I had booked a guided tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Robie House for day 19. The house is located in the Hyde Park area of Chicago and is minutes (bus ride, not walking) from the Science and Industry museum. As the museum hands out day passes it gave us something to do while we waiting for the right time to go for our guided tour.
The museum is home to many unique artefacts among which is the U-505, a German U-Boat captured by the Americans in 1944. It is the only Type IXC U boat still in existence. After lying neglected for many years, stripped of it’s parts, it was finally restored by the Museum. The German manufacturers who made the various components that went into the U boat even decided to provide all new parts for the submarine for free just so it could be restored to near-new condition.
The submarine is also has a walk-through tour, showing off the cramped interior and telling the story of the boat’s capture by the Americans. During the tour they control the lights and provide sounds that provide atmosphere for the story being told. I only have a glimpse of just how nerve racking being in that metal tube deep underwater, hearing the sound of active sonar reverberating through the hull, and waiting for the sound of splashes indicating depth charges would have been.
Another section of the museum had various artefacts from NASA including the actual Apollo 8 Command Module, as shown above. They have the hatch open and you can clearly see just how cramped the interior space is, and that is before you put three people in it.
By this stage it was getting close to the time of our tour so we ate and quickly departed, heading towards the Robie House.
The Robie house is undergoing much needed restoration. The house has seen much neglect and has been badly mistreated over it’s hundred year life, the worst of which was probably the Chicago Theological Seminary using the house as a dormitory before deciding to demolish it. It was saved with the help of a student protest including the help of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who had quite a lot of sway in that era.
The tour was quite excellent, taking us through many of the houses rooms. The house is a beautiful example of Prairie style Architecture and also is also a summarises Frank Lloyd Wright’s ability for harmonious well thought out design, both interior and exterior, as well as flow and lighting that he is so famous for.
Unfortunately, like with his home and studio tour, we could not take photographs of the interior. I really wanted to take photos of the interior. More accurately I really want that home in my life.
All of the windows and French doors are filled in with art glass, the house uses Roman brick on both it’s interior and exterior surfaces, lots of attention to detail and use of open flowing spaces in order to make the rooms seem important, interesting and larger than they really are.
I’ve nicked the photo above from the internets. I really could have taken a better photo myself but unfortunately I was not allowed. I’m really looking forward to my in depth tour of Fallingwater, where I’ll be allowed to take interior photos.
After this we headed back to the Science and Industry museum for a couple of hours of looking through their various exhibits. There is so much stuff there that we didn’t get to see, just because we ran out of time. They have an entire house, a concept green house, which they run tours through which we missed out on. They also have almost an entire Boeing 727 suspended from the ceiling and functioning as an exhibit which I only saw from a distance. I haven’t even included the entire sections of the museum we never even got to step foot in, due to time constraints.
The museum closed at 5:30pm and we were out the door and heading back to the loop.