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American Domestic Architecture ~ CHAPTER ONE
This work presents an outline of American domestic architecture from the early colonial period to the late twentieth century. The influence of English and European architects and European models of architectural design is of particular interest. During the colonial period, architectural forms can be explained as an expression of traditional building practices imported from the home country. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, however, a preference for traditional English, French, and Spanish architectural forms must be defined by a nostalgia for historical forms that confers social status and family heritage.
The designs utilized by wealthy builders for large plantation houses in colonial America tended to follow English models. Their designs influenced related plans adopted by middle-class house builders. Even small house designs were influenced by vernacular English, French, German, or Dutch architecture, particularly by architectural plans being published in Britain. Since colonial society was a mixture of cultural influences and of colonists from different countries and social circumstances, the architectural forms that developed were necessarily very diverse. These architectural forms, that is, tended to be reflected in the overall social diversity of the colonists.
In the Southern colonies, domestic architecture and social patterns tended to emulate aristocratic English models. But in the Northern colonies, with their large urban centers and commercial activities, English or Dutch middle-class urban architecture predominated. In rural areas various European vernacular forms were experimented with, as well as Scandanavian log construction and native Indian houses Such experimentation continued until c.1810-1830 when a distinct Greek Revival house type emerged. It was closely followed by Gothic and Neo-Classical Revival forms. These all were influenced by English models and by English architects. An American form of house design and construction slowly developed after c.1840-1850 with the publication of numerous books by native trained craftsmen who introduced new construction techniques suited to American social conditions.
Distinct stylistic variations in house design are generally found only in those societies with a professional system of architectural education. The first American born architects did not practice, however, until after c.1830. Before 1800, colonists and settlers relied upon traditional building techniques and designs derived from English and European models. Many colonial builders had been trained in Britain and tended to copy plans from familiar aristocratic houses or from architectural books published in England. British architects who had emigrated to the American Colonies were also hired whenever possible to create house designs. Through these means, English architecture dominated public competitions for important civic buildings, churches, or commercial buildings until 1830. Foreign-born architects became prominent in America, particularly in the larger commercial cities such as Newport, Charleston, Mobile, Savannah, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, or New Orleans.
Unlike Britain with its rigid class structure, the American Colonies were a much more egalitarian society dominated by planters, merchants, and traders who determined the social trends and prevailing architectural traditions of the new nation as it developed towards self-rule. At first, houses of the wealthy resembled the middle-class manor or townhouses of England in elevation or in interior furnishing. After the emergence of nationhood, however, American architecture began to diverge from English design and began emphasizing native building materials and forms over traditional British forms. By 1840, moreover, an urban middle-class began to dominate society and architectural books appeared promoting cottages or villas intended for suburban sites.
Of all of the early publications, the most popular and influential were those of Andrew Jackson Downing who was trained as a horticulturalist. He became famous as an architectural writer popularizing designs for smaller country houses that could be integrated within landscape compositions. Downing's writing promoted his view that American houses must be designed for industrious and independent artisans and workers. He used the term 'cottage villas' for many of his designs, and wrote that:
What we mean by cottages, in this country, is a dwelling of small size, intended for the occupation of a family, either wholly managing the household cares itself, or, at the most, with the assistance of one or two servants. The majority of such cottages in this country are occupied, not by tenants, dependants, or serfs, as in many parts of Europe, but by industrious and intelligent mechanics and working men, the bone and sinew of the land, who own ground upon which they stand, build for them their own use, and arrange them to satisfy their own peculiar wants and gratify their own tastes.
A useful comparison can be made between Downing's plans for cottages and the artistic cottages designed by John Nash in Blaise Hamlet, Gloucestershire, in 1810-1811 or the various cottage orné designs that he produced. In England, the word 'cottage' could have a wide variety of meanings, sizes, and social connotations, and the term 'villa' was a newer word that was adopted in the architectural literature by the late eighteenth century to denote a larger suburban house of a gentleman. In general, the best way to distinguish the two terms is to define a cottage as being smaller and less pretentious than a villa, and to define a villa as a medium-sized detached house surrounded by extensive grounds in a suburban setting. In America, an English trained architect Calvert Vaux popularized 'villa' designs in his book Villas and Cottages of 1857. According to Vaux
By far too many of the villas that are built are extensive and costly, and many persons in easy circumstances are deterred from building a home in the country, because they are impressed with the idea that they must erect a large house or none at all…All that appears to be necessary for real comfort in a villa or cottage residence, exclusive of the bedrooms and offices, is a parlor of tolerable size, which shall be the general living-room of the family, and another apartment contiguous to, or connecting with it, to be used as a break-fast and dining room. If a third large room, to be called either library or drawing-room, is required, the whole scale of the house is materially enlarged, and its cost increased.
A comparison of the plans in Vaux for villas and cottages, with an intermediate 'country' or 'suburban' house, shows that cottages generally have three to four rooms per floor, and are at most two stories in height. Villas are two-story houses having at least four large rooms per floor and a minimum of eight rooms. Villas often provided a central tower or balcony, and a limited third or attic story. The cost of cottages, furthermore, was significantly less than that of villas, by at least half. And villas tended to have more elaborate architectural details and were often constructed from more expensive and permanent materials. As with English examples, American villas of the period favored Italianate designs. That is, American villas had elaborate cornices and soffit brackets, as well as windows that were hooded, framed, or pedimented. Some villas were Gothic, having pointed or arched windows with elaborate ornamental tracery, pinnacles, or battlements. Such villas, moreover, were generally built of brick or stone in the country, and were considered prominent suburban estates.
The earliest published designs for American cottages or villas were in the popular English Gothic mode, and are adaptations of well-known English designs by Regency architects such as John Nash and Jeffrey Wyatt(ville) or are by Gothic Revival architects like A.W.N. Pugin and William Butterfield during the early Victorian Period. Gothic designs by English-trained architects Richard Upjohn or John Notman, or those by American-born architect A.J. Davis, are adaptations of English cottages. Later house designs published by A.J. Downing, Calvert Vaux, A.J. Bicknell, Samuel Sloan, and George E. Woodward and Edward G. Thompson introduced a variety of different design approaches. They included 'Italianate', 'Norman', 'Castellated', 'Elizabethan', 'Ornamental', 'Suburban', 'Old English', and even 'Picturesque' which had some Gothic elements mixed with neo-classical features or Renaissance details. Although a few Gothic designs could be found after 1850, they were clearly in a minority by this time, particularly with architectural publishers. This reflected either a general change in public taste or a professional aversion to Gothic architecture by designers. Since similar changes were occurring in England with Gothic designs being supplanted by Italianate or other neo-classical forms, the preferences of American publishers may simply reflect current trends in England.
One reason for the dominance of neo-classical architecture in America after 1860 can be attributed to the influence of Beaux-Artes trained American architects. Besides Calvert Vaux and Gervase Wheeler, who were both born in England and emigrated to America in the 1850's, Richard Morris Hunt became the first native American architect to study at the École Des Beaux-Artes in Paris from 1846-1854, where he developed a thorough knowledge of classical and French design. After returning to the United States and opening a studio in New York in 1857, he became the most popular domestic architect for wealthy clients.
A second American architect to study at the École was Henry Hobson Richardson who was in residence at Paris from 1860-1865, and upon his return to the United States he formed a partnership with Charles Gambrill in 1867. Like Hunt, Richardson designed his early houses for upper middle-class or wealthy clients combining French château details with distinctly American and English Victorian elements. After 1880, however, Richardson's mature style emerged, and his designs combined massive stone masonry with small window and door openings, small porches, large turrets or towers, and monumental arches that have been called 'Richardsonian Romanesque'.
Richardson and Hunt also created the earliest 'stick' and 'shingle style' designs, influencing other architects to develop similar designs. In the metropolitan New York and Boston areas and in Newport, Rhode Island (utilized as a summer resort by wealthy New York families), the first 'stick' houses designed by Hunt and Richardson are found after c.1862, with the earliest shingle houses appearing after c.1874. Late shingle houses of c.1880-1887 have distinctive low and horizontal lines, roofs with steep pitches and ridges, and patterns of shingles on their exterior surfaces. Oftentimes, turrets or towers were added (borrowed from Richardson's Romanesque designs) as well as large wrap-around porches on the front or sides to provide additional outdoor living space and spatial elaboration.
Shingle houses promoted experimentation with Colonial-Revival forms combining Georgian and Palladian facades and plans. Particularly in country houses or weekend villas a restoration movement was fostered that could be considered part of nation-building. Or as Axelrod says
…to create a central national experience and a central core of myths and values. Repeatedly in the accounts of American colonial revival efforts we find that patriotism is perceived as a major motive for preservation or restoration…The evidence of the past…demonstrates that people realized the necessity of preserving relics in order to keep ideas and ideals alive. The most abstract cultural values need to be grounded in some tangible and verifiable truths. Some of these relics, like Mount Vernon, were unique but were given widespread impact through such strategies as designing a governing board with representatives from all states….That the colonial became the vehicle for national identity is again largely an accident of history, since any objects associated with the formative years of nation building probably could have been transferred into positive and potent icons of that period….All societies need shared symbols and values, without them they are only an agglomeration of people…every society evolves the rules by which it will operate and the symbols it will honor….Better to see the extra-ordinary success of the colonial revival into our own day as evidence of a need to continue to reaffirm in non-verbal terms certain tenets and values perceived as central to American life and the American experience.…
Antecedents for 'shingle style' designs came primarily from English Queen Anne designs created by the leading British architects (R. Norman Shaw, Basil Champneys, Ernest Newton, James MacLaren, E.W. Godwin, J.D. Sedding, C.H. Townsend). While house designs presented in American publications were somewhat similar to English Queen Anne designs, designs by many of the leading American architects featured more simplified elevations and treatments than contemporary English work. This simplicity primarily resulted from differences in building materials and construction methods, for American architects primarily utilized standardized lumber and shingles to create designs that were often intended only for summer occupancy.
In England, by contrast, Queen Anne houses were being built in large suburban housing estates around larger cities specifically intended for middle-class clients as primary residences or as studio houses for artists/architects. English Queen Anne houses, moreover, were predominantly built of brick and stone (with limited use of terracotta tiles or mouldings), and this choice of materials gave English houses a more homogeneous character than American designs constructed from wood. In America, stone was generally utilized only for the largest and most expensive houses, for only wealthy clients could afford the great expense involved in quarrying, transporting, working, and erecting stone structures. Terracotta architectural elements were also more difficult to obtain in America. Therefore, terracotta tended to be used only on commercial or public buildings.
American shingle and stick designs were primarily publicized in the growing architectural press consisting of numerous professional journals and books featuring house plans. An extensive architectural press developed after the Civil War in response to a widespread public demand for housing to meet the needs of an expanding population that was moving West at an unprecedented rate. When the transcontinental railroad was completed, and the early gold and silver miners of the wild West were replaced by farmers, ranchers, and merchants, there was a steady demand for new housing that continued until the new century. From the Appalachians to the Sierra Nevadas and the Pacific Ocean, new towns and homesteads were being created daily. House designs were required particularly in areas without established architects or builders. In the Northeast and in New England, by contrast, established families were building seaside or mountain vacation homes. This also created a demand for simple house plans suitable for local builders. Publishers such as William T. Comstock and R.W. Shoppell in New York produced numerous catalogs containing house plans, while other publishers produced books of photographs featuring the latest country or urban houses of the period.
Another related subject that was of interest to women was domestic science, or housekeeping By the late 1860's, the first books began to appear giving specific advice on how to design and organize house interiors. One of the first books to appear in America on this subject was that of Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe titled The American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science, etc., of 1869. In addition, many of the new illustrated magazines published articles on house design and these had an enormous impact on house owners, builders, and architects. Such journals also had a widespread influence on the development of a distinctive American type of house by 1900, contributing directly to the development of modern architecture. By demonstrating the advantages of laborsaving equipment, central heating, modern kitchens, and washing machines, domestic publications promoted functional house plans.
Perhaps the most dramatic development in the field of domestic design, however, came when architectural publishers issued plans and elevations of houses complete with working drawings. Such publications permitted a builder to construct a house at a much lower price than that normally charged by a local architect. Published plans not only promoted design standardization, but also tended to foster a degree of competition between architects and designers for the growing middle-class market. While large architectural firms could still make a reasonable living designing mansions or large country houses for nouveau-richè families, architects were no longer needed to provide designs for typical suburban houses. Architectural publications had a dramatic impact particularly in rural areas, where no architectural services were available, permitting builders in the country to erect the latest designs. Plans could even be purchased with a complete list of building materials and detailed information on the finishing of interiors and exteriors.
By c.1900-1908, moreover, lumber mills and building suppliers, and later Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Montgomery Ward's, began to offer builders complete kits containing all the lumber, fixtures, hardware, and materials required to construct a house. By the 1920's, builders of small houses had a complete array of services available. Contractors as well as homeowners could purchase building materials and erect houses without consulting an architect or calculating lists of supplies or fixtures required for a project. This increased the speed and efficiency of home construction and lowering building costs. These advances were particularly important in an era without power tools, when most construction involved hand labor and specialized tools that were not readily available. The savings in both time and money made the purchase of complete house kits economical for standard designs.
During the late nineteenth century the federal government began compiling census statistics on population, transportation networks, and business/manufacturing data. This data can be utilized to define residential housing patterns. Population data, in particular, can provide an insight into the general movement and character of urban growth, as well as suburban architectural developments.
American middle-class house design after the Civil War was shaped by a variety of demographic and economic factors. The largest urban areas (New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, San Francisco) experienced dramatic population growth from 1870-1920 (See table 2) primarily stimulated by railway expansion. (See table 3) The major cities contained almost 41% of the urban population by 1910. Between 1870 and 1910 there was an average population growth of 400% for the largest Northeastern industrial cities (for New York, Philadelphia, and Boston) and over 1000% for the large cities of the Midwest and Southwest (Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Los Angeles). As a result of this phenomenal growth, suburban housing developments began to appear around cities, particularly those with a railway system.
American industrial growth was largely a product of rapid expansion in manufacturing and of the development of a national transportation network, specifically railroads. Industrial development led to an increase in jobs that had, says Pred,
...an initial multiplier effect; that is, new local demands created both by the factories themselves and by the purchasing power of their labor force will call into being a host of new businesses, service, trade, construction (of housing, streets, street railways, sewers and water mains, schools and other public buildings, and stores and other business establishments), transportation, local government, professional, and miscellaneous white-collar jobs. Large doses of new manufacturing may also be expected to amplify the initial multiplier by encouraging the local appearance of linked industries that either provide inputs for the recently arrived factories…or utilize the semi-finished outputs of these same growth leaders….The combined effect of new industrial employment and an initial multiplier effect will be an alteration of the city's occupational structure an increase in population, or growth in urban size…a second round of growth is initiated, and…generates an initial multiplier effect…and the process continues (at an irregular pace) in a circular and cumulative manner until interrupted or impeded by diseconomies….
Large urban areas, in effect, become self-sustaining economies expanding exponentially as the
…local-market industries, by perpetuating income circulation within the city, further generate[d] income (and jobs) and hence development...the importance of imports dwindles as the economic unit (metropolis) grows in area and population; in other words, the degree to which multiplier effects are localized...is a function of city size.
Another factor in urban population growth was immigration, for European immigrants contributed to rural expansion in the mid-nineteenth century. But by the last decades of the century, Pred says
...the ease of acquiring fertile land declined, agricultural opportunities for immigrants diminished, and the ultimate destination of the stream of migrants arriving from Europe became increasingly urban-oriented.
An additional factor contributing to urban business expansion was an increase in the average daily and annual manufacturing wages paid between 1860 and 1890. Wages rose an average of 50% during these three decades, and a further 37% from 1890-1914, stimulating per capita consumption of manufactured goods at the same time that industrial mass-production resulted in a lowering of prices for industrial goods relative to agricultural and housing prices. According to Pred:
The absolute increase of wages and real buying power meant that with the passage of time the multiplier effect of many manufacturing increments became more extensive, and thereby the speed of absolute urban-size growth was accelerated. Higher average levels of per capita consumption were particularly stimulating to the expansion of industries whose products had a high income elasticity of demand. The ramifications of higher average earnings were compounded by the fact that total family incomes were also being increased through the more widespread employment of women; that is, the female working force was increasing more rapidly than total employment.
Urban expansion also tended to promote class divisions and social stratification. Ethnic, racial, religious, and occupational distinctions came to be reflected in residential patterns. As inner cities became more crowded after c.1910, higher urban land prices made the purchase of individual single-family houses more difficult. Middle-class homebuyers purchased homes in suburban housing developments convenient to public transportation termini, particularly before the automobile and urban highway systems made private travel practical. Inexpensive rail, omnibus, streetcar, and subway networks also stimulated real-estate investors and building contractors to construct speculative multi-family rental housing or large housing estates when low land values and interest rates permitted. A general absence of local building codes or zoning regulations also promoted a diversity of regional designs and approaches. Unlike railroads, oriented to national transportation networks, local transportation network "…transformations wrought by electrically powered trolleys, subways, elevated lines, and interurban commuter railways...permitted the selective urban accretion of people and factories to continue in a modified form."
In this way, cities and their suburban housing developments became part of a decentralized and ever expanding communication network, for: "Shortly after the turn of the century, every rapidly growing city was the hub of an intricate network of electrified commuter transportation. Permissive of longer journeys to work and of factory construction at the urban periphery, where lower land costs prevailed and larger sites were available, the coming of electric traction heralded the decentralization of metropolitan manufacturing." Moreover, "...electric traction facilitated the perpetuation of concentration by allowing the...metropolis to lessen its density and assume a more spatial dispersed or "subcentralized" form." This decentralization took the form of expanding suburban developments built initially along the railway lines, gradually expanding to incorporate the areas located between the suburban estates or along roadways connecting the communities. Suburban housing thus expanded outward from cities and provided opportunities for architects and builders to construct single-family or duplex houses for families who were moving from the crowded cities into the country.
During the late 19th century, architects were also employed by wealthy clients wanting large suburban or country houses. Due to a decrease in the number of domestic servants by c.1905-1915, wealthy families required new and smaller houses incorporating modern appliances and plans. This was a significant factor promoting development of modern house types, e.g., Spanish Modern on the West Coast and 'Prairie' houses in the Midwest. Modern open-plan houses, in addition, were smaller than typical historical revival or eclectic designs. By reducing the size and extent of servant's quarters and bringing the kitchen and other service facilities closer to the main rooms, modern designs necessarily acquired a more compact house plan. Children's wings complete with classrooms became less common while children's rooms were integrated more fully within the main house plan after c.1907. After 1920, moreover, domestic designs incorporated garages, central heating or cooling, and household appliances such as washing and drying machines, central vacuum systems, kitchen appliances, etc. These advances placed an emphasis on functional design at the expense of historical precedent. While English Tudor, Georgian, or Regency villas remained common models for large estates, such forms were no longer considered appropriate for medium-sized or small functional houses after 1930. According to Hewitt:
Aside from the incorporation of the garage, the most important change in the country house of the 1920's and 1930's was its simplification and reduction in size. A good architect could squeeze more into the plan and with the help of new mechanical systems produce a more efficient domestic plant. The program changed very little but was often reduced to a minimum number of spaces....
In little more than half a century the program and service zones of the country house were transformed from a highly ordered, hierarchical organism based on Victorian values and social organization to a less formal, more flexible engine that depended not on human labor but on mechanical devices. American architects...who saw the house as a machine for living were eventually drawn to a new ideal—the modernist villa. Advocates of new social mores, family relationships, and patterns of daily life...began to expose the virtues of modernism, especially as practiced by European immigrant architects.
Thus, house design evolved away from 19th century models. A reduction in size accompanied by an increase in functional complexity and an incorporation of new mechanical systems inevitably led architects to experiment with innovative plans. One result was a development of new forms of functional open-plan architecture from c.1900-1935, particularly in those geographic areas with the most pronounced commercial innovation and population growth, namely in Chicago and Los Angeles.
In the case of Los Angeles, a functional architecture with flat roofs, stucco exterior walls, open courtyards, patios, pergolas, and use of glass window-walls and doors developed that was appropriate for both the mild climate and the out-door lifestyle. Innovative technology in California (i.e., of steel curtain walls, sprayed-on concrete or stucco walls, sliding glass doors, new mechanical heating and cooling systems, and reinforced concrete cantilevered decks/roofs) was particularly rapid during the 1920's and 1930's, and was promoted by both native and European-trained architects embracing advanced technology. The cosmopolitan character of California (particularly of Los Angeles and its movie industry) with its rapidly expanding economy and innovative entrepreneurs also provided a stimulus for architectural innovation.
Population growth in metropolitan Los Angeles in one generation (from approximately 11,183 in 1880 to over 438,000 in 1910) indicates the phenomenal commercial expansion of Southern California. This expansion provided an economic stimulus for development of new house types, with Los Angeles becoming a primary center for architectural innovation and experimentation. Early experimentation began during The Craftsman era, c.1904-1912, when the magazine founded by Gustav Stickley devoted many articles to innovative house designs in the Los Angeles and Pasadena areas, particulary to a new type of small house called a 'bungalow.'
By c.1911 there were many building supply and lumber companies providing housebuilding kits for bungalows. The bungalow developed from earlier types of cottages such as the Southern shotgun cottage that was prominent after the Civil War, particularly during the 1880's, and from Spanish ranch houses of Southern California. By c.1910-1912, bungalows were being built in almost all parts of the country, and were a dominant house type for smaller houses in large suburban housing developments. Publication of bungalow designs by Stickley and other publishers contributed to a widespread popularity of this house type, stimulating architects to experiment with new materials and designs for small suburban houses.
Perhaps the most notable of the early functional architects in America was Irving Gill who practiced in San Diego and later in Los Angeles. Gill had a significant influence on European-trained architects such as R.M. Schildler and Richard Neutra who were designing functional and innovative houses from the mid-1920's. Frank Lloyd Wright was also a significant influence on young architects working in California. One reason is that he brought Schindler and Neutra to Los Angeles to work on his early projects there, particularly the complex he was designing on Olive Hill in Hollywood for Aline Barnsdal were called the 'Hollyhock House' and La Miniatura' his smaller house for Mrs. G.M. Millard, both largely completed by 1922.
Neutra, in turn, was himself to become a significant influence on a younger generation of architects (he taught and employed Harwell Hamilton Harris and Gregory Ain). In collaboration with Gregory Ain, Neutra developed a new type of functional California house during the 1930's. Neutra's first major house, the Lovell House, became a catalyst stimulating architects and progressive laymen to adopt a modern and purely functional approach to house design similar to that being developed in Europe by the leading modern architects and designers (by Le Corbusier, Rob. Mallet-Stevens, Tony Garnier, Adolf Loos, Theo Van Doesburg, Gerrart Rietvalt, etc.). The Lovell House was the first steel-frame and sprayed concrete house in America, and was one of the first to be built on a steep hillside with terraces and cantilever projections. The Lovell House also became important because of the widespread publicity it received due to the owner's publication of a newspaper column on health and fitness. It became popular also because Neutra involved young architects from a class he was teaching about its innovative construction. Another significant factor was Lovell's opening of the house to the public after completion on four Sundays in 1929. About 15,000 residents of Los Angeles visited the house. Neutra, in addition, wrote extensively about his architectural theories, and his first book titled in English The Stylistic Development of New Building in The United States, was published in 1930, shortly after he had completed the Lovell commission. In the 1930's he traveled extensively in Europe. Through lectures and publication of his designs his work had an influence on European architects.
What stimulated Neutra and other young architects in Los Angeles to develop an innovative modern architecture was the presence of very independent clients who wanted functional designs reflecting their unusual lifestyles. Neutra found in Southern California
...what I had hoped for, a people who were more 'mentally footloose' than those elsewhere, who did not mind deviating opinions….All this seemed to me a good climate for trying some-thing independent of hide-bound habitation.
In addition, the dry and arid climate and unusual building sites selected by clients (along hillsides or in canyons) provided an important stimulus for architects to develop innovative approaches incorporating new materials or construction techniques that would have been less suitable for conventional houses located in temperate zones. Neutra's Lovell House was designed for a steep hillside, and was nevertheless constructed in only 40 hours from a pre-fabricated steel framework that was anchored to a massive reinforced concrete foundation. The numerous windows were factory-made, and were slipped onto the steel frame. A concrete gunnite was sprayed onto the exterior surfaces over wire mesh. Built in different levels descending the hillside, and completed with innovative landscaping, it was unlike any house ever built until then, and was perfectly suited to both its unusual site and unorthodox clients. As Frank Lloyd Wright wrote to his former associate:
The boys tell me you are building a building in steel for [a] residence—which is really good news. Ideas like that one are what this poor fool country needs to learn from Corbusier, Stevens, Oud, and Gropius. I am glad you're the one to 'teach' them.
Wright was to take the essential principles developed by Neutra in his Lovell House and to dramatically redefine them in his own masterpiece, Fallingwater, in the next decade. Wright was able to master these new aesthetic and engineering principles and successfully translate them into a distinctly American idiom. Wright took concrete and steel construction technology to a higher level by applying them to an aesthetic program incorporating house design within a natural environment. Fallingwater, thus represents a watershed in American architecture. After its completion, Wright's principles of organic architecture dominated house design. All architects working in America, whether native born or foreign, had to acknowledge his vision. Fallingwater and several additional unique masterpieces that Wright was able to create redefined American architecture by rendering obsolete the international functional approach to siting, planning, and interior design that had dominated architecture from 1916-1935.
Only the most formidable functional architect of all, Mies Van Der Rohe, was able to influence young architects to adopt European functional house design when he came to the United States from Germany in the late 1930's. Mies influenced both high-rise apartment and skyscraper design as well as residential work. Mies' major domestic work, the Farnsworth House, although being criticized by its owner, became an important design that had a lasting influence on young minimalist architects.
Any criticism of Mies may have been largely due to the influence of Wright and his Usonian house designs that were dominating contemporary domestic architecture. While many young architects were experimenting with functional design based on European models, many others were studying with Wright at Taliesin, or would be influenced by his organic architecture. After the Second World War, when suburban houses were built outside of every American city, Wright's Usonian designs influenced American suburban architecture. After 1954, Wright's proposals for a suburban functional house were eventually adopted and evolved into the contemporary ranch house that was later built in the millions throughout the country from c.1960-1980.
In the Midwest, with its harsh climate and more traditional lifestyle, architects were less free to experiment with new aesthetic approaches. After 1890, a development of new construction techniques in commercial architecture (curtain walls, steel frameworks, reinforced concrete floors, etc.) began to influence domestic design. This stimulated architects to experiment with new house plans. In Chicago, a large middle-class composed of commercial/industrial entrepreneurs familiar with modern commercial building techniques accepted innovative materials and construction techniques in domestic architecture. This promoted a cross-fertilization between commercial/industrial architecture and domestic design and stimulated architectural innovation. Wright, in particular, was able to find a large number of businessmen and industrialists who wanted his unique 'Prairie' houses. Wright’s influence inspired an entire school of young architects into developing this type of domestic architecture into a new American idiom.
Chicago was the fastest growing industrial manufacturing and shipping center in the U.S. after the railroads established their Midwest rail yards around Chicago by the 1880's. In addition, Chicago had 1,354 miles of electric commuter railways by 1907 compared to only 926 for Los Angeles, 1,595 in New York, and 1,362 in Boston. By 1900, moreover, Chicago's urban population had grown to nearly 1.7 million, and was second only to metropolitan New York with a population of 3.4 million. Chicago also had one of the highest percentages of immigrant population (76.9%), stimulating its industrial and economic growth.
Chicago's dramatic population and manufacturing growth suggests that there is a fundamental relationship between population size, urban growth patterns, and manufacturing/commercial activities. Since Chicago grew so rapidly after 1860, particularly in the decades from 1870-1890, the total accumulation of new wealth, industrial technology and innovation had promoted an acceptance of architectural innovation in both commercial and domestic architecture. Before 1900, Chicago had been one of the most progressive centers for modern commercial architecture, specifically of skyscrapers and multi-story commercial buildings. Entrepreneurs accepted these commercial structures and desired a similar functional domestic architecture. In addition, the European heritage of many Chicago entrepreneurs along with an absence of traditional architectural forms (due to the destruction of the Chicago fire) also provided a stimulus for innovation.
In the industrial cities of the Midwest, then, entrepreneurs supported an innovative approach to domestic architecture. The earliest modern houses developed after c.1890, and by c.1902-1908 'Prairie School' architects were designing houses with horizontal rooflines, massive overhanging hipped roofs or flat roofs, massed window openings, and simplified interior and exterior volumes. Frank Lloyd Wright was the most influential architect of the Midwest, and his house designs became internationally known when a folio of his best designs were published in Berlin by Ernst Wasmuth in 1909-1910. In the forward to the Wasmuth edition, Wright defined his approach as follows:
When we perceive a thing to be beautiful, it is because we instinctively recognize the rightness of the thing...The artist makes this revelation to us through his deeper insight. His power to visualize his conceptions being greater than our own, a flash of truth stimulates us, and we have a vision of harmonies not understood today, though perhaps to be tomorrow....Then, having learned the spiritual lesson that the East has power to teach the West, we may build upon this basis the more highly developed forms our more highly developed life will need.
Nature sought in this way alone can save us from the hopeless confusion of ideas that has resulted in the view that beauty is a matter of caprice.…All architecture worthy the name is a growth in accord with natural feelings and industrial means to serve actual needs. It cannot be put on from without...Any attempt to use forms borrowed from other times and conditions must end as the Renaissance ends,—with total loss of inherent relation to the soul of the people...of this that I feel qualified to speak; for the works illustrated in this volume…is the first consistent protest in bricks and mortar against this pitiful waste. It is a serious attempt to formulate some industrial and aesthetic ideals that in a quiet, rational way will help to make a lovely thing of an American's home environment, produced without abuse by his own tools, and dedicated in spirit and letter to him...Our better class residences are chiefly tributes to English architecture, cut open and embellished to suit; porches and "conveniences" added: the result in most cases a pitiful mongrel. Painfully conscious of their lack of traditions, our get-rich-quick citizens attempt to buy Tradition ready made, and are dragged forward, facing backwards, in attitudes most absurd to those they would emulate, characteristic examples of conspicuous waste.…America, more than any other nation, presents a new architectural proposition. Her ideal is democracy, and in democratic spirit her institutions are professedly conceived. This means that she places a life premium upon individuality...and seclusion with all toward which an English nobleman aspires, but with absolute unwillingness to pay the price in paternalism and patronage asked of him for the privilege...
Wright's Prairie designs could express both American democratic ideals as well as the specific functional needs of a client. Most of Wright's clients were wealthy industrialists or businessmen like Fred C. Robie, a bicycle and motorcycle manufacturer in Chicago. In 1908, Robie purchased a lot near the University of Chicago on Woodlawn Avenue for $13, 500. Being an independent designer and entrepreneur, Robie had some definite ideas for a house:
In my original thoughts of the house, I definitely wanted it as nearly as possible—as a main feature—that it be made of materials that would be fire-proof, and of such construction that the relationships of the rooms would be as—let me say—without interruption, long hallways, stairwells, and box-like partitions….The layouts that I provided were gradually shaped-up to something that I could introduce to an architect, because I had no conception of construction, or design of an exterior of brick and gray sandstone trim, which I had in mind.
I wanted the windows without curvatures and doodads, both inside and out. I wanted all the light I could get in the house, and shaded enough by overhanging eaves...somewhat protective of our views. In other words, I could sit...across the room and look out in three different directions.…And most interesting were, possibly, the storms we had. Most perfect from the health standpoint, was the excess light and beautiful sins of the summer...shaded, without direct sunlight, on open porches...Light has always been somewhat of a specialty of my disposition. I never was happy when I was in...an artificial light, rather, in a room if it glared at me...I didn't want any dark closets; I wanted something that was out in the open, where I could see it and where it wouldn't accumulate moths and a lot of junk....The other item of arrangement that I was particularly interested in was to have a child's...playroom on practically the ground-floor level. The point that I was trying to establish was a safety measure; that the children wouldn't have to run up and down the stairs and slide on the banisters and all that stuff which was natural with kids...That property or garden...would be the section between the garage and house and a brick retaining wall from the rear and side. These kids could not be gotten out of the yard, nor could they help themselves to foreign travel. They were fully protected; and that should eliminate accidents of serious nature.…I finally transferred to larger sheets with more accuracy, to make them more presentable.…These various sketches...numbered half a dozen—were displayed to friends of mine...in the building business or the architectural business.…They looked at these things, and they thought I'd gone nuts. Well, maybe so. It was my money….I wanted a house of minimum cost....I did a little travelling about, inspecting some of these products of the then- modern type of home, and ran across a constant thought: "Oh, I know what you want—one of those damn—one of those Wright houses"….I became rather interested in his views. And I thought, well, if he was a nut, and I was maybe, we'd get along swell. He agreed that was entirely possible.
Robie wanted a house that could be built at a minimum cost, at least in comparison to what was being built by contemporary builders in his area. Wright's design and the unusual construction techniques he employed in the Robie House, which was a medium-sized house on a very restricted suburban lot, came to a total of $35,000, not counting the Wright designed furniture and interior fittings. In comparison to a conventional house of that period which would have cost between $5,000 and $8,000, the cost of Robie's house was exorbitant, and well beyond the means of an average middle-class family. Wright utilized a simple reinforced concrete slab foundation with radiant heating, and built "walls of brick, copings and sills of cut stone, floors and balconies of reinforced concrete, beams of steel and a final story framed in wood." In addition, Wright designed elaborate leaded windows, interior furniture and built-in units, including many unique fittings such as light fixtures.
Such techniques were more expensive than wood frame construction, but wood could not provide fireproof building that Robie had specified, nor would it permit the design of long horizontal multi-level floors giving an open spatial movement to the plan. In the Robie House, Wright was able to demonstrate his mastery of spatial flow and complexity. An emphasis on reinforced concrete and masonry construction also helped establish the permanence of modern design as a functional alternative to traditional construction techniques. Along with the Avery Coonley House (1906), with its extensive gardens and pools incorporating interior and exterior spaces, the Robie House represents a summing up of Wright's early design philosophy, expressing the essential 'Prairie' concepts first developed in 1902 in the Ward W. Willits House and the Susan B. Dana House.
Wright utilized reinforced concrete construction in his large country houses, but his most original and controversial design incorporating reinforced cantilevered terraces was for Fallingwater, built for Edgar J. Kaufmann in rural Pennsylvania in 1935-1937. The cost of cantilever construction was very high, even for wealthy clients, as Fallingwater was to prove. The house over the waterfall was originally specified by Kaufmann to cost "between 20,000 and 30,000 dollars," but its final cost "By the end of 1937 [was]...nearly 75,000 dollars. More than 22,000 dollars would be spent from 1938 through 1941 for further finishing and changes in the lighting and hardware. The guest wing and servant's quarters, begun and almost finished in 1939, would cost almost 50,000 more." At this time, at the end of the Depression and before World War II, such sums were considered astronomical, particularly for a relatively small weekend house in the country.
The expensive nature of modern construction was no doubt apparent to Wright, for in the same year that he was beginning to construct Fallingwater he was also designing and building his earliest Usonian house for Herbert Jacobs in Madison, Wisconsin. This was a modest house of only 1,500 square feet built for about $5,500. According to Wright:
What would be really sensible in this matter of the modest dwelling for our time and place?….To give the small Jacobs family the benefit of the advantages of the era in which we live, many simplifications must take place….What are the essentials in their case, a typical case? Is it not necessarily to use work in the mill to good advantage (off-site prefabrication), necessary to eliminate, so far as possible, field labor, which is always expensive….
By designing a one-story house on a concrete slab grid from pre-fabricated milled lumber, Wright was able to develop a smaller suburban house that would be affordable to middle-class families. His development of an organic Usonian house was therefore a logical outcome from his earlier 'Prairie' houses; like his Prairie houses, Usonians were designed to be integrated within a landscape, and were designed for a specific site and for a particular client. Walls could be constructed of milled lumber, plywood, or bricks; built on a thin concrete slab over a gravel bed and with a radiant heating system, construction was economical and could be fitted to almost any building site. Some of the later Usonians also had earthen berms providing natural insulation along outside walls, and late designs oftentimes incorporated curvilinear rather than square or hexagonal modules.
The architecture of Wright represented a commitment to nature and to 'organic' principles in which
...the spatial arrangement corresponds fundamentally to the actual movement of the man who inhabits it; organic architecture is not abstractly utilitarian but, in the integral sense of the word, functional. We are still too much in the habit of looking at a house as though it were a picture, and even the best critics are often better at analyzing plans and sections and elevation than the total structure and the spatial conception of a building. The organic architect concentrates upon the structure, and he regards it nor merely from a technical point of view but as the complex of all the human activities and feelings of the people who will use it.
In an 'organic' design, moreover:
...The envelope is not important, even less the box. What is in it, the inside, is relevant….The inside is the value to be molded, compressed and expanded, and perhaps manipulated. The outside is like a stamp, a form around the void, a container.
According to Jonathan Hale, an architect and writer:
...the public side of a Wright house is by no means blank or ugly; it reveals the spirit of the house, but it protects the occupants in the mental and physical openness the interior space evokes...the primary purpose of Wright's cantilevers—the roofs, parapets, and trellises that jut so far out from his buildings...is to reveal space.
…The house uses its elements the way music uses instruments to make rhythm, color, texture, proportion, harmony. The floor plan is like a musical score. In plan, the little concrete mullions…look like rows of sixteenth notes; the big columns…look like quarter notes; the long walls are like sustained tones…space also expands and contracts vertically, as ceiling heights rise and fall, and built-in elements, such as seats, tables, and shelves, advance and recede. The idea isn't heroism or originality; that was Wright's artist mask. The idea is the dance.
Right in the middle is the fireplace; it is a reassuring hearth, but it is also fire at the center of the house.
What distinguishes Wright's designs from those of his 'Prairie' contemporaries, even those architects who worked closely with him in his Oak Park Studio, is the sense of spatial complexity and flow (the dance) governing his house plans. Wright's 'Prairie' designs created a spatial 'democracy' in which individuals inhabiting an architectural space can fully function. According to Hale, in an " architecture of democracy, you are the center; you are always at the center. It is the essence of democracy that everyone is at the center."
This spatial 'democracy' places the individual at the center of the house plan and is the result of an open plan in which different materials used in the interior and exterior
...are cut, stacked, shaped into patterns. The materials are various, but the discipline of shape is continuous...form of life to another. But even pattern is not dominant…. Space, the Nothing, is dominant.
Modern domestic design differs from traditional stylistic forms in the way that space is utilized as an important element to create compositional relationships between materials, shapes, surfaces, and patterns. Spatial flow and complexity is created through elimination of any ordered volumes, and by the creation of a discontinuous rhythm of forms, surfaces, and light effects. A modern architect designs with space more than volume and creates a sequential arrangement of volumes that is dictated by the plan. By developing a design from the inside out, the function of the plan shapes its spatial movement and places an individual at the very center of a design.
This is the one firm rule in designing 'organic' structure; a client's needs and requirements must be determined before any design can be created. Modern design emanates from individual need and seeks to create an architecture expressing individual rather than cultural functions. Instead of creating a social statement proclaiming status or wealth, modern design seeks to provide a solution to client needs and lifestyle. Thus, a house either becomes a mechanical system mediating between man and his environment, or a comprehensive aesthetic-spatial structure integrating man with an environment. The client and the architect together must choose which approach to follow, as architecture is a collaborative art requiring debate, discussion, and even compromise.
This book will investigate this architectural debate by studying the types of compromises that American architects (or those foreign-born architects building in America) and clients made when building houses during different periods in our history. Since the entire range of housing from the Colonial to the Post-Modern Periods will be surveyed, only the most innovative or historically important aspects can be selected and fully defined. As in any selection process, much of value can be ignored. For this reason a large range of examples will be cited even though only a few individual works will be discussed in depth. Such an overview will permit a comprehensive presentation of the subject, while attempting a concise treatment. Such an approach can also define the socioeconomic aspects of architectural development and identify any relevant factors contributing to architectural development.
Of particular interest will be an examination of those social and economic factors conditioning the evolution of American architecture. As socioeconomic conditions changed over the past three centuries, so too did house designs and their functional requirements. Domestic architecture is particularly reflective of any changes in the size and structure of families, and of the socioeconomic values of those designing and building houses. As a society undergoes change, moreover, public conception of what constitutes an appropriate type of house also changes. As a consequence, new house types, methods of construction, building codes, and modes of ornamentation are adopted.
This investigation of architecture relies upon original architectural drawings, prints, photographic documentation (especially for examples built after c.1850), and on published accounts. Since buildings are frequently altered over time, little reliance can be placed upon recent photographs that generally record changes made to a structure rather than any original appearance intended by an architect or builder. Changes in plan often occur as subsequent owners attempt to modernize houses by adding new conveniences or additions. Unless a restoration attempts to eliminate such accretions or changes, a restored house may differ significantly from any original representations of that house by the builder or architect. For these reasons, original architectural designs (even those listed as projects what were never built) and historical representations of houses are preferred over recent photographs. While we can interpret historical architecture by contemporary standards, any attempt to understand historical buildings according to present expectations is intellectually dishonest and results in a distortion of historical values. For this reason alone, any reliance upon historical architectural drawings can insure a degree of accuracy in interpreting the intentions of an architect, and can be invaluable in understanding the original character of a building.
By uncovering unknown facts about the past one can also begin to more fully understand the relevant processes influencing individuals and social groups to create those forms surviving in the historical/archaeological record. While many important early houses have been destroyed over the centuries, sometimes soon after they were completed, many others have survived almost intact as historical records. The interpretation of this surviving record, including the many paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs of buildings, can make an important contribution to American History because
...the architectural historian cannot write the history of the world, especially since other sources can usually disclose as much or more about the many issues which are intertwined with architecture. The focus of architectural history should, therefore, be buildings. But the historian's task is not simply to uncover a past that time has obscured. A principle of selection is also important. There is probably something of interest to say about every building, but some demonstrate the art of architecture more forcefully than others. Architectural historians should be allowed many diversions, but their first responsibility is to show how, through a compelling rendering of the elements of architecture and their assembly, vital ideas become transmuted into vivid and memorable form.
Through a careful selection and analysis of architectural designs an understanding of the past can be attained and provide an insight on contemporary architectural forms. This is the value of scholarship, for any study of the past is really an attempt to more fully understand the present, particularly those forms that have been inherited from the past. Without research we would be unable to fully articulate the meaning or appreciate the existence of architectural forms. As a culture matures, furthermore, it accumulates past artifacts that require both definition and preservation. Without meaningful definition our contemporary forms can have little significance. Then we would be compelled to destroy our historical artifacts along with our heritage. In this sense, an interest in historical forms is a sign of social health and confirms a desire to preserve a cultural inheritance by fully understanding its meaning. This work is presented, therefore, as an exploration of the historical record in order to not only preserve the past but to define contemporary artifacts.
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