Emery House, 218 Arlington Street, Elmhurst, Du Page County, IL

Significance: The Emery House is an early work of the Prairie School architect Walter Burley Griffin. Griffin's attitudes toward the Prairie School idiom are well identified by the architectural historian, H. Allen Brooks, Jr., in his article "The Early Works of the Prairie School Architects." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, March, 1960, p. 8-9: "Designed between 1901 and 1902, the Emery House was conceived as a solid rectangular block with two off-center projecting wings, thereby giving a pin-wheel effect to the plan...the staircase, screened from the living room at the bottom, permits a sudden panoramic view across most of the house as one mounts to the upper levels...the exterior is more formal in composition and the emphasis upon the rectangle belies the freedom of planning to be found on the interior...Griffin though in terms of mass, not volume. Containment of form ranked above free-flowing composition and emphasis on wall as surface took the place of spatial penetration."
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N840
Survey number: HABS IL-1101
Building/structure dates: after 1900 Initial Construction