Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
with a cartoon theme; other worthwhile stops include the double-decker
carousel and bumper cars. Six Flags also has live shows, IMAX movies, and
restaurants. If you take the trouble to get out here from the city, allow a full day.
I-94 at Rte. 132 E., Gurnee.
&
847/249-4636.
www.sixflags.com. Admission (including unlimited rides,
shows, and attractions) $42 adults, $30 seniors and children over 54 in. tall, free for children 3 and under.
Open daily May 10am-7pm; June-Aug 10am-10pm; weekends only in Sept 10am-7pm. Parking $10. Take I-
94 or I-294 W. to Rte. 132 (Grand Ave.). Approximate driving time from Chicago city limits is 45 min.
6 Historic Houses
An extensive tour of the neighborhood surrounding the Frank Lloyd Wright
Home and Studio leaves from the
Ginkgo Tree Bookshop,
951 Chicago Ave.
(
&
708/848-1606
), on weekends from 10:30am to 4pm (tour times are some-
what more limited Nov-Feb). This tour lasts 1 hour and costs $9 for adults and
$7 for seniors and children 7 to 18, and is free for children under 7. 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 (recorded in English, French, Spanish,
The (Frank Lloyd) Wright Stuff
Oak Park has the highest concentration of houses or buildings any-
where designed and built by Wright, probably the most influential fig-
ure in American architectural history. People come here to marvel at
the work of a man who saw his life as a twofold mission: to wage a sin-
gle-handed battle against the ornamental excesses of architecture, Vic-
torian in particular, and to create in its place a new form that would
be at the same time functional, appropriate to its natural setting, and
stimulating to the imagination.
Not everyone who comes to Oak Park shares Wright's architectural
philosophy. But scholars and enthusiasts admire Wright for being con-
sistently true to his own vision, out of which emerged a unique and
genuinely American architectural statement. The reason for Wright's
success could stem from the fact that he himself was a living exemplar
of a quintessential American type. In a deep sense, he embodied the
ideal of the self-made and self-sufficient individual who had survived,
even thrived, in the frontier society—qualities that he expressed in his
almost-puritanical insistence that each spatial or structural form in his
buildings serve some useful purpose. But he was also an aesthete in
Emersonian fashion, deriving his idea of beauty from natural environ-
ments, where apparent simplicity often belies a subtle complexity.
The three principal ingredients of a tour of Wright-designed struc-
tures in Oak Park are the
Frank Lloyd Wright Home & Studio tour,
the
Unity Temple tour,
and a
walking tour
—guided or self-guided—to view
the exteriors of homes throughout the neighborhood that were built by
the architect. Oak Park has, in all, 25 homes and buildings by Wright,
constructed between the years 1892 and 1913, which constitute the core
output of his Prairie School period. Visiting another 50 dwellings of
architectural interest by Wright's contemporaries, scattered throughout
this community and neighboring River Forest, is also worthwhile.
