Unified Vision

This Web site combines three different, but closely related, bodies of information: a virtual tour of the Purcell-Cutts prairie house (a property of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts), an exhibition catalog of prairie school objects in the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and four virtual tours of prairie school buildings in Minnesota. The Purcell-Cutts house was designed by William Gray Purcell and George Grant Elmslie for Purcell and his family in Minneapolis in 1913. The author of the site tells us that it is one of “the most outstanding examples of Prairie School architecture in the country” for which the architects “followed architect Louis Sullivan's principles of organic architecture.” That statement conflates Sullivan's organic system of ornament for Chicago school tall office buildings with Frank Lloyd Wright's leading role in the prairie school, within which he developed an organic system of architecture. In fact, Elmslie worked for both Sullivan and Wright, and the house is a synthesis of both men's ideas

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