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“Usonian” redirects here. For the alternative name for a United States citizen, see Demonyms for the United States.

The interior of the Rosenbaum House

Usonia (/juːˈsoʊni.ə/) is a mid-20th-century architectural style and ideal for the United States promoted by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The architectural style predominantly refers to a class of small, single-story dwellings designed by Wright without a garage or much storage. They are often L- or T-shaped, characterized by native materials; flat roofs and large cantilevered overhangs for passive solar heating and natural cooling; natural lighting with clerestory windows; and radiant-floor heating.

Wright used the term to refer to the United States in general (in preference over America), and more specifically to his vision for the landscape of the country, including the planning of cities and the architecture of buildings. Wright proposed the use of the adjective Usonian, coined by a Scottish writer in the early 20th century.

Wright regarded thought the term “United States” primarily refereed to a political union, and he sought to define an ‘American way of life’ beyond the Constitutional structure that extended beyond constitutional and governmental forms.[1][2]

Wright associated ‘Usonia’ with Middle-class democratic societies opposed to European Aristocracy, he states in his 1957 work ‘A Testament’.[3]

Etymology

Gordon House

The word Usonian appears to have been coined by James Duff Law, a Scottish[4] writer born in 1865. In a miscellaneous collection, Here and There in Two Hemispheres (1903), Law quoted a letter of his own (dated June 18, 1903) that begins “We of the United States, in justice to Canadians and Mexicans, have no right to use the title ‘Americans’ when referring to matters pertaining exclusively to ourselves.” He went on to acknowledge that some author had proposed “Usona” (United States of North America), but that he preferred the form “Usonia” (United States of North Independent America).[5] The earliest published use by Wright was in 1927:

But why this term “America” has become representative as the name of these United States at home and abroad is past recall. Samuel Butler fitted us with a good name. He called us Usonians, and our Nation of combined States, Usonia.

— Frank Lloyd Wright[6]

However, this may be a misattribution, as there is as yet no other published evidence that Butler ever used the word.[citation needed]

Historian José F. Buscaglia reclaims the term Usonian to refer to the peoples, national ideology and neo-imperial tradition of the United States of America.[7]

Author Miguel Torres-Castro uses the term Usonian to refer to the origin of the Atlantic puffin used in the children’s book Jupu the Puffin: A Usonian Story. The bird is a puffin from Maine, US.[8]

The Esperanto word, usono, is derived from the English word Usonian to refer to the United States of America.[9]

According to some accounts, the term may have circulated informally in Europe around 1910 as a proposed alternative to “U.S.A.,” possibly to avoid confusion with the newly formed Union of South Africa.[10]

Philologist Charles Alphonso Smith claims in his 1919 work ‘New-Worlds Self-Defined’ the term ‘Usonia’ was first used in 1885 in Toronto, Canada.[11]

Usonian house design

“Usonian” usually refers to a style shared by middle-income family homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright mostly designed houses for wealthy clients until the 1930s,[12][13] when he also began to design lower-cost Usonian houses for middle-class families.[14][15] The Willey House, built in 1934, may have been the first Usonian house;[16] the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs First House, built 1937, is often considered to be the first true “Usonian”.[17] Over his lifetime, he designed more than 300 Usonian houses, including 140 that were ultimately constructed.[18]

In general, his Usonian houses tended to have open plans, geometric floor grids, in-floor heating, and a carport, and they lacked a garage or basement.[15] They also tended to be arranged in the shape of an “L” or a “T”.[19] They are characterized by native materials; flat roofs and large cantilevered overhangs for passive solar heating and natural cooling; natural lighting with clerestory windows; and radiant-floor heating. Another distinctive feature is that they typically have little exposure to the front/’public’ side, while the rear/’private’ sides open expansively to their view. This strong visual connection between the interior and exterior spaces is an important characteristic of all Usonian homes.

After designing the Jacobs First House, Wright ultimately designed dozens of similar Usonian homes across the U.S.[20][21] The Usonian design is considered among the aesthetic origins of the ranch-style house popular in the American west of the 1950s.[22][23] The Usonia Historic District is a planned community in Pleasantville, New York, built in the 1950s following this concept. Wright designed three of the 47 homes himself.

Noted Usonian houses

Precursor to Usonians

The Malcolm Willey House, a precursor to the Usonians
Jacobs I, exterior, front. Widely considered to be the first true Usonian house.
Hanna–Honeycomb House, view of front exterior
Goetsch–Winckler House, exterior, view of carport and entry
Bernard Schwartz House, one of only a few 2-story Usonians designed and built
View of the rear/private side of the Laurent House. This house is a “hemicycle” Usonian, rather than the more typical L-shaped variants. It is also the only house Wright designed for a physically disabled client.

Usonian Houses

Street-side view of the Rosenbaum House. The two, long, cantilevered, roofs pictured are a signature feature of Usonian houses, and serve to emphasize the horizontal.

The FSC Usonian House

The Florida Southern College campus features a collection of thirteen Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, known as Child of the Sun. The most recent, referred to as the “Usonian House”, was constructed in 2013 according to a 1939 Wright design for one of twenty faculty housing units.[verification needed] The 1,700 sq ft (160 m2) building includes textile-block construction and colored glass in perforated concrete blocks, and features furniture also designed by Wright. It is home to the Sharp Family Tourism and Education Center, a visitor center for guests visiting campus to see the Wright buildings, and includes Wright photographs and a documentary film about the architect’s work at the school.[25]

Usonian Automatic Houses

The Usonian Automatic houses were made with concrete blocks. An attempt on the part of Wright to further lower the cost of housing, the clients could actually be involved in the creation of the blocks and thus the construction of the building (such as in the Tracy House).

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The Peters-Margedant house was not designed by Wright, but rather, one of his apprentices, William Wesley “Wes” Peters. Many of its features were later incorporated into the Usonians.[24]

References

  1. ^ Wright, Frank Lloyd (1932). An Autobiography. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce.
  2. ^ Wright, Frank Lloyd (1932). The Disappearing City. New York: William Farquhar Payson.
  3. ^ Frank Lloyd Wright (1957). A Testament. New York: Horizon Press. p. 160. Available at: Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/testamentbyfrank0000unse/page/160/mode/2up
  4. ^ “James D. Law”. electricscotland.com. Retrieved May 24, 2022.
  5. ^ Law, James D. (1903). Here and There in Two Hemispheres. Lancaster: Home Publishing Co. pp. 111–12n.
  6. ^ Gutheim, Frederick, ed. (1941). Frank Lloyd Wright on Architecture: Selected Writings 1894–1940. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, p. 100.
  7. ^ Buscaglia-Salgado, José F. (2003). Undoing Empire, Race, and Nation in the Mulatto Caribbean. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-3574-9. Archived from the original on June 25, 2022. Retrieved February 22, 2014.
  8. ^ Torres-Castro, Miguel (2014). Jupu the Puffin: A Usonian Story. New York City: Jupu Press. ISBN 978-0-6159-4073-1. Archived from the original on June 27, 2022. Retrieved April 3, 2014.
  9. ^ Moch, Gaston (December 1905). “Usono”. Espero pacifista. Vol. 1, no. 6. Neuilly-sur-Seine: Internacia Societo Esperantista Por La Paco.
  10. ^ Sergeant, John (1984). Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian Houses: The Case for Organic Architecture. p. 16.
  11. ^ Smith, Charles Alphonso (1919). New Words Self-defined. p. 198. As a matter of fact, the name Usona was first proposed by a Canadian, James P. Murray of Toronto, in 1885. (Quoted from a letter in the New York Times, 20 July 1918.)
  12. ^ Scardino, Albert (May 27, 1987). “Herbert Jacobs, 30’s Reporter Who Reshaped Architecture”. The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on November 10, 2017. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
  13. ^ Jeffrey M. Dean (November 19, 1973), National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Jacobs, Herbert A., House, National Park Service, archived from the original on February 27, 2020, retrieved July 3, 2022 With two photos.
  14. ^ Sundberg, Anne (May 30, 2004). “A house designed by a legend”. Herald-Times-Reporter. pp. F1, F2. Retrieved March 24, 2025 – via newspapers.com.
  15. ^ a b Schwartz, Bernard and Fern, House (Report). National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service. February 19, 2019. p. 17.
  16. ^ “The Malcolm Willey House”. thewilleyhouse. Retrieved May 12, 2019.
  17. ^ “Herbert Jacobs House”. Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Retrieved May 12, 2019.
  18. ^ Hendrickson, Paul (2020). Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 344. ISBN 978-0-8041-7288-2.
  19. ^ Barrett, Lesley Rogers (May 5, 2003). “House on West Side stands out”. Wisconsin State Journal. p. 9. Retrieved April 11, 2025 – via newspapers.com.
  20. ^ McCrea, Ron (May 7, 2005). “Wright Times Three; Celebration Set Today for National Landmarks”. Madison Capital Times. p. 1A. ProQuest 395295490.
  21. ^ Gould, Whitney (June 1, 2003). “In the Wright place Retired UW professor loves the calming effect of an architectural legend”. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. p. 7N. ProQuest 261759988.
  22. ^ Clark, Clifford Edward, Jr. The American Family Home, 1800-1960. Chapel Hill. University of North Carolina Press, 1986. pp. 193-201. ISBN 978-0807841518
  23. ^ Wright, Gwendolyn. Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America. Cambridge, MIT Press. 1983. pp. 253-262. ISBN 9780262730648
  24. ^ “Peters-Margedant House – Archaeology and Art History”. evansville.edu. University of Evansville. Retrieved May 12, 2019.
  25. ^ “Wright Stuff”. Florida Trend. March 2014. p. 36.