The designs of Robert Closson Spencer, Jr. combined the modern Prairie style with historic elements, especially half-timbering, and including a wide variety of design elements based on stylized floral form.

He graduated from the Univ. of Wisc. with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1886 and then enrolled in the architecture program at MIT. He married Ernestine Elliott on 11/28/1889 and in 1891, won the Rotch Traveling Scholarship, allowing him to tour Europe with his wife spending the next two years studying architecture. Upon return to Chicago, Robert went to work for Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge. The Stanley Grepe House (1894) was his very first large commission and was emphatically a Tudor Revival design in English style stucco.

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In 1895, Spencer established his own practice in the Schiller Bldg. in Chicago. His office space happened to be next to Frank Lloyd Wright and the two became close friends. The very next year Spencer and Wright moved their offices to the loft of the Steinway Piano building (designed & occupied by Dwight Perkins). The Loft, as it was known, was the workspace for a number of young architects interested in developing a new architectural style that was free from historical forms and details. It was here that the Prairie School was born and making Perkins, Spencer & Wright charter members.

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He was known as a very prolific writer and in 1900 wrote the first of many articles for the Architectural Review, highlighting the work of his friend Frank Lloyd Wright. In the same year he authored a series of articles in The Ladies Home Journal about midwestern farmhouses. In 1905, Spencer formed a partnership with Horace S. Powers. Spencer was the designer and Powers served as the office manager. They designed residential structures primarily in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs with some additional commissions scattered across the Midwest. It was during these years that his designs changed from predominately Tudor style, including generous use of English medieval half-timbering, to the more modern rectangular Prairie style using half-timbering as ornament.

During this partnership in 1906, Spencer founded The Casement Hardware Co., and he invented and manufactured hardware for casement windows. Spencer returned to private practice in 1923, and joined the faculty of the school of architecture at Oklahoma A&M in 1928. He moved to the Univ. of FL in 1930 and then left teaching in 1934 to produce murals for the U.S. government. until his retirement to Tucson, AZ in 1938.

Source: https://rigov.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/1813