Northern California boasts many Craftsman-style homes, including a lovingly appointed model on University Avenue in Los Altos. Paul Duchscherer, San Francisco design consultant who worked on that property, has written a new book that aims to expand our understanding of the Arts and Crafts style.
“Beyond the Bungalow, Grand Homes in the Arts & Crafts Tradition” (2005, Gibbs Smith) combines Duchscherer’s vast knowledge of Arts and Crafts architecture with exquisite photography by Linda Svendsen to profile what the author calls “the extended family” of bungalow homes.
Bungalow homes are so popular, Duchscherer posits, that many other large homes that sprang from the Arts and Crafts vernacular have been overlooked. The bungalow was but the starting point in a progressive movement that later incorporated touches of the rustic and the American foursquare and crossed over to the Swiss chalet, Oriental, Prairie, Shingle, Tudor Revival and English Cottage styles of the early 20th century.
The bungalow style came to mean a one- or 1½-story home with a large overhanging roof attached to a porch, featuring open interior living areas with exposed beams, built-ins and simple decoration using natural woods and colors from nature.
The style became the standard for the largest number of new homes built in the early 20th century, according to Duchscherer. A booming U.S. economy created a large market for new homes, and soon buyers were choosing their home designs from catalogs. Gustav Stickley, who had popularized the Arts & Crafts style with “The Craftsman” magazine, began marketing building plans for his ideal American home, the bungalow, around 1901.
Sears, Roebuck & Co. took the plans catalog concept the next step in 1909 by launching the kit house. Kit houses were ready-cut, including many elements of interior trim, and made it possible for homeowners of more modest means to afford built-ins and special millwork that would have been too costly if produced by local carpenters. These catalogs replicated the basic Craftsman design across the United States.
The styles that followed tweaked the design while keeping many of its essential elements. Particularly in large homes, Duchscherer writes, architectural imagination was given free rein.
In the Bay Area, the “First Bay Tradition” of progressive architecture brought in the Shingle Style, modified from its origins in seaside homes on the Atlantic Coast.
Duchscherer does not mention many local examples, but it’s easy to recognize some of the styles he discusses. An example of the Shingle Style can be seen in the Griffin House on Foothill College campus in Los Altos Hills. The dramatic dormers and deeply sloping roof speak the Arts and Crafts language, and the Shingle Style adds a country-house feel to the home built by Frank Delos Wolfe and Charles McKenzie of San Jose in 1901 for Willard Griffin, one of the founders of Del Monte packing company.
Stonebrook Court in Los Altos Hills recalls another crossover style Duchscherer discusses – the Tudor Revival Style, popular from the 1880s to the early 1930s. Originally called Lantarnam Hall in reference to owner and financier Percy Morgan’s Welsh heritage, the home was begun in 1914 and finished in 1916 by Bay Area architect John H. Powers. At 11,000 square feet, the home, with its half-timbering, may externally resemble a Tudor Revival structure, but its grandeur owes more to the Elizabethan manor house that served as its model.
Duchscherer mentions Green Gables in Woodside for its stunning mock-thatch roof like those that characterized English Cottage-style homes. These roofs were expensive and technically difficult to build, Duchscherer says, because the wooden shingles had to be irregularly cut and steam-bent. “To achieve the rolled edge effect,” he writes, “the shingles were laid over a specially made wooden substructure to ensure that the roof’s rounded appearance and thickness would approximate that of a thatched roof.”
Built in 1911 for banking and paper magnate Mortimer Fleishhacker, Green Gables was the largest project undertaken by Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene. The Greenes had earlier gained fame for their work in high-end Craftsman style in Pasadena.
Duchscherer is a San Francisco celebrity for his work encompassing architecture, interior design and decorative arts, and he displays his full knowledge and talents in “Beyond the Bungalow.” As an accessible history or coffee table conversation piece, his book is well worth buying. In addition to book writing, Duchscherer specializes in work on historic structures and is often featured as a guest designer on HGTV’s “Curb Appeal.”
