Hubert Savage, Architect (1)

 

Eventfulness of form

 

 

December 2008: cross-gabling makes for an impressive frontage

 

When architect Hubert Savage designed a bungalow for his own use back in 1913, he was following his Arts and Crafts leanings by building it over a shallow crawl space. This move also meant he could sidestep damaging the site's natural contours, making them instead into a part of the building itself. As a result, the house feels like it grows directly from the site it stands on. His decision to minimize the depth of this crawl space also made for a structure fitted to its surroundings in a way that houses back in town - laid out in arbitrarily defined subdivisions, on typically narrow lots - didn't. It's true that Savage's choice also trimmed the considerable costs of a concrete basement from his bottom line (typically, ten percent of total costs at the time; more if, in order to excavate a basement, bedrock had to be blasted and hauled away). But Savage's choice was consequential beyond just sparing expenses: it allowed him, for example, on the garden (or west-facing) side of the house, to design a building that sits more or less directly on the ground. In Savage's eyes that would have been a serious positive, something he was aiming for.

 

Bungalow crawlspace under construction, USA somewhere, undated 

 

 

The photo above shows a bungalow crawlspace under construction (photo from Old Craftsman Style Homes, a social media group). It reveals just how simple this method of construction was relative to excavating a basement and pouring concrete foundations (just think of the equipment and material complexities that go with developing a basement on a rocky site like Savage's). The photo above shows how brick piers were used to support the sills and joists of the house. If this all appears somewhat rudimentary now, that's because it was a technique that was under-conceived at the time (it was used to expedite getting on with constructing a building). Certainly it made for quicker and ultimately cheaper construction, but this sometimes came at the cost of convenient access to the building's underside, as well as to more-thorough proofing against undesirable effects, like rodents. Note, for example, how the brick piers shown above appear to be resting directly on ground, either with only skimpy footings, or with none at all. Any moisture penetrating the crawlspace due to drainage issues would tend to get wicked up by bricks sitting in direct contact with ground - causing them, over time, to shift and spall. Savage's builders employed a similar technique in making the crawlspace on Grange Road: brick piers supporting joists and sills, coupled with curtain walls of stone to close the perimeter. At some point, a number of additional posts were added,  resting on precast cement footings, which served to reinforce vertical support for the building.

 

 

Bungalow under renovation, built over a low crawlspace, USA somewhere 

Tea-planter's bungalow, on a low plinth, with liveried servants (undated)

The shallow depth of the crawlspace certainly reinforced the horizontal aesthetic, resulting in a building set near the ground in true bungalow fashion (c.f. photo above). Traditional Indian bungalows, which the British 'borrowed' from  suburbs lying beyond India's teeming cities and then gradually modernized, invariably came on a low plinth, giving them strong horizontal lines. As a result, bungalows still appear most natural when sited close to the ground. And Savage was obviously after just this look: a low building beneath a sheltering roof projected well out over its walls, designed in that way that emphasizes its proximity to ground. It was both fashionable, and rather exotic, to design in this manner in 1913 - a method perhaps of differentiating the contemporary bungalow from houses that were more markedly Victorian - houses that tended to be taller (multi-storey homes with ceilings reaching as high as twelve or even fourteen feet, versus eight feet and a few inches of ceiling height in most bungalows).

 

1911 ad for Garden City: note the price-creep in the subsequent ad 

 

Garden City backers hoped a new rail line would trigger rapid growth

 

But whatever led the Savages to build a house way out in what was then still a part of the boonies? Certainly it didn't hurt that parcels on quarter acre lots were being advertised with city water and electric lighting, as well as the promise of sidewalks and graded streets (see first ad, above, but note that such claims are missing in the 1912 ad). The real answer to this question undoubtedly had to do with the cheapness of quarter-acre parcels in Garden City, a suburban enclave comprising cleared land with some choice upland parcels (such as the holding acquired by the Savages). The investors backing this real estate development play hoped that Garden City would develop rapidly, courtesy of a new electric rail line (c.f. the ads above, from 1911 and 1912, picturing an Interurban Railway line that became operational in 1913). The Savages' land purchase allowed them to build a new home within walking distance of a stop along the new Interurban line. A location within walking distance of Marigold Junction made commuting downtown, where Savage's architectural office was located, entirely feasible. It also meant that the Savages could inhabit a ridge-site dotted with mature oaks, at a comparatively short distance from downtown (roughly five kilometres). The opportunity cost of their purchase was unbelievably cheap relative to today's inflated land prices - if we assume the Savages acquired two premium upland parcels, which they could have done for no more than $1200 (ultimately, there was sufficient land to subdivide into three generous parcels, plus a leftover chunk that was ultimately added to Marigold Park). The cost of purchase, rendered in 2024 dollars, would have been just under $38,000 (if they paid full price based on the ads, which I doubt). These days, when a single RS-6 lot nearby sells for as much as $800,000, made this a serious bargain!

 

 

Garden City Hall, built in expectation of rapid development, circa 1921

 

As a credentialed British architect with Arts and Crafts values, Savage was determined his new structure do minimal damage to the natural landscape (he knew exactly what the opportunity before him was actually worth). This was in contrast to the way things were being done back in town, where natural context wasn't allowed to suggest the orientation or design of new houses. The principal facts for consideration were the adjacent homes, sitting on streets of uniformly platted lots. But out in the pristine countryside in Saanich, on a large lot with abundant natural features, nature could be allowed to play a more formative, even a defining, role. Working in concert with the scenic possibilities, rather than disregarding them in favour of houses packed onto long thin lots like tinned sardines, presented Savage with the unique opportunity to design a structure that was more compatible with its surroundings, which meant he could get to a worthier outcome. Savage's interest in building unobtrusively in the landscape, and making the existing scenery and natural contours serve as context for his new building, just happened to align with the natural hollow paralleling the ridge on which the bungalow was built. This physical feature, coupled with Savage's preference for a benign form of construction, led him to transform the natural hollow into his crawl space.

 

 

Modern building site: cleared and levelled, emphasizing convenience 

 

Following the design-lead offered by the hollow also enabled him to orient the building to optimize light-capture while taking optimal advantage of views. All Savage had to do, given the physical structure of the site, was limit the building's length to more or less the length of the natural hollow. Given that he was aiming to create a small, artistic bungalow anyway (a structure of less than 1600 square feet, all in) the limitation on building length didn't involve major sacrifice. Of course, there were knock-on consequences to siting a building this organically, among them a remarkable proximity to ground along the western and northern edges. But as we shall see from interpreting the outcome, there were many other advantages to this method of siting - all turned to account by an aspiring young Arts and Crafts architect.

 

 

Tiny crawlspace door inhibiting easy access

 

While the shallowness of the crawlspace was arguably aesthetically desirable for the bungalow's overall look, Savage's choice of location for the access to it turned actually getting under the building into a chore (c.f. photo above, noting how small the opening actually is). Placing it in a cramped location between the building and rising bedrock, right against one of those supporting brick piers (to the right, photo above) complicates both entry and exit. Some bungalows built over crawlspaces dealt with the problem of access by providing for entry from within the building, by means of a panel of flooring that could be lifted, placed in a corridor or even inside a substantial closet. Savage however, for reasons that remain murky, preferred exterior entry, yet shied away from locating the door where the stone foundation was deepest - towards the southeast corner of the house - a location where the entrance might have been larger, thus simplifying getting underneath the building; clearly, Savage the architect was keen to minimize the appearance of the access point, which he totally succeeded in doing! And so, the opening he left us is barely large enough to admit a full-sized adult. Worse still, because the door is located where bedrock rises towards the sill plate, one has to enter feet first, on the stomach, in order to be properly oriented inside (the crawlspace floor deepens out quickly once you are fully in, but as the ground falls away sharply, backing-in is mandated; plus, things have been further complicated by the recent addition of a cast-iron drain pipe near the portal, which has the effect of further constraining getting in and out). It's almost as if Savage believed he would never have to actually go down there himself! But of course, one does indeed have to get under the building, if only for access to the plumbing and electrical systems! I cursed that small, awkward entry point (door-less when I moved in back in 1988) through three-and-a-half decades of living otherwise quite comfortably in the Savage bungalow, because it turned access to the underside of the building into a chore. And not least in emergencies, such as when, in the dead of winter, in the middle of the night, a pipe under the building bursts due to a sudden cold snap, and then has to be shut off, manually  - something that actually happened during my first winter in the Savage bungalow! Of course, I subsequently had the plumbing system under the building reconfigured so there were shut-off valves within easy reach of the crawlspace door!

 

Accessible Remoteness 

Alan Gowans, who wrote The Comfortable House: North American Suburban Architecture 1890 - 1930, notes that the type of house designed expressly to provide greater human comfort first arose in the new middle-class suburbs made possible by reliable forms of long distance transit (in the first instance, steam railroads in America). Later, electric streetcar networks, and then the longer electric Interurban rail-lines that linked dispersed regional centres into networks, began distributing these residential enclaves as suburbs on the periphery of urban regions right across North America. In addition to homes that suddenly incorporated novel provisions for enhanced creature comforts (like electric wiring, telephones, indoor plumbing, bathrooms, hot water, etc, all of which arrived virtually at once) Gowans says that the existence of these rural enclaves also witnessed the birth of an entirely new type of dwelling - one designed expressly for more-rural locales, with their more-generous natural landscapes. In the Grange Road bungalow, I believe we can see an example of this new dwelling-type emerging, built well out in pristine countryside, with access to its relative remoteness enabled by a novel form of electrified rapid transit.

 

 

Tod Inlet Station, a stop along the Saanich Interurban Line, ca 1919

 

Scale model, interior of an Interurban Line car, courtesy of Aaron Lypkie

Downtown Interurban platform, across the road from Victoria City Hall

 

"The idea of a location far enough from the city to have rural qualities – open fields nearby, good-sized garden behind, and set off from the street by a front lawn – yet close enough for people to commute to the city to earn their living, was new." The rural lands opened to development by rail access prompted the creation of a novel house-type, a hybrid Gowans says that was "a combination of country and city home," one with "a basically horizontal look...with the long facade facing the street". In this sense, Savage's picturesque intentions for his own bungalow on its well-treed site just happened to mirror the fashion then occurring in rural suburbs right the way across North America. But being an architect designing a home for his own family's use, he could endow his version of the bungalow with bona fide Arts and Crafts attributes (for example, organic building placement, see above).

 

Artistic bungalow, gable-end facing the road, in Victoria (now stuccoed)

 

Savage bungalow, long facade turned to face Grange Road, rural suburb style

 

 

Not only did the length of the new house-type face the road (in what would soon become the standard for suburban layouts) but this novel form of placement stood in sharp contrast to similar buildings found back in town, which were increasingly built with their gable ends facing the road, on more standardized and much narrower lots (see photo one, above). Having the length of the building turned towards the street in 1913 constituted an entirely novel look in domestic architecture, one that derived ultimately from the relative cheapness of the rural lands now conveniently connected by rail corridors to the urban core. "Neither city nor country houses, they represented a really new kind of dwelling, designed for a new, suburban kind of place." I would contend that this is precisely the sort of dwelling Savage imagined building out in the back of beyond in Garden City: an Arts and Crafts bungalow with all the modern conveniences, a building on one level with a sheltering roof form and emphatically horizontal lines, a long cross-gabled facade facing the road, perched remarkably comfortably in a minimally altered natural landscape.

 

 

The cover of Garden Cities Of Tomorrow (1901)

 

The Garden City idea, as elaborated by Ebenezer Howard in his Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1901) didn't quite fit the local vision for Saanich's Garden City, which might more accurately have been called a 'garden suburb' rather than a city. It was from the outset envisaged as a place of residence primarily, and in no sense was it an effort to foster a complete community, with industries and farms integral to its makeup (Howard's actual vision). The people who lived in Saanich's version of Garden City were expected to commute daily to downtown in order to earn their living, then retreat to this residential suburb at night. Which is exactly how the Savages envisaged using their new dwelling.

 

Government St. back in the day: note the gable ends facing the road

 

 

 

Vancouver, West End, houses with gables facing the road, on narrow lots

 

The differentiation of suburban-style buildings  located in open countryside from their in-town counterparts was often further accentuated, Gowans contends, by the habit of designing markedly different facades for the front, sides, and rear of the house - an approach that individualized such buildings more, adding considerably to their distinctive visual appeal (often such homes came with enhanced linking environments as well, such as paths, verandahs and sleeping porches). Houses in town, which were being built on narrower, more standardized lots, tended to come with sidewalls designed similarly, with fewer windows because of proximity to neighbouring residences. The Savage bungalow differed in every way from houses in town, but in this instance the process of differentiating facades was eventually taken a step further, as Savage ultimately created a house with four unique facades (in this, whether he was conscious of it or not, Savage was in effect doing what Philip Webb (the first Arts and Crafts architect) regularly did. Of course, back when the Savages built their bungalow, there were no other neighbours nearby - all of that was yet to come, but certainly they expected it to happen, because the people moving into Garden City believed that the new rail link would trigger rapid settlement (as did the entrepreneurs who invested so handsomely in building the Interurban line). That's not the way things played out ultimately, however: the new rail line became so starved for customers that it was shut down in 1921, a victim of both the profound economic slump that began in 1913 and presaged the First World War, and the unregulated competition of the jitney cabs that immediately appeared in droves (see photo below). Suddenly, there were over 50 such jitneys active in the Victoria region alone (they set up an association for lobbying purposes) cutting dramatically into the electric railway's passenger market. Ultimately however, this new reality may not have mattered al that much to the Savages, who got to enjoy a luxurious scenic hillside and design a unique bungalow as their own home. By skilfully manipulating both site and building, Savage managed to achieve a building with four entirely different facades integrated into a convincing whole that remains striking to this day.

 

 

Lake Hill 'jitney' bus in the 1916 snowstorm: unregulated competition

 

Cross-gabled east-facing front facade, emphasizing horizontal lines

 

Savage opted to run his bungalow along the ridge defining the site (running south-to-north) which, among other things, allowed him to impart a feeling of grandeur to the building as viewed from the approach path (the plain quality of the main gable roof form is on this facade relieved by a trio of cross-gabled bays stepping the building dramatically out into the landscape). The house (photo above) is evidently designed to emphasize horizontal lines, and thus stands in marked contrast to the more vertical, Victorian-era buildings built in town (c.f. next photo).

 

 

Bungalow (left) next to a taller Victorian-era house: horizontal vs vertical emphasis

 

 

Savage took full advantage of the upland site to generate long front and rear facades for his new  bungalow. Fitting the house intimately onto the site, he contrived a shallow oblong - just two compact rooms and a tiny circulation corridor for the back (north) half of the building, which he deepened somewhat at the south end, to accommodate a conservatory room-cum-utility hub on the southwest edge (which is gained by jogging the building's footprint outwards and slightly lifting the roof-line). The cross-gabled frontage is consistent with the traditional Tudor-era buildings common in Savage's native England, an attribute he transformed masterfully into two roofed bays book-ending a welcoming verandah (see second photo below). This verandah, its substantial roof resting comfortably atop a pair of tall tapered stone piers crowned by trios of short, chunky timber posts, impressively dresses the ridge site.

Fords Hospital, Coventry, England, built in 1509, cross-gabled roof form

 

Cross-gabled roof, dramatically advancing verandah flanked by roofed bays

The bungalow's south wall (its true gable end) differs totally from the street facade in treatment, comprising an asymmetric assembly of window shapes, types, sizes and formats integrated into a coherent whole (as shown in the photos below: balanced overall, window placements dictated by the floor plan). On this wall Savage delivers a facade displaying what Nicholas Pevsner characterized as the English genius for 'informal grouping' (c.f., The Englishness Of English Art).

South facade: an asymmetrical collage of shapes set in a horizontal matrix

South wall pictured in more wan end-of-day light, in December 2017

 

Along this wall, two projecting bays sport unusual fixed-pane leaded-glass windows, one (to the left, photo above) a transom above two leaded-glass casements, the other a standalone window composed of honeycomb-shaped (hexagonal) panes. Untypically for this house, the roofed bays also sport exposed rafter tails - for a touch of Craftsman-type styling - whereas the main soffits are all enclosed, hiding the rafters in a manner consistent with many of Victoria's Arts and Crafts style buildings. The south wall impresses the viewer as dramatically as the street facade does, while exhibiting entirely different features (but continuing Savage's pattern of jogging the exterior wall planes for livelier movement). Due to the way the land falls away at the south-east corner, which necessitates a much-deeper stone foundation there, the south facade appears dramatically taller than the opposite, north-facing, gable end (photo below) where the building appears to rest directly on the ground, without visible foundation, and is clearly just one storey high. 

 

The west wall differs dramatically from those facing east and south

 

The west wall roof lifts slightly to accommodate the back door and porch

 

Porch roof (left) lifted slightly in order to incorporate an array of utilities

The long west wall also steps outwards at the building's south-west end (to the right, middle photo above) with the roof lifted slightly in order to accommodate a rear door and what on our watch became a conservatory room with a window seat and views to the garden (you can make out the slight roof lift in the photo immediately above, enabling just sufficient height-gain with the barrel-vaulted ceiling to accommodate the enclosed porch and rear door). Note also how, on this facade especially (middle picture above) the bungalow sits remarkably near to the ground, literally resting on it along the northern edge (to the left, top picture above). This facade, again differentiated from the one facing the road, is however no less visually appealing. Here the architect explores the opposite impression given by the design of the street facade, exposing the main gable roof with its two chimneys, on a building that, because it is sitting virtually at ground level, declares itself to be just one storey high (photos below). In contrast, the main gable roof is largely masked from view on the front facade, due to the land's elevation and the prominent cross gables. Here on the west side, one steps out through a back door that feels remarkably close to the ground (because it is) then walks out into a protected garden set into an oak meadow.

 

 

Front facade with prominent cross-gables masking the main roof form

The west wall sits at ground level, leading out into an oak meadow

 

The photo below shows the north facade of the house, which is architecturally similar to the south end, but has less of the drama that derives from its height and unique detailing. Many fewer windows appear on this facade too, obviously by design. At the north end, the natural hollow beneath the bungalow is very shallow, so this part of the crawlspace is rather inaccessible. This feature does however reinforce the bungalow's remarkable proximity to ground, making it feel as though it grows out of it and is fused with it. At some point early on, Savage decided to add a walk-in closet beyond the bedrooms located at the north end of the house. This addition explains the small shed-roofed structure nestled against the north-facing gable end (c.f. photo below) a fact that Savage utilizes to further differentiate this facade from the other three. You can also see that Savage designed the walk-in closet to work with the site's natural contours, preferring to step the bungalow up the land-form rather than excavate the rock outcrop in order to keep things to one level (the modern building culture's reflexive choice these days would be to level the rock outcrop). This had beneficial consequences inside too, in creating a second level for the building's footprint necessitating a substantial step-up in order to access the walk-in closet. The walk-in closet is shown as already existing by the time Savage drafted a first floor plan, in 1933 (ergo, the addition was done prior to that date) - making for a seamless addition to an already complex house! Heritage consultant Stuart Stark remarked that the walk-in closet has art-deco features that make it slightly inconsistent with the design of the main building, but that it's remains congruent with the design of the bungalow. Perhaps this was Savage demonstrating that buildings do grow over time, and that he was not afraid of demarcating a new building era?

 

 

North gable rising from ground, walk-in closet stepped up the landform

 

 

 

 

Step-up to the walk-in closet that was built later

 

Books For Looks:

 

Alan Gowans, The Comfortable House: North American Suburban Architecture, 1890 to 1930. 

 

Nicholas Pevsner, The Englishness of English Art.

 

Ebeneezer Howard, Garden Cities Of Tomorrow, 1901.