Allen House
Elsie—the wife of governor, senator, and newspaper publisher Henry J. Allen—commissioned Wright to design the couple’s home in College Hill, a newly developed residential neighborhood of Wichita.
The last of Wright’s Prairie residences, it simultaneously recalls the early houses of the period and prefigures Wright’s Usonian style of the 1930s. Wright designed the house while working on the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and the square structure, with its enclosed lily pool and garden, has a notably Japanese aesthetic. The rich exterior is complimented by sumptuous interiors of art glass windows, bookcase doors, and masonry wall joints covered in gold leaf.
