Purcell and Elmslie : Prairie Progressive Architects

by Gebhard, David

• ISBN13: 9781423600053
• ISBN10: 1423600053
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-09-15
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith

Summary

Purcell and Elmslie: Prairie Progressives explores the work of two important members of the organic architecture movement, and celebrates their tremendously important contributions to American architecture and the Prairie School. Wishing to return to simplicity and honesty, Purcell and Elmslie created homes and buildings that were consistent with a democratic society-simple forms, the natural use of textural materials and decoration, and buildings that accommodated the nature of a site. As did Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, Purcell and Elmslie held the conviction that a building does not end with its simple structure, but reaches its final and logical culmination in the clothing-color, situation and natural environment, together with its decoration of glass, terra-cotta, and other textural materials.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. 8
Background	p. 16
Introduction	p. 18
George Grant Elmslie	p. 28
William Gray Purcell	p. 46
The Work of the Firm	p. 66
The Nature of the Partnership	p. 68
The Domestic Work	p. 80
The Nondomestic Work	p. 116
Work after the Firm	p. 148
The Late Work of Purcell & Elmslie	p. 150
Contribution & Influence of the Firm	p. 160
Catalog of Major Projects	p. 168
Early Work of Elmslie	p. 170 Early Wo
Purcell & Feick	p. 170
Purcell, Feick & Elmslie	p. 171
Purcell & Elmslie	p. 174
Purcell 1920-1965	p. 176
Elmslie 1920-1952	p. 176
Notes	p. 178
Bibliography	p. 182
Photo Credits	p. 188
Index	p. 189
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

The new architecture of the early 1900s was in essence the culmination of a tendency toward indigenous expression that had been inherent in American architecture since the seventeenth century. The period from 1890 to 1917 was the final battle line drawn between academic eclecticism, represented in the work of Richard Morris Hunt and the firm of McKim, Mead and White, and progressivism represented first by the Chicago commercial school and the work of Louis Sullivan and later by the Prairie School, by the western bungalow tradition of the Greene brothers, and finally by the Craftsman movement of Gustav Stickley. As far as quantity is concerned, the progressive groups fought a losing battle, but in regard to quality, history has more than vindicated their determined stand.