K. C. DeRhodes House
| K. C. DeRhodes House | |
|---|---|
 |
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| General information | |
| Type | Wood & Stucco |
| Architectural style | Prairie School |
| Location | 715 West Washington Street, South Bend, Indiana |
| Construction started | 1906 |
| Governing body | Private |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | Frank Lloyd Wright |
The K. C. DeRhodes House is a classic 1906 Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie style home located at 715 West Washington Avenue in South Bend, Indiana. The home has been carefully restored by its current owners over more than two decades and remains in private ownership. It is one of two Wright homes in South Bend, the other being the Herman T. Mossberg Residence.
In 1906, newlyweds Laura Caskey Bowsher DeRhodes and Kersey C. DeRhodes built a two-story house in South Bend, Indiana, designed for them in the Oak Park studio of Frank Lloyd Wright.
In plan, the DeRhodes house is a mirror image of the 1904 Barton House in Buffalo, New York. Oriented south to north, the main floor is one large rectangular space subdivided by piers and low bookcases with light screens into three spaces: a reception area, a large living room with fireplace toward the south (front) and a large dining room with Wright's customary built-in china cabinets toward the (north) rear. An entry/foyer to the east and the stairway and kitchen wing to the west extend the plan into a cruciform shape. Terraces protected by low walls at the north and south ends of the house extend the living space into the surrounding landscape.
The exterior of the DeRhodes house exhibits many of the features associated with Wright's Prairie School architecture: the stucco exterior with wood trim, the strong water table, the pronounced horizontal lines of the continuous window sills and terrace parapets, the leaded glass "light screens" of the windows, the grouping of the windows into continuous bands, and the low-profile hip roof.
The celebrated rendering of the DeRhodes house by Wright's assistant Marion Mahony Griffin is considered by scholars to be among the best to emerge from the Oak Park Studio, and was thought so by Wright himself, who inscribed it "Drawn by Mahony after FLLW and Hiroshige".
Laura Caskey was born in Ligonier, Indiana, the daughter of Lutheran clergyman Curtis Caskey and his wife Margaret. Before her marriage to Kersey C. DeRhodes, Laura Caskey was the second wife of South Bend industrialist-millionaire Nelson Prentice Bowsher (1845-1898). Bowsher rose from being an inventor and master mechanic at the Oliver Chilled Plow Works to the proprietor of his own manufacturing business, N. P. Bowsher. By his first wife, Clarissa C. Hostetter, Bowsher had two sons, Delavan Denis Bowsher and Jay C. Bowsher. Prior to her marriage to DeRhodes, Laura lived in the Bowsher family mansion at 805 West Washington, South Bend.
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