MASON CITY AND PRAIRIE SCHOOL ARCHITECTURE

A Chronology

1844	Richard Lloyd Jones and his family emigrate from Cardiganshire, Wales, to Union (now Ixonia), Wisconsin.
1846	Iowa Territory is granted statehood.
1851	Founding of Cerro Gordo County (named for a prominent battle in the Mexican-American War in 1847) in north-central Iowa, with an initial population of eight Euro-Americans.
1851	Crystal Palace Exhibition opens (first World’s Fair) in Hyde Park, London.
1852	Death of kindergarten founder Friedrich Froebel.
1852	Publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
1853	Mason City is established (originally known as Shibboleth, then Mason Grove).
1853	Commodore Matthew Perry arrives in Tokyo Bay with heavily armed black ships; demands trade negotiations with Japan.
1854	Lloyd Jones and his family move from Ixonia to Jones Valley, near Spring Green, Wisconsin.
1854	The first physician arrives in Mason City.
1854	Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden.
1854	Inter-tribal conflicts among Native Americans near Clear Lake, Iowa (called the Grindstone War) prompt temporary evacuation of the area’s Euro-American settlers.
1855	First sawmill erected near Mason City on Lime Creek. Also established that year are the city’s first grocery store, law office, blacksmith shop and photography studio.
1855	American poet Walt Whitman publishes his collection of poems Leaves of Grass.
1856	Birth of architect Louis H. Sullivan in Boston.
1856	Publication in London of Owen Jones’s The Grammar of Ornament.
1856	Educator Margarethe Meyer-Schurz (wife of statesman and reformer Carl Schurz) starts the first Froebel kindergarten in the United States in Watertown, Wisconsin.
1856	Abolitionist John Brown and followers murder five slavery supporters in the Pottawatomie Massacre in Kansas.
1856	First school in Mason City begins in a log cabin, prompting construction of the first stone school building the following year.
1858	Mason City is designated the county seat of Cerro Gordo County.
1858	Cerro Gordo Press, the first Mason City newspaper, begins publication.
1859	John Brown leads an unsuccessful raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
1859	Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of the Species.
1861	With the attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, the American Civil War begins.
1861	British designer, poet and social reformer William Morris co-founds an interior design firm, later called Morris and Company. His efforts will establish him as the leading figure in the arts and crafts movement.
1862	At Mankato, Minnesota, thirty-eight Santee Sioux Native American men are put to death by mass hanging for attacks on Euro-Americans. It is the largest group execution in U.S. history.
1864	In Colorado Territory, a camp of as many as 160 peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho Native Americans (two-thirds women and children) are killed and mutilated by a 700-man militia of Euro-American soldiers in what is known as the Sand Creek Massacre.
1864	First millinery shop opens in Mason City.
1865	American Civil War ends with the surrender of the Confederate army on April 9. In the same month, U.S. president Abraham Lincoln is assassinated.
1865	First lumberyard opens in Mason City.
1867	Birth of Frank Lincoln Wright (name later changed to Frank Lloyd Wright) in Richland Center, Wisconsin.
1869	Completion in Utah of the link between the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railway lines, the country’s first transcontinental railroad.
1869	The Milwaukee Road railroad line to Mason City is completed, and the first train arrives in the city.
1869	First Mason City bank (Cerro Gordo County Bank) is founded.
1870	Milwaukee Road railway is extended to Austin, Minnesota. Completion of an additional Iowa Central railroad line to Mason City is eventually followed by others.
1870	A second mill is constructed on Willow Creek at Mason City.
1871	Birth of Marion Mahony in Chicago.
1871	In the Great Chicago Fire, much of the downtown business community is destroyed. The family of infant Marion Mahony flees to Hubbard Woods, north of Chicago, where they resettle in Winnetka, Illinois.
1871	The first brickyard opens in Mason City.
1872	Completion of the Brooklyn Bridge.
1876	Births of architects Walter Burley Griffin in Maywood, Illinois, and William Drummond in Newark, New Jersey.
1876	Mark Twain publishes Tom Sawyer.
1876	Wright’s mother attends the Centennial World’s Fair in Philadelphia. After learning about kindergarten, she brings home a set of Froebel’s wooden blocks.
1876	Throughout the United States, Euro-Americans are alarmed and shocked to learn that the Seventh Cavalry, under the command of General George A. Custer, has been defeated by Native Americans (presumed to be an inferior race) at the Battle of Little Big Horn.
1877	Thomas Edison invents the phonograph.
1878	First telephone system installed in Mason City.
1879	Edison invents the electric light bulb.
1880	New York City installs electric streetlights.
1883	Jenkin Lloyd Jones (Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Uncle Jenk”) founds the All Souls Unitarian Church in Chicago.
1883	Completion of the Parker Opera House in downtown Mason City on Federal Avenue, across from the northeast corner of Central Park.
1883	Birth of architect Barry Byrne in Chicago.
1884	The City Bank (later renamed the City National Bank) is founded, with Thomas Emsley as president. When he dies two years later, his wife, Mary Church Emsley, a major shareholder, becomes the new bank president.
1884	Dedication of the Iowa State Capitol Building in Des Moines.
1884	Civil War monument erected in Central Park in Mason City.
1884	Mark Twain publishes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
1884	The linotype machine is patented.
1884	The first skyscraper is built in Chicago.
1886	Frank Lloyd Wright joins Joseph Silsbee’s Chicago architectural firm.
1886	Joseph Silsbee designs Unity Chapel in Spring Green, Wisconsin, with Frank Lloyd Wright as draftsman.
1886	The Statue of Liberty is dedicated.
1886	Streetlights are installed in Mason City.
1887	Wright joins the Chicago firm of Adler and Sullivan as draftsman.
1888	Lilly Emsley, daughter of Mary Church Emsley, marries Mason City lawyer James E.E. Markley, who will later recommend Wright as the architect for the new City National Bank. A Unitarian and outspoken women’s rights advocate, Mary Emsley is well acquainted with Wright’s uncle Jenkin Lloyd Jones, a prominent Chicago-based Unitarian preacher.
1890	Scholar Ernest Fenollosa (cousin of Joseph Silsbee) is named to the curatorial staff of the new Japanese department at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
1892	Inventor John Froelich develops the first gasoline-powered tractor in Waterloo, Iowa.
1892	Mason City Brick and Tile Company is founded.
1893	Wright is fired by Sullivan for moonlighting; he begins his own architectural firm.
1893	Birth of arts impresario and book designer Merle Armitage in Mason City.
1896	First Ford automobile.
1896	U.S. mail delivery is provided to farms through the Rural Free Delivery Act.
1899	Publication of Arthur Wesley Dow’s Composition.
1899	Jacob Decker purchases the Mason City slaughterhouse and begins the Decker Meat Packing Plant.
1902	Birth of composer and playwright Meredith Willson in Mason City.
1902	Wright designs a new building for his aunts’ Hillside Home School near Spring Green. In the same year, Marion Markley, the eldest granddaughter of Mary Church Emsley, enrolls in the school and is soon followed by her younger sister, Doris. In visiting the school, their parents, James and Lillie Markley, are impressed by the building’s architecture.
1903	Wright designs the office building of the Larkin Soap Company in Buffalo, New York.
1903	Construction of the Wilson Opera House in Mason City, near the northwest corner of Central Park.
1903	Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first sustained airplane flight at Kitty Hawk.
1905	Mason City Carnegie Library opens.
1905	Albert Einstein publishes The Theory of Relativity.
1906	Wright designs the Robie House in Chicago.
1906	Publication of Kakuzo Okakura’s The Book of Tea.
1906	First motion picture theater arrives in Mason City.
1908	Founding of Northwestern States Portland Cement Company in Mason City. After a financially troubled beginning, it is taken over in 1911 and thereafter productively managed by banker Charles H. MacNider.
1908	Construction of the Stockman House in Mason City, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
1910	Construction of the City National Bank and Park Inn in Mason City, designed by Wright.
1911	Lehigh Portland Cement Company of Allentown, Pennsylvania, establishes a Mason City facility.
1911	Marriage of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony.
1912	Completion of the Arthur Rule and Harry Page Houses in Mason City, designed by Walter Burley Griffin.
1913	Walter and Marion Griffin relocate to Australia, expecting to remain there for about three years.
1914	Completion of the James E. Blythe and Joshua Melson Houses in Mason City, designed by Walter Burley Griffin.
1914	Mamah Borthwick Cheney (Wright’s partner), her two children and others at Talisesin, near Spring Green, Wisconsin, perish in an attack and subsequent arson by a house servant.
1914	Wright designs Midway Gardens in Chicago.
1915	Completion of the Sam Schneider House, designed by Walter Burley Griffin, and the Hugh Gilmore House by Barry Byrne in Mason City.
1917	United States enters World War I. Soon after, the governor of Iowa forbids the use in public of any non-English language by people in groups of two or more.
1917	Completion of the E.V. Franke House, designed by Barry Byrne, in Mason City.
1919	Radios are introduced in Iowa homes.
1921	In Australia, Walter Burley Griffin and the Greater Sydney Development Association become owners of ninety acres of rocky terrain. This will become the location of a Griffin-planned community called Castlecrag.
1922	Operations begin in Mason City at the Northern Sugar Corporation.
1923	Completion of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, designed by Wright. At noon on the hotel’s official opening day, the city is struck by a massive earthquake. Wright’s hotel is one of the few buildings to survive.
1925	Walter and Marion Griffin move from Melbourne to Castlecrag in Australia.
1926	Pioneer Hi-Bred International in Iowa begins marketing hybrid seed corn.
1927	First Mason City airport is established. Charles Lindbergh attends the dedication.
1929	Griffin designs the Fishwick House in Castlecrag.
1930	William Van Alen designs the Chrysler Building in New York.
1935	Wright designs Fallingwater in rural Pennsylvania.
1935	Walter Burley Griffin leaves Castlecrag to work on architectural commissions in India, followed soon after by his wife, Marion.
1937	Following surgery, Walter Burley Griffin dies of peritonitis in India. Marion Mahony Griffin moves back to Castlecrag, then leaves Australia permanently in 1938. She returns to Chicago, where she remains for the rest of her life.
1939	Wright designs the Johnson Wax Building in Racine, Wisconsin.
1941	United States enters World War II.
1950	Television becomes a source of home entertainment.
1956	Wright designs the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
1959	Death of Frank Lloyd Wright.
1959	Former Wright apprentice Curtis Besinger designs the Tom MacNider House, a Usonian structure, in the Rock Crest/ Rock Glen neighborhood in Mason City.
1962	Death of Marion Mahony Griffin. 1965 Opening of Charles H. MacNider Art Museum in Mason City.
1967	Death of Barry Byrne.
1992	Having been relocated in 1989 and restored to its historic state, Wright’s Stockman House opens as a house museum.
2002	Opening of Music Man Square in Mason City.
2011	Its restoration complete, the Historic Park Inn Hotel opens in Mason City.
2011	Completion of the Robert E. McCoy Architectural Interpretive Center, adjacent to the Stockman House in Mason City.

Corridor designed by Wright at the Johnson Wax Corporation Building. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith (n.d.). Carol M. Highsmith Archive, LOC Prints and Photographs.