Ben and Harriet Schulein House

The Ben and Harriet Schulein House, also known as the Ben Schulein House, is a two-story historic residence located at 2604 Jackson Street, Sioux City, Iowa, in the United States. Designed in 1913 for a locally prominent Jewish businessman and his wife by William L. Steele (1875–1949), it represents a turning point in Steele’s development as an architect by introducing Prairie School features.

Steele had served in the office of the famous Chicago architect Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) prior to settling in Sioux City in 1904. Sullivan criticized the then-dominant styles of architecture based on historical revivals or eclectic mixing of historical features, championing instead progressive architecture based on concepts such as elimination of historical styles, simplification, functional and “true” expression of a building’s purpose, embrace of new technology, and the frank use of materials without disguise. Another of Sullivan's protégés, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959), was inspired by Sullivan to pioneer the Prairie Style of architecture at the turn of the 20th Century. However, Steele had been relatively unsuccessful in interesting clients in the Sioux City area in his progressive ideas about architecture, although he had designed a number of mildly progressive American Craftsman bungalows and the Davidson Building (Sioux City, 1912–1913), a Sullivanesque office block.

The wide eaves and strong horizontal lines of the Schulein House represent Steele’s first tentative steps in the direction of the Prairie School. From now on, whenever budget and client could be stretched far enough, Steele would turn away from other architectural styles and pursue Prairie Style. Steele’s evolution as a noted Prairie architect would continue with two Prairie-influenced buildings in 1915: the Carnegie Library (Armour, South Dakota) and the Livestock National Bank (Sioux City). These in turn led to the Woodbury County Courthouse (1915–1918, with George Grant Elmslie as principal designer), the First Congregational Church (1916–1918), the Charles Mix County Courthouse (1916–1917), the H.H. Everist House (1916–1920), and many other celebrated Prairie School designs in Sioux City and elsewhere in Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota.