A House Focused on the Back Yard

By Harold T. Wolff, Researcher, Ridge Historical Society

When I was trying to capture the essence of the Thomas S. Woods House, 2115 W. 107th Pl., I had to agree with what the owners said of it when I was looking it over: that it was really focused toward its back yard, while presenting the obligatory facade of reception to the street. I do not mean that the house is not welcoming -- the covered entry stretching toward the street demonstrates the architect's consideration for visitors coming in foul weather -- but only that the home reserves its openness to the rear yard.

The Woods House was built between Nov. 1940, and May 1941. Its architect was Philip Will Jr. (1906-1985) of the firm of Perkins, Wheeler and Will, which in 1946 became the architectural powerhouse we now know as the Perkins & Will Partnership.

Philip Will, Jr., was born and educated in Rochester, NY, and graduated with a degree in architecture from Cornell University in Ithaca in 1930, where he earned the highest grades ever given at the school. Before graduating he had been a draftsman with the Rochester firm of Gordon & Kaelber. From 1930 to 1933 he worked for the New York City firm of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, architects of the Empire State Building.

In 1933 Will came with his bride to Chicago to tour the Century of Progress, and was persuaded by his college roommate, Lawrence Perkins, to stay in the midwest. He worked for Howard Fisher's General Houses Inc., which designed prefabricated steel homes. In 1934 he was with the Associated Architects, South Park Gardens, where he worked alongside Perkins. In 1935, Perkins, Will, and E. Todd Wheeler formed their own firm. They struggled to stay in business during the Depression, but in 1940 shot to national attention as designers (in conjunction with Eliel and Eero Saarinen) of the Crow Island School in Winnetka, the prototype of the modern American school.

By 1965, the firm was the leading school architects of metropolitan Chicago and, eventually, of the United States. They were also, in the late 1940s, the designers of some of the most significant public housing in the country, the Racine Courts at 107th Street and Racine Avenue, which were so ideal that they were eventually sold to the tenants. Perkins & Will also designed tall buildings, including the elegant but now demolished U.S. Gypsum Building, and, with C. F. Murphy Associates, the First National Bank Building (now One First National Plaza).

The Woods House faces the street with a one-story outstretched garage wing on the left which doubles as the welcoming covered entry porch for the main entrance. The house is made of an earth-toned brick, neutral enough in color to emphasize the natural setting but appropriately distinctive to keep the outlines of the building from being lost in the trees. Behind the garage and porch wing, which has a hipped roof, the body of the house is side-gabled, and at first seems to present a rather simple facade to the street. This effect is deceptive, however, because the outstretched wing is balanced by two features of the wall: a decorative pattern of glass blocks sited off-center and sets of casement windows one above the other to the right.

The glass blocks are arranged in two vertical columns, each block framed on all four sides by bricks with their short sides exposed, and the two columns are separated by a raised ridge of bricks between each side-by-side pair of brick-framed blocks. In terms of breaking up the plane of the wall, this pattern of glass blocks, which illuminates an interior stairway, has almost the appearance of a tapestry or batik inset into the outside wall of the house.

Curiously, the rows of casement windows are only employed on the front of the house. On the back wall, the pattern is large picture windows flanked by casements, affording views of the rear yard. On the two stories of the rear wall, picture windows with narrow casements flanking them wrap around the southwest corner. The gables above the side walls are dressed with metal stripping. The back also has a one-story hipped-roof wing extending into the rear yard, and this also has picture and casement windows.

The Woods House is thus clearly designed to both intercept and welcome the visitor from the street side while providing extensive views of the rear yard for the occupants to enjoy. Thus the focus of the house is really on the rear.