Craftsman
and Bungalow By Peter Barr At the turn of the century a number of social reformers in America began to react against shoddy designs produced by industrial production, the decorative excesses of the Queen Anne era, and the endless chain of historical revivals of the nineteenth century. Instead, they called for American homes to become more responsive to the realities of modern life, more centered on nature and on the social needs of human beings. At the forefront of this movement was the Syracuse, New York, furniture designer Gustav Stickley, who manufactured relatively plain, elegant, rectilinear oak furniture that was noted for its old-fashioned mortise-and-tenon construction and beautiful, natural wood grains. In 1901 Stickley began to publish The Craftsman magazine, which featured reproductions of his furniture as well as plans for homes and essays on aesthetics that reflected ideas originating in the British Arts & Crafts movement (that emerged as a reaction by John Ruskin and William Morris to the inferior industrial designs featured in the 1862 London International Exhibition) and Japanese design concepts (featured at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition). His magazine also included architectural plans and elevations by the California architects Charles and Henry Greene. The magazine’s architectural designs, which Stickley republished in 1909 in a popular book titled Craftsman Homes, emphasized efficient, open plans centered on a large open living room (that replaced the Queen Anne’s formal parlor) and prominent fireplaces that served as the center of family life. Spaces flowed into each other through wide doorways that were trimmed, like his furniture, in wood that was simple, rectilinear, unpainted and selected for its natural beauty—most often oak or white pine. On the exterior of his homes, Stickley sought to connect homeowners to both nature and hand-craftsmanship through room-sized porches and natural materials such as rough-cut shingles, rough stonework, brick, and wood trim that was often stained or painted in earthy tones. Perhaps the most easily identifiable exterior features of buildings inspired by his designs are tapered posts on Craftsman porches, some of which were added to the front of older homes. Other typical features of Craftsman designs are triangular knee braces under wide overhanging roofs, as well as exposed roof beams and rafter tails. Such features celebrate rather than conceal the method of the roof’s construction—and thus reflect Stickely’s concern that industrial society was losing touch with traditional means of production. (Ironically, such features soon became factory produced and are often obscured today by vinyl siding.) A term closely related to Craftsman-style homes is “bungalow.” It was a term first used by British colonists in Bengal to describe the one-story, thatched huts they lived in. A few modest American homes had been described as “bungalows” in architectural journals before Stickley began his own crusade. But the national craze for bungalow cottages in America began when Stickley published examples of modest Craftsman bungalows in his magazine and, at the same time, lumber companies began to offer prospective home-owners (and their builders) all the pre-cut materials they needed to construct bungalows inexpensively. These companies offered to send everything first-time homeowners needed by rail—building instructions, tools, pre-cut lumber, nails, trim, hardware, plumbing, fixtures, appliances, etc. In some cases, all that the local builder needed to provide was a level foundation and manual labor. Between 1912 and 1940, according to Daniel Reiff’s book Houses from Books, the Sears catalogue (famous for its line of “Craftsman” tools) offered as many as nineteen different bungalow designs of the Stickley type; and practically every other mail-order company did so too during the 1910s and 1920s--including the Aladdin Company in Bay City, Michigan. (p. 176).
|
|
