Triptych Window from the Coonley Playhouse, Riverside, Illinois

This colorful, whimsical triptych window is from the Avery Coonley Playhouse, a small structure that Frank Lloyd Wright designed as an addition to the Coonleys’ suburban Chicago estate, which he had previously completed in 1908. Louis Sullivan’s foremost student, Wright continued his teacher’s search for an indigenous American architecture. Like Sullivan, Wright drew inspiration from nature and natural forms, and both men were pioneers of the Prairie School of architecture, characterized by low-slung, horizontal lines and rambling, open spaces that reflect the gently rolling landscape of the Midwest. Odes to the middle-class American family at the turn of the century, Wright’s residences are organic, designed not only to adapt to a family’s changing structure but also to contain the sense of a unified and harmonious whole. Every detail of the Coonley complex, like all of Wright’s projects, bore his personal imprint, down to the creation and placement of the furniture and the design of this window. Referencing such Americana as the flag and colored balloons, Wright explored the use of glass both as a transparent screen uniting exterior and interior and as a decorative element, the colors and design of which anticipate the later abstractions of Piet Mondrian.