Hubert Savage, Architect (5)

 

 

Modest Victoria bungalow, Finlayson area, ca 1920: note full basement

 

How can we know with certainty that the house Savage designed is in fact a bungalow, rather than a chalet or a cottage? Alan Gowans, in The Comfortable House: North American Suburban Architecture 1890 - 1930, offers guidance on how we can decide whether a building is a bungalow, elaborating four features that were were characteristic of the original Indian 'bangala' (from which the Anglo-Indian bungalow derived).  Those four features can be summarized as follows: there is no basement; the building is one or one-and-a-half storeys high; a roof sweeps out over a prominent verandah; and, inside and outside environments interpenetrate. Let's consider each factor in turn.

The Savage bungalow definitely lacks a basement (for more on this topic, please refer to my article Hubert Savage, Architect (1)). Building a low crawlspace over a natural, mostly shallow, hollow allowed Savage to design a building near to the ground - indeed, one that seems to rise directly from it. One byproduct of the natural crawlspace is that external access to the building's underside is necessary, and that there's limited access to the northern third because the shallow depth of the hollow here means insufficient height for easy access. This proximity to ground was also characteristic of the original Indian bangala, which was built on a mud plinth  (the British later modified this by making the plinth out of brick or stone). The plinth served to elevate the bungalow slightly above the ground, raising it slightly so it would remain dry during monsoon season. This use of plinths continued as the British evolved the Anglo-Indian bungalow, giving it a similar horizontal emphasis. With the advent of the California-style bungalow (from about 1905) the plinth was made into a crawlspace under the building, which allowed bungalows to be built directly over soil. Construction on brick or cement piers topped with structural timbers as a platform resulted in "a very low foundation, thus emphasizing its mainly horizontal lines" (Robert Winter, The California Bungalow). The extensive use of crawlspaces in Southern California gave bungalows similarly horizontal lines, continuing the bangala look. It was also appropriate for the locale too, as it rarely rained there and the native soils tended to be well-drained. However, there could be problems arising from the tendency of moisture to collect in crawlspaces, which could promote rot in a largely wooden structure. Addressing this problem took a method of venting the enclosed space so the trapped moisture escaped. Insects and rodents could also be problems too. One positive associated with use of crawlspaces was a dramatic reduction in overall building costs due to not having to build a basement. This made such savings integral to the real estate formula behind the bungalow's phenomenal success.

 

Alan Gowans reproduces an advertisement from Bungalow Magazine, dated 1914, listing various models of kit bungalow available through Sears, with prices ranging from as low as $393 for a small one to a high of $1407 for a deluxe model. These houses were pre-cut, could be shipped anywhere that had rail access, for assembly on the building site: prices included "all lumber, lath and shingles, siding, ceiling, flooring, doors, windows, moldings, frames, porch work, stair work, finishing lumber, building paper, sash weights, pipe, gutter, hardware, paint and varnish," and with no knots in the old growth timber to boot! 

 

 

Excessively high bungalow with its basement largely above the ground

 

 

"Anyone who has seen very similar bungalows in Vancouver, B.C., some of them beautifully designed, realizes that when compared to their California relative, they seem gawky on their often unnecessarily high basements that are usually mostly above ground. The California bungalow seemed to hug the earth." Robert Winter, The California Bungalow.

 

 

The Savage bungalow is built over a shallow crawlspace in the Southern California manner, with its low foundation walls imparting similar feelings of horizontality. But it has the added twist of being placed organically on a natural feature of the site, which allowed Savage to pull the building even lower. Brick piers supporting the bungalow vertically combine with curtain walls of stone that close the building off to the outside. This characteristic of sitting just above or at ground level (especially along its West wall, towards the North end) sets the Savage bungalow apart from most other commercially built bungalows of the day, which tended to come on full basements (thus accommodating a furnace and heat distribution system, among other things). But, the practice of building a full basement under them tended, in Victoria and Vancouver, to raise them higher than California bungalows (it was more convenient and cheaper to build basements sitting mostly above ground). The resulting look is awkward ('gawky' is Robert Winter's term) compared to the way that a California bungalow sits. Indeed, as bungalows came to be successfully marketed beyond Southern California - appearing in northern cities with real winters, like Chicago - the need for full basements to accommodate furnaces grew too. The Savage bungalow, with its ultra-low-lying appearance, is thus more consistent with the look of the original bangala, the Anglo-Indian bungalow, and the California variant that inherited the bungalow mantle (see photos below).

 

 

 

Small door accessing the bungalow's underside

 

Northwest end where the crawlspace is too shallow for straight forward access

Building under repair, showing its proximity to ground

 

 

The Savage bungalow is also a building of just one storey (although it appears to be taller as approached from the front path, where the lay of the land and the use of cross-gables lend the house a much-grander presence). The ground floor is capped by a long gabled roof, a fact that's more apparent from the west side of the building. The original Indian bangala was also a one-storey structure, and this feature carried over into the Anglo-Indian bungalow (which originally had a thatched roof). When a derivative form of this Anglo-Indian bungalow eventually landed in Victoria, B.C., where it was called a 'Colonial bungalow', it set a fashion for using its stylish roof for extra bedroom space, achieved by means of light-admitting dormers (see photos below). This tendency to utilize the roof for additional living space only grew over time, so the dormers grew larger too. Bungalows built in California tended to take a similar approach, thus turning many bungalows into one-and-a-half storey structures from the start. Use of the roof for extra living space was well-established by 1913, when Savage designed his bungalow, but his attic was always intended for storage (something we can tell from the narrow steps accessing it). This must have seemed reasonable back in 1913, but as bungalows were came to be widely built (in quantities sufficient to designate them America's first 'dream home') the roof level was increasingly used as living space, and especially space for bedrooms, thereby confirming the building's one-and-a-half storey status. 

 

"A fundamental point to remember is that a bungalow is not a housing style but a planning format...Today, it is most widely accepted that a 'true' bungalow may be defined as a house that has most (if not all) of its bedrooms on the same floor as its primary public spaces. This...rightly separates the issue of the planning format from the home's architectural style...Although a first-floor location for the bedrooms is technically what defines a 'true' bungalow, the term can also be correctly assigned to homes that may have some additional attic-level bedrooms." Along Bungalow Lines, by Paul Duchscherer, 2006. 

   

 

 

Rudimentary thatch-roofed bungalow in India without any dormers

"Although the advantage of the bungalow was that it was mainly on one floor, the limited space usually necessitated a staircase leading to the attic or more likely a tiny sleeping porch that by the twenties was usually windowed in. The literature, a little embarrassed by this cheating on the original single story idea, suggested that this space might be used for a study, a game room or a guest room. As the bungalow developed, more and more often the upstairs space was enlarged and used as a sleeping area. In fact, even the early bungalows often have an upstairs bathroom." Robert Winter, The California Bungalow

 

 

Elegant colonial bungalow, with dormers enabling the roof space to be lived in

Same colonial bungalow with graceful dormers to expand the living space

 

 

Over time, the roof level of bungalows thus tended more and more to become habitable space, which was usually realized with dormers set tastefully and modestly into the roof. The Savage bungalow could still be expanded along these lines, despite only the western facade being available to take a dormer (the eastern facade, being cross-gabled, isn't usable without inflicting major damage on the structure, which is ruled out by heritage designation). In order to transform the current storage attic into additional habitable space, it would be necessary to address the steepness of the existing, precariously vertical, staircase; this could be done, in part, by relaxing its rise and adding a landing, which would let it turn and in this way make better use of the ample attic space. This transformation would also allow bulkier objects to be carried upstairs. A more-relaxed staircase (one sloped less sharply than at present) is a necessity that might involve adding a small dormer above the roof of the walk-in closet (and would also likely require some sacrifice of existing closet space in the master and spare bedrooms). Assuming all this could be done tastefully, it should be possible to add perhaps as much as 700 square feet to the existing footprint (enough room for, say, a large master bedroom at the southwest end of the building, flowing into a spacious ensuite bathroom with separated tub and shower facilities, plus a large spare bedroom that would double as a study or office space at the north end of the building). There would also be an access corridor to serve these rooms, with an opportunity to build storage closets along the eastern side. This added storage space would partially compensate for the lack of a basement. It would also be useful to take down the upper section of the now-redundant second chimney (to the left, second photo below) in order to simplify routing the new staircase and access corridor. 

 

 

Western roof form that could accommodate a shed dormer for added living space

 

Unused chimney to be removed to improve access 

 

It's important, given the building's heritage status, that should any of this work occur, it be done right - which to my mind means in a manner consistent with early bungalow standards. Bungalow dormers tended to be set into the gable roof form tastefully, where they came well-proportioned and dressed compatibly with the building. The detailing need not be excessive, but it tended to define an authentic look for classic bungalow dormers. Today's dormers have a tendency to ignore the character of the original building (in typical Modernist fashion) adding features that are often jarringly incongruous, perhaps on the pretext of 'making a statement'. This move should be resisted by heritage advisory committees with a say on proposed changes (one can only pray for buildings that are heritage-listed but not yet designated).

 

 

Dormer addition with no relationship to the original bungalow's lines 

 

 

The resulting dormer should not look like an architectural excrescence, but rather fit within the available roof space and be appropriately detailed. The dormer could be on the large side (especially if, as is the case with the Savage bungalow, it isn't visible from the road) but it should be designed to fit within the existing roof and not simply ignore it. Any appearance of the bungalow becoming a two-storey building should be strenuously resisted. This isn't always the case nowadays (see photo above, where the new windows, the size of the new siding, and the blunt projection of a new roof line all ignore existing details). This is why it's important that architects be guided by original bungalow values when designing dormers, principally to ensure that the new structure fit comfortably into the space available rather than designing as if there are no limits. It's easy to go wrong here, because restraint is called for, meaning it's never just a question of maximizing spatial gain.

 

 

Modest dormer, sitting comfortably within the roof, likely added recently

 

Larger shed dormer done right: quality windows & compatible detailing

Fairfield bungalow with shed dormers that are well-detailed, if on the large side

Vic West bungalow with gabled dormers set modestly into the roof form

 

The problem with space gained through dormer-addition is that it's temptingly easy to go too far. Today, people care less how a building looks from the outside and more how the addition works internally (that is, we tend to overvalue spatial gain). Even if one has a commitment to dress the new dormers consistent with the style of the original building, overloading the roof with them tends to lead to incompatibility. At some point it all becomes too much, and the original bungalow form now appears as a two-storey house.

 

"...the minute you put on a [palpable, obvious] second floor, away flies your bungalow roof. You may have a house, but you haven't a bungalow." Mabel Chilson, What is a Genuine Bungalow?, Keith's Magazine, April 1916. 

 

 

Bungalow with multiple dormers on both sides, on the verge of being two storeys

Modernist dormer extending exterior wall plane, imparting a two-storey look 

A roof sweeping over a prominent verandah is another original bungalow feature, which introduces a sheltered space over the point of entry. This was true of the original bangala, and it carried over into the version the British adapted to Europeans to use. It also became an important part of the California-style bungalow (although the verandah tended to become smaller over time, as houses in tract developments became the norm). But it's a defining feature of the Savage bungalow, projected out from the building proper, and bookended by two bays with multiple windows. Verandahs on bungalows look best when the are furnished informally, which gives them the feeling of an outdoor room marking the transition from outside to inside. The interpenetration of outside and inside set in motion by this verandah's broad, sweeping roof lines was often reinforced by other devices too, among them pergolas and outdoor dining spaces.

 

 

Pergola worked into the facade of a historic bungalow, in Kitchener-Waterloo

 

 

Such projections also include windowed conservatories, lanais, sleeping porches, patios, and terraces, all of which, as author Jane Powell notes, are essentially verandah-like structures. And all of these functional extensions of the original verandah environment came to typify bungalows built in Southern California, where the climate is mostly benign and the indoor-outdoor theme is easily reinforced. The Savage bungalow's compact verandah (that is, by Anglo-Indian standards) nonetheless works similarly, providing an informal space that's perched high up on the natural ridge. In this location, it evokes strong feelings of prospect (views to scenery that are removed from the roadway) and refuge (weather-protected and secure). The low verandah railing, which invites us to sit on it, is a typical feature of classic North American bungalows that would not be allowed under current building codes (see photos below).

 

 

A sweeping roof protecting a prominent verandah is essential to bungalows 

 

June light reflecting mature oak leaves as shadows on a projecting cross gable

A transitional environment conveying strong feelings of prospect and refuge 

The fourth characteristic - inside and outside environments interpenetrating - is where the Savage design really excels. This feature was characteristic of the original Indian bangala, and it applies to bungalows everywhere - at least, to those with any amount of land around them. Of course, as Alan Gowans notes, by dint of the protected verandah alone, inside and outside environments are drawn into close association. But Savage also explored other ways of connecting the outside to the inside in ways that render his bungalow unique. To bring the abundant natural scenery indoors, he employed many generous windows to open up compelling views, so that glimpses from within directly connect the building to the scenery beyond. We chronicled the remarkable range of windows in our second post in this series (Hubert Savage, Architect (2)). But here we are also have in mind Gustav Stickley's words on windows as points of connection to the world outside the structure, made in an article promoting a rural building in The Craftsman magazine:

 

"As the object has been to bring as much outdoor feeling as possible into the house, especial attention has been given to the windows, of which there are a great many." Gustav Stickley, The Craftsman, October 1909.

 

 

 

Savage established a vital sense of connection to scenery outside with windows

 

The feature of having many large windows also combined agreeably with the movement of the wall planes, which jog in and out on all four sides of the bungalow. This in-out movement strengthens the sense that the connection between inside and outside is organic by design. As noted above, many techniques that reinforce this sense of interpenetration began as ways of taking advantage of the benign weather characteristic of Southern California, which was where the American mania for bungalows got started (and where a great many classy, architect-designed bungalows were built).

 

"As a writer of bungalow books put it, 'the bungalow cannot be built too close to the ground and, indeed, the purpose should always be to make the bungalow a harmonious part of the grounds surrounding it....so that the indoors and outdoors may be said to join hands.'" Robert Winter, The California Bungalow

 

 

In Southern California, moderate weather supported shortcuts in building design that revealed the structure of the bungalow (for example, open soffits and exposed rafter-tails, both hallmarks of the Craftsman style, went with a tendency to forgo gutters and downspouts entirely, which meant additional savings due to living in a dry climate with well-drained soils). But the interpenetration of outside and inside consciously emphasized in bungalow design also applied to the original Indian bungalow. The fact that this feature - of linking the building integrally to its surroundings - was also characteristic of the original bangala and the Anglo-Indian bungalow, is intriguing. 

 

 

Elegant airplane bungalow in Los Angeles: note absence of gutters and downspouts

 

Honey Grove, Texas: brick bungalow, recessed verandah with Oriental features

  

One of Savage's notions involved leaving what was identified on plan as a "summer tea room" open to the elements, almost as if it were actually a sleeping porch-type arrangement. The idea evidently didn't hold up over time, for quite obvious reasons. Although Savage had a way of shuttering the opening in winter, this can't have been an entirely satisfactory solution, as once shuttered, light and views would have been excluded throughout the winter months. There is also the matter of rainfall beyond the winter months, as well as the prevailing winds blowing out of the west, both of which would have meant wear and tear on the internal environment due to the porch being open to the elements. Anyway, by the time I bought the place in 1988, the open summer tea room had been sealed up with a small wood-framed picture window flanked by a pair of cheap aluminum sash windows with screens. We exchanged those aluminum sliders for clear leaded glass windows at the time of the first building remake. We don't know whether Savage himself had anything to do with the partial remake of this room, which saw a once-open area translated into windowed space, but I'm skeptical because he certainly had better taste than the discordant and temporary quality of those aluminum windows. The summer tea room does show as being still open to the elements on Savage's 1951 version of the floor plan, so perhaps the aluminum sliders weren't his doing. 

 

 

Back garden seen through the small picture window, which we retained

View through the small picture window in the conservatory room in spring

The notion of designing each exterior wall with a different personality - thus imparting unique movement to each facade - was entirely fruitful. Savage originally elaborated different treatments for the three most prominent walls, leaving the north wall to stand as a plain version of the south wall largely without windows (thus lacking the south wall's complexity, height and the balanced asymmetry of its complex elements). Then, because he decided to add a walk-in closet sometime after building the original bungalow, he had the opportunity to elaborate a more distinct personality on that wall too. The high diamond-paned window set above the incised bookshelf may actually have been added at the same time, as there's definitely a more severe quality to its flattened arch that's consistent with the art-deco era. The movement of wall planes was also exploited inside the bungalow too, benefitting internal features like the dining room window-seat in the projecting bay window (see photo below) or the built-in radio in the living room in another bay, or the walk-in closet with its built-in cupboards flanking a compact built-in dresser. These innovations have all stood the test of time, as worthy ways of dressing the projections resulting from the movement Savage built into the walls.

 

 

Rumble the cat relaxing on the built-in window seat

 

 

While that covers off the four items on Gowans's list that were typical features of the original bangala in India (Savage's building exhibiting all four, so decidedly a bungalow) there is another way to ascertain that this house was consciously designed as a bungalow, and that is by consulting the floor plan drawn up in 1933. There we find the building described as follows: "frame construction of bungalow type" (first photo, below) a notation that, to me, stands as definitive. And yet by the 1930s, when Savage initialled this version of the floor plan, the bungalow era had already drawn to a close, supplanted initially by World War One, which was followed a decade later by the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. It's intriguing to me that as late as 1933, Savage continued to acknowledge the building type that back in 1913 had been so popular that he designed one as his lifetime home. Yet how quickly the bungalow era moved from giddy enthusiasm to complete oblivion, returning only recently when these modest structures were once again discovered by the discerning middle class. Even as bungalows continued to be built during the 1920s - in subdivision quantities in cities across North America - the building type itself had already lost cachet, and bungalows, while they had anticipated people's need to have the latest in modern technology, and while they made a major contribution to the look of the built environment, were by then falling from grace. The new reality in Victoria first became evident around the time WW1 began, when younger Victorians in large numbers enlisted to fight in far-away Europe. The economic downturn these events triggered, reinforced by the depression of the thirties, would hold local aspirations in check for many decades. Housing as it had been in the bungalow era left town for good; and when the market for new houses finally returned, it took a form that gave far less to the street and the community than was standard in the bungalow era.

Detail drawn from 1933 Floor Plan: 'frame construction of bungalow type'

Savage initialled his 1933 floor plan of the Grange Road bungalow

 

 

Floor plan of Hubert Savage's residence, Summer Tea Room and California Cooler

 

 

There is another feature that came to typify bungalows in the public mind, arising from the British adaptation of the native Indian bungalow. That building, which started out as a rudimentary native hut, was modified over time to better suit European needs, eventually becoming what's known as the Anglo-Indian bungalow. And that additional feature, absorbed by bungalows to the extent that today they feel naked without it, originated in the idea of a compound around the building. Originally this compound was simply an area of land that could be controlled by those who occupying the building (an area of land that in India might be substantial). As Anthony King notes, in The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture: "the bungalow was invariably situated in a large compound, an area of marked territory which, in turn, was located at a distance from other buildings or places of settlement."

 

The compound then, as the area of land surrounding the building, came to define the specifically British adaptation of the native building type. "The spacious compound...was a prerequisite for the bungalow's development. Being of only one storey, and with an extensive thatch [roof] covering the whole, the dwelling depended on the space around it for ventilation and light. In fact, the compound was simply an extension of the bungalow's internal space, an outdoor room..." While the original rationale for having a compound was defensive in nature - buffering the bungalow from other uses and people - over time this land-area became transformed by the inhabitants (and their servants, of which there were many) into a gardened setting. The Anglo-Indian bungalow thus conserved all of the basic characteristics of the native building type during its evolution, but added the feature of a gardened setting around it. 

 

 

Anglo-Indian bungalow in a gardened setting or compound, with servants

 

This compound gradually evolved into the gardened setting that typified the modern bungalow type - one where the natural pattern of movement by people is out of the bungalow and onto a verandah surrounded by a garden room, which is ultimately fused with the dwelling itself. This phenomenon of appropriating a surrounding area of countryside was so ubiquitous that, by the time the young Winston Churchill visited India, towards the close of the 19th century (as recounted in his book My Early Life) he would describe the bungalow settlement he inhabited in the following way: "All around the cavalry mess lies a suburb of roomy, one-storeyed bungalows standing in their own walled grounds and gardens..." Thus, by the late nineteenth century, the idea of a bungalow as a house in a gardened setting began to travel with the building form itself, as did the conjoined notion of the bungalow as "a retreat from the society around it" (see Winter and King for further discussion of this idea). These realities became part of the successful marketing of bungalows, which began in Southern California and then spread elsewhere in North America.

 

And the phenomenon of the compound, after it transitioned to a gardened space around the building, moved with the bungalow as an export product, making its way first to Australia, then back to England proper, and then finally on to North America, where it landed in Victoria, British Columbia (and also perhaps in Northern California, see below).

 

 

Worcester bungalow in Piedmont, San Francisco Bay, by artist William Keith

 

Jane Powell, in Bungalow: The Ultimate Arts and Crafts Home, has this to say about the Worcester bungalow: "It is generally agreed that Joseph Worcester's house, built in 1876 across the Bay from San Francisco in Piedmont, was the first Arts and Crafts house in California." That house is manifestly a bungalow, likely modelled after the Anglo-Indian type, the shape of which it seems to share (see picture detail below).

 

 

Clearly, Worcester's building is a bungalow modelled after the Anglo-Indian form

 

 

The bungalow that was launched commercially in Southern California was something different again, a unique product that would eventually come to be built almost everywhere, including in Victoria. Mostly these buildings in Victoria differed somewhat from true California bungalows for the simple reason that they weren't sited as near to the ground as was the fashion there (see essay above). However, even with a greater projection above ground as built in Victoria, California-style bungalows are still evident to my eye (see photos below).

 

 

 

California-style bungalow in Victoria, higher than in California to include a garage

 

California-style bungalow in Victoria, lower than normal for a house with a basement

 

Another California bungalow in Victoria BC, set lower than most local bungalows

 

In California, home of the modern bungalow-type, the compound that morphed into a gardened setting was integral to the bungalow's marketing. As Robert Winter writes, in The California Bungalow, "...the idea of the extension of the bungalow into a garden is important for the understanding of the bungalow mystique. Landscape architecture, usually the province of the few, was [now] the property of the many." Winter is writing about the modern California bungalow, built extensively from 1905 on; but this product of American invention was soon to be exported to cities across North America.

 

"The Arts and Crafts garden in California shared the general ideals of garden design elsewhere in the country in creating unpretentious designs out of local materials, in relating buildings to the broader landscape, and in treating garden space as an outdoor room." David Streatfield, The Arts and Crafts Garden in California, in The Arts and Crafts Movement in California - Living The Good Life, edited by K. R. Trapp 

Hubert Savage's bungalow shared the appearance of being built in a gardened compound, simply because it initially enjoyed its own half-acre of space, with no other structures standing nearby. Savage also constructed his bungalow to take maximum advantage of his site's characteristics. Indeed even today, in a much-more built-up suburbia, it retains the appearance of having dedicated grounds around it, in spite of now being reduced to the dimensions of an RS-6 lot. While this fact entails that the landscape buffer is a bit thin on the north edge of the property, where ten foot setbacks arguably bring the neighbours too close for comfort (fortunately, there's a fence) both the front and rear of the building retain the appearance of having a landscape of their own. All of which reinforces the idea that the bungalow on Grange Road is rightly viewed as an icon of Arts and Crafts architecture.

 

Books for Looks:

 

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

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

The California Bungalow, Robert Winter. 

The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture, Anthony D. King.

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

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

The Bungalow - America's Arts and Crafts Home, by Paul Duchscherer.

Along Bungalow Lines, by Paul Duchscherer. 

 

Hubert Savage, Architect (4)

 

 

 

 

 

Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house built largely 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 read 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 was the basis of construction. Unlike Wright, who had worked with Louis Sullivan designing tall office buildings from 1888 to 1893 (buildings that benefited enormously from the load-bearing capacity of steel skeletons, large areas of durable glass for windows, and safety elevators) Savage was then 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 precise milling and sanding - and with zero knots to boot. As a designer of stylish residences, Savage would have been content to source these abundant, high-quality, natural materials for building. Indeed, these products are on display in every room of the bungalow he designed for his family, so certainly he had come to terms with machine outputs.

 

 

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 always the case. Craftsman William Morris, rejecting both the abject conditions foisted on workers by the industrial revolution, along with the crassly inferior design of the products it put out, made a career in decorating by practising recovered crafts that could be carried out by hand. This tended to make his output expensive to buy, which restricted it pretty much to wealthy clients. Morris himself took 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", was one example. But so great was his success as an artist-craftsman that he set a fashion among followers for recovery of traditional crafts, like cabinet-making, pottery and metalwork, and for handiwork performed by self-employed artisans. Indeed, it became an article of faith among Arts and Crafts architects to gain more knowledge of the core skills central to the fashioning of buildings.

 

 

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

 

Despite this focus on handcrafted objects (see photo above) architects in the Arts and Crafts movement gradually came to adopt a more accepting 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 generalized after Morris's death in 1896, as large-scale machinery was increasingly used to prepare raw materials for construction. Most individual architects made their own peace with machine-process, especially if they perceived that its output didn't necessarily come at the expense of exercising craft skills. In fact, some recalled how, prior to precision-cutting of wood in sawmills, there once existed the laborious work of the sawpit. Operating a traditional sawpit took two people working a heavy bladed saw in order to slice raw logs into the planks used for building - one stationed above the log, the other down in the sawpit (see next photo). This was the sort of labour process that many people felt could be better executed by machines, without any real loss of control. 

 

 

Country-sawpit used to make timbers for house construction (G. Jekyll photo)

 

 

Some Arts and Crafts architects celebrated the passing of the sawpit because they felt that such labour wasn't a particularly good use of craft skills. Better to automate that part of the job, the thinking ran, and concentrate on applying the craft skills where they could be put to better 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 felt that '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 many skilled artisans to work as independent craftsmen, also came to feel that machines could play a creative role in the building process. Ashbee visited America a number of times, becoming friends with prominent Chicago architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Early on, Wright confronted Ashbee with his new 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 a progressive on the issue of machines while still laying stress on the importance of craft skills, decided that architects and craftsman had to reckon with the output of machines. "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 that everything should be made by hand. At the time, the old-growth forests being rendered into raw materials made for remarkably cheap construction inputs, of exceptional quality. Wright, of course, took the arguments in favour of machines to a higher and more abstract level. He credits machinery with opening up fresh possibilities for artists, once freed from being "engines of enslavement" responsive only to the profit motive. Wright, by then also 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 most contemporary industrial products, which took the form of past luxuries and were loaded with fake ornamentation. Wright, who professed admiration for artist-craftsman William Morris, nonetheless maintained that the Arts and Crafts movement's prioritization of hand work was itself stuck 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 who launched the Prairie style of domestic architecture, was also a bit of an outlier. Other American commentators would probably not have gone as far as he did, but they too were nonetheless fascinated by the inherent potential of technology (Americans on the whole embraced machinery in ways that the British Arts and Crafts movement often struggled with). The American Arts and Crafts movement was willing, for example, to reconcile itself to the idea of hand-fashioning, chiefly by reserving it to the later stages of production, where marks on products could appear as finishing touches (visible traces of the supposed encounter with materials) on outputs that were largely fashioned by machines.

 

"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, editor; 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, the British Arts and Crafts movement, with its reverence for craft-labour and handiwork, for the most part designed and oversaw the building of larger homes for people who were rich - either wealthy capitalists (or their scions, such as William Morris, who had Red House built in 1860) or arty aristocrats with the resources and urge to own large country estates. Morris himself complained of being 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 grew directly out of the rising urban middle class, for whom the principal design-object was the much more humble Arts and Crafts bungalow. This is not to say that some bungalows and larger houses weren't designed for people with oodles of money (see 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 homes the aspiring middle-class could afford than they could be at that time 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, in a then-remote location on Eaton Road. We don't know just how he accessed the construction site, but the experience of visiting it more than likely acquainted him with Garden City's potential. There was a steady buzz around the marketing of quarter-acre parcels there, the sales pitch buttressed by positives (like the Interurban electric rail line, access to town water, 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 rights of way for the new Interurban line. This ad, subtitled "Success Sermons", captures the active land speculation happening around Greater Victoria at the time. The subtext was that wealth would inevitably flow from any investments made today.

 

Success Sermon extolling the benefits of investing in Garden City land

 

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

 

  

Saanich Interurban line crossing 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, [ie. the 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 buy a couple of contiguous quarter-acre parcels. This 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 a big payoff seem 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 punctuated by a major depression. Savage however is unlikely to have cared how long it actually took to happen, because his upland half-acre came with the scenic attributes to make a unique setting for his nest. And there was a world of old-growth timber at his finger tips to mix with discerning craft skills in order to create an artistic bungalow. 

 

 

1911 ad for Garden City: low taxes, electric carline, city water, sidewalks

 

 

 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 exceptional quality, using only the best materials, manufactured to very high standards - these ready-made components simplified the art of home building. This isn't comparable to today's more tawdry prefabrication - which is all chip-board and OSB, grossly under-scaled two-by-fours, and uses 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 make every door or window that went into a house. They still, however, needed to know their skill fully, and the ones 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 (excepting roofs, where cedar shingles were dominant) was old-growth Douglas fir, which could be turned into everything from the studs and joists used to manufacture 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. And that's precisely what appears throughout the Savage bungalow, outside and in. Nowadays, whenever a piece of the original building has to be repaired or replaced, the carpenter doing the work needs architectural joinery skills in order to be able to replicate the precise dimensions of the original components using similar materials. It is no longer possible to just buy these components off-the-shelf, for the most part, as the wood now is systematically mis-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 2X4, right, second-growth with knot and split

Vern Krahn replacing old-growth fir with like material during soffit rebuild

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 frequently used cedar shingles. Cedar shingles for siding were at that time emblematic of local Arts and Crafts buildings, but Savage preferred a more formal look, which had the effect of adding dramatic shadow lines to the exterior while its horizontal lines reinforced the proximity to ground. This graphic siding-type, bordered by raised string courses above and below, couples with vertical boards on the outside corners of the walls (photo immediately above). The upper string course (the horizontal black banding) is sometimes referred to as a frieze band, while the lower string course is today called a belly band. There is also a significant drip ledge positioned just above the belly band, which is intended to catch and cast away any moisture running down the walls. Note also that the cross-gabled frontage jetties outwards, mimicking the manner of Tudor-era buildings (for more on the incorporation of Tudor features, see Hubert Savage, Architect (3)). The interior corners of the wall plane (to the left in the photos above and below) have recessed corner boards inserted into them, which makes the siding appear to run continuously through the inside corners, further reinforcing the horizontal emphasis. Note also that Savage has encased his soffits in wood (often the choice for local Arts and Crafts buildings) which necessitates the use of a device, descending from the barge board, to mask the corner of the boxing that would otherwise show below the barge board (see photo above). The masking device may be another example of a Savage original (I haven't observed it elsewhere). The moulding along the barge board is lifted just at the end of its run too, which exposes the barge board end more completely and gives it a slightly oriental touch consistent with the bungalow idiom. 

 

 

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

  

Rebuilt Craftsman door, inside wall turns not marked vertically, assymetric layout

 

In the 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 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 descend from the frieze band, a common feature of bungalow designs back then.

 

"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 sash windows and front door (photo above) asymmetrically into the facade too, reflecting the freedom bungalow designers had to add elements of rusticity and informality to their buildings (this contributed to the overall impression of informality while sidestepping classical conventions on window spacing). Note too that the verandah's beadboard ceiling (top photo, above) is of markedly narrower than the drop-siding used to clad the bungalow. 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.

 

 

Siding running up to the gable peaks contrasts with the front facade

 

 

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

 

 

South wall fully differentiated from the other walls, with asymmetric grouping

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 the wall planes on the south, east and west facades of the bungalow. Savage designed markedly different movements into each wall, in the southwest corner raising the roof angle just enough to accommodate a back porch and rear garden door (last photo in sequence). The north end of the building eventually hosted a walk-in closet with a shed-roof, nestled up against the main building, which gave Savage the opportunity to more fully differentiate it from the other three facades (the walk-in closet was added sometime after the original bungalow was built; previously that facade had received only modest treatment). The result is lively movement on all four sides of the building, imparting a genuine "sense of surprise" to each facade (Nicholaus Pevsner, The Englishness of English Art). All four walls thus garner novel treatment, creating constant movement of the building's footprint and thus holding on to viewer attention. The rendering of each wall in a different manner while integrating them into a unified whole was a significant achievement (Philip Webb, the original Arts and Crafts architect and a lifelong friend of William Morris, did this routinely, beginning with 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 excavating the rock ledge, preferring instead to step the new building up a level (see photo below). The addition is also rendered in a style slightly at variance with the original design (while staying broadly consistent with it) a technique that was often utilized by Arts and Crafts architect Edward Lutyens as a way to demarcate later additions to structures he had previously worked on (see photo above). The important thing, as J. D. Sedding noted, is not that the building comes to be modified over time, but rather that the addition express "unity of effect" with the prior work. 

 

 

Added walk-in closet stepping up the landform 

 

 

VI

 

 

Interior Treatments

 

Arts and Crafts architecture wasn't about a particular style so much as an approach to building whose aim was a worthy outcome. In order to improve the outcomes, it modelled itself on local traditions of building and gave priority to local materials. As a first principle, it also involved crafting houses as unified wholes, inside and out. But Arts and Crafts practitioners were also concerned to demonstrate respect for craft skills, express fidelity to the materials used, and generally to engage creatively with the entire building process. These tenets were held to be useful ways of enriching construction, all of them articles of faith by the time Savage came to design his own bungalow.

 

The bungalow movement was advancing rapidly back in 1913 - right across North America - and Savage's effort took the process a step further. We have previously described the unique features of his design, like its low-lying quality and the way in which use of a natural hollow for the crawlspace reinforced its horizontality. But also, as Paul Duchscherer reminds us, in Along Bungalow Lines: "A fundamental point to remember is that a bungalow is not a housing style but a planning format." Bungalows could be built in any number of styles and still be bungalows: Oriental, Craftsman, and Tudor, to mention some of the most popular. But bungalows were first and foremost an approach to planning of a one-storey building - one having all the principal rooms on the ground floor, including bedrooms (as Savage's did). Bungalows were about other features too, like a generous, welcoming verandah to orchestrate a memorable transition from exterior to interior space, an overhanging roof to impart an abiding sense of shelter, and conscious interpenetration of outside and inside environments (see below). All these features were bound together in a rustic, homelike building that was enormously popular in the Victoria market before World War One.

 

I attempted to show in previous articles in this series how Savage went about siting and designing the bungalow (Hubert Savage, Architect (1) and (2)). Now I'd like to briefly describe the interior arrangement, in part to comment on how it meets the Arts and Crafts standard of unifying design. The bungalow held the middle class consumers who comprised its expanding market in thrall all across North America. Moreover, the building was relatively cheap to construct in those days, using the high-quality materials generated by mechanized industry out of an apparently inexhaustible supply of old-growth timber (as well as having the advantage of initially affordable lands that opened to development by streetcars and Interurban railways). I believe that Savage took advantage of these factors in constructing a deluxe bungalow of just under 1550 square feet. By building on a crawlspace he not only saved the cost of constructing a basement, but also avoided the damage to the site's natural scenery this step would have involved.

 

One enters this bungalow through a front door protected by a significant, elegantly roofed verandah, which works as an outdoor living room and shelters the transition from outside to inside. Passing through a generous front door, glazed with small bevelled glass panes, we then enter a vestibule with a compact coat closet, which then becomes a short hallway under an arch that leads to a doorway to the kitchen. The vestibule is fitted with a wainscot of wooden panels in an upright rectangular pattern, capped by a prominent plate rail projecting outwards, combined with singular door surrounds, all of it made from knot-free old-growth fir that's stained matte black. There's also a single wall-mounted lamp in the vestibule, with two candle-shaped bulbs, centred in a frieze panel (photo below) made of a composite material painted to resemble the look of plaster. This ensemble forms an elegant, compact entry space, done up in high style in order to make a lasting first impression. The setup is somewhat unusual for a 1913 bungalow, inasmuch as direct entry to the living room from the verandah was often the norm in both California and Craftsman-type bungalows (one way in which perceptions of the bungalow's typically compact spaces, often laid out in subdivision formats back in town, could be maximized with design). Another space-maximizing device in smaller bungalows involved enlarging the opening between the living and dining rooms, which had the effect of partitioning the areas rather than separating them with doorways; this open-space was typically elaborately trimmed with wood too. Savage followed neither of these conventions however, preferring instead the more distinct separation of functions that came with a vestibule, hallway and standard door openings (he also enjoyed the relative luxury of sufficient square footage to be able to accommodate separating functions rather than squeezing all of them into a smaller space). This immediately made the Savage bungalow more genteel-feeling than the majority of standard-issue models, but this came at the price of having more doorways and access-doors between rooms. 

 

 

Wainscot, plate rail, arch above, in the vestibule

 

Vestibule and 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 to reinforce a sense of connection to the outside world. While decorative treatment of the vestibule and living room are handled similarly as regards height and dressing of the wainscot, the decorative brackets beneath the plate rail go from being chunky squares with rounded corners in the vestibule, to coming to a squared point in the living room. Overall, the living room takes the design in the vestibule to a higher plane, with box-beamed ceilings, a brick fireplace and tiled apron, asymmetric bookshelves on both sides of the fireplace, bevelled glass in a built-in mirror above the fireplace, and a mantle piece that continues the overall design. It feels very 'woodsy' in there, with the atmosphere of an environment made primarily of old-growth fir (including the wooden floor, which is stained a honey-brown tone). The living room, evidently contrived as the social living space, is centred on the hearth (as bungalows of this era typically were) yet there is no quaint inglenook. The wainscot and ceiling beams are also stained matte black, bringing an English Arts and Crafts style into the living room ceiling. Despite the darkened wood treatment however, there is no lack of light in the room during the day, as the windows, which face east and south, admit plentiful light. And the wood, while 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 by ample windows

Lawson Wood frieze, boxed ceiling beams, wainscot

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

There was once a built-in radio in the small alcove off the south wall of the living room (the alcoves jog the facade, expressed as dormers on the exterior wall - see photo below); the built-in radio shows as intact on both the 1933 and 1951 floor plans, but was removed sometime prior to my arrival in 1988. There is also a colourful frieze band too (a lithographic print, I believe) 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 lighting schemes, which in this bungalow would have been useful at night-time when darkness prevails. Alas, I could discern no evidence of beam-lights or lanterns ever having been installed in the Savage bungalow. Beam-lighting was widely available by 1913; initially the raw light of the bare bulbs was deemed tolerable due to the novelty of electric lighting. But lights rapidly evolved into more sophisticated fixtures, like lanterns and table lamps that give off more indirect or shaded lighting. Sometimes the box-beams might be decorated or stencilled too, or the panels between them 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 more concerned to allow old-growth fir to speak for itself, and he designed a living room that was large enough to accomplish this.

 

 

Roofed dormers on the exterior become alcoves housing built-ins inside

 

Lawson Wood decorative lithograph adds atmospheric punch to the decor

 

The dining room, 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 consistent with the living room's decorative scheme, yet differing marginally from it. It too has box-beamed ceilings, but these run in straight lines, as befits the smaller area of ceiling, while the box-beams in the living room cross, indicating the room's relatively greater spaciousness and formality. The dining room comes with its own fireplace too (see second photo below) and also has wainscot, plate rails, plaster-effect frieze-band (akin to the vestibule, again made out of some sort of paintable composite material) and two original wall-mounted lamps (the wainscot runs higher in the dining room than it does in the living room, as there is no lithographic frieze band to accommodate).  Here the style of decorative bracket repeats the chunky form in the vestibule. As recounted in my post First Impressions (2023), the dining room had just been painted when I first toured the house in 1988, its matte black stain hidden by a coat of fresh, relatively tasteful, yellow-gold paint. Fearing that this move was likely to continue into the other matte-black areas (which turned out to be 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 the built-in window-seat, appearing between incised shelves in its own alcove; it's backed by clear leaded-glass casements with a matching transom above. I always marvelled at the light these windows bring in due to their southern exposure, with the added light-gain that comes from being set into a projecting dormer. On plan, the room also originally contained a buffet (in 1951 identified as a sideboard, yet still extant) which was perhaps a piece of furniture designed by Savage, but it too was gone upon my arrival. There weren't any marks on the wainscot indicating that it had been built-in, however, so likely it was 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 sitting between incised shelves

 

 

If one imagines the dining room as still matte-black, like the living room and the entry corridor, it's relatively easy to see the bungalow as a gendered environment (as was typically the case). Design of the rooms at the south-end of the bungalow, with their dark wood finishes, cozy fireplaces, bookshelves, mirrors, window seats (along with other built-in features) were intended to represent a place where the male breadwinner could withdraw to after interacting all day with the squabbling business world. The rest of the house, by contrast, represented a more female domain, including the kitchen, bathroom, and the bedrooms, which were correspondingly less heavily finished and decorated for lighter effect. It was in the female part of the house where, for example, wallpaper and paint were more prominent and were considered appropriate. It was also here, in the female space, where the majority of gadgets were to be found, intended as aides to render homemaking and housekeeping much simpler than they had been in Victorian houses.

 

Among the elements supporting an overall unity of design, without and within, is the uniformly low ceiling height of the rooms. At eight foot four inches high, these rooms carry the marked horizontality and proximity to ground of the exterior right inside the building itself. Perceptions of the bungalow as low-lying are also reinforced by means of the many windows, which gather light while imparting vivid impressions of scenery around the building. Lowered ceiling heights were a key way to contrast the bungalow with Victorian-era buildings, which regularly came with ceilings as high as thirteen feet (so, nearly five feet higher). Higher ceilings did impart feelings of grandeur and luxury to Victorian-era interiors, but came at the price of inefficiency as regards heat (due to hot air's tendency to rise into the upper reaches of a room) and ventilation. They also had the side-effect of pushing buildings that much higher, creating the opposite effect of a low-slung bungalow where nearness to ground was consciously emphasized.

 

 

Tall Victorian-era house with high ceilings, downtown

 

Another way that Hubert Savage sought to unify the design was by making views of parts of the bungalow's exterior available from inside the building. One could be forgiven for thinking that this happened by pure chance, but I'm certain that it was deliberately sought-after. Bungalows offer unique opportunities for just this sort of visual sleight-of-hand, by dint of being articulated around a defining verandah that is projected out into the world and has a sheltering roof supported on tapered pillars of stones of random shape. And as we see from the photo below, the verandah constitutes a view that is visible through the grouped windows in the living room.

 

 

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

 

 

Savage also elected to bump-out the west wall in the south quadrant, in effect creating another opportunity to glimpse the bungalow's exterior form from inside. Here it's the thickening of the building to incorporate a rear utility porch that creates the opportunity to explore this effect, providing views of the structure through the kitchen windows and reinforcing the bungalow's tendency to ramble. The following photo shows the transparency of this move, graphically bringing the outside world closer to the viewer within while demonstrating how near to ground level the bungalow actually is.

 

 

Bumped-out rear porch and back door seen through the 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 rear door - something that's seen whenever one ventures out into the back garden (as in the next photo). The main bedroom, like the living room, also shows views of the verandah and the stone staircase 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 adorned the walls and ceilings in a consistent manner while developing a unique personality for each room. The wainscot, window treatments, and the handling of doorways demonstrates just how much structural interest can be created by roughly similar treatments. But, as becomes evident in the kitchen - and this holds true for all other rooms in the bungalow - Savage obviously felt strongly about decorating his ceilings with wood. It's my opinion that this happened because the ceilings represent large areas that are available to reinforce an overall effect, here the look of being built-in. All Savage's ceilings take this direction in one way or another, which is achieved principally by running a band of wood (or a sculpted moulding) along the top of the wall plane (see photos below). In addition to reinforcing the appearance that things are built-in, Savage designed every ceiling to show a distinctive pattern in wood. In the kitchen, which was redone in 2005, we had an opportunity to continue Savage's original wall band along the banks of cupboards we added, strongly reinforcing the look of their being built-in (see photo below).

 

 

Band over new cupboards reinforces the built-in look

 

But even in rooms like the master bedroom, Savage reinforced the built-in look. Here it's combined with a pattern in wood that turns the ceiling into a sequence of panels that imply movement through space. This is mated with boards over the outside edges of the wall-corners (similar to the treatment of the bungalow's exterior). The rosette that centres the array of panels was a later addition, covering wires that once fed an overhead light that was part of the original ceiling - photo below). In other bedrooms (see second photo below) he used a cove moulding to reinforce the look of being built-in.

 

 

Irregular panelization was a Savage trademark

  

Note ceiling treatment in the second bedroom, with a cove moulding for effect

 

One room that received wholly unique treatment was the rear porch, simply because its ceiling had to be lower than the standard of eight foot four inches that obtains in the rest of the bungalow. This is because it could be accommodated only by lifting that section of roof slightly. As a result, this compressed the overall height, forcing Savage in turn to render it as barrel-vaulted, in order to conserve a maximum of apparent height for what is a very low room. This gave it an unusual scooped-out effect, which made the compact room cozy to use (see next photos).

 

 

Barrel-vaulted ceiling resembling an 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 the compact hallways it leads to, versus the tendency of California-style bungalows to engage in more open-space planning (which makes a virtue out of necessity given the compact size of tract bungalows). Savage had sufficient space in his bungalow to achieve a flow between rooms in other ways, principally by retaining compact hallways. Despite these hallways, every major room wound up with at least two doorways (except for the bathroom) while the kitchen has four, all in active use. In fact, we actually found that there were a few too many doors in living in the Savage bungalow (doors take storage space when left open, while doors that are infrequently closed are de facto redundant). As a result of this phenomenon, we removed a door that we habitually kept open in kitchen (from the vestibule), which served to reveal the incised shelf it covered when left open. Emboldened by this success, we then removed the door between the living and dining rooms, which also served the end of space-retrieval. The door was also always open, and similarly obscured some architectural features. We had Vern Krahn repair the door hinges we removed, so when refinished there was no trace of a door ever having been there. It was just a doorway without a door between two rooms, and it increased our sense of internal spaciousness.

 

When the walk-in closet was first added to the bungalow, there was for a long time only one opening to it, off the small bedroom across the hall from the master bedroom. This couldn't have been convenient, because the main users of the walk-in 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, another opening had been skived into the walk-in closet from the master bedroom. I don't know the story of how that opening came to be, but Alys Savage lived on in the bungalow after Hubert passed in 1955, until well into the 1970s. Some sort of major renovation occurred at some point along the way, a time when many things were substantially rearranged. 

 

A word in closing on the overall design principles employed in bungalows: designers felt that the busy interiors of Victorian houses (which was based on collecting superfluous clutter) was to be avoided at all costs, and by design. Better a few good things than many knickknacks; better that many of them be built-in, so they were part of the house. Traditional ornament they viewed as being tacked on, and quite promiscuously too, so they set themselves on course to simplify design radically and to restrict themselves to revealing and decorating the building's inherent structure (following the precepts articulated by A.W. N. Pugin). Principally this was achieved by means of rectilinear decoration with wooden materials, entailing the design of interiors with straight lines, right angles, squares and rectangles, with an emphasis on constructive finishes, in a search for a clean, modern and uncluttered look. Something they avoided at all cost was the effect of turned wood, which Victorian and Queen Anne-style houses had used extensively. Bungalow designers wanted to avoid the turned-wood effect, but this wasn't to be achieved at the cost of a 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 Duchscherer, 1995.

Along Bungalow Lines, Creating An Arts and Crafts Home, Paul Duchscherer, 2006.

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.

"The Art That Is Life": The Arts & Crafts Movement in America, 1875 - 1920, by Wendy Caplan, 1987.