Frank Lloyd Wright-Prairie School of Architecture Historic District

Oak Park's north-central neighborhood covers about 474 acres of former prairie laid out on a flat street grid. Detached wooden houses sit on lots of varied size behind continuous lawns and mature street trees, giving the streets a park-like character. Development began after the Civil War and was nearly complete by World War I, so styles run from Italianate through classical revival, with a notable body of early modern work. Frank Lloyd Wright settled in Oak Park in 1889, built his own house that year and a studio in 1897, and designed about twenty-five buildings in the village, most within this area. Roughly sixty-five more buildings come from Prairie School architects, including students and associates of Wright. The nomination describes this as the largest concentration of early modern architecture in the world, and says the district would likely have qualified for its suburban character and architecture from 1865 to 1917 even without Wright. Two boyhood homes of Ernest Hemingway are also here.