Structure of Craftsman Homes

Craftsman Style

• The Craftsman style of building originated with the Greene brothers of Pasadena, California, who began building large "ultimate bungalows" at the turn of the 20th century. Combining Arts and Crafts and local Spanish colonial styles, Greene and Greene designed massively rectilinear buildings with deeply overhanging, low-pitched gabled or hipped roofs. Exposed rafter ends and braces graced roof sides and ends. Although the Greenes produced the highest Craftsman forms, genuine craftsmen like carpenter David Owen Dryden converted it into the vernacular form, creating their own designs or using catalog designs. Many of the Craftsman structural details were adopted by later Prairie-style builders, but Craftsman builders concentrated on simple, often rustic details. The style faded after 1930, giving way to Colonial Revival and Prairie styles.

Building Materials

• Craftsman builders preferred local materials and built to local conditions. Houses could be built over a crawl space or basement with a foundation of stone or cement block. Foundations might be faced with stone, brick, concrete block or stucco. Siding might be wood clapboard, brick or stucco. Windows and door framing featured wide, plain wood. Rafter ends and braces or brackets, plain wood affairs, often had simple jog or boxed ends as their only decoration.

Exteriors

• The low rectilinear form of a Craftsman building was emphasized by the shallow-sloped roof. The building appeared to hug the earth with porch and pergola columns that tapered widely toward their bases. Foundations flared out at the soil level in a form called "battering." Deep porches running the length of the front of the house featured solid surrounds in the same material as the walls and double or single columns with massive bases to support their roofs. Windows, known as lights, often three- or four-over-one sashes, might also be built with transoms. Doors were plain, massive wood, often pierced by vertical rectangular lights. Windows arranged in rows of three or more windows on opposite sides of a house provided improved ventilation in warm weather. A Morgan millwork pattern book published in 1921 shows a bungalow with a sun porch including seven three-over-one sash windows.

Roof

• Craftsman roofs dominated the structure. Simple bungalows' side gables might contain an odd number of casement or transom windows that could be opened in warm weather to air out the attic. Multi-gabled or hipped roofs often held dormers of upstairs rooms. Low, nearly flat roofs overhung house walls by several feet, providing shade on summer days for the whole house.