Preserving our Past: February

The W. E. Gifford Residence

5961 N. Shore Drive

By Tom Fehring

The home was constructed in the year 1950 for the original owner of the property, W. E. Gifford. It was designed in a contemporary prairie school style by architect Jesse Claude Caraway. Although it lacks the overt organic detailing of the most famed prairie school buildings, it nevertheless stands out in its neighborhood of traditional Tudor and Georgian homes.

The most prominent features of the home are the strong line of the deeply overhanging eaves, and the large masonry chimney, both ubiquitous among prairie school style homes. The horizontality of the primary, east façade is interrupted by the prominent chimney and the front entry, which is centered between the two car garage and main living space. The first floor of the home contains a majority of the living spaces. The second floor is a one-room, hexagonal space with a flat roof and ribbon windows on three sides. The variety of interior finishes includes plaster, brick, stone, and wood paneling, punctuated by a variety of window types, shapes, and sizes.

The home’s historic significance lies in its close association with one of the great American architects, Frank Lloyd Wright. The home’s architect, Jesse Claude “Cary” Caraway was an apprentice of Wright’s at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin for seven years. Graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with an undergraduate degree in architecture, Caraway decided to pursue his architectural education at the famed Taliesin Fellowship.

The fellowship was largely Wright’s personal experiment in architectural education, and depended simultaneously on his alluring public persona as well as his trailblazing architectural ideology. The unconventional schooling included lessons in art, music, drawing, drafting, and building construction (an area in which Wright had dubious expertise). The students, or apprentices, were also in charge of running Wright’s estate. They built out-buildings, maintained the main home, farmed the land for their own subsistence, and cooked meals for all the inhabitants of the estate on a rotating basis. They observed Wright’s interactions with clients, learned from his methods, and were indoctrinated with his ideas of low building profiles, natural local materials, unique geometries, and new spatial layouts.

Architect and engineer Jesse Claude “Cary” Caraway was one of the many young architects in training who traveled across the country to the Taliesin estate. There is no public record of his personal relationship with Wright, and very little record of his professional body of work. We do know that the home was originally built for W.E. Gifford, a successful contractor who built homes for Wright in Madison and Evanston, Illinois. When Gifford retired in 1949 he commissioned Wright to design a home for him on a vacant lot within the newly resubdivided Klode Park Neighborhood. Wright delegated the task to his apprentice and architectural engineer, Cary Caraway. Caraway used the knowledge he acquired at Taliesin to design a low, earth-hugging house with natural stone and wood finishes. Over the two years during which the home was under construction, Wright, or “The Master,” made several visits to check on the building’s progress and make suggestions. The home was completed in 1951 at an estimated cost of $20,000.

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