On a recent trip to Oklahoma City, we made a small diversion to visit Herb Greene's Prairie Chicken House in Norman, OK. I first came across the home years ago while researching work of architectural photographer Julius Shulman. Greene convinced Schulman to photograph the house while he was in town to photograph a different project by Greene's mentor Bruce Goff. Looking at Shulman's photos of the home today, there are a few notable changes as one might expect over 60+ years. The home no longer stands alone on the prairie but is ringed with trees that demarcate the property perimeter. The original orange shag carpet is gone and the original siding is showing its age. The building is in the early stages of a renovation that will see it back to its original state– shag carpet included. 

 

The home is an exceptional piece of history and has some wonderful, unexpected spaces within. Houses today that eschew right angles and conventional form often feel overwrought or relegated to a luxury class rather than anything architecturally meaningful. The Prairie Chicken House maintains a sense of accessibility and relatability to the common person through scale, material, location and craft. There are a handful of notable details throughout the house– the way the shingles are applied inside and out more like feathers at times than a building material; the simple rebar railings for the pair of dramatic stairways that cut through the entry foyer; the simply structured steel carport canopy at the entry; the west-facing stained glass window to highlight the setting sun; the flush, shingled doors and cabinets that disappear into the wall– still neatly align after the years. 

 

Here is a short history of the home pulled from the Prairie House Preservation Society website:

 

Herb Greene’s influential though under-recognized design practice, stems from Bruce Goff’s non-conformist pedagogy and an overlooked counterculture architecture movement in the 1950-60s, now referred to by the University of Oklahoma as the American School. Attracted by Goff's ethos of encouraging individual process rather than replicating an accepted style, Greene transferred from Syracuse University to study with Goff from 1948-1953. During this period Greene was recognized for his imaginative rendering skills and Goff entrusted him with presentation drawings for some of his most well known projects, including the iconic Bavinger House, among many other designs.

 

Greene joined the faculty at University of Oklahoma in 1958, where he hoped "to contribute to the imaginative side of the department of architecture" and to pursue his love of painting and montage. Greene's first significant project after returning to Oklahoma was his own Prairie House (1960-1961), in Norman, Oklahoma. Greene’s residence drew popular acclaim after Julius Shulman published photographs of the home in the 1961 issue of Life magazine (alongside the Joyce Residence in Snyder, OK). The Prairie House is considered by some to be one of the most coherent embodiments of the type of Organic architecture exemplified by Bruce Goff and his followers. At the current age of 92, he is the only living member of the University of Oklahoma American School faculty and the Prairie House is one of only three buildings still standing in Norman from this significant era in Oklahoma history.

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Photos by the author, 2024. All Rights Reserved

Drawings are from ArchDaily