The Dwight Perkins House is a historic house located at 2319 Lincoln Street in Evanston,

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

. The house was built in 1904 for architect Dwight H. Perkins and children's author and illustrator

Lucy Fitch Perkins Lucy Fitch Perkins (July 12, 1865 – March 18, 1937) was an American illustrator and writer of children's books, known best for ''Dutch Twins'' (1911) and its sequels, the ''Twins'' series. Biography Lucy Fitch was born on July 12, 1865, in ...

. Perkins designed his house in a style heavily influenced by the

Prairie School Prairie School is a late 19th and early 20th-century architectural style, most common in the Midwestern United States. The style is usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped i ...

and the

Arts and Crafts Movement The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America. Initiat ...

. The house was built from wood and

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and ...

, materials characteristic of both styles which let the house blend into the surrounding nature. Its exterior decorative features include

bracket A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...

eaves The eaves are the edges of the roof which overhang the face of a wall and, normally, project beyond the side of a building. The eaves form an overhang to throw water clear of the walls and may be highly decorated as part of an architectural sty ...

casement window A casement window is a window that is attached to its frame by one or more hinges at the side. They are used singly or in pairs within a common frame, in which case they are hinged on the outside. Casement windows are often held open using a c ...

s, trellises, and a half-timbered gable. Landscape architect Jens Jensen, a friend of the Perkinses, designed the house's surroundings, which include a reflecting pool. The inside of the house incorporates horizontal bands of windows which let in sunlight, unpainted wood features, and an open floor plan. The house was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

on August 29, 1985.

References

Prairie School architecture in Illinois Houses completed in 1904 Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Cook County, Illinois Buildings and structures in Evanston, Illinois Houses in Cook County, Illinois {{CookCountyIL-NRHP-stub