A small, subdued house in Minneapolis here has won resounding applause from students of Prairie School architecture. The Purcell-Cutts House opened to the public this fall after four years of restoration by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the architectural firm of MacDonald & Mack.
"The spaces of that house, particularly the living room, I consider to be the epitome of the Prairie movement," said David Gebhard, a professor of architectural history at the University of California in at Santa Barbara.
The house was designed in 1913 by two ardent and prolific practitioners of the Prairie style, William Gray Purcell of Chicago and his Scottish-born partner, George Grant Elmslie, who were colleagues of Frank Lloyd Wright. "Purcell was a delightfully whimsical man," Dr. Gebhard said. Without taking itself too seriously, the Purcell-Cutts House is a little sermon on the Prairie style, reaching its ideological climax in the living room and dining room. In this 50-foot-long split-level space, the dining room is poised over the sunken living room like the prow of a boat.
"It is the most sophisticated and subtle part of the building," said Dr. Michael Conforti, chief curator at the museum.
Mr. Purcell and his family briefly occupied the house. In 1917, they moved to Philadelphia, and the house was sold in 1919 to the Anson Cutts family, the only other occupants. When Anson Cutts Jr. turned the keys over to the institute in 1985, with an endowment for restoration, the museum became the caretaker of a rare, unadulterated specimen from the Prairie School's heyday.
But the house was in "fairly desperate" condition, with structural problems and 75 years of grime, said Stuart MacDonald, the project supervisor. The biggest challenge was returning its faded color schemes and stencilwork to their original, subtle and at times whimsical glory.
As obsessed as Prairie Style architects were with spatial relationships, they were equally enthralled with the play of natural light on painted surfaces and with colorful decorative motifs in glass, grillwork, murals and stenciling that amplified but did not overwhelm their spaces. Mr. Elmslie is now recognized as the Prairie School sage of color and organic detailing. To revitalize these decorative elements, Alec Wilson, another Scotsman, was called into service.
The plaster walls in the living room and dining room have now been returned to their original dusky rose. The oak floors have been treated with a lavender grain filler and then beeswax so that they have a pearly lavender-gray cast. Panels of leaded glass windows on the east, west and south walls make these rooms a sanctuary for morning and evening light.
The house is a lesson in the difficulty of making one's ideals jibe with reality. Mr. Purcell, in keeping with the Prairie School philosophy, believed strongly in improving the lot of the average family with a style of native organic American architecture that was also affordable.
The unpretentious house is very much in keeping with Mr. Purcell's aim, except that its painstaking details absorbed a substantial amount of money. In 1913, at a time when the average house cost about $3,000 to build, Mr. Purcell's cost $14,500.
The Purcell-Cutts house, at 2328 Lake Place, is open the second Saturday of each month from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Reservations can be made by calling the Minneapolis Institute of Arts at (612) 870-3131. Admission is free. Special tours can be arranged for a fee two weeks in advance by calling (612) 870-3140.