150 Nuttall Rd
Riverside, IL 60546, USA

F.F. Tomek House (The Ship House; See also:Riverside Landscape Architecture District) - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

The Robie house (1908-1910), Wright's most famous prairie house and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963, is recognized as the " ... clearest of Wright's expressions of the prairie house ideal." In addition to being a good example of an influential and beloved style, the Tomek house is a unique link in the chain of Wright's design development.

In an article for Modern Architecture in 1931, Frank Lloyd Wright defined what he attempted to achieve in his prairie architecture. He cited nine qualities of the style. The Tomek house embodies all nine of these qualities.

First- To reduce the number of necessary parts of the house and the separate rooms to a minimum, and make all come together as an enclosed space.

In the Tomek house, the living and dining rooms, separated by the hearth and stair, begin to share space. Bulkheads, rather than walls set off the circulation paths in those rooms. Wright uses compositional elements, stairs or ceiling bulkheads, to define space without dividing it.

Second-To associate the building as a whole with its site by extension and emphasis of the planes parallel to the ground, but keeping the floors off the best part of the site.

The ground floor, unpunctured by windows and outlined by the wood trim, acts as a heavy base for the building. The low-hipped roofs with their wide eaves and dramatic cantilevers emphasize the horizontal. The single vertical element in the composition, the chimney, acts as a visual anchor, tying all the horizontal elements together and rooting them to their site.

Third-To eliminate the room as a box and the house as another by making all walls enclosing screens ...

Boundaries between inside and outside are blurred in the Tomek house. The raised terrace on the east end of the building is an outside space, but it is enclosed by the huge cantilever, visually connecting it to the interior. The breakfast room on the opposite side of the building is an interior space, but protrudes outside the walls. Its translucent ceiling adds to an exterior feeling, as does the lack of support mullion between the two large casement windows. Comer windows and the bands of windows also blur this distinction between interior and exterior.

Fourth-To get the unwholesome basement up out of the ground, entirely above it, as a low pedestal for the living portion of the home.

The ground floor of the Tomek House does serve as a visual pedestal for the dramatic windows and roof forms. Putting the main living spaces on the upper floor provides privacy and dramatic views of the site.

Fifth-To harmonize all necessary openings to "outside" or to " inside" with good human proportions and make them occur naturally-singly or as a series in the scheme of the whole building.

The main entrance does not puncture the flat expanse on the south facade, but is held in place between two pilasters. These pilasters set the area between them off, making the door seem natural, non-violent. The roof over this door is low, cantilevered far out, creating an intimate, proportionate entryway. The band of windows above this door does not puncture the wall, but spans the space between the horizontal base and the roof. A straight band of twelve windows with thin mullions replaces the walls that should support the long roof. Instead, Wright put the supporting piers in the interior spanning the indoor and outdoor spaces with steel. Here Wright "broke the box." A window in the reception room was moved to avoid direct views from the carriageway entry into the room.

Sixth-To eliminate combinations of different materials in favor of mono-material so far as possible; to use no ornament that did not come out of the nature of materials to make the whole building clearer

Wright varies colors on the inside and the Tomek house retains an unusually large amount of original plaster in an autumnal palette. On the exterior, it is a natural sand-colored stucco with rough-sawn cedar trim. The wood trim serves to define masses on the exterior and to draw the eye and lead the visitor in the interior. The art glass is integral to the building. It keeps the elements out and adds texture to the void between the horizontal band and the roof. It is also decorative jewelry, filling the organic composition with warm and patterned light. All the original windows are still in place. They contain different widths of zinc earning, a typical Wright design feature in his art glass

Seventh-To incorporate all heating, lighting, plumbing so that these systems became

Radiators in the Tomek house are built into the walls, covered by designed wooden screens. The steel beam in the living and dining room ceilings is also the bulkhead that divides the walkways from the central portion of the rooms. The backlit art glass in the dining room and the custom designed light fixtures on the ground floor also incorporate this aesthetic.

Eighth-To incorporate as organic architecture-so far as possible-furnishings making them all one with the building ...

Wright designed much of the furniture for the Tomek home. The built-in seats, architectonic sideboard cupboards and cabinets remain, although the freestanding furniture has been removed.

Ninth-Eliminate the decorator.

By creating a unified color palette, providing furniture, and limiting the need for curtains, Wright created a unified, style-less interior that residents of the Tomek house would never need to "update."

By Wright's own definition, the Tomek house is an exemplary prairie style home. Later in his life he saw the house as part of a group "especially suited to the prairie ... which are virtual one floor arrangements, raised a low story height above the level of the ground."7 Other homes he included in this group were; the Coonley house (an NHL, 1970), also in Riverside, the Thomas, Heurtley and Robie houses. Edgar Kaufmann chose the south elevation of the Tomek house to illustrate a portion of Wright's text discussing perfect, integral forms.

Scholars have come to see the Tomek house, in plan and in elevation, as a predecessor to the Robie house, the prairie house par excellence. Built only three years before the Robie house, the Tomek house documents the development of Wright's thoughts as a sketch demonstrates the development of a final design.

In elevation, the Tomek house is the first link in a chain continuing with the Yahara Boat Club first thought to have been conceived in 1902, but later correctly dated 1905,9 developing through the River Forest Tennis Club (1906), and ending at the Robie House. The Yahara Boat Club, an unexecuted project, "was the first design in which Wright carried to its logical conclusions his interest in abstract composition." 10 The long, unbroken base, the wide roof disengaged by bands of windows, and the plain end pilasters articulate the mass, resembling the form of the Tomek house. The River Forest Tennis Club was also a narrow building with a cantilevered roof. Its terrace and pointed end bays begin to suggest the end treatment of the Tomek and Robie houses. 11 The Tomek house takes these features and develops them further. The pilasters add a sense of rhythm to the south elevation. The low-hipped roof hovers over this articulated mass, and the dramatic cantilever draws attention to it. Low walls and comer windows assure that no portion of the home appears box-like.

The main elevation of the Robie house elaborates on these elements. With the experience of the Tomek house, and with roman brick, a more expensive material, Wright creates a complex elevation that more fully incorporates his design intents. He uses the long, thin roman bricks, with raked out horizontal mortar joints and flush verticals to emphasize the horizontal. 12 Rather than creating a rhythm with pilasters on the lower level, as he does at the Tomek, Wright uses three layers of overlapping brick walls to create "wall screens," that reinforce the horizontalness of the design. The ends of the Robie house become symmetrical, prow-shaped interior spaces. The front door is switched to the rear of the home. While more fully articulated and without a main door, the exterior of the Robie house resembles the Tomek house. A low-hipped roof cantilevers above the main living space, again visually disconnected from the body of the house by a band of art glass windows. The smaller upper floor, with a low roof with wide eaves, attaches itself to the chimney, the primary vertical element of the composition. In the Robie house, the chimney has been visually enlarged by including a closet space in its mass, adding strength to the vertical element of the composition. 13 Setbacks and comer windows are again used to avoid a boxy appearance. The changes in degree between the elevations of the Tomek and Robie homes suggest a continuum of design.

As the elevation of the Robie house developed from ideas used in the Tomek house, so did the plan. In plan, both of these homes are of the "in-line" type, as defined by Wright. A variation on the cruciform theme, these projects are normally elevated, with a horizontal axis, the living and dining room spaces, through which passes a primary vertical element, the chimney. A cross-axis with vertical implications then passes next to this vertical element, the main entry path in both the Robie and Tomek houses. 14 Wright used this general plan configuration throughout his career, long after he left the prairie style behind, but it was in these two houses that he fully developed the type.

The "in-line" plan began with the unexecuted McAfee house (1894), where the main floor entry created a cross-axis with the primary living space, dividing it in two. Here the stair divides the kitchen and servant's area. Wright's prairie ideals of unity of space and economy of elements drove him to use and refine this basic plan in subsequent commissions. The concept appears in the Husser house (1897). Here, Wright uses the entry stairs and a pair of alcoves to create a cross axis and divide the central space into two. He also extends the dining space with a polygonal apse, creating a second cross axis and further defining it as a separate space. This plan is compressed and improved in the Tomek house. Wright pushes the secondary spaces to the back of the home, isolating the formal spaces, the heart of his problem. He reduces the number of elements by bringing the stairs into the home. The stairs and the hearth act together to divide the living and dining room spaces in the center, rather than on the sides, as was done in the Husser house. This increases the distinction between the two and eliminates the need for a second cross axis.

In the Robie house, the changes in plan are refinements on the Tomek plan. The great breakthrough of the Robie house was the flow of ceiling space between the living and dining rooms. It is as if Wright stood in the Tomek hall, looking to the south, and saw this possibility of unity of space. In the Robie house, Wright pulls the secondary spaces even further away from the central core and makes the two ends of this main portion symmetrical; both pointed as the prow of a ship. The crucial change made in the Robie house was the division of the living and dining room spaces. The two are again divided in the center by the vertical entry stair-hearth unit. This time, however, the six-foot wide stairway becomes two narrow flights of stairs, rather than a single wider one, and option Wright first considered for the Tomek House according to drawings at Taliesin. This change allows Wright to widen the pathways between the two main spaces. In the Tomek house, the hall on the north breaks the flow of space, and the dining room is narrow. In the Robie house, the pathways are widened. This strengthens the connection between the rooms and achieves the ideal of unity of space.

In the Robie house, Wright solved the design problem of the prairie home. The solution, however, was not born whole, rather its development can be seen in Wright's previous projects, most obviously the Tomek house with the first cantilevers in a residence. In this home, Wright developed the massing of his elevations and finally glimpsed a unity of space. At the time it was built, the Tomek House was on the cutting edge of architectural change and was one of Wright's great contributions to architecture. The repose, the two dramatic cantilevers (two feet larger than those at the Robie House), the masterly touch of knowing where to stop and not overdo, the stately proportions and careful detailing are hallmarks of a mature artist, not to be expected of one in his thirties. The Tomek House contains many innovations that became characteristic of Wright's later work, such as the fenestration, use of glass (art glass, picture windows, and interior glass), corner windows, far-reaching cantilevers, a carport and porch integral to the house and backing corner supports. In an interview in the later part of his life, Mr. Robie recalled how impressed his contractor was with Wright's drawings. It was tightly designed as a whole, and the drawings left the contractor with no forgotten or undesigned elements to deal with. 16 Perhaps this was due to the fact that Wright had designed this basic building before, in the Tomek house, and in the Robie house he was merely fine-tuning these elements to achieve perfection. In the Tomek house the ideas of the Robie house appear almost fully formed, and in fact Edgar Kaufmann felt;

... the dramatic entrance stair and the main rooms ... in the Tomek house, (are) designed with a surer architectural touch than the same elements in the more famous Robie House ... The Robie House benefits from better materials and a finer exterior, especially in the expression of its subordinate parts; but in spatial essentials the Tomek house is clearly supenor.

While aesthetics is debatable, the development of the Tomek house adds depth to the understanding of the National Historic Landmark Robie House, by lighting the path that Wright's mind took while solving the problem of the prairie home. It is this association, with its

place as a well-preserved prairie house, which makes the Tomek house an important work in the history of modernism in architecture.