 with precut factory lumber to save cash and labor, a half-dozen duplexes and bungalows on this block—the American System-Built Homes, as they have come to be known—were Wright’s first attempts at attainable architecture. He did more sketches for this project than any other in his career, according to Dale Gyure, a Wright scholar. Gyure notes that the homes embody ideas from “The Art and Craft of the Machine,” a 1901 speech in which Wright spoke of building affordable housing by letting machines free humans for more high-level design. Wright was cooking up an ambitious plan with a developer, Arthur L. Richards, to sell homes via a car-dealership model when the combination of a sluggish economy and the entry of the United States into World War I effectively scuttled the project, according to Sidney K. Robinson, a professor emeritus of modern architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago,"--A Look at Frank Lloyd Wright's Little-Known Prefabs, by Patrick Sisson, January 7, 2015.

stucco

wood (plant material)

jpeg

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LTU-TO-357