Monarch
Walter Inglis Anderson (1903-1965), block print, 1941
Zachary Harris MFA (b. 1988), plasma-cut steel, 2019

This historic beachfront summer home in Ocean Springs, Mississippi was designed in 1890 by Chicago architect Louis Sullivan – the father of the skyscraper – with assistance from his young draftsman, the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright. The home, evidence of this architectural collaboration, helped usher in new ideas in residential design. The home is “distinctly American,” says Robert Ivy, CEO of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), pioneering in the way that it “reaches out into the landscape and positions people in a more symbiotic relationship with their surroundings…” 

Louis Sullivan, who built the home for Chicago lumber-baron James Charnley, was so taken with the seaside atmosphere that he built his own summer cottage next door to The Charnley-Norwood House. Here, Sullivan found renewal and connection to nature, describing the surroundings as “a stately forest of amazing beauty, arranged as though by the hand of an unseen poet.”

The Charnley-Norwood House has endured devastation and rebirth, rebuilt in 1897 after it caught fire, and restored with immense effort and coordination after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Its latest renaissance was completed in 2013, and the home is now managed by the Mississippi Gulf Coast National Heritage Area.

Known as “Bon Silene,” referencing the rose garden in front of the home, The Charnley-Norwood House is a testament to the resilience and historic preservation. Past the manicured rose garden and toward the Mississippi Sound, visitors look over a wild meadow of flowers and natural growth. This ecosystem supports life of all kinds, most notably the monarch butterflies, who descend upon the meadow during their spring and fall migrations.