Scooby Robie Doo!

Poor old Mr. Robie.  You've got to feel for the guy, really.  

Stunning view of the exterior of Robie House

Its really quite a poignant story.  There he is, riding high on top of the world, a wealthy industrialist at only age 30, rich from the family firm, with a beautiful wife and two young kids, commissioning what would become a landmark piece of architecture.  No sooner has the house been finished, then the patriarch dies - and leaves his son with a huge mountain of debt.  The sum of money owed was enormous and left Mr. Robie bankrupt with no choice but to sell the house he loved and had only lived in for 18 months, as well as his prized automobile collection.   His story doesn't have a happy ending, unfortunately - he and his wife divorced, with the now ex-Mrs. Robie and kids moving back to her home state.  He then spent the rest of his life sadly grubbing away as a salesman, just to getting by, and never again achieving or regaining the status and comfort in life that he'd enjoyed in his earlier years.  But his name would be forever associated with the spectacular Priarie-style house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for him - which was either a consolation or profoundly irritating.  And - by the time he died, he'd managed to pay back all his father's debtors, so I guess there was some degree of redemption in the end for him.

Anyway, enough of the depressing stuff!  To rewind, Mumsie and I had decided to treat ourselves to a fat dollop of cul-cha at the weekend, which is how we found ourselves at the Robie House at 8.30am on a Saturday morning.  Well, we can't spend every weekend shopping at DSW and Marshall's now, can we?  (Wait?  What?  We can?  Dammit!)  Mumsie has always had an affinity for both Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Rennie Mackintosh - we'd hit up the Macster many years ago on a trip to Glasgow (before the recent fire) so now was the perfect opportunity to "do" it Wright during her visit here to Chi-town.  There are a plethora of FLW (as those of us in the know like to call them) buildings in and around Chicago, notably in an area in the city called Oak Park.  We weren't in Oak Park but were instead in Hyde Park, a beautifully leafy green part of town on the South Side of the city where part of the main campus of Chicago University is located.

Man, it was gorgeous.  I didn't realize this part of town was so beautiful - especially as all you usually hear about the South Side is preceded by the words "don't go to…".  It has a reputation (rightly so) for being rough - very rough in places.  Anyway, this part of the South Side was not rough but was stunning - it was very reminiscent of Cambridge, with the old University buildings and magnificent churches and gardens.  As we walked past one church with a garden tent being installed on the front lawn, it only needed a duck pond and a cricket team and we could have been transported back to the heart of Wessex country.  Made both of us feel quite nostalgic, actually.

Anyway, i'd booked us in for the "Private Spaces" tour in which you could get to see parts of the house that were not normally included in the regular tour.  So, of course, I had to do that one.  Get to nose around more?  Yes, please!  As it turned out, it was a very private Private Spaces tour as there were only 3 of us booked!  (by contrast, I'd tried to get us in there the previous week but - because it was a holiday weekend - it was completely booked out).   Our guide was a lovely chap who's name I shamefully can't remember (and not sure I knew it back then either) and obviously devoted to all things FLW.  He was extremely knowledgable and did a great job explaining the history of the house, pointing out the important design and construction features and all the little details you'd completely overlook unless someone told you about them.  It did take a while to get going, though, as we spent the first 15 mins or so outside the house as he told us all about the construction, the zoning laws - which was all very interesting but just let us into the house already!!!

Stunning art glass windows on the second floor from the living room,
 overlooking an outside patio, under a big cantilevered overhang

After what seemed like FOREVER (but probably only about the same amount of time that your parents made you wait before you could open that first present in your stocking on Christmas morning), we went inside the house, firstly into the lobby foyer part, then gradually working our way through the various rooms and levels of the house - the children's playroom, the billiards room, the living room, dining room, master and guest bedrooms and bathrooms, kitchen, pantry and servants quarters.  I'm not going to narrate you through each part of the house, I'm afraid - my lame commentary would be a very poor imitation of our Nameless Guide's tour.  I took quite a few pictures    - most of them were a bit dull, so I've just picked the few that I thought were half decent and give you a bit of a sense of the interior of the house.  It doesn't have any furniture in it, so its mainly big open interior spaces (with the exception of a single sofa) - all the interesting detail is in the materials used in the construction, the different colors of the cement used in the brickwork to emphasize the horizontal line of the bricks, the angle and placement of the wooden beams, the light fittings and the shadows cast upon the ceiling, the art glass windows and the patterns used that both let light in but kept prying eyes out, the revolutionary (for the time) central air system, the extensive use of electricity rather than gas and - finally - the internal triple garage instead of a stables that was the first of its kind anywhere in the US.   After the tour, I finally understood why this was such an important and distinctive building and had a new appreciation for the sheer amount of thought and attention to detail that FLW poured into the house.  Here are just a few more photos from our tour:

Decorative ceiling treatment, with lights behind the
parchment, lending the room a soft, diffuse glow

The main living room area on the second floor 

State of the art bathroom in 1910.
Also a state of the art bathroom in modern day NYC 

One of the guest bedrooms with stunning art glass windows

Mumsie wondering how she can fit the house into
her hand luggage

Surround sound shower.  Dunno about you, but i'd
still be impressed with this today!! 

Spectacular view from the far end of the living room,
all the way down through to the dining room

So that was Robie House.  The pictures don't really do it justice, I'm afraid so if you are interested and want to see more (and better) pictures and explanation, check it out these links:

http://www.flwright.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robie_House

By the time we were done with the tour (and the gift shop shopping!), it was just before 11am so we had a bit of a wander around in the glorious sunshine, before deciding that it was coffee time.  Not being able to find a coffee shop after a 5 min amble about, we unilaterally upgraded our needs to "lunch".  We headed into the main strip of Hyde Park, got lucky with a parking space behind McDonalds, then lucked out again with a completely random choice of restaurant for lunch, a place called A10.  Remember - Mumsie and I were enjoying a day off (or two) from our Detox Diet with the rules of engagement being - if it ain't nailed down or oinking, its fair game.  Like the troopers we are, we proceeded to demolish three different variants of Bread Product during "lunch" - and was only sorry that we were too full to enjoy a fourth - the beignets!  And, with a rueful glance at the menu and a vow to "start with dessert first" next time, we waddled out of the restaurant and wended our overly-stuffed way home.  Carbo-loading for the 5K race tomorrow?   I think I got that one covered….

Cambridge, much?

Carbo nirvana.  Just don't tell Dr Hyman….