B. Harley Bradley House
The B. Harley Bradley House is a Frank Lloyd Wright designed Prairie school home that was constructed in Kankakee, Illinois in 1900-1901. B. Harley Bradley and his wife, Anna Hickox Bradley, were the brother-and-sister-in-law of Warren Hickox, of the Warren Hickox House which is located next door to the Bradley House. The Bradley House and the Willits House, also built in 1901 in Highland Park, Illinois and designed by Wright, compete for the title of the first Prairie School residence designed by Wright and built to his specifications.
Harley Bradley had inherited means from his grandfather, a local manufacturer of plowshares and other farm and garden implements. The Bradley House is a 12,000-square foot residential space that includes a 6,000-square-foot residence, a 3,000-square-foot basement, and a 3,000-feet stable space that is connected to the main building by a breezeway. Tours are available for a fee, and the house's current owner, the nonprofit group Wright in Kankakee, has refitted the stable to serve as a gift shop.
The "Prairie School" is so named because Wright, the school's pioneer architect, worked with his clients to develop architectural spaces that were inspired by the natural plant forms of the tallgrass prairie that surrounded Kankakee. This mirroring theme was especially suited to the fenestration - i.e. the windows - of the buildings constructed in this style. 82 of the Bradley House's original 90 art glass windows survive. Ironically, much of the Bradley family fortune used to build and fit out the house had come from the implements used to plow up the prairie sod that is celebrated by the house.