Hubert Savage, Architect (4)

 

 

 

 

 

Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house built with machine-run components

 

"In the United States the technocratic and commercial spirit ruled, and the issue for the American Arts and Crafts movement became the wise use of the machine rather than its rejection." R.G. Wilson, The Arts and Crafts Movement in California.

  

We don't know whether Hubert Savage had absorbed Frank Lloyd Wright's essay lauding the use of machined components in modern building, The Art and Craft of the Machine (1901). However, like Wright and other Arts and Crafts architects working in North America, Savage clearly accepted machine-run inputs as raw materials for home building - especially the old-growth fir that in the Pacific Northwest provided the basic materials for construction. Unlike Wright, who had worked with Louis Sullivan designing tall office buildings from 1888 to 1893 (which benefited from the load-bearing capacity of steel skeletons, large areas of durable glass, and elevators) Savage was primarily a designer of family residences made mostly of milled wood. There were many such mill-run raw materials available in 1913, all of it old-growth timber, its grain structure beautifully exposed by precision milling and sanding - and with zero knots to boot. As a designer of stylish domestic spaces, Savage would certainly have been content to source these abundant, high-quality, natural materials for home construction. Indeed, they are displayed in every room of the bungalow he designed, so he had certainly come to terms with machined inputs.

 

 

Perrycroft: an Arts and Crafts house by C.F.A. Voysey, completed in 1895

 

At the outset of the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain however, this wasn't typically the case. Craftsman William Morris, rejecting both the abject conditions forced on workers by the industrial revolution, along with the disastrously poor design of its products, made a career as a decorator by practising recovered crafts conducted by hand (despite this making his output expensive to buy, which restricted it to wealthy markets). Morris himself held various positions on the use of machinery over the course of his eventful life; "it is the allowing of machines to be our masters, and not our servants, that so injures the beauty of life nowadays", for example. But so great was his success as an artist-craftsman that he set a fashion among his following for the recovery of traditional crafts, like cabinet-making, pottery and metalwork, which involved working at these crafts as self-employed artisans. Indeed, it became an article of faith among Arts and Crafts architects to gain knowledge of the core skills central to fashioning buildings.

 

 

Note adze marks (apparent handwork) on beams at Royal Oak Inn, by H. Savage, 1939

 

Despite the focus on handcrafted objects (cf. photo above) architects in the Arts and Crafts movement gradually came to a more lenient view of machined inputs. As Gillian Naylor observes, in her The Arts and Crafts Movement (1971), "gradually each [architect] came to realize...that machinery need not be a destructive force, and that men, as [C.F.A.] Voysey put it, 'must live and work in the present'." This process of gradual self-realization became more general after Morris's death in 1896, as large-scale machinery was increasingly employed to prepare raw materials for use in construction. Most individual architects made their own peace with machine-process, especially if it wasn't perceived as coming at the expense of craft skills. In fact, some recalled how, prior to precision-cutting of wood by sawmills, there existed the laborious job of the sawpit. Operating a traditional sawpit took two people working a heavy sawblade to slice raw logs into planks for building - one sawyer standing above the log, the other down in the sawpit (see next photo). This was the sort of labour process that many felt could be better executed by machines, without loss of control. 

 

 

Country-sawpit used in making the timbers for houses (G. Jekyll photo)

 

 

Some Arts and Crafts architects celebrated the demise of the sawpit because they felt such work wasn't the best use for craft skills. Better to automate that part of the job, the thinking ran, and concentrate rather on relying on craft skills where they were put to best use. Architect C.F.A. Voysey, while acknowledging that 'the human quality in familiar objects has in many cases been driven out by the machine', also believed 'the machine has come to liberate men's minds for more intellectual work than was provided for them by the sawpit.' ('Ideas In Things',  in The Arts Connected With Building, 1909). Charles Robert Ashbee, another well-known British Arts and Crafts architect who trained skilled artisans to work as craftsmen, also came to feel machines could play a creative role in building. Ashbee visited America on several occasions and became friends with prominent Chicago architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Early on, Wright confronted Ashbee with his credo: "My god is machinery, and the art of the future will be the expression of the individual artist through the thousand powers of the machine - the machine doing all those things that the individual workman cannot do. The creative artist is the man who controls all this and understands it." Ashbee, himself progressive on the use of machines, decided that architects and craftsman had better reckon with it. "The whole tendency of what is known in America as 'fine machine-tool production' is in the direction of personal skill, and the use by the individual of the tool, and the power behind it under his direct control. All mechanism that helps individuality may also help the Arts."

 

 

II

 

If the British Arts and Crafts movement had to face such conflicts head on, there was no need to do so in America, where the fabulous quality of machined raw materials simply trumped the idea of making everything by hand. At the time, the old-growth forests being rendered into raw materials made for remarkably cheap inputs of exceptionally high quality. Wright, of course, took the arguments favouring machines to a higher and more abstract level. He credits machinery with opening new possibilities for artists, once freed from being "engines of enslavement" responding to the profit motive. Wright, by then a successful domestic architect, continued: "The machine is intellect mastering the drudgery of earth...that the margin of leisure and strength by which man's life upon the earth can be made beautiful, may immeasurably widen; its function ultimately to emancipate human expression!" This self-expressive potential he contrasted with the shoddy design of current products, which take the form of past luxuries but are loaded up with fake ornamentation. Wright, who professed to admire artist-craftsman William Morris, nonetheless maintained that the Arts and Crafts movement's prioritization of hand work was stuck squarely in the past. "Is it not more likely that the medium of artistic expression itself has broadened and changed until a new definition and new direction must be given the art activity of the future, and that the machine has finally made for the artist...a splendid distinction between the art of old and the art to come?"  

"Now let us learn from the machine. It teaches us that the beauty of wood lies first in its qualities as wood. No treatment that does not bring out these qualities all the time can be plastic or appropriate or beautiful. The machine teaches us that certain simple forms and handling are suitable to bring out the beauty of wood and certain forms are not; that all wood-carving is apt to be a forcing of the material, an insult to its finer possibilities as a material having in itself intrinsically artistic properties, of which its beautiful marking is one, its texture another, its color a third." 

Wright concludes that the machine, through "its wonderful cutting, shaping, smoothing and repetitive capacity, has made it possible...to use it without waste..." As such, he claims that machine-productivity establishes an entirely new basis for art: "the machine is a marvelous simplifier; the emancipator of the creative mind, and in time the regenerator of the creative conscience." 

 

Wright, an eccentric genius responsible for creating the Prairie school of architecture, was a bit of an outlier. Other American commentators would probably not have gone so far, but they were nonetheless fascinated by the inherent possibilities of technology (Americans on the whole embraced machinery in ways that the British Arts and Crafts movement tended to struggle with). The American Arts and Crafts movement was willing, for example, to reconcile itself to the idea of hand-fashioning by reserving it for the later stages of production, where marks appeared as finishing touches (visible traces of the encounter with materials) on products that to that point were in essence machine-made.

 

"Far from being a prelude to the modernist movement in architecture, the Arts and Crafts movement in California was anticommercial, antimodern. Ironically, it was not antimachine. Its proponents might be slightly embarrassed by their dependence on machines, but they nevertheless used them to saw the wood and power the gadgets that were employed in all but the most primitive Arts and Crafts houses." Robert Winter, ed; Toward A Simpler Way of Life, The Arts and Crafts Architects of California. 

 

 

The Gamble House, by Greene and Greene, under construction in Pasadena, California

 

Interestingly, as an aside, the British Arts and Crafts movement, with its reverence for craft-labour and hand work, for the most part designed and oversaw the building of larger homes for those with money - either wealthy capitalists (and their scions, such as William Morris at Red House in 1860) or arty aristocrats with the resources and urge to own country estates. Morris himself complained that he was forced, by dint of economic position, to "minister to the swinish luxury of the rich". While in North America, by contrast, the impetus for architects and craftsmen came directly from the rising urban middle class, among whom the principal design-object was the more humble Arts and Crafts bungalow. This is not to say that some bungalows and larger homes weren't designed for people with oodles of money (cf. the Gamble House, by Greene and Greene, photo above) but rather that, on average, the homes designed by North American Arts and Crafts architects were more likely to be aimed at the aspiring middle-class than they could be in that era in Britain. 

 

"Certainly, the distinctive realm of the Arts and Crafts house has only begun to be explored, rediscovered, and savored. As it nears its second century on our landscape, the vintage qualities of Arts and Crafts design embodied in the bungalow may be said to be aging well." The Bungalow: America's Arts and Crafts Home, by Paul Duscherer, 1995.

 

III

 

In 1912 Hubert Savage got to design and oversee construction of a house in what eventually became the municipality of View Royal, way out in a then-remote location on Eaton Road. We don't know just how he got to this construction site, but the experience likely acquainted him with Garden City's potential. There was already a buzz around the marketing of quarter-acre parcels there, the sales pitch buttressed by positive attributes (like the Interurban electric rail line, access to town water supply, potential for electricity, etc). An ad for Garden City in the Daily Times in 1911 ran opposite a news story reporting that crews were already out clearing right of way for the new Interurban line. This ad, subtitled "Success Sermons", captures the active land speculation going on around Greater Victoria at the time. The subtext was that wealth would inevitably flow from today's investments.

 

Success Sermon extolling the benefits of investing in Garden City lands

 

Investing in real estate that would be served by streetcars was a savvy way to make a lot of money quickly. This was speculation in motion, larded with lots of hype, yet plausible because land values had rapidly doubled wherever streetcars ran. 

 

  

Saanich Interurban line crossing the Viaduct Trestle (now Interurban Road)

 

 

"Victoria B.C. is a city of destiny. Its growth has been steady and sure. It is the capital centre of what is acknowledged to be the richest province of the whole world today. It is the mecca of the people in search of an ideal climate and beautiful homes. Garden City is on the outskirts of Victoria, in the beautiful fertile valley of the Colquitz - Garden City will have city water and electric car, [i.e. the electric Interurban line] electric light and all the conveniences of the city without the high taxes...Garden City is the ideal location - values will double in Garden City within a year...and the ones who get in now on this legitimate real estate proposition...will make the money."

 

I have argued elsewhere (see Hubert Savage, Architect (1)) that Savage took advantage of the relative cheapness of land in Garden City to purchase a couple of contiguous quarter-acre parcels. That holding came with unique picturesque attributes too, and as an Arts and Crafts architect, he would have instinctively recognized their suitability for building. The Success Sermon of course made the big payoff sound imminent: "Good real estate here will never be worth less. It is inevitable that it will rapidly become worth much more." Still, it would be long after Savage's death in 1955 before subdivision of the original holding actually became feasible, as it took that long for the real estate market in Victoria to recover from the effects of two world wars and a major depression. Savage however is unlikely to have cared how long it took to come about, because his upland half-acre had the scenery to make a unique setting for his home. And there was a world of old-growth timber at his finger tips to mix with discerning craft skills to create an artistic bungalow.

 

 

IV

 

Woodworkers Limited Sash and Door Factory, Douglas St, circa 1912

The engraving above shows one of several Victoria factories cranking out high-quality windows and doors for use in home construction. Increasingly, such semi-finished components were available ready-made, the products of custom milling operations. An early instance of prefabrication - of exceptionally high quality, using only the best materials manufactured to high standards - these ready-made components simplified the act of constructing a home. This isn't comparable to today's tawdry prefabrication - all chip-board and OSB, grossly under-sized two by fours, and synthetic glues and plastic components. Back in 1913, the availability of prefabricated, high-quality components simply meant that on-site carpenters didn't have to fashion every door or window for the house. They still, however, needed to know what they were doing, and the carpenters Savage hired certainly did.   

 

"To say in this day of well-nigh perfect machinery that anything that is good must be done entirely by hand is going rather far. There are certain purely mechanical processes that can be accomplished much better and more economically by machinery, giving the craftsman prepared materials to work with instead of taking his time for their preparation." The Craftsman Catalogue, 1906, Gustav Stickley 

 

Stickley also commented on the issue that year in The Craftsman, in an article entitled The Use and Abuse of Machinery, noting that "the essential element of craftsmanship...is not the mere idea of doing things by hand...but the putting of thought, care and individuality into the task of making honestly and well something that satisfies a real need." "The modern trouble lies not with the use of machinery, but with the abuse of it, and the hope of reform would seem to be in the direction of a return to the spirit which animated the workers of a more primitive age, and not merely to an imitation of their method of working."

 

The most common wood in this part of the world for all aspects of construction (except for roofs, where cedar shingles were preferred) was old-growth Douglas fir, which could be turned into everything from the studs and joists used as the building's skeleton, to the wooden components that brought walls, ceilings and floors to finished appearance. 

 

 

V 

 

 

Exterior Treatments 

 

 

Sash windows, drop siding: mill-run components

  

Local mills produced dimensional lumber in various widths and thicknesses, providing raw materials for both exterior and interior carpentry. That's precisely what appears throughout the bungalow, inside and out. Nowadays, whenever a piece of the original building has to be repaired or replaced, the carpenter doing the job must have architectural joinery skills so he can replicate the precise dimensions of the original. It is no longer possible to just buy such components off-the-shelf, in most cases, as the wood now is systematically wrongly sized (due to our having gone metric in 1975) as well as being skimped on in dimension, a practice that seems to run with the use of second-growth timber - see photo below.

 

 

Left, full-dimension, old-growth 2 X 4, right, second-growth with knot & split

Vern Krahn replacing old-growth fir with old-growth fir during soffit remake

Corner boards, string and belt courses bound walls

 

Savage opted for double-bevelled drop-siding as exterior cladding, preferring this elegant designer-touch to that of the more commonly used cedar shingles. Cedar shingles for siding had become emblematic of local Arts and Crafts buildings, but Savage chose a more formal look that added dramatic shadow lines to the bungalow's exterior (and reinforced its proximity to ground). This graphic siding-type, bordered by raised string courses above and below, is coupled with vertical boards on the outside wall corners (photo above). The upper string course (the horizontal black banding) is sometimes referred to as a frieze band, while the lower string course is nowadays called a belly band. There is also a significant drip ledge positioned just above the belly band too, designed to catch and cast away any moisture running down the walls. Note also that the cross-gabled frontage jetties outwards, mimicking the fashion of Tudor-era buildings. The interior corners of the wall plane (to the left in photos above and below) have recessed corner boards inserted, the effect of which is to allow the siding to run continuously through inside corners, further reinforcing the horizontal emphasis. Note also that Savage has encased the soffits in wood (which was often the local choice on Arts and Crafts buildings) necessitating use of a masking device, descending from the barge board, in order to hide the boxed corner (see photo above). The masking device may be another example of a Savage original design. The moulding along the barge board lifts just at the end of its run, exposing the barge board end more completely. 

 

 

Inside wall turns (left, above) are not marked with vertical boards

Note drip ledge near the base of the wall, immediately above the belly band

 

 

In the top photo above, a rebuilt Craftsman-style front door with original bevelled-glass panes (four over four) offsets to some extent the damage done when the lower door panel (for reasons unknown) was replaced with plywood and a jarring lion's head knocker (at least the plywood wasn't 'good-one-side' grade). Note also that the sash windows are made to descend from the frieze band, a common feature of bungalow designs in the era.

 

"Even with a [verandah] of symmetrical design, it is quite typical to see a deliberately informal, asymmetrical placement of the front door and windows." The Bungalow, America's Arts and Crafts Home, by Paul Duchscher  

 

Savage set his single sash windows and front door (top photo, above) asymmetrically into the front facade, reflecting the freedom of bungalow architects to add elements of rusticity and informality to their buildings (this contributed to the impression made, while sidestepping classical conventions on window spacing). Note too that the verandah's beadboard ceiling (top photo, above) is of markedly narrower width than the drop-siding used as cladding. The English Tudor-style lamp illuminating the verandah is a more recent addition in a style we deemed appropriate, given the residual Tudor features of the house.

 

 

Drop siding run up into the gable peaks, contrasting with the front facade

 

 

Intriguingly, when Savage designed the facades for the south and north ends of the bungalow, he chose to run the drop-siding right up into the gable peaks (see photo above). This contrasts with how the cross-gables are treated on the front facade (where he used Tudor boards with plaster between, for an entirely different look). The contrast further differentiates the street facade from especially the south wall, where the latter's height is emphasized by continuing the siding up the wall (as well as by the pronounced stone foundation). One also appreciates the emphasis gained by reserving vertical corner boards, painted black, to the outer corners of the wall plane. This enables viewers to enjoy full continuity of the horizontal surface, even as the wall plane moves in and out, introducing pleasing jogs to the building's outline (photos above and below).  

 

 

South wall fully differentiated from other walls, with asymmetric composition

Continuous bevelled siding on inside wall turns, for a seamless effect

Savage jogged the rear utility porch outwards, by lifting its roof slightly

The three photos above show the active and fanciful movement of wall planes on the south-east and western facades of the bungalow. Savage designed markedly different movements for each wall, in the southwest corner raising the roof angle just enough to accommodate the back porch and rear garden door (photo above). The north end of the building came eventually to host a walk-in closet, nestled against the main building, which furthers differentiation from the other facades (the walk-in closet was added sometime after the original bungalow had been built). The result is lively movement on all four sides of the building, imparting a genuine "sense of surprise" to each facade (Pevsner, The Englishness of English Art). All four walls thus have novel treatments, which keeps the footprint moving constantly and holds viewer attention. The feat of rendering each wall wholly differently while integrating them into a unified whole was significant (Philip Webb, the first Arts and Crafts architect and a lifelong friend of William Morris, did this routinely, beginning with his first commission at Red House).

 

Walk-in closet adds complexity to the north facade

 

Note that the walk-in closet steps up the landform (photo above), a spatial device often employed by British Arts and Crafts architect Hugh Baillie Scott. Here Savage went out of his way to avoid blasting out the rock ledge, preferring instead to step the building up a level (see photo below). The addition is also rendered in a style varying somewhat from the design of the original (while remaining broadly consistent with it) a technique often utilized by Arts and Crafts architect Edward Lutyens to demarcate later additions to structures he'd previously worked on (see photo above). The important thing, in the words of J. D. Sedding, is not that the building is modified over time, but rather that the addition express "unity of effect" with the previous work.  

 

 

Added walk-in closet stepping up the landform 

 

 

VI

 

 

Interior Treatments

 

Arts and Crafts architecture wasn't about working in a particular style, but about taking an approach to building whose goal was a worthy outcome. It sought to model itself after local traditions of building, but not slavishly. As a first principle, it involved crafting the house to be a unified whole, inside and out. Arts and Crafts practitioners were also concerned to demonstrate respect for craft skills, express fidelity to materials, and generally engage creatively with the building process (including, possibly, direct involvement of the architect). These priorities were held to be useful ways of enriching construction, all articles of faith by the time Savage came to design his bungalow. 

 

I attempted to show in previous articles how Savage may have gone about siting and designing the bungalow (Hubert Savage, Architect (1) and (2)). Now I want to briefly describe the interior layout, in order to comment on how it goes about meeting the Arts and Crafts standard of unified design. Bungalows were extremely popular back in 1913, right across North America, holding in thrall the middle class consumers who comprised their market. Moreover, bungalows were then relatively cheap to build using the high-quality materials generated by an apparently inexhaustible supply of old-growth timber (as well as the initial affordability of land opened by electrified rapid transit). I believe that Savage took advantage of both factors in constructing a deluxe bungalow of just under 1550 square feet. In doing so, he could save on the costs associated with making a basement (which on bedrock would have been crippling) as well as foregoing the damage to the site this would have entailed.

 

One enters the bungalow through a front door sheltered via an elegant roofed verandah, which provides an outdoor living room while transitioning from the world outside to the one within. Passing through the front door, which is glazed with small bevelled glass panes, we enter a vestibule with a closet for jackets, which then becomes a short hallway, under an arch, and leads to a doorway to the kitchen. The vestibule is fitted with wainscot comprised of wooden panels in an upright rectangular pattern, capped by a prominent plate rail projecting outwards, and with distinctive door surrounds, all of it fabricated from old-growth fir that's stained matte black. There's also a single wall-mounted lamp, with two candle-shaped bulbs, centred in a frieze panel (photo below) made of a composite that's painted to resemble plaster. This ensemble forms an elegant, compact space, done up in high-style in order to make a lasting first impression. The setup is also unusual in a 1913 bungalow, insofar as direct entry to the living room from the verandah was often the norm for both California and Craftsman-style bungalows (one way in which perceptions of the bungalow's typically compact spaces, in subdivision format in town, could be maximized by design). Another space-maximizing device was an enlarged opening between the living and dining rooms that partitioned the two; it was typically trimmed quite elaborately with wood. Savage followed neither treatment however, preferring the distinct separation of functions that a vestibule, hallway and the use of standard door openings brought (he did have the relative luxury of sufficient square footage that his front door did not have to open directly into the living room). This immediately made the bungalow more genteel than the majority of standard-issue models, but at the cost of necessitating more doorway openings (and doors) for access between rooms. 

 

 

Wainscot, plate rail, arch above, in the vestibule

 

Vestibule, front door from living room, showing consistency of treatment

 

To the left off the vestibule, through another doorway, lies the living room, which is generously sized, richly decorated, and furnished with ample windows that reinforce connections to the outside world. While decorative treatment of the vestibule and living room are handled similarly regarding height and overall dressing of wainscot, the decorative brackets supporting the base of the plate rail go from chunky squares with rounded corners in the vestibule, to having a more defined tip in the living room. Overall, the living room elevates the design that starts in the vestibule to a higher plane, with box-beamed ceilings, a brick fireplace and tiled apron, asymmetric bookshelves on either side of the fireplace, bevelled glass in a built-in mirror above the fireplace, and a mantle piece that continues the general design of the room. It feels very 'woodsy' in there, the atmosphere of an environment that's made substantially of old-growth fir (including the wooden floor, which is stained honey-brown). The living room, obviously contrived to be the bungalow's social living space, centres on the hearth (as bungalows of this era typically do) but there is no inglenook. The wainscot and ceiling beams are also stained matte black, carrying the English Arts and Crafts manner into the living room. Despite the darkened wood treatment however, there is no absence of light in the room throughout the day, as the windows, which face east and south, admit loads of light. And the wood, being stained, still shows its grain-structure.

 

"Wood panelling was frequently carried up the walls to form a high wainscot and usually capped by a plate rail, which was a shallow, grooved shelf for the display of plates, trays, pottery, small pictures, or other objects." The Bungalow, America's Arts and Crafts Home, Paul Duscherer, 1995.

 

  

Living room showing wall and ceiling treatments, light entering via windows

Lawson Wood frieze, boxed beams, wainscot

 

Living room treatment: boxed beams, plate rails, wainscot, scenery 

 

 

Fireplace and tiled hearth, built-in mirror and bookshelves, door treatment

 

 

There was once a built-in radio in a small alcove off the south wall of the living room (the alcove jogs the facade, which is expressed as a dormer on the outside - see photo below); the built-in radio shows as intact on both the 1933 and 1951 floor plans, but had been removed prior to my arrival in 1988. There is also a colourful frieze (a lithographic print, I believe) that's signed by English artist Lawson Wood in 1921, which gives the room added atmospheric punch.

 

"Generally speaking, the warmth of natural woodwork was considered appropriate in the main living areas. Typical features, like box-beamed ceilings, door and window casings, and various built-ins showcased the pleasing colour and textual variations of wood." The Bungalow, America's Arts and Crafts Home, by Paul Duscherer, 1995. 

 

 

The creation of box-beams in the ceiling often inspired an accompanying lighting scheme, which would have been useful at night-time when darkness prevails. Alas, I discerned no evidence of beam-lights or lanterns ever having been used in the Savage bungalow. Beam-lights were generally available by then, and initially the raw light of bare bulbs was tolerated due to its novelty. Lighting rapidly evolved into more sophisticated fixtures, like lanterns and table lamps that gave off more indirect or shaded light. Sometimes box-beams might also be decorated or stencilled, or the panels between them might be wallpapered. But Savage's design was far too chaste for any such treatment (which would have had the effect of making the interior feel busy). Savage was much more concerned to allow the old-growth fir to speak for itself, and he had a living room large enough to accomplish this purpose.

 

 

Roofed dormers on the outside become alcoves with built-ins within

 

Lawson Wood decorative lithograph adds atmospheric punch to the decor

 

The dining room, which is accessed off the living room through a standard doorway (or from the kitchen, via a similar doorway - see pictures below) is handled in a manner that's consistent with the living room's decorative scheme, yet differs marginally. It too has box-beamed ceilings, but these run in the straight lines as befits a smaller area of ceiling, while the box-beams in the living room are made to cross, indicating the room's relatively greater formality and spaciousness. The dining room comes with its own fireplace too (see second photo below) and is furnished with wainscot, plate rails, plaster-effect frieze-band (akin to the vestibule, again made out of some sort of composite material that's paintable) and two original wall-mounted lamps (the wainscot runs higher in the dining room than in the living room, as there is no Lawson Wood frieze band to accommodate).  Here the style of decorative bracket repeats the chunky form of the vestibule. As recounted in my post entitled First Impressions (2023), the dining room had just been painted when I first toured the house in 1988, its matte black stain already submerged under a coat of fairly tasteful yellow-gold paint. Fearing that this move was likely to continue to the other matte-black areas (which was indeed the plan) my offer-to-purchase was conditional upon all painting of darkened woodwork ceasing. 

 

"Although many bungalows were designed by known architects...the majority of them weren't. The simplicity of the style lent itself to endless variations of the basic elements, and soon individual builders, building companies, and land speculators were throwing up tracts of bungalows. Plan books, already a fixture since the nineteenth century, began to feature bungalows. Anonymous architects or delineators designed most of these, though not all." Bungalow: The Ultimate Arts and Crafts Home, by Jane Powell, 2004.

 

 

The decorative centrepiece of the dining room is of course the built-in window-seat, which appears between incised shelves in its own alcove; it's backed by clear leaded-glass casement windows with a matching transom above. I always marvelled at the light these windows catch due to their southern exposure, with the added gain of being set into a projecting dormer. On plan, the room also once contained a buffet (in 1951 identified as a sideboard, but still there) which was perhaps a piece of furniture designed by Savage, but it too was gone upon arrival. There weren't any marks on the wainscot indicating it had been built-in, however, so it was likely freestanding.

 

 

Doorway, wainscot, plate rail, incised shelves, window seat with leaded glass

Second fireplace, now an off-white colour, wall-mounted sconce, mantle  

Built-in window seat between incised shelves

 

 

If one imagines the dining room as still being matte-black, like the living room and vestibule/corridor, it's relatively easy to see this bungalow as a gendered place (which in fact they often were). Design of the south-end rooms, with their darkened wood finishes and cozy fireplaces, their bookshelves, mirrors, window seats (and other built-in features) represented a place for the male breadwinner to find refuge - somewhere that he could withdraw to from the hectic squabbles of the working world. The rest of the house, by contrast, represented the female domain, including the kitchen, bathroom, and the bedrooms, and was correspondingly less heavily finished and decorated for lighter effect. It was in this part of the house where, for example, wallpaper and paint were more prominent. It was also here, in the female space, where the majority of gadgets were located, intended as aides to render homemaking and housekeeping much simpler than they had been in Victorian houses.

 

Among the elements supporting overall unity of design, without and within, is the uniformly low ceiling height of the rooms. At eight foot four inches high, these ceilings continue the exterior's marked horizontality and proximity to ground into the building. The perception of the bungalow as being low-lying is also reinforced by the many windows, which gather light while adding vivid impressions of scenery around the building. Lowered ceiling heights were a key way of contrasting bungalows with Victorian-era buildings, which could come with ceilings as high as thirteen feet (so, nearly five feet higher). This ceiling height imparted feelings of grandeur and luxury to Victorian-era interiors, but at the cost of their being inefficient to heat (due to hot air gathering in the upper reaches of rooms). They also had the side-effect of pushing buildings higher too, the opposite effect of a low-slung bungalow where nearness to ground was consciously emphasized.

 

 

Tall Victorian-era house with high ceilings

 

A further way in which Hubert Savage sought to unify design was by making views of chunks of the exterior available from within. One could be forgiven for thinking that this happened purely by chance, but I'm convinced it was deliberate. Bungalows offer unique opportunities for just this sort of visual sleight-of-hand, by dint of being articulated around a defining verandah (which projects out into the world, its dominant roof supported on tapered pillars of (in this case) randomly shaped stones). And as we see from the photo below, the verandah constitutesd a view that can be seen through the living room's grouping of windows.

 

 

Roofed verandah, low railing, tapered stone pillar with posts, from within

 

 

Savage also elected to bump-out the west wall in the south quadrant, in effect creating another opportunity for viewing the bungalow's structure from within. Here it's the thickening of the building to incorporate a rear utility porch that creates opportunity for the effect, providing views of the structure through the kitchen windows and reinforcing the building's rambling quality. The following photo shows the transparency of this manoeuvre, graphically bringing the outside world closer to the viewer while demonstrating just how near ground the bungalow actually sits.

 

 

Bumped-out rear porch and back door seen through kitchen windows

 

The design of the bungalow creates other opportunities to glimpse the building's exterior from within, such as the view of the long west wall one has through the glazed garden door - something seen whenever venturing into the back garden (photo below). The main bedroom like the living room also shows views of the verandah and the stone steps leading to it.

 

 

West wall view can be seen through glazed door

 

 

Earlier, we described the entry suite of rooms, showing how in the vestibule, living room and dining room Savage decorated consistently while developing distinctive personality for each room. The wainscot, window treatments, and the handling of doorways shows how much structural interest can be created with similar treatments. But, as becomes evident when in the kitchen - and this holds true for all other rooms in the bungalow - Savage obviously enjoyed decorating ceilings with wood. It's my opinion that this is because ceilings comprise large areas that can reinforce an overall effect, here a built-in look. All Savage's ceilings have it in one fashion or another, achieved principally by a band of wood (or moulding) running along the top of the wall (see photos below). In addition to reinforcing the look of things being built-in, Savage gave each ceiling a distinct pattern in wood too. In the kitchen, which we redid in 2005, we had the opportunity to continue Savage's original wall-strip above the new banks of cupboards added, which greatly reinforces the look of things being built-in (photo below).

 

 

Band above new cupboards reinforces a built-in look

 

But even in rooms beyond the kitchen, such as in the master bedroom, Savage reinforced a similar look. He combines it with a woodwork pattern that manifests design by turning the ceiling into a sequence of panels implying movement through space. This is combined with boards over the outside edges of the wall-corners. The rosette centring the array of panels was a later addition, covering wires that at once fed an overhead light that was part of the original ceiling - photo below). In other bedrooms (see second photo) he used a cove moulding to reinforce the built-in look.

 

 

Irregular panelization was a Savage trademark

  

Note ceiling treatment in the second bedroom using a cove moulding

 

One room that received truly unique treatment was the rear porch, simply because it's ceiling had to be lower than the standard eight foot four inches obtaining throughout the bungalow. As a result of this compressed height, Savage rendered it as barrel-vaulted, in order to conserve the maximum of apparent height for the room. This gave it an unusual scooped-out effect, which made the compact room cosy to use (see next photos).

 

 

Barrel-vaulted ceiling resembling antique railcar

 

Conservatory ceiling, view looking northwards, barrel-vaulted treatment

 

There remains a bit more to be said about Savage's use of space and small hallways versus the tendency, particularly in California bungalows, to engage in more open-space planning (a virtue made necessary by the small of size of subdivision bungalows). Savage had sufficient space in his bungalow to achieve flow between rooms in other ways. For example, every major room has at least two doorways (except the bathroom) while the kitchen has four doorways, all of which are actively used. In fact, we found that there were too many doors in the Savage bungalow (doors require storage space if they are left open; doors that are rarely closed are borderline redundant). As a result, we removed a door that was habitually open in kitchen (to the vestibule), revealing the incised shelf it covered when open. Emboldened by this success, we removed another door between the living room and dining room, also for space-retrieval. The door was also always left open, which obscured architectural features. We had Vern Krahn repair the removed door hinges, so there was no trace of doors ever having been there.

 

When the walk-in closet was first added to the bungalow, initially there was only one opening to it off the small bedroom across the hall from the master bedroom. This can't have been very convenient, because the main users of the closet were Hubert and Alys. That arrangement shows as continuing on both the 1933 and 1951 floor plans. But by the time I arrived in 1988, there were two openings to the walk-in closet, including one from the master bedroom added after 1951. I don't know the story of who did that opening, but Alys Savage lived on in the bungalow after Hubert passed in 1955 until well into the 1970s. Some sort of major renovation occurred sometime along the way, and things were rearranged. 

 

A word in closing on the overall design principles of bungalows: designers felt that the busyness they associated with Victorian houses (the cluttered environment within, based on collecting superfluous gewgaws) was to be avoided at all costs. Traditional ornaments they saw as being tacked on, rather promiscuously too, so they set themselves on a course to simplify design radically and to restrict themselves to the building's structure. Principally this was by means of rectilinear decorating with wooden materials, entailing designing interiors for straight lines, right angles, squares and rectangles, with an emphasis on constructive finishes, in a search for a clean, modern, uncluttered look. One thing they avoided was any evidence of turned wood, something Victorian and Queen Anne-style houses used extensively. Bungalow designers want to avoid the effect of turned wood, but not at the cost of 'woodsy' feeling. Mostly their designs were about right-angles and straight lines. There were a few cove mouldings, to be sure, and a smattering of curves too, but mostly the emphasis was on straight lines. It was above all a linear style that eschewed tacked-on ornament. 

 

 

 

Books for Looks:

 

The Art and Craft Of The Machine, address to the Chicago Arts and Crafts Society, by Frank Lloyd Wright, 1901.

The Englishness Of English Art, by Hugh Pevsner, 1955.

CFA Voysey, 'Ideas In Things',  in The Arts Connected With Building, 1909.

The Arts and Crafts Movement, Gillian Naylor, 1971. 

The Bungalow, America's Arts and Crafts Home, by Paul Duscherer, 1995.

Bungalow: The Ultimate Arts and Crafts Home, by Jane Powell, 2004. 

Toward A Simpler Way Of Life, The Arts and Crafts Architects of California, edited by Robert Winter, 1997.

The Arts and Crafts Movement in California: Living The Good Life, edited by Kenneth R. Trapp, 1993. 

Artisans and Architects, by Mark Swenarton, 1989. 

Art and Labour, Ruskin, Morris and the Craftsman Ideal in America, by Eileen Boris, 1986.

Art and Handicraft, by J. D. Sedding, 1893.