Arts & Crafts  / Prairie School

Hallmarks

Hallmarks of Prairie Houses

Though they’re a hundred years old, Prairie School and Prairie-style houses still seem modern in their massing, materials, and lack of ornament. Dwellings built from Kansas City to Des Moines incorporated Prairie School-influenced massing and details: grouped windows, low-walled porch and stoop, modern ornament.

• HORIZONTAL is the emphasis on houses built to acknowledge the flat prairie lands. The massing is horizontal, and so are treatments such as porches, banded windows, and belt courses.

• LOW-PITCHED ROOFS, hipped or nearly flat, extend the horizontality, as do their overhanging eaves.

• CUBIC or otherwise geometric form is prevalent in massing and details.

• WINDOWS have different proportions than those of the 19th century. Look for vertical muntin patterns in sash, and tall narrow windows in bands that form a horizontal expanse. Geometric or abstract art glass (in the manner of Frank Lloyd Wright designs) was mass-produced.

• ORNAMENT is sparse and integral; look for abstract forms molded into concrete pillars, for example, rather than classical ornament or decorative sawn wood.