Sam Himmelfarb

[1][2][3] He also designed the Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired Samuel and Eleanor Himmelfarb Home and Studio (built, 1942) in Winfield, Illinois, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

[17][18][19] In high school, he learned to play the drums and by the early 1920s was performing semi-professionally in local vaudeville acts, dance music ensembles, and on a Pacific cruise ship; large crowds and musicians would later serve as subjects for many of his paintings.

[6][23][24] He supported himself with two jobs, as a drummer—playing a 16-show run for big band leader Horace Heidt and gigs with Jimmy Durante—and an architect's apprentice on projects for Long Island homes and the Empire State Building.

[4] They moved to the Midwest in the 1930s, and Himmelfarb focused on commercial three-dimensional design work, creating window displays for Mandel Brothers department store and exhibits for the 1933 A Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago.

[4] Himmelfarb was part of a socially conscious group of Midwest modernists that included Mitchell Siporin, Julio de Diego, Macena Barton, and Milwaukee-based Joseph Friebert,[26] among others.

[6][1] Discussing Himmelfarb’s painting, Road House (1927), Patricia Smith Scanlan identifies its similar "dark-toned urban realism" and informal setting—a humble roadside bar populated with disinterested subjects—while also noting the subtle influence of French modernism in its plunging perspective, strong lighting effects, and loose brushwork.

However, in paintings such as Poet and Paysano (1950), Front Row at the Beach (1955) and Mosaic (1957),[42] he began to experiment with stylized flat or angular, Cubist-like shapes, brighter color, patterned surfaces and a fragmented, reordered sense of space.

[36] By 1960's Downtown and 1961’s Neighborhood Street Scene,[42] Himmelfarb was employing collage—in part, reflecting the fragmented nature of his new compositions—in a manner that recalled both the abstraction of Hans Hofmann and the Pop, representational-abstract silkscreens of Robert Rauschenberg.

[6][44] His late work alternated between abstracted, painterly pieces, such as On the Way (1965) or Sun Bleached (1969), and high-key, geometric syntheses of recreational, domestic or urban scenes, often executed in acrylic (e.g., Family Feast, 1971; In, 1972).

[4][45] These influences are reflected in the structure's exposed building materials, simple geometry, and lack of ornament, as well as its horizontal lines, straight-forward schematics, floor-to-ceiling glazed walls, and placement on an undulating natural lot.

[4] Himmelfarb modified Wright's L-shape footprint design for the Jacobs House, adding a studio wing set at an oblique angle to the rest of the home to create a Y-shape.

The home's interior features a fireplace at the center of the living room, a garden-like space inside the elbow bend at the house's front, outdoor terraces, and an open carport.