Purcell & Elmslie: Prairie Progressive Architects

Purcell&Elmslie

Prairie Progressive Architects Organic, honesty, and democratic were the terms most often used by Prairie School architects in reference to their architecture. The new architecture of the early 1900s was in essence the culmination of a tendency toward indigenous expression that had been inherent in America since the seventeenth century.

The initiators of this progressive philosophy were Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, whose works and writings are the most widely known. In fact, they are so well known that there has been a tendency to dismiss the others who worked and produced in the same period as copyists or minor innovators. Such is far from the truth as the firm of William Gray Purcell and George Grant Elmslie adequately indicates. They made significant contributions that were important not only in their own day but remain important in the fabric of our towns today. The most productive of the Prairie School firms of the time, Purcell and Elmslie included in all their thinking the conviction that a building does not end with its simple structure but reaches its final and logical culmination in the clothing-color, situation and natural environment together with its decoration of glass, terra-cotta and other textural materials.

The only book to contain details from the extensive office records of the firm of Purcell and Elmslie, as well as from letters, unpublished writings, notes and personal conversations with William Gray Purcell and George Grant Elmslie, this comprehensive volume encompasses the history of the firm, from their residential designs such as the Purcell-Cutts House in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to commercial buildings such as the Merchants Bank in Winona, Minnesota, to civic buildings such as the Woodbury County Courthouse in Sioux City, Iowa.

"A sumptuous, informative volume that should be welcomed by all those who appreciate the Arts and Crafts Movement. This book will likely remain the standard source for its subject for years to come."

-Richard Longstreth, author of The Charnley House: Louis Sullivan,
Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Making of Chicago's Gold Coast.

Noted architectural historian David Gebhard taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara and has been published extensively on American and European architecture.
Among his publications are The Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles (Gibbs Smith, Publisher, revised edition, 2003) and The National Trust Guide to Art Deco in America (John Wiley, 1996).

Patricia Gebhard obtained degrees in Art History and Library Science from Oberlin College, Mills College, and the University of Minnesota. Her previous books include George Washington Smith: Architect of the Spanish Colonial Revival.