Read Introducing Chicago blog first, then this. I don't know how to reverse them.
Take the tour to Oak Park, the home of Walter Burley Griffin. It's an outer suburb of Chicago, the perfect place for a young architect to build a house and start a family.
* You can do a walking tour around the houses that he built for friends and family in the late 1800s and very early 1900's.... He started designing houses at a time when Victorian architecture was very formally structured... tall, turreted, each house in the centre of the block, front entrance also centred and always curtains on the windows.
* He had decided that houses should follow the lie of the land, the start of the bungalow house, set on a concrete slab, rather than over basements.... all the trends that we use today, including posiitioning the houses in the most suitable place on the block, with entrances around the side or wherever it works best.
* And the connection with Australia? One of his star young employees was Walter Burley Griffin, designer of Canberra, Castle Crag and many other Australian icons.
* You will want to see the furniture he designed for each house, and buy his books!
* He was fired from his first job, because when the Chicago Real Estate guide was published several years on, it featured houses designed by FLW, unbeknown to his employer. They took a dim view of it, and threw him out. Of course he went on to create history.
* Read Warren Buffits life story and his relationship with Bsrbara, the woman who headed up the Chicago Times... that's a good insight also.
* So, walk the waterfront, see the Aquarium, and the Marshall Field Museium, The Art Gallery, go the top of the John Hopkins building, the tallest building and look across three American states - and enjoy every minute!
" Chicago is, Chicago is... my kind of town!"
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