Winslow House (River Forest, Illinois)

The Winslow House is a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house located at 515 Auvergne Place in River Forest, Illinois. A landmark building in Wright’s career, the Winslow house, built in 1893-94, was his first major commission as an independent architect. While the design owes a tremendous debt to the earlier James Charnley House, Wright always considered the Winslow house extremely important to his career. Looking back on it in 1936, he described it as "the first 'prairie house’.”

The original owner, William Winslow, was exemplary of Wright’s Chicago clients, which the architect described as, “American men of business with unspoiled instincts and ideals.” A manufacturer of decorative ironwork, Winslow later worked with Wright on a number of publishing projects, specifically for Keat’s Eve of St. Agnes (1896), and The House Beautiful (1896/97). The men were first introduced through Winslow's dealings with Adler and Sullivan, Wright's former employers.

The house's design is inspired by the works of Wright's mentor Louis Sullivan and anticipates Wright’s mature Prairie School buildings of the next decade. Sheltered beneath a low-pitched roof with wide eaves, the home is symmetrical and horizontally divided into a stone section, a golden Roman brick section, and a terra cotta frieze of Sullivanesque ornament. In contrast to the calm and balanced front facade, the rear is a mass of irregular geometric forms. The interior echoes both Wright's own home and the Charnley House with the fireplace at the center facing the entry with rooms on either side and a hidden main staircase.

The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 17, 1970.