Surrounded by woodland on three sides, Mike and Teresa Bergman’s home is the sort of house that takes you back in time when Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter Burley Griffin were the lead architects and designers of homes in what is known as the “Prairie Style.”
Prairie Style was developed by Wright in the early 20th century at his suburban Chicago Oak Park Studio, a bold new approach to domestic architecture, which Wright developed and his one-time partner Griffin would also utilize, primarily in the upper Midwest. In fact, other architects connected with Wright would later be dubbed “The New School of the Middle West,” which included William Gray Purcell and Griffin’s wife, Marion Mahony Griffin.
The “prairie” in Prairie Style is a reference to the broad, flat prairie landscape of the middle part of the United States. Thus, the Wright-developed Prairie Style homes were also broad with flat roofs, making them distinctly “American” at the beginning of the 20th century, later dubbed “the American Century.”
Talking to home builder and designer Gary Randolph, of Nichols Hills-based Randolph Design & Build, who has overseen some 400 building and design projects since relocating from Weatherford to Edmond in the 1980’s, OKC City Lifestyle learned that the Bergmans approached Randolph several years ago with an idea for a Prairie Style home in a secluded woodland area that was adjacent to the Kilpatrick Turnpike.
It was an exciting project for Randolph, not without its challenges, but overall turning out the way he had planned, complete with a beautiful outdoor swimming pool in the backyard that is complete with a waterfall and a hot tub, something Teresa Bergman loves.
Regarding the house, Randolph said the Bergmans came to him at Randolph Design & Build with an idea for a custom-built house.
Using ideas and plans offered to him by the Bergmans, Randolph followed in the Prairie Style to create the home.
Both of the Bergmans were amazed at every feature of the house, inside and out. As for Randolph, he embraces new projects with excitement, mixed with ease and confidence.
“I draw every day,” Randolph said. “Drawing, planning or estimating.”
And the result was an amazing home, spanning 100 years from the original Prairie Style homes of Frank Lloyd Wright's day.
