Purcell & Elmslie: Prairie Progressive Architects - Hardcover

Gebhard, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1423600053 ISBN 13: 9781423600053

Publisher: Gibbs Smith, 2006

Synopsis

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.
The firm of Purcell and Elmslie was tremendously successful in the sense that their small open-planned free-flowing houses could be shared by a great number of Americans of moderate means. Projects discussed in this book can be found throughout the Midwest, including Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, North Dakota, Illinois, Wisconsin, and more. The time has come to recognize the work of these progressive architects of the Midwest.
Purcell and Elmslie: Prairie Progressives includes:
Comprehensive biographies of George Grant Elmslie and William Gray Purcell
The Work of the Firm
The Domestic and Non-Domestic Work of Purcell, Feick and Elmslie
Work after the Firm Broke Up
The Late Work of Purcell and Elmslie
A Catalog of Major Projects

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Purcell&Elmslie
Prairie Progressive Architects Organic, honesty, and democratic were the terms most often used by Prairie School architects in reference to their architecture. The new architecture of the early 1900s was in essence the culmination of a tendency toward indigenous expression that had been inherent in America since the seventeenth century.
The initiators of this progressive philosophy were Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, whose works and writings are the most widely known. In fact, they are so well known that there has been a tendency to dismiss the others who worked and produced in the same period as copyists or minor innovators. Such is far from the truth as the firm of William Gray Purcell and George Grant Elmslie adequately indicates. They made significant contributions that were important not only in their own day but remain important in the fabric of our towns today. The most productive of the Prairie School firms of the time, Purcell and Elmslie included in all their thinking 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.
The only book to contain details from the extensive office records of the firm of Purcell and Elmslie, as well as from letters, unpublished writings, notes and personal conversations with William Gray Purcell and George Grant Elmslie, this comprehensive volume encompasses the history of the firm, from their residential designs such as the Purcell-Cutts House in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to commercial buildings such as the Merchants Bank in Winona, Minnesota, to civic buildings such as the Woodbury County Courthouse in Sioux City, Iowa.

From the Back Cover:

"A sumptuous, informative volume that should be welcomed by all those who appreciate the Arts and Crafts Movement. This book will likely remain the standard source for its subject for years to come."
-Richard Longstreth, author of The Charnley House: Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Making of Chicago's Gold Coast.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gibbs Smith
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1423600053
• ISBN 13: 9781423600053
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144
• Editor: Gebhard Patricia