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Downtown Dayton Walking Tour
Item 24 of 31

Prairie School is a late 19th- and early 20th-century architectural style, most common in the Midwestern United States. The style is usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in horizontal bands, integration with the landscape, solid construction, craftsmanship, and discipline in the use of ornament. Horizontal lines were thought to evoke and relate to the wide, flat, treeless expanses of America's native prairie landscape.

The Prairie School was an attempt at developing an indigenous North American style of architecture in sympathy with the ideals and design aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts Movement, with which it shared an embrace of handcrafting and craftsman guilds as an antidote to the dehumanizing effects of mass production.


This Prairie-style structure was built in 1920 and was designed as an apartment. It was built about the same time as the apartment building at 1034-1042 Grand. But the construction date is where the similarity ends.

Down the street, at 1034 Grand, you’ll find a detailed, almost whimsical design. Here this Prairie-style structure is notable for its lack of design details. The Prairie style is frequently based on the basic rectangular box. Features include square or rectangular forms with pyramidal or hip roofs, dormers, and widely overhanging eaves. Here we see a vernacular version of the Prairie-style that is adapted for a large double. The hard, highly glazed brick is also typical of masonry buildings constructed during this period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_School