architecture

  • A&C home gets modern upgrades in Alameda, CA

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    Zahid Sardar, the San Francisco Chronicle‘s design editor, is one of the few architecture journalists out there who understands the Arts & Crafts Movement and its importance to the Bay Area.

    Yesterday’s paper included the following article by Sardar on a recent remodel of Berkeley architect David Burton’s 1908 home; visit sfgate.com for the whole story.

    Berkeley architect David
    Burton’s 1908 Arts and Crafts house in Alameda, which he and his wife,
    Jordan Battani, purchased in 2001, had been altered in the shag carpet,
    avocado green and harvest gold era of the late ’70s. Outside, the
    shingles were painted powder blue.

    With new paint to mitigate all that, they made do until five years
    ago, when they needed more space for Battani’s mother, who moved into
    the 2,700-square-foot home. "It was easy. We felt we are rattling
    around in a large space," says Burton, 43, whose son was only 3 then.

    Burton used to work for Bob Swatt, an architect whose taste for
    modernism he shares, and so the skylit, eat-in kitchen he and Battani
    envisioned was to be modern. But, he also wanted it to mesh with their
    Arts and Crafts home, whose roomy closets, oak floors, dark wood
    built-ins and leaded glass details are intact.

    Anyone who reads this site regularly (OK, I flatter myself, I realize there are only a half dozen of you and my mom) knows that I take a pretty dim view of redesigning old homes in anything but an at least attempted orthodox fashion. However, this is an attractive remodel. For the most part, the materials complement the house’s own materials and design, and the architect added light to focus attention more on historic detail, and only in a few cases (such as the removal of dark exposed beams) removed what I consider attractive portions of the original design. All in all, very pretty and very effective.

  • a very special bungalow in Oakland, California

    Stephen Coles (whose eyes, unfortunately, are drawn much more to what I often remind him are the sterile, soulless lines of Mid Century Modern) emailed me yesterday with a heads-up on a particularly pretty bungalow in Oakland, California’s Rockridge district, photographed inside and out by Flickr user The Jaundiced Eye, a regular in the Hewn & Hammered photo pool on that site. The house is, of course, TJE’s own residence, and it really is an especially comfortable, attractive and well-designed space. It is, in the author’s own words,

    A Japanese pagoda-influenced California Craftsman. Get a load of the
    sleeping porch up top. This place is huge, but what makes it really
    remarkable is how intact it is. No one screwed it up. Not even the
    kitchen!

    And how did he manage to snag such a showpiece home in one of the most architecturally desirable neighborhoods in the Bay Area? Therein lies a story:

    This happened very quickly. I found it on the web while I was in
    Florida visiting my parents and sent Len an email. He dealt with the
    rest of it himself. When he picked me up from the airport he drove me
    to the place and parked in front (about 11:30pm). encouragingly, we
    drew the attention of several suspicious neighbors who actually came
    out of their houses. I liked that people obviously keep an eye on the
    neighborhood. The next day Len met the realtors and the owner and
    brought our house resume that showed all of the work we did on our 1910
    Edwardian in SF. The owners really like Len. About two days later they
    offered it to us. They had rejected over 25 other offers because they
    didn’t think the people understood what the house is, or how to care
    for it. Fortunately the lease on our SF townhouse expires on April
    14th, so we are ready to go. The new house is in Rockridge which is
    part of Oakland. It is a largely Arts & Crafts neighborhood that is
    right next to Berkeley, a block away from College Avenue which is a
    hopping little street with restaurants,clubs and a European style
    market. I think we will be very happy here. I already have dibs on the
    top room with the sleeping porch for my office.

  • ask an expert: caring for hardwood floors

    The Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s always-useful Ask an Expert column dealt this past week with something we all need to be concerned about but often overlook: caring for our hardwood floors.

    Q: I have a beautiful 1925 Craftsman bungalow. The house is blessed with wood floors. I have noticed a black spot near the doorway to the kitchen (a heavy-traffic area) and also in the corner of the family room (a not-so-heavy-traffic area). What are my options in dealing with theses spots? And, more importantly, where do they come from so I can stop them from coming back? There are no leaks anywhere near the spots, and the floor is always dry (except when I mop). Do you have any suggestions on types of cleaners I can use to keep the floors looking shiny and new? I’ve been using Murphy’s Oil Soap. – D.W., Bedford

    A: From Roger Somogyi of Lamb Floor Fashion Center (30840 Lake Shore Blvd., Willowick, 440-943-6722):

    As you know, hardwood floors are natural, beautiful and timeless. Caring and consistent proper cleaning and maintenance will ensure that they remain that way.

    As for the black spots, I would have to assume that it is some type of moisture-related problem, possibly pet urine or mold. With your home being a 1925 vintage, it is likely that whatever has caused the black spots has penetrated the surface, and a plank replacement is the best way to permanently solve the problem. The wood planks that show the spots can be removed, new, unfinished planks can be installed, and the new planks can be custom stained to match the color and finish of your existing floor. A reputable wood repair and refinishing company should be able to help.

    Cleaning techniques vary depending on the type of finish that is on the uppermost layer of the floor, which is called the wear layer. Knowing the type of finish is important to properly clean a wood floor.

    read the entire column with information on caring for a variety of finishes

  • Crow House named to National Register of Historic Places

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    American ceramicist and painter Henry Varnum Poor‘s Rockland NY home – known semi-affectionately as “crow house,” after the birds that harassed Poor during the construction of the structure – has been added to the NRHP. Oddly, the town that hosts it – Clarkstown NY – either refused or was unable to purchase it themselves, so a neighbor (either richer or more interested in historic preservation), the town of Ramapo, is in the process of buying it from current owner Arthur Wagner. Wagner bought it a year ago from Peter Poor, son of the artist, for $1.15 million; let’s hope he didn’t feel a need to make a profit off the public by selling it at a huge mark-up.

    The brick home includes some interesting Tudor and castle-like features, including archways, circular stairways, exposed beams, and plenty of hand-crafted furniture made specifically for the site. According to visitors, the hand-made ceramic doorknobs, tiled windowsills and other stone and ceramic inlays are especially attractive; all the decorative ceramics were made by Poor specifically for this project at a kiln on the property. Much of the furniture is American Arts & Crafts.

    The New York Times ran an article in 2006 on the race to save the building, which Wagner originally planned to destroy; it includes several photographs.

    photo courtesy of the Preservation League of New York State

  • Sears kit homes in Minneapolis

    Kim Palmer had a good article on Sears kit homes in the Star Tribute earlier this month. Read the entire article on the Star Tribute site.

    When Paul Kirkman first laid eyes on the house he bought last year, he
    knew it was a rare find: a 1917 Arts & Crafts bungalow with all its
    original woodwork and charm intact.

    The
    house, in Minneapolis’ Bryn Mawr neighborhood, had all the features
    that bungalow fans covet: dark built-ins, wainscoting and moulding,
    coffered box-beam ceilings and even an Inglenook fireplace.

    "I
    said, ‘This is perfect — the one,’" recalled Kirkman, who had been
    searching for just such a home for seven months. "I like bungalows, and
    in my mind, this hits the pinnacle of that kind of architecture. The
    living room is about as original as you can get."

    But Kirkman’s
    bungalow is something even rarer: a Sears kit house, one of about
    75,000 sold by mail order between 1915 and 1940.

    There were 370
    models, representing many styles, but Kirkman’s house, the "Ashmore,"
    is one of the least common, with only a handful of known surviving
    examples, according to Rosemary Thornton, author of "The Houses That
    Sears Built."

    Advertised as "the Aristocrat of Bungalows," the
    Ashmore was among the largest (2,800 square feet) and most elaborate of
    the Sears kit homes. "It’s a beauty, with a lot of nice features,"
    Thornton said.

    And it definitely defies any stereotype that
    mail-order homes are low-rent, said Tim Counts, president of the Twin
    Cities Bungalow Club. "Some people think of kit homes as ricky-ticky,
    slap-it-together, but often they are very high-end homes, and that one
    is a perfect example."

  • Blackstar Construction Group

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    Santa Barbara-based Blackstar Construction Group (probably not named after my favorite Radiohead song) is a general contractor specializing in Mission / Craftsman woodwork, interior architecture and detailing.

    While their website does show off some very appealing jobs, many more of their projects are up on Flickr for the world to see, photographed by their friend Justin Wagner – I’m actually surprised more craftspeople don’t take this approach – and it’s easy to tell that they really take pride in the quality of their wood and skill. Some of my favorites:

  • Frank Lloyd Wright house tours in Oak Park

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    This Old House    ‘s terrific Hardware Aisle blog is always full of good stuff – tool and material reviews, pointers to new techniques, and last week an article on Frank Lloyd Wright house tours. Read the whole article on their site:

    Why does it captivate us to walk through the homes where legends lived or worked?

    It started with Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, then Ricky Schroder’s sweet living room on "Silver Spoons," and later the suggestive banister at Sigmund Freud’s pad.

    Come May 17, 2008 architecture devotees will flock to Oak Park, Illinois,
    which is base camp to explore a cluster of homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright
    and his contemporaries.

    The homes range from a Civil War-era Italianate
    built around 1860 to the Harry S. Adams House (pictured) built in 1913-14.

  • Brad Pitt, bungalow aficionado & rebuilder of New Orleans

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    Many of you probably know Thomas Heinz, Randell Mackinson & Brad Pitt’s book on the Blacker House and its restoration. It’s an interesting read, and the photographs are surprisingly good. Certainly, Pitt’s been one of the more visible old-house aficionados in California, buying up old LA-area Craftsman homes and restoring them when he has the time.

    The Los Angeles Times has an article on Pitt’s continued interest in architecture – both traditional and contemporary – and his founding of the Make It Right foundation, which aims to completely rebuild New Orleans’ extensively damaged Lower Ninth Ward, keeping the neighborhood’s character intact and rebuilding homes specifically for their residents. He’s said that this effort is different from other proposals specifically because it doesn’t exist to make developers rich and homogenize an entire area, but rather rebuild for the benefit of those who live there. Let’s hope it works out. Tina Daunt has the full story in her Cause Celebre column of December 5 – read the whole thing there.

    NEW ORLEANS – IN Hollywood, causes tend to divide into the popular and
    the deeply personal. You usually can recognize the difference because
    the former come from the pages of next month’s glossy magazines and the
    latter right from the heart. …

    Over the years, Pitt has bought old California Craftsman houses
    and restored them, gathering every bit of literature he could find on
    the Arts and Crafts movement and its most famous local architects, Charles and Henry Greene. The actor became so interested in their iconic homes that he teamed up with scholar and restoration expert Randell L. Makinson
    to produce the most extensive book to date on the restoration of Greene
    & Greene’s Blacker House, which had been stripped and abandoned.
    (Pitt provided black and white photos as a visual essay on the Pasadena
    home’s rebirth.)

    Pitt has spent time with Frank Gehry at his studio, tinkering with diagrams and models. And last winter, for his birthday, girlfriend  Angelina Jolie gave him a special gift: a private tour of Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural masterpiece that spans  Bear Run, a creek that flows through woods about 50 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

    So it’s only fitting that Pitt’s deep regard for the built environment
    and his concern for housing as a social cause have come together in his
    most ambitious project to date – "Make It Right" which aspires to
    nothing less than the reconstruction of New Orleans’ storm-ravaged
    Lower 9th Ward.

    Pitt, along with residents of the area, Democratic fundraiser and movie producer Steve Bing, and
    a team of world-renowned architects launched a national fundraising
    campaign this week to help the city recover from the devastation caused
    by Hurricane Katrina. Pitt and Bing have already pledged to kick in $5
    million each toward project development and construction. (Another
    difference between popular and heartfelt causes is their shelf life.
    Ruined New Orleans may not be an issue in the current presidential
    campaign, but neither Pitt — who has a residence in New Orleans’
    French Quarter – nor Bing has been able to forget that so much of a
    major American city still lays in ruins.)

    "The plan is to start with 150 homes," Pitt told a gathering of
    reporters and residents on Monday. "But there’s no reason why we can’t
    do a thousand homes, or 10,000 …We can make this happen, but we
    all need to join together to do this."

  • finding arts & crafts in unexpected places

    One thing we talk about regularly is finding Arts & Crafts vernacular in what can only be called unexpected places. Sometimes the use might be inappropriate but still well-executed; sometimes neither. Reader Jean Emery wrote to tell us about her own experience at finding Spanish Colonial architecture in the last place you’d expect – upstate New York:

    This is a visual response to the post about transplanting or recreating the arts and crafts vernacular. I hope this picture comes through. I’m a fourth generation San Diegan transplanted to upstate New York and I’ve always taken a great interest in a group of about twenty or so Spanish colonial homes built in Albany, probably in the 1920s or so. They’re so California!  But, as you can see, they haven’t fared very well here. I would love to buy one, but they generally are in pretty poor shape, have been terribly re-muddled. The stucco doesn’t take well to repeated freezing and thawing, and the original windows weren’t at all energy efficient so have been replaced with ugly double-panes.

    Also, the new Stickley arts and crafts reproductions are big here in town because we’re near the manufacturer in Syracuse, but they just don’t have the soul and the patina of the originals. And American Bungalow has recently had some vulgar, expensive houses with customized woodwork run amuck!

    I’m not really sure what the moral of all this is. I do love these bits of Mediterrean architecture plunked down in the snow belt!

    Jean notes that one such home – 17 Rosemont Street in Albany (pics) – is for sale at an asking price of $178,900.

    Thanks for sharing these, Jean. We do love to see this kind of thing, so if other readers have pictures to share, please do send them in!