The Frederick C. Robie House is a historic house museum on the University of Chicago campus in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright in the Prairie style, it was completed in 1910. The house was built for the manufacturing executive Frederick Carlton Robie and his family. George Mann Niedecken oversaw the interior design, while associate architects Hermann von Holst and Marion Mahony also assisted with the design. The Robie House, described as one of Wright's best Prairie style buildings, on the northeast corner of Woodlawn Avenue and 58th Street in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago in Illinois, United States. The lot measures wide and long, the larger dimension extending west–east parallel to 58th Street. The house itself measures across. Due to an existing covenant on the site, the Robie House and neighboring residences are set back from Woodlawn Avenue.
At the time of the Robie House's construction, the block immediately to the south was vacant; the nearest building in that direction was away, across the Midway Plaisance park. Due to the flat topography of Chicago's South Side, the site was also not particularly prominent. The houses to the north, along Woodlawn Avenue, were set back from the street and were above the sidewalk. These houses were largely made of brick. Although the Robie House's architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, characterized the house as a "city dwelling", it was more akin to a suburban house in a streetcar suburb full of single-family homes. To the west are the Rockefeller Chapel and the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures. To the south is the University of Chicago Booth School of Business building designed by Rafael Viñoly.
History
The house was commissioned for Frederick Carlton Robie, a manufacturing executive who, in the 1900s, worked at his father's Excelsior Supply Company. Robie married Lora Hieronymus in 1902. They moved to Hyde Park, Chicago, in 1904, relocating again within the same neighborhood in 1907. At the end of 1906, Robie and Wright discussed the house for the first time.