Craftsman: its rules, features and buildings | The Textbook of Architecture

The American house of the Arts and Crafts: the low, broad bungalow and its larger cousins, built round a living room and its hearth, with a deep porch, wide eaves on exposed rafters, and wood and stone used plainly. Gustav Stickley’s magazine, plan books and kit houses spread it across the suburbs.

Gustav Stickley, a furniture maker from upstate New York, founded The Craftsman in 1901 to carry the ideas of Ruskin and Morris to America, and within a few years it was publishing house designs in issue after issue, with working plans free to its subscribers. His books, Craftsman Homes (1909) and More Craftsman Homes (1912), gathered them. They asked for simplicity, for local materials shown as they are, and for a plan made for family life rather than for display.

The plan put the living room at the heart of the house: the entrance hall shrank to a small vestibule or a nook of the living room, so that the front door opened from the porch almost straight into a large room built round its fireplace, which opened widely into the dining room behind. The bedrooms were along a short hall to one side, with the bathroom between them. Outside, a deep porch, usually recessed under the main roof, made an outdoor room, and pergolas and sleeping porches carried life further into the open air.

The bungalow was its most popular form: one storey or one and a half, broad and low, with a gently pitched roof whose wide eaves showed the ends of the rafters, wood shingles or clapboard, and casements grouped in long bands; the tapering porch posts on piers of brick or river stone that many builders gave it came from the plan books rather than from Stickley. In California the Greene brothers made it an art of joinery in houses such as the Gamble House (1908–09); across the country plan books and kit houses sold by mail order, from Sears, Roebuck and others, made it one of the commonest new houses in America between about 1905 and 1930.

The Craftsman house had a short life as a fashion and a long one as a type. Its open living room, its porch and its single storey passed into the ranch house of the 1940s and 1950s, and through Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie houses, which shared its ideals, into the modern open plan.

Fig. 1The plan: the living room round its fireplace, entered from the porch, the dining room open behind it, the bedrooms along a short hall with the bathroom between them. Open in Models ↗

Fig. 2Wright’s Prairie house, which shared the Craftsman’s ideals. Open in Models ↗

Recognise it by

A living room built round its hearth, entered from the porch, the entrance hall no more than a nook of it

A deep front porch, often recessed under the main roof, on posts or piers of brick or stone

Low-pitched roofs with wide eaves and exposed rafter ends

One storey or one and a half; a wide dormer in the roof

Wood shingles, clapboard, river stone and clinker brick

Casement windows grouped in long horizontal bands

Built-in bookcases, seats and sideboards; plain oak woodwork

Bedrooms along a short hall with the bathroom between them

Buildings

Robert R. Blacker HousePasadena, California · 1907–09 · Greene & Greene

Gamble HousePasadena, California · 1908–09 · Greene & GreeneThe masterpiece of the Craftsman bungalow.

Craftsman FarmsParsippany, New Jersey · 1908–11 · Gustav StickleyStickley’s own log house.

Sears Modern Homesacross the United States · 1908–40Kit houses sold by mail order, many of them bungalows.

Bungalow HeavenPasadena, California · 1900s–1930sA district of several hundred bungalows, still lived in.

The rules of Craftsman

The veranda

Give the country house in a hot summer climate a veranda, or piazza, some seven or eight feet deep: a roofed porch along the front on light posts, stopping short of the ends of the front, shading the windows and the walls and giving the household a room out of doors.

The living room at the heart of the house

Do without the parlour kept for show, and reduce the entrance hall to a small vestibule or a nook of the living room: let the front door open, through it, into a living room built round a large fireplace, open widely into the dining room, with seats, bookcases and cupboards built into its walls.

The porch as an outdoor room

Build a deep porch, eight or nine feet, usually recessed under the main roof, on sturdy posts or piers, big enough to sit and eat in: in summer it is the living room of the house.