Edwin H. Cheney House

Edwin H. Cheney House
U.S. Historic district Contributing property
Location	520 North East Avenue, Oak Park, Illinois
Coordinates
Architect	Frank Lloyd Wright
Architectural style	Prairie School
Part of	Frank Lloyd Wright-Prairie School of Architecture Historic District (#73000699)
Added to NRHP	December 4, 1973

Edwin H. Cheney House (1903) located in Oak Park, Illinois, United States, was Frank Lloyd Wright's design of this residence for electrical engineer Edwin Cheney. The house is part of the Frank Lloyd Wright-Prairie School of Architecture Historic District. It is a brick house with the living and sleeping rooms all on one floor under a single hipped roof (reminiscent of the design Heurtley House). Here, however, there is a less monumental and more intimate quality to the house partly because it is not raised a full story off the ground, and partly because of the way its windows are nestled in between the wide eaves of the roof and the substantial stone sill that girdles the house.

The living rooms, which take up the entire front of the house and open onto the walled terrace at the center, are trimmed in fir. Together they form a single longitudinal space under a continuous ceiling carried up in the form of a hip roof, the whole subdivided into dining room, living room, and library by wooden posts and cabinets. The basement features a large in-law suite. The house is currently a bed-and-breakfast inn.

It was this commission that precipitated the celebrated love affair between Wright, and Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the climax of which occurred in 1909 when Wright abandoned his architectural practice and left with Mrs. Cheney for a year in Europe. This era of Wright's life ended in 1914 when Mrs. Cheney and her children were murdered at Taliesin by an insane servant.