Dana House

Unified and harmonious, the Dana house stands as one of the most opulent expressions of Wright’s visionary design philosophy. Designed and constructed between 1902 and 1904, the house was Wright’s most elaborate residential commission to date. In contrast to Wright’s typical clients, who were middle class business men, Dana was an independently wealthy, progressive woman. A social and cultural luminary in the community of Springfield, Illinois, Dana provided Wright with a substantial budget to remodel her family’s mid-nineteenth-century home. In place of the original home, Wright and his colleagues at the Oak Park Studio, including Marion Mahony, Walter Burley Griffin, William Drummond, George M. Niedecken and sculptor Richard Bock, conceived a bold and expansive new plan with a sophisticated decorative scheme.