B. Harley Bradley House
Date: 1900
Address: 701 S. Harrison Avenue, Kankakee, Illinois 60901
City: Kankakee, Illinois
Category: Residential
Links: https://wright1900.org
Accessibility: Public
Restoration status: From 2005 to 2010, the house was restored to its 1901 appearance. It is now operated by Wright in Kankakee as a public museum
Wright’s design for the B. Harley Bradley house expands upon the architectural vocabulary he had begun to explore in the Husser house, and which eventually came to define his mature Prairie buildings. Accordingly, Wright again employed a quasi-cruciform plan in which a large central living room is flanked on either side by wings that extend laterally. On the exterior, the low, flared gabled roofs exaggerate the horizontality of the squat, layered rectangular volumes that comprise the two-story house. In a bold reinterpretation of traditional English half-timbered design prototypes, Wright carried the plaster and dark wood surface treatment across the entire façade of the house. His uniform application of these building materials brought the structure’s main body, projecting wings, and surrounding partitions into harmony with one another. Wright maintained further continuity by designing many of the house’s interior furnishings.