Talk:Laura Gale House

A fact from Laura Gale House appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 1 June 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Mrs. Thomas H. Gale House is considered a forerunner to the famous Fallingwater house in Pennsylvania?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2007/June.

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Just a question[edit]

Why isn't it called the Laura R. Gale house? After all, Thomas was dead by the time she commissioned it, and so he had nothing to do with it. As it stands, her title (and the name of the house) gives her no individuality, no existence beyond being married to Thomas H. Gale. Is this some old-fashioned snobbish convention? Why is it being promoted in the 21st century? Surely in these feminist times we have moved beyond that? 82.32.238.139 07:05, 1 June 2007

Give me a break. The Preservation Trust refers to it as the Mrs. Thomas H. Gale House in their maps, as do most other references it is also known as the Laura Gale House, which I added once I found the ref on my bookshelf, but is much more commonly known as the Mrs. Thomas H. Gale House. IvoShandor 12:36, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Significance" of Gale House vs. Fallingwater vs. Prairie School[edit]

I take issue with the idea presented in the article that Fallingwater is the culmination of the "Prairie School" of architecture, that Wright developed.

Not being a credentialed expert, but from my own amateur knowledge, I can accept that Gale is the precursor to Fallingwater, i.e., Wright's use of cantilevered balconies, that Fallingwater might be classed as a "small" house, etc.

But it is a complete conflation of terms to liken Fallingwater to a Prairie School-style home. Obviously, Fallingwater was built in a hilly region, with sloping terrain, a waterfall, and in the middle of forest. The ultimate expression of Prairie School architecture, is generally accepted to be the Robie House, completed 1910 (Chicago).

That consensus of opinion is presented here in Wikipedia on the Robie House page^[1], and so is in contradiction to the analysis presented here. The conflation of Prairie School with Fallingwater is stretching architectural historicism to the breaking point, in my opinion.

Alpine Joy (talk) 16:53, 31 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ "It was designed and built between 1908 and 1910 by architect Frank Lloyd Wright and is renowned as the greatest example of the Prairie School style, the first architectural style that was uniquely American."

[1] "It was designed and built between 1908 and 1910 by architect Frank Lloyd Wright and is renowned as the greatest example of the Prairie School style, the first architectural style that was uniquely American."

[1]