• Mission Hills Development in Northern California

    Missionhillsrosenhouse
    "Mission Hills Development builds finer homes that
    are based on the Arts and Crafts movement from the early 1900’s.
    Featured architects are Henry and Charles Greene of Pasadena, CA.,
    circa 1900 to 1920."

    These are indeed "finer" homes – finer, by far, than most of the new development I see, and at first glace at least look to be far better designed and constructed than even the chicest McMansion.

    Sebastopol, CA – "the World in upheaval" is the site of Mission Hills
    Development’s current project. Situated on 5 acres in a valley between
    rolling hills, this 6200 square foot house is part Gamble House and
    part Blacker House. Build with the same detail as these two famous
    Greene & Greene homes in Southern California, it encompasses five
    different hardwoods for its central hallways and grand rooms.

  • The Sun Valley Seasons: Greene & Greene-ish in Idaho

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    The "Sun Valley Seasons" (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) are four luxurious 4,000+ sq ft single-family homes designed by Ruscitto / Latham / Blanton and built by Intermountain Construction on three lots in Sun Valley, Idaho. What makes them interesting is the level of detail – they were designed and built to resembled Greene & Greene homes, and the gabling, roofline, and much of the interior architectural woodwork is certainly in that vein.

    I can’t speak to the quality of the homes – I haven’t visited them or seen construction pictures – and I sometimes feel a little odd looking at new construction that is so self-consciously "antiqued," in that it’s made to look very similar to a particular designer’s work in a particular era. However, you can see that at the very least the designers and builders certainly had a thing for the Greenes.

    The people who staged the homes and did some of the finishing, though, included a few items that are completely incongruous in such a home – an ornate chandelier and other light fixtures, for instance, that owe more to Louis XIV than the Arts & Crafts movement; white beadboard in the kitchen; fake-paneled appliances, and a fountain that looks like something out of a Berkeley hippie commune. Overall, though, the level of detail is certainly impressive.

  • Arts & Crafts gems shine in Berkeley’s velvet hills

    I was going through SFGate.com’s home section archive and found this great piece by R.W. Apple, Jr. (the New York Times‘ architecture critic), originally published in that paper in 2003:

    "Westward the course of empire takes its way," wrote the 18th century
    Irish philosopher Bishop George Berkeley, so the 19th century founders of a
    little city directly across the bay from San Francisco, almost at the western
    extremity of the American empire, chose to name it after him.

    Many famous men and women have walked its streets — Ernest O. Lawrence,
    the remarkable physicist who invented the cyclotron; Clark Kerr, who helped
    develop the nation’s best statewide system of higher education; Mario Savio,
    the leader of the radical Free Speech Movement during the turbulent 1960s; and
    in our own day Alice Waters, arguably the nation’s greatest restaurateur.

    Another — too little known, at least beyond Northern California — is the
    architect Bernard Maybeck, a precursor of the modern movement like Otto Wagner
    in Vienna, Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow, Victor Horta in Brussels and
    the brothers Charles and Henry Greene in Pasadena.

    Much that he saw and so brilliantly succeeded in grasping still stands
    today in Berkeley, on and near the campus of UC Berkeley and in the hills
    above it, in the north side neighborhood where Maybeck lived for most of his
    life (1862-1957). More than anyone else, he made Berkeley one of the nation’s
    architectural treasure-troves.

    read the whole thing

  • installing Romex & receptacles in a plaster-on-brick wall

    Our friend Matt Wyczalkowski with the St. Louis Rehabbers Club has a new set of photographs up on Flickr, detailing two different projects in the same room: running new Romex inside a wall from the basement and across a ceiling to a light fixture, going around a few corners on the way (something that many old-house owners have either had to do or SHOULD be doing soon – before our houses burn down, at least), and installing a receptacle in a plaster-on-brick wall (no easy task).