Alphabet Challenge: O

I’ve signed onto The Blogging from A to Z April Challenge 2021.

The challenge is to blog the whole alphabet in April and write at least 100 words on a topic that corresponds to the letter of the day. 

Every day, excluding Sundays, I’m blogging about Places I Have Been. The last post will be on Friday, April 30 when I finally focus on the letter Z. 

O: Oak Park

Oak Park is noted for being the place with the most houses, twenty-five, designed or remodeled by Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright, one of the most influential architects of the 20^th century, lived and worked in Oak Park with his wife and six children from 1889 to 1913 when he left them for the wife of one of his clients. But that’s another story.  

I moved to Oak Park with my husband and two children in 1977. In ‘83, I enrolled in a course sponsored by the FLW Home and Studio Foundation. For six consecutive Saturdays I sat in a large room at the Oak Park library with other potential volunteers listening to the experts discuss architecture in general and FLW’s life and work in particular. The class was free. I still have the three-ring notebook.  

For the next five years, I volunteered in the Book Store interacting with myriad visitors from all over the United States and abroad. And at The Annual House Walk, which at that time was held on the third Saturday in May, I gave tours. The Friday before the House Walk, all volunteers had a private showing of the homes that would be open to the public the next day. 

When we had out-of-town guests, I often took them on an informal walking tour of the FLW’s historical homes throughout Oak Park. 

I still have a keen interest in architecture, especially since my daughter became an architect and married an architect and my 17 year old grandson is planning on studying architecture in college next year.