THE PRAIRIE SCHOOL: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND HIS MIDWEST CONTEMPORARIES.

By H. Allen Brooks '49. University of Toronto Press,1972. 373 pp. 247 illustrations. $25.

With erudite glibness, sophisticated Americans may extol the massive Temple of Athena in Corinth with its monolithic columns; the Pantheon in Rome, Corinthian throughout with its huge domed rotunda; Salisbury Cathedral, the perfect example of Early English with its piers composed of clustered columns of Perbeck marble; that most renowned of Saracenic erections, the Alhambra in Granada; and the greatest work of the French Renaissance, the Louvre.

But let a European speak to a peripatetic American about the Prairie School, and the American may remain silent. Professor Brooks is the man to enlighten him about what went on in architecture during the international revolt and reform during the early 1900's following the inspiration of Louis Sullivan and the guidance and publicity of Frank Lloyd Wright. Even many well-educated Middle Westerners have little knowledge about how profoundly the Sullivan and Wright contemporaries (William Drummond, George Grant Elmslie, Hugh Garden, Walter Burley Griffin, George Maher, and Dwight Perkins) changed in the Middle West the appearance of public and private buildings, outside and in. Architects could no longer count on inexpensive construction costs, large tracts of land, and servants indoors and gardeners outdoors. And so they faced up to the absolute need of small houses, precise and angular in design, which nonetheless could give inside a sense of space by highly sophisticated interior arrangements. With residences emerging modestly, discreetly, and inevitably out of the landscape, the prairies of Wisconsin and Illinois, lowa and Indiana, Missouri and Michigan became more functional and more beautiful.

Americans with hearty appreciation of Loire Valley palaces, Rhine castles, and English country homes may now include the dynamic and original creations of The Prairie School, with the guidance of the man who has held the Mellon Chair at Vassar, the presidency of the Society of Architectural Historians, a visiting professorship at Dartmouth College, and the Professorship of Fine Arts since 1958 at the University of Toronto. Professor Brooks has assessed each architect's contribution to the work of the others and to the movement as a whole. He also explains how the movement came into being, what it accomplished, and why it should have faded out suddenly at the time of the First World War. Eschewing Wright's well-known early work, he concentrates on Wright material unpublished and unknown. The unfamiliar post-1900 career of Sullivan is treated at some length.

Despite 247 illustrations, 348 pages of text, five of bibliographical notes, and 20 pages of double-columned index. Professor Brooks regrets that his book representing so many men's work cannot be all inclusive, that many buildings and architects outside the American Middle West must be ignored or mentioned only in footnotes, and that much remains to be done.

It is pleasant to note in the Preface that Professor Brooks considers himself deeply indebted to Mark L. Peisch '44, a former member of the Department of Art, Dartmouth College, and author of The ChicagoSchool of Architecture (1964), and to Hugh S. Morrison '26, Leon E. Williams Professor of Art, Emeritus, Dartmouth College, "who first fired my interest in architectural history and over 30 years ago wrote his timeless study of Louis Sullivan."