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Usonian living room with a warm wood ceiling, clerestory windows and built-in furniture
Nomadseifer / Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0 (license). View the source record

Wall Paneling & Wainscoting · Mid-Century Modern

Interior of the Bernard Schwartz House, Two Rivers, Wisconsin (Frank Lloyd Wright)

The living room of the Bernard Schwartz House, a Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian design of 1939, with a horizontal-board ceiling, clerestory windows and built-in seating and shelving.

Design characteristics

Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian houses, designed from the late 1930s, were meant to be affordable homes for middle-class Americans. They use brick, glass and horizontal wood boards, with built-in furniture throughout. In the Schwartz House, the warm wood ceiling and band of clerestory windows create a long, low living space, and the built-ins keep it uncluttered. The Usonian approach, warm wood and continuous built-ins, is a direct ancestor of mid-century modern interiors.

Classification

Style
Mid-Century Modern
Category
Wall Paneling & Wainscoting
Material
Cypress
Motifs
Horizontal board, Clerestory
Photograph
2010
Photographer
Nomadseifer
Evidence
Photograph of a documented interior or object
Source
Wikimedia Commons

Architectural context

Flush slab doors, walnut and teak, and storage built into the walls. United States and Scandinavia · c. 1945–1970.

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