John Van Bergen house is being moved in Willmette IL. It was reported that he worked in FLWright's office.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/w ... story.html
John Van Bergen House is being relocated
H Allen Brooks, The Prairie School (1979), pp 279-80:
"Other architects active during the years 1912-14 included John Van Bergen, who worked successively for Griffin, Wright, and Drummond before entering private practice in 1911. His earliest houses are profoundly indebted to Wright and . . . [he] came close, perhaps closer than anyone, to actually imitating Wright's designs. And because so many of these were built in his home town of Oak Park where pilgrims go to seek out Wright's work, the impression has been that Wright's contemporaries were generally imitators of the master . . . His excellent sense of proportions [sic] was much to his credit, yet because of this his houses look so well designed that they more readily pass for the work of Wright."
(That last, and the tenor of the passage in general, date the writing; no "pilgrim" today mistakes Wright's work for that of his followers -- or vice versa -- because of the wealth of guidance available on the Web and in print -- I would say.) (But I suppose even some OP residents might still be mistaken, in a couple of cases ?)
From the looks of the subject house, above, it seems that Van Bergen was still working off of Wright's 1909 Davidson/Roberts/Baker/Steffens house design, in the late 'twenties . . .
SDR
"Other architects active during the years 1912-14 included John Van Bergen, who worked successively for Griffin, Wright, and Drummond before entering private practice in 1911. His earliest houses are profoundly indebted to Wright and . . . [he] came close, perhaps closer than anyone, to actually imitating Wright's designs. And because so many of these were built in his home town of Oak Park where pilgrims go to seek out Wright's work, the impression has been that Wright's contemporaries were generally imitators of the master . . . His excellent sense of proportions [sic] was much to his credit, yet because of this his houses look so well designed that they more readily pass for the work of Wright."
(That last, and the tenor of the passage in general, date the writing; no "pilgrim" today mistakes Wright's work for that of his followers -- or vice versa -- because of the wealth of guidance available on the Web and in print -- I would say.) (But I suppose even some OP residents might still be mistaken, in a couple of cases ?)
From the looks of the subject house, above, it seems that Van Bergen was still working off of Wright's 1909 Davidson/Roberts/Baker/Steffens house design, in the late 'twenties . . .
SDR
Cross-fertilization: http://savewright.org/wright_chat/viewt ... 4828c26789