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firm active: 1907-1921 minneapolis, minnesota :: chicago, illinois |
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Riverside Country Club
Purcell and Elmslie
Riverside, Illinois Text by William Gray Purcell
Parabiographies entry, Volume for 1914
Commission Date (in Parabiographies): February 11, 1914
Commission Date (in Parabiographies): February 11, 1914
This was a project fathered by Henry Babson. We had made sketches and a beautiful perspective for this building which appeared in the special number of the Western Architect in June 1913. Golf clubs in general had made gestures toward uniting the club idea and the outdoors, but in general, the architects were too much concerned with selecting a style form, Colonial, Elizabethan, English, and the addition of a broad terrace represented their farthest reach in the direction of uniting the design of a golf club with landscape architecture of the links. Of course, these country club buildings were usually very large and rambling, due to the pressure of practical arrangements, and their growth by unit. New clubs were built in imitation of old ones that had acquired prestige, so that one way or another these buildings were tied to the earth more successfully than the average dwelling. Frank Lloyd Wright built the River Forest Golf Club in Quick's Pasture, River Forest, along about 1910. This building really got down into the heart of what a club and golf club was in essence. The building was full of gaiety, and lifted people entirely out of their daily mental and emotional environments. Wright's Club was subsequently moved bodily to a new location when Quick's Pasture was sold to Cook County as a bird sanctuary.
George made a very decided effort to retain the play spirit, to abandon all reference to other buildings of any kind, to ancient or modern, or Wright. He not only tied the lines of the building into its site, but got some spirit of practical working revelation between the inside enclosed activities and the outside play.
When we actually came to construct the building in [1918], various practical matters led to the laying aside entirely of the first project and developing an entirely new scheme. The result is a highly satisfactory building, but in some ways I feel that the first project came nearer to expressing our own feelings about what such a building should be.
Collection: William Gray Purcell Papers, Northwest Architectural Archives, University of Minnesota [AR:B4d4.8]
research courtesy mark hammons