Text Excerpt from:
Patrick Sullivan, Mary Beth Reed, and Tracey Fedor, “The Ranch House in Georgia”
THE MODERN RANCH HOUSE
appears to be an enigmatic house type that sprung fully formed into the American popular consciousness of the mid-twentieth century because it was ideally suited to the domestic needs of the suburban nuclear family. Widely recognized as having a long footprint with a low, one-story silhouette, the Ranch House, along with the Bungalow, is one of the most ubiquitous residential building types found throughout much of the United States, including Georgia. Although it is commonly associated with the widespread suburban sprawl of the post-World War II era, the modern Ranch House has roots established in the early nineteenth century with the frontier vernacular architecture of California and the American Southwest.
NINETEENTH-CENTURY RANCH HOUSE ANTECEDENTS
During the first few decades of the twentieth century, the modern Ranch House was developed and refined by various architects and designers; however, the house type is in many ways a revival of nineteenth-century dwellings built by Spanish-speaking and early American settlers in what is now the western United States. Following the War of Mexican Independence in 1821, the territory of California fell under Mexican control after roughly a 50 -year period of active Spanish colonization. By 1832, the Mexican government had secularized the former Spanish Catholic missions and land grant systems in the territory, which allowed for prominent pioneer families, known as “Californios”, to amass large land holdings that were used for agricultural and cattle ranching purposes (May 1997:8-9).
In many cases, the sprawling houses built during the Spanish (1796-1820) and Mexican (1821-1848) periods of occupation adhered to vernacular domestic traditions brought over from Spain to the New World. The most common construction material of Mexican dwellings was dried adobe brick, usually built three feet thick and covered in plaster. Their adobe masonry walls were set directly on the ground or more rarely on a stone foundation. Post and beam timber construction was reserved for roof framing and sometimes for exterior walls where cypress, live oak, or pine was readily available (May 1997:16-17). Often, window openings had wooden decorative grilles (rejas) and latticework (celosias). The flat, or low-pitched shed and gabled roof structures were usually covered with thatch or curved clay tile.
Unlike the British residential types formulated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Colonial Spanish and Mexican houses tended to eschew a focus on classical symmetry of the façade, preferring to leave the public wall of the dwelling blank and unadorned. Spanish residential design was greatly influenced by ancient Roman, and later Moorish, domestic plans, which were generally only one-story in height and featured inward-facing orientations (Gosner 1996:130-31). Much like the Roman country villa from which it was derived, the emphasis of the early Californio haciendas was on the living space in the interior or rear courtyard. The courtyards were ringed on two to four sides by rooms that opened out onto long porches, or corredors, which were supported by timber columns and shaded by overhanging eave extensions or separate shed roof additions (May 1997 :19).
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Another precursor to the modern Ranch is found in the vernacular construction of American pioneer farmhouses built in Northern California, New Mexico, and Texas during the late nineteenth century. Unlike the Spanish and Mexican adobes, these rustic properties could be one or two stories and often featured materials and architectural details such as board- and-batten or wide vertical plank siding, front porches, the use of stone for foundations and chimneys, and cedar shake roofs (May 1997:17). One of the most popular examples is the single-story, side gabled Harrell Ranch, built in 1875 in Surrey County, Texas.
POPULARIZATION OF THE CALIFORNIA RANCH HOUSE
At the close of the Mexican-American War in 1848, sovereignty of California was transferred to the United States and many of the Californio families fell into financial decline. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, a cadre of artists and writers in the burgeoning Southern California art movement began to rediscover these old adobes and haciendas as picturesque subjects and sources of inspiration. With their lack of classical symmetry and exotic architectural features, the ranchos evoked a carefree and romantic image of the state’s Spanish and Mexican past to many of the Anglo- American artists. The book Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson, sparked initial widespread interest in Californio culture. Immensely popular with American readers, the fictional story chronicled the life and hardships of a half-Native American Indian girl in nineteenth-century Southern California. Jackson developed the setting of the book from a composite portrait of a few old Californio family histories and their homesteads. Following its publication in November 1884, fans and tourists began to flock to the adobes and ranches loosely connected with the book, including the Casa de Estudillo and Rancho Camulos (Hess 2004:21).
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INITIAL MODERN RANCH DESIGNS AND INFLUENCES
At the turn of the century, architects and critics also started to take note of the low and rambling, courtyard plans of the old Spanish and Mexican haciendas and the simple aesthetic of Southwestern ranches. In 1910, the restoration and reopening of the Casa de Estudillo as a tourist site associated with the Ramona story, reignited the public’s interest in the architecture of California adobe houses. In 1911, Sunset magazine, a popular western home and garden publication, reproduced Harmer’s 1890s paintings of the De la Guerra adobe, drawing further attention to the outdoor living space of the hacienda courtyard as a perfect complement to the casual California lifestyle (May 1997:10). During a 1925 tour of California, The American Architect editor Henry H. Saylor also identified this quintessentially Western and practical form of architecture, writing that “it just grew, naturally, inevitably, a logical result of meeting definite needs in the most direct workmanlike manner possible with the materials at hand. It borrowed none of the finery of other architectural styles; it sounded no blatant note of self advertisement; it never, so far as I know, laid claim to even a name, and yet there it stands” (May 1999:21). Even Teddy Roosevelt, the cowboy-president himself, praised this type as “the long, low roomy ranch-house, of clean hewed logs...as comfortable as it is bare and plain” (Hess 2004:25).
THE BANDINI HOUSE
Built near Pasadena, California in 1903, the Bandini House represents one of the first modern Ranch revivals. Designed by Greene and Greene, an architectural firm more renowned for its association with the bungalow and the American Arts and Crafts Movement, the cross-gabled, one-story Bandini House was modeled on the Casa de Estudillo and featured a U-shaped plan that enclosed a rear courtyard garden (Hess 2004:21). Common living spaces in the Bandini House were centrally located with bedrooms occupying the two wings. All rooms opened into a corredor with rough-hewn timber supports that wrapped around the courtyard (McCoy 1960:108). Board-and-batten siding and rough-cut stone chimney exteriors also contributed to the rustic and unpretentious character of the property. The Bandini House was later demolished in the 1960s to make way for a parking lot.
THE GREGORY FARMHOUSE
A second, and far more influential, early modern Ranch was San Francisco-based architect William Wurster’s Gregory Farmhouse. Built in 1927 in Scotts Valley, California near Santa Cruz, the low, one-story frame house was a series of connected rooms with an L-shaped plan that enclosed a central courtyard area. A separate, two-room guesthouse and watchtower were placed away from the main building near the entrance of the gated complex. Wurster employed cedar shake shingles to cover the low-pitched gable roofs and spare, whitewashed, vertical board siding served as the primary building material for the exterior and interior spaces.
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CLIFF MAY
A sixth-generation Californian, Cliff May was born in San Diego in 1908…Cliff May was never trained as an architect and began his career in real estate during the late 1920s as a self-taught furniture maker. Through family connections, he built Southwestern-inspired pieces to furnish open house displays for residential properties on the market. Along with business partner O.U. Miracle, he designed and built his first house in San Diego in 1931 (Hess 2004:33). May’s one-story modern Ranch House was based on the traditional U-shaped hacienda and featured a series of connected rooms and corredor surrounding a large interior walled-patio. Adhering to Wurster’s conviction in simplicity of design, as well as borrowing elements from Spanish Colonial Revival style detailing, the frame-constructed walls of the house were coated in unembellished stucco and plaster, exposed wood beams supported the shallow gabled roof, and terra-cotta tile flooring was installed throughout (Gregory 2008:30-31). Notably, May integrated the garage into the façade of the house, showing his recognition of the evolving relationship between the Ranch House and the automobile.
Between 1931 and 1937, Cliff May built over 50 similar custom and speculative suburban houses in the San Diego area, which he coined Haciendas and Ranchíeras. In 1934, banker and oilman John A. Smith commissioned May to build a house in eastern Los Angeles. May built his second family house, known as the “Lily Pond House,” in Mandeville Canyon near Los Angeles in 1935. Spanning two lots, it was a larger version of his typical San Diego hacienda design with a generally blank public façade leading into the private interior of the landscaped patio area (Gregory 2008:41). Cliff May described these residential designs as “informal yet gracious,” claiming that they were the modern adobes for the twentieth- century Californio. According to Cliff May, “outdoor living is a big part of the ranch house” (May 1999:26).
In 1937, Cliff May moved his business to Los Angeles where he partnered with Smith to build custom-designed houses for a variety of wealthy clients including business executives and Hollywood actors (Hess 2004:33). Increased budgets and larger lot sizes allowed May to refine and expand upon his earlier models. Many of these new ideas came to fruition in 1939 with the development of the Riviera Ranch subdivision off West Sunset Boulevard. Designing for the landscape, on lot sizes ranging from two-thirds of an acre to two and a half acres, May began to deviate from the standard U-shaped plans of his earlier houses. He experimented with an alphabet soup collection of sprawling Ranch plans including L, O, T, and Y combinations, often substituting the private interior courtyard with a sweeping backyard terrace (Gregory 2008:44, 47). May also softened much of his previously overt Spanish and Mexican architectural features in favor of simpler, more streamlined interiors. Openness of the floor plans, large picture windows, and floor-to-ceiling glass sliding doors were designed to erase the boundary between indoor and outdoor living space and maximize the natural light and cross-ventilation offered by the mild Southern California climate (May 1999:26).
Example of U-Shaped Ranch House
OTHER NOTABLE RANCH DESIGN INFLUENCES
Positive features in Sunset magazine (1936, 1944) and The Architectural Digest (1934), combined with the success of the Riviera Ranch subdivision, brought regional and national exposure to Cliff May and his innovative Ranch House designs (Cloues 2008b). Although one of the most well known designers, May was not the only one making significant contributions to the evolution of the Ranch House type during the pre-World War II era. Lutah Maria Riggs, the first female Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in California, followed Cliff May’s concepts with the Knemeyer House, an angled-wing courtyard Ranch House built in the Rolling Hills subdivision in Los Angeles in 1939 (Hess 2004:37,86). Others, such as architect H. Roy Kelly’s Pulliam House, built in Pasadena in 1936, began to incorporate the modern open-space floor plan within the Ranch House model (Cloues 2008b).
California Modernists such as architect Harwell Hamilton Harris and Albert Frey sought to remove any hint of historicism from their Ranch House designs, which included the Lowe House (1933) in Altadena and the Markham House (1940) in Palm Springs, respectively. Both architects reduced the Ranch House to a basic, abstract geometric form (Cloues 2008b). Outside of California, O’Neil Ford, a respected Texas-based modern architect, looked to the vernacular ranch architecture of the Western Plains when designing the first Hersh House in his hometown of Denton, Texas in 1939. Described by Ford as “Chicken Coop Gothic,” the house featured connected flat and shed roofs and was clad in wood clapboard siding. The April 1940 publication of Pencil l Points, a national architecture magazine, lauded the Hersh House as the “first real Texas house of the present movement” (Cochran 2009).
In the 1930s through the 1950s, venerable architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, would also make a considerable impression on the future development of the suburban Ranch House with his residential Usonian designs. His first Usonian House was built for Herbert Jacobs in Madison Wisconsin in 1936. Wright would go on to design about 50 Usonian homes throughout the United States. Although he fervently denied any outside influence on his work, Wright’s Usonian houses generally adhered to typical Ranch concepts being one-story in height with a low horizontal profile integrated with the landscape of the site. The geometric-designed houses were constructed of natural materials and were devoid of any architectural historicism, although the use of flat or low-pitched roofs and wide, cantilevered overhangs was adopted from Frank Lloyd Wright’s earlier Prairie Style designs. With the Usonian House, Wright’s primary contribution to the form of the ranchhouse is evident in his efficient use of open, interior space within the confines of a small building footprint. Usonian house models had either L-shaped or straight linear plans. Like Cliff May, Wright also placed the emphasis on the rear of the building, where he employed large windows to allow for integration of the indoor rooms with the outdoor space of the backyard.
THE RANCH HOUSE AND POST-WAR SUBURBAN DEVELOPMENT
The trend of auto-oriented development, and the explosive growth of the American residential suburb during the latter half of the twentieth century began in earnest during the period between World War I and World War II as numerous economic, political and social changes started to take hold. Increased automobile ownership in the United States during the financially flush decade of the 1920s initiated a shift toward auto-dependent neighborhood planning and the decline of the urban streetcar networks and streetcar-serviced suburbs, which had been the principal model of residential expansion in American cities since the 1870s (Jackson 1985:175). As a result of the Great Depression, there was a 95 percent drop in residential construction in the United States between 1928 and 1933 (Jackson 1985:193). Programs instituted to alleviate the debilitating effects of the depression on the housing market, like the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) and Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA) Loans, further encouraged suburbanization by depreciating inner-city residences through ‘slum’ classification and by subsidizing construction for new single-family houses built according to FHA guidelines (Jackson 1985:196-206)
RISE OF THE CALIFORNIA MERCHANT-BUILDERS
The Los Angeles-based firm of Marlow-Burns was one of the earliest merchant-builders to design and build economical versions of the Ranch Houses marketed toward the home buyer. Prior to World War II, the company constructed large-scale, planned communities in metropolitan Los Angeles that included stores, parks, schools, and hospitals, in addition to housing. With developments at Windsor Hills (1938), Westside Village (1939), Westchester (1941), and Toluca Wood (1941), Marlow-Burns built simplified, mass-produced Ranch House types that closely adhered to the basic building guidelines required for FHA- approved loans (Hess 2004:40). These Ranch models were one-story with minimal architectural detailing and had square plans with bedrooms clustered on one side and common living spaces on the other (Hess 2004:40).
David Bohannon was another important California developer who propagated the Ranch House type in large-scale development projects. Bohannon entered the residential construction industry during the early 1930s, building small neighborhood developments around the San Francisco Bay Area (Hess 2004:46). He streamlined operations under his company, Suburban Builders, Inc., and began construction of his first tract development near Palo Alto, California in 1936. Capitalizing on this success, Bohannon began work in 1940 on his ambitious Hillsdale community in San Mateo. One of the largest residential developments planned, Hillsdale was to originally incorporate over 5,000 single-family houses. A total of 16 model homes were offered in the “California Ranch,” Cape Cod, and Colonial styles and featured either two or three-bedroom plans (Hess 2004:43-45).
The outbreak of World War II forced Bohannon to limit Hillsdale to only 400 houses, yet in 1944 it provided him with a blueprint model for his war-related San Lorenzo Village development. Built around Chrysler and National Automotive Fiber Company plants, San Lorenzo was planned as a fully designed community with 1,500 houses for defense workers, a shopping center, restaurant, and theater (Hess 2004:48). At San Lorenzo, Bohannon was able to refine and simplify his building procedures (later nicknamed the “California Method” by West Coast observers), which allowed for the work to be performed by unskilled subcontractors, reduced schedule times, and greatly increased overall volume. Like Henry Ford had done with the automobile industry, David Bohannon was able to effectively automate housing construction (Hess 2004:47).
THE RANCH AND SUBURBAN TRACT DEVELOPERS
Soldiers returning from World War II and a corresponding increase in birthrates created a pent-up demand for new, middle-class housing stock. In 1944, there were only 114,000 housing starts in the entire United States. The use of ready to build, pre-cut materials and rapid, standardized method of construction perfected by the housing industry during the war, increased that number to almost 1.7 million new single-family units in 1950. By 1955, suburban development would account for 75 percent of all new housing (Jackson 1985:233). Although the Cape Cod and Colonial Revival architectural styles would remain popular among middle-class homebuyers in the Northeast region during this period, as typified by Alfred and William Levitt’s first Levittown development in 1949, it was the mass-produced Ranch House from California that would represent the majority of residential suburban architecture throughout the rest of the country during the housing boom from the late 1940s through the 1970s (Hess 2004:38).
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THE CONTEMPORARY STYLE RANCH
By the late 1940s and early 1950s, builders began to recognize the value of well-designed, affordable houses in attracting the middle-class consumer and many began working with architects to develop new looks for their model homes. Along with the traditional Spanish and Colonial Revival styles of architecture, the clean lines and simple geometry of the Contemporary Style proved to be well suited to the low, horizontal massing of the prefabricated Ranch House and became quite popular with fashion-conscious homebuyers of the period. Architects also began to incorporate modern open floor plans into their interior designs, often merging the dining, living room, and kitchen areas into one common living space.
Among the most distinctive early Contemporary Style Ranch Houses was the ‘Eichler house,’ which was first designed by Stephen Allen and Robert Anshen in 1949 for builder Joseph Eichler and was later modified by Los Angeles architects A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons (Hess 2004:67). Primarily a California-based developer, Eichler placed an emphasis on providing well-crafted, modern residential design for middle-class homebuyers. Lacking in architectural ornament,‘Eichler houses’ were generally characterized by low and wide front gable roofs, exposed post-and-beam construction, spacious open floor plans, and the use of floor-to-ceiling glass. Taking a cue from Eichler, David Bohannon contracted architects Harwell Hamilton Harris and Edwin A. Wadsworth to design Contemporary and Traditional Ranch model homes for features in House Beautiful magazine in 1950. Bohannon’s 1951 tract developments in San Mateo and San Jose were comprised entirely of Contemporary Style Ranch home designed by his in-house architect Mogen Mogenson (Hess 2004:69). Even Cliff May joined in on the Contemporary Ranch movement in 1952, by designing low cost Contemporary Style Ranch Houses for suburban markets. Developed along with business partner and architect Chris Choate, his “Cliff May Homes” branded models were built of simple, exposed post-and-beam construction with ready to assemble materials and retained very little of the romanticized Spanish historicism of his earlier custom houses (Gregory 2008:130-138).
THE RANCH HOUSE GOES NATIONAL
With an eye focused on the booming California housing market, media publications began touting the Ranch design the preferred house for the modern American family. As early as 1945, a national housing report recommended that California-styled house-like the ranch type-built in a carefully planned neighborhood or community with all the essentials for good living is your best bet for the post-war” (Hess 2004:51). A Better Homes & Gardens survey in 1946 found that most prospective homeowners preferred the low, casual plan of the Ranch (Cloues 2008b:27). Also in 1946, and more critical to its success as an accepted house design for the post-war era, was a feature of the Ranch House on the cover of the House-Of-The-Month Book of Small Houses, a national publication for the banking and mortgage underwriting industry. The Ranch House was not only considered to be aesthetically fashionable, but financially feasible for residential construction (Cloues 2008b:40-41).
A few influential plan books by noted California architects and designers further contributed to the growing national popularity of the Ranch House. The 1946 publication, Sunset Western Ranch Houses, was the first in a series of collaborations by Cliff May and the editorial staff at Sunset magazine. Along with an essay by May on the nineteenth- century lineage of the modern California Ranch, the book highlighted a number of innovative custom designs by Cliff May and other contemporary West Coast architects (Gregory2008:68-70). The Small Home of Tomorrow (1945) and New Homes for Today (1946) were two works by distinguished Los Angeles architect Paul Williams. The first African-American architect voted an American Institute of Architects (AIA) Fellow. Williams designed a number of residences for Hollywood actors and his two-volume set showcased some of his more popular Ranch House plans including the linear “Pasadena,” L-shaped “Catalina,” and T-shaped “Meadowbrook” models (Williams 1946).
The United States military also played a large role in the national dispersion of the Ranch House. Suffering from its own housing shortage after World War II, the military addressed the issue through the establishment of the Wherry and Capehart residential building programs in 1940 and 1955, respectively (Temme 1998:34,58). Intended as public-private partnerships, the Wherry and Capehart programs utilized preexisting FHA and VA approved residential plans from the commercial markets for military personnel and defense-contractor housing. Simplified Traditional and Contemporary Style Ranch designs were often chosen for single-family and duplex homes. In the thirteen-year history of the two programs, over 250,000 housing units were constructed, many of them Ranch Houses, on or near military installations throughout the country (Temme 1998:84).
While the military was transforming its built landscape at installations across the country, another movement was taking place in landscape design. The informal aesthetic of the Ranch House was augmented by a number of contemporary landscape architects in California who sought to take advantage of the state’s mild climate by creating designs that integrated indoor living space with backyard outdoor activity areas.
Thomas D. Church and Garrett Eckbo were among the most prominent landscape architects working to develop a new residential gardening style suited to the changing lifestyles of the post-war family. Each worked on a number of commissions with Cliff May; some of which were published in Landscape for Western Living (1956) and both men were prolific writers as well as designers. In their books Gardens Are for People: How to Plan for Outdoor Living (1955) by Church and Eckbo’s Landscape for Living (1950) and Art of Home Landscaping (1956), they outlined their ideas for creating private rear yard gardens with an emphasis on zoned activity areas or ‘rooms’ through the use of privacy screens, patios, layered terraces, and swimming pools (Ames and McClelland 2002:69). Their contemporary designs often featured native, low-maintenance plants and shrubbery arranged in curvilinear forms and abstract geometric patterns that accentuated and framed the horizontal silhouettes of modern Ranch Houses.
SOURCES
Cloues, Richard. “The Ranch House Pedigree.” PowerPoint presentation to the Georgia Department of Transportation, Atlanta, Georgia, 2008b.
Cochran, Mike. A Catalogue of the Works of O’Neil Ford in Denton, Texas, 2009. Electronic document, www.mikecochran.net/Hersh.1.html, accessed January 3, 2009.
Gosner, Pamela. Caribbean Baroque, Historic Architecture of the Spanish Antilles. Pueblo, Colorado: Passeggiata Press, 1996.
Gregory, Daniel P. Cliff May and the Modern Ranch House. New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications, 2008.
Hess, Alan. The Ranch House. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2004
Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier. New York, NY: Oxford University Press,1985
McCoy, Esther. Five California Architects. New York, NY: Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1960
May, Cliff and the Sunset Magazine Editorial Staff. Western Ranch Houses. Reprinted. Hennessy & Ingalls, Santa Monica, California. Originally published in 1958 by the Lane Publishing Company, 1997.
____. Sunset Western Ranch Houses. Reprinted. Hennessy & Ingalls, Santa Monica, California. Originally published in 1946 by the Lane Publishing Company, 1999.
Temme, Virge Jenkins. For Want of A Home: A Historic Context for Wherry and Capehart Military Family Housing. Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD: United States Environmental Center, 1998
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