Herb Greene is the architect behind the newest Oklahoma property listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Built in 1960-61 as his family’s private residence, Prairie House was a collaborative effort between Greene and his University of Oklahoma students. Greene was himself a student of Bruce Goff, and the two of them are considered the pioneers of the American School, an independent “school” of design philosophy that is part of the Organic Architecture movement, the most famous representative of which was Frank Lloyd Wright.
“Bruce Goff was an associate of Frank Lloyd Wright, and he passed on the principles of Organic Architecture he learned from Wright, who learned them from Louis Sullivan,” said local artist, building consultant and member of the board of Prairie House Preservation Society (PHPS) Larry Dean Pickering. “The idea behind Organic was reclamation and the use of locally available materials that work well and harmonize with the local environment.”
Placement on the National Register makes the preservation process more secure, thereby ensuring that Prairie House does not meet the same fate as its sister structure in Norman, Bavinger House, another Organic design — this one by Goff — that was destroyed in 2016, a move that PHPS Interim Executive Director Beau Jennings called “a tragedy.”
“We had two iconic examples of this architectural style that originated in Oklahoma just a few miles apart, both of which were collaborative efforts between architect-professors and their students,” Jennings said. “One of them is now gone, and I’m proud to be working to help preserve and restore the second one.”
Jennings said generous grants from Oklahoma Historical Society and Norman Arts Council are helping prepare the house for a full exterior renovation. The outside is made up largely of cedar planks — cedar being abundant in Central Oklahoma — and the structural elements are largely lumber and steel.
Both Jennings and Pickering spoke excitedly about a film project that focuses on the life and legacy of Greene, and if all goes as planned, Oklahomans will get to see it at deadCenter Film Festival next year. Produced by Greene’s great niece, Lila Cohen (pronounced LEE-la), the film is a feature-length documentary using Prairie House and Greene as central subjects to examine the American School, the house, and Greene’s life and legacy. (Greene is 95 and living in Berkeley, California.) A rough cut of the documentary is expected by October, according to Cohen.
“I want people who see the film to better understand the form, yes, but I also want them to see and understand the complexity of life and nature via this form.” — Lila Cohen
Complex legacy
Cohen graduated from the University of Arizona (UA) with a degree in architecture, and in addition to her role as filmmaker, she serves as an architect for a small firm in California that builds multi-family housing for marginalized and at-risk people. She spoke to Oklahoma Gazette by phone from her office in San Francisco.
“The film is looking at some big questions about my uncle’s work and the American School,” Cohen said. “Why has this movement been overlooked and misunderstood? Why did brilliant architects like Philip Johnson refer to it as ‘beneath contempt’? I always thought the style and philosophy were special, and while I was a student at UA, a slide of the Prairie House popped up on my professor’s presentation during a structures class. So what happened to these ideas?”
Cohen acknowledges that complex factors led to the overshadowing of the American School — a preference for simplified, mass-producible architecture; a bias toward Oklahoma and other areas not associated with “great” architecture; and the reliance on locally available resources — but there were also less complicated factors.
“Twenty years after Prairie House, my uncle stopped doing architecture work, and Bruce Goff died relatively young,” Cohen said. “Then there was all the misunderstanding of what the American School represented. It was kind of like Googie architecture [Classen Inn is one of the last pieces of Googie-style in Oklahoma.] inasmuch as most of the commentary was derisive: kitschy, wacky, undisciplined, etc.”
Like her uncle and Goff, Cohen believes that individuality matters more than styles that are easy to replicate, but it’s individuality related to circumstance and context, not personality. Each building tells a story, and she believes her uncle’s story is worth telling.
“I want people who see the film to better understand the form, yes, but I also want them to see and understand the complexity of life and nature via this form,” Cohen said. “We miss out on so much when we have preconceptions, and the architecture world definitely had preconceptions about Oklahoma and its architects.”
Visit prairiehousepreservation.org.
This article appears in Summer Guide 2025.