The Klutho residence is a two-story Prairie House constructed of a 2-by-6-inch wood stud frame, sheathed with a white stucco exterior up to a continuous second-floor projecting sill line, which wrapps around the house. Above this sill, Klutho placed a continuous band of bedroom windows and dark-stained horizontal lapped wood siding. The projecting sill line at the second-floor windows steps down in a rhythmic progression at the north elevation of the design. This arrangement expresses the main stairwell of the house on the exterior, with full-height leaded-glass windows with abstract “tree of life” designs illuminating the interior.

The house originally faced east on Main Street, and the living room, with the master bedroom above it, received the early morning sun. This main facade features extensive glass with wood mullions running the full two-story height between projecting stucco piers. French doors open from the living room onto a raised patio, which is afforded privacy from the street by an encircled three-foot-high stucco parapet. The patio reaches out from the house as a visual, yet sequestered, connection to the public sidewalk.

It was also the first of many local buildings of the style that displayed the Prairie cross motif (which appears as capitals at the top of the mullions on the front of the house and the newel post inside) that was adapted from the ornaments on Wright's Larkin building. Klutho stirred further controversy when he added a planter featuring the statue of a nude nymph on the front of the house.

With the decline of the movie industry and Klutho’s finances, he sold this lot on Main Street in 1925 and moved the house around the corner to its present location on the old movie studio property. By 1927 he had converted the house to a duplex rental unit, severely altering its appearance in the process: the statuary and planter were removed; the porch and the large roof overhang on the east side were taken off; the stair-stepping of the west side windows was eliminated; and a Spanish-style arch and new outside staircase were added at the duplex entrance. Klutho moved back into this building in 1935, living out his life in the second-story apartment. The house has now been restored, thus assuring the preservation of one of Jacksonville’s most revolutionary residences.

Photos courtesy of Robert C. Broward and Wayne W. Wood.

References
• Broward, Robert C.: The Architecture of Henry John Klutho: The Prairie School in Jacksonville. Jacksonville, Florida: The Jacksonville Historical Society, 2003.
• Wood, Wayne W.: Jacksonville's Architectural Heritage: Landmarks for the Future. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1996, p 191.