Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #130823 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-30
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 144 pages

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book to contain details from the extensive office records of the firm of Purcell and Elmslie, as well as from letters, unpublished writings, notes and personal conversations with William Gray Purcell and George Grant Elmslie, this comprehensive volume encompasses the history of the firm,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 the Author
Noted architectural historian David Gebhard taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara and has been published extensively on American and European architecture. Among his publications are The Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles (Gibbs Smith, Publisher, revised edition, 2003) and The National Trust Guide to Art Deco in America (John Wiley, 1996).

Patricia Gebhard obtained degrees in Art History and Library Science from Oberlin College, Mills College, and the University of Minnesota. Her previous books include George Washington Smith: Architect of the Spanish Colonial Revival.

Customer Reviews

An Important History of two of the best Prairie Architects
Too little has been written about the members of the Prairie School other than Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Griffin, Marion Mahoney, John van Bergen and the subjects of this book, Purcell and Elmslie. This book remedies that by providing a history of their brief but productive joint practice. While, like most of the Prairie School, they were predominantly residential architects, this volume also deals with their commercial work, in particular the many small town banks that they designed. It does an admirable job of detailing the interplay between the two men, the sum of whose work together was so much greater than their solo work. In the ten or twelve years they worked together they produced some of the finest interiors of the Prairie School, and this book is an important contribution in keeping their work from being forgotten.

The text is accompanied by many high quality photos. One minor quibble is that they are not more closely tied to the text. In a number of cases the text refers to details of a design that just begs for an illustration, but none is presented. Still, this is a minor flaw in a book that provides so much information.

A Different Slant On Prarie Architecture
Purcell & Elmslie Prarie: Progressive Architects is a superb collaboration by Patricia Gebhard compiling her deceased husband, David Gebhard's notes and information. The book gives a different slant on the Prarie style architecture that is generally associated with Frank Lloyd Wright. I personally feel that Purcell & Elmslie were much more aware than Wright that human beings had to live in and utilize their architecture. The book is profusely illustrated with many color and black and white photographs.