Copy of a Frank Lloyd Wright "Bootleg"
This week marked the anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright’s birth, which reminded me of driving around recently when something caught my eye. A house looked so familiar that I had to turn around. Was that a Wright design?
The western suburb of Wheaton has a replica not of Wright’s famous prairie style, but one of his “bootleg houses”. All architects have to start somewhere, Frank Lloyd Wright was no exception. While employed as a draftsman at the architectural firm of Adler & Sullivan, the 25-year-old worked on his own commissions, designing around eight “bootleg houses,” including the Thomas H. Gale House in 1892. According to his contract with Louis Sullivan, Wright was forbidden to do independent work. When Sullivan found out, Wright was immediately fired. The story goes that Sullivan was so upset by Wright’s disloyalty, he withheld the deed to Wright’s home (Sullivan had loaned $5000 to Wright to pay for its lot and construction). Sullivan’s partner Dankmar Adler had to intervene and settle the conflict between teacher and student. Sullivan and Wright would not reconcile for over two decades.
Located down the block from Frank Lloyd Wright’s own home in Oak Park, the Gale residence is almost identical to its neighbor to the east. Both were constructed at the same time as speculative houses for Gale, who worked as a realtor and was a member of Oak Park’s oldest families. E.O. Gale originally bought the land in 1865 and later deeded it to his son. For five years Thomas Gale lived at 1027 Chicago Avenue before moving a few blocks away to a home on Kenilworth Avenue. The twin home at 1019 Chicago Avenue was occupied by attorney Robert R. Parker for over a decade.
Influenced more by his first employer Joseph Lyman Silsbee than Louis Sullivan, these Queen Anne style “bootleg” houses have high-pitched roofs and polygonal dormers but also show Wright’s experimentation with simplification and geometric forms. Eliminated of ornamentation, the emphasis is on the horizontal, specifically the ribbon windows. Wright’s early designs show his development towards a unique personal style, later to be identified with the Prairie School.
Thomas Gale worked again with Wright on three summer cottages in Whitehall, Michigan but during his commission for a new home at 6 Elizabeth Court in Oak Park, he unexpectedly died at the age of 41 following surgery for stomach ulcers in 1907. His widow Laura Gale proceeded with the home’s construction, although neighbors thought it was a “terrible thing.” Considered a precursor to Fallingwater, it’s hard to believe this modernist design was built just fifteen years after her first home located a few blocks away. Moving in with her two children Sally and Edwin, Laura lived here until her death in 1943. Sally later sold it in 1961.
But what about the copy of the Gale “bootleg” home? Built in 2002, over a century after Wright’s original design, the exterior of the home on West Street in Wheaton is nearly a perfect match for both the Gale and Parker Houses. There are of course slight differences, one being the side of the new home, which lacks a dormer window and an octagon-shaped open porch. But it’s still a faithful reproduction that one could call it a “bootleg” of a “bootleg”.
It reminded me of the Fallingwater knockoff located on Geneva Lake in Wisconsin. Barely thirty years old, it was torn down just last year for $6 million so new owner Warren Mula, former president of Aon, can build his dream home. Hopefully the Wright reproduction in Wheaton will have a better future than the one in Wisconsin.