Art Institute of Chicago

Eliphalet W. Blatchford House, Chicago, Illinois, LaSalle Street Elevation and Partial Section

Peter Bonnett Wight

Date: 1873/75
Medium: Ink and watercolor on paper
Culture: LaSalle Street, 375 North
Department: Architecture and Design
Institution: Art Institute of Chicago

New York architect Peter B. Wight was one of the first to bring the High Victorian Gothic style from England to the United States. Wight used this style for many early commissions, such as this house for industrialist Eliphalet Blatchford and his family, built just after the Great Chicago Fire. With polychromatic masonry, metalwork, and an asymmetrical form, this house would have stood out in Chicago as a bold hybrid of influences from 19th-century Great Britain and 15the-century Italy. Wight’s designs for the interior of the house also embraced the modern idea of gesamtkunstwerk , or cohesive design, with medievalinspired schemes for woodwork, furnishings, and brightly colored wall papers.

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