Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
station onto Harlem Avenue, and proceed north to Lake Street. Take
a right on Lake Street, follow it to Forest Avenue, and then turn left
to the
Oak Park Visitor Center
(see below).
BY TOUR
The
Chicago Architecture Foundation
regularly runs
guided tours from downtown Chicago to Oak Park. For details, see
“Sightseeing Tours” on p. 117.
VISITOR INFORMATION
The
Oak Park Visitor Center,
158 Forest Ave. (
&
888/OAK-
PARK;
www.visitoakpark.com), is open daily from 10am to 5pm
April through October, and from 10am to 4pm November through
March. Stop here for orientation, maps, and guidebooks. There's a
city-operated parking lot next door. The heart of the historic district
and the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio are only a few blocks
away.
An extensive tour of Oak Park's historic district leaves from the
Ginkgo Tree Bookshop,
951 Chicago Ave., on weekends from
11am to 4pm on the hour (tour times are noon, 1, and 2pm
Nov-Feb). The tour lasts 1 hour and costs $12 for adults, $10 for
seniors and students ages 11 to 18, and $5 for children 4 to 10. If
you can't make it to Oak Park on the weekend, you can follow a self-
guided map and audiocassette tour of the historic district for the
same price; the audio tour is available at the Ginkgo Tree Bookshop
from 10am to 3:30pm.
THE WRIGHT STUFF
Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio
For the first 20
years of Wright's career, this remarkable complex served first and
foremost as the sanctuary where he designed and executed more than
130 of an extraordinary output of 430 completed buildings. The
home began as a simple shingled cottage that the 22-year-old Wright
built for his bride in 1889, but it became a living laboratory for his
revolutionary reinvention of interior spaces. Wright remodeled the
house constantly until 1911, when he moved out permanently (in
1909, he left his wife and six children and went off to Europe with
the wife of one of his clients). With many add-ons—including a bar-
rel-vaulted children's playroom and a studio with an octagonal bal-
cony suspended by chains—the place has a certain whimsy that
others might have found less livable. This was not an architect's mas-
terpiece but rather the master's home, and visitors can savor every
room in it for the view it reflects of the workings of a remarkable
mind.
