There s A Reason Original Craftsman Style Homes Are Still Around After 100 Years

According to Grant Marani, a partner at New York’s Robert A.M. Stern Architects, a considerable amount of credit for the popularity of the Craftsman movement must be given to Gustav Stickley, a “furniture maker turned promoter of the English Arts and Crafts movement in America who popularized the style through his influential magazine The Craftsman in the early twentieth century.”

What Is a Craftsman House?

Kristin Hohenadel has written on design for publications including the New York Times, Interior Design, Slate, Fast Company, and the international editions of Elle Decor.

Emily Estep is a plant biologist and journalist who has worked for a variety of online news and media outlets, writing about and editing topics including environmental science and houseplants.

A Craftsman house is a popular home style that emerged from the American Craftsman movement of the turn of the 20th century that spanned everything from architecture to interior and landscape design, in addition to applied and decorative arts.

History of Craftsman Architecture

Like political elections, architectural movements are often a result of what has come before, a rebellion against the status quo. Craftsman homes are an American architectural tradition that emerged and spread primarily between 1900 and 1929. It was a backlash against the mass-produced, Industrial Revolution-fueled Victorian architecture boom that prized ornament and decoration made all the more accessible by new technologies.

If the Industrial Revolution celebrated the wonders of manmade materials and the possibilities of what machines could do for people, Craftsman architecture was an aesthetic reaffirmation of the beauty of natural materials and forms, and the marvels of what humans can make with their own hands.

American Craftsman style was inspired by the British Arts and Crafts movement, which itself resulted as a backlash to Europe’s Industrial Revolution. Craftsman architecture was particularly popular in California and the Midwest, but it spread across the country in part thanks to American furniture designer Gustav Stickley, an Arts and Crafts movement booster who helped popularize the style (and coin the name) with his early 20th-century monthly magazine “The Craftsman.”

The California Bungalow style of Craftsman home was also popularized by Pasadena, CA-based brothers Henry and Charles Greene, who were heavily influenced by Japanese style. Another notable style that emerged from the American Craftsman movement was the much celebrated Prairie School of architecture founded by legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who went on to design some of the world’s masterpieces of Mid-Century Modern architecture.

Unlike the ostentatious McMansions that would emerge a century later, Craftsman style homes were small to medium-sized single family homes that showed the beauty of simplicity and modesty in architecture. While Craftsman style houses such as the popular California Craftsman homes are also bungalows, keep in mind that not every bungalow is a Craftsman-style home.

Craftsman-style homes remain one of the most popular home styles in the United States. Original Craftsman houses are still widely sought after, and the core elements of Craftsman style continue to inform architects and neo-Craftsman new builds to this day.

Key Characteristics of Craftsman Houses

• Low-pitched roofs with protruding single or double gables and overhanging eaves
• Exteriors feature intentionally exposed beams, brackets, and/or rafters
• Wide, open front porches are held up by signature thick tapered columns
• Typical Craftsman homes are one to one and a half stories tall
• Home design may be symmetrical or asymmetrical
• Large bay or picture windows include a small overhanging roof ledge positioned over the window, with rafter tails
• Exteriors are typically painted wood siding, traditionally cedar shaker shingles
• Often includes stone or stucco accents on both the interior and exterior
• Original Craftsman homes were generally painted in earth tones such as brown and green, but today can be found in a rainbow of colors
• Sash windows on original Craftsman homes may feature iconic Frank Lloyd Wright leaded glasswork

Craftsman Interior Design Style

Undoubtedly one of the reasons that Craftsman houses remain one of the most popular American architecture styles is because they reflect timeless aesthetics and values that never go out of style. A Craftsman home is solidly made with natural materials and nature-inspired colors and motifs, with a focus on the beauty of artisanal craftsmanship. While Craftsman designs were focused on simplicity and functionality, they nonetheless feature more attention to detail and built-in character than today’s streamlined, minimalist contemporary designs.

Craftsman interiors are built to be cozy, homey, unpretentious, and warm. Unlike today’s typical open-plan spaces, they feature distinct living and dining spaces; small eat-in kitchen nooks; and a traditional, human-scaled space plan. Living and dining rooms are typically anchored by one or two fireplaces as central room features, which may be clad in brick or tile.

One of the elements that makes Craftsman homes feel inviting to live in is the extensive use of woodwork. This includes thick wood framed windows and doors; built-in bookshelves, window seats and other custom millwork; beamed ceilings; and hardwood floors. The use of medium to dark-stained wood on the interiors lends Craftsman interiors a traditionally masculine feel.

While Craftsman homes feature large bay or picture windows to let in natural light, they can feel somewhat dark by contemporary standards. While purists would never dream of painting out the wood in a traditional Craftsman home, many people choose to lighten up some of the natural woodwork, usually with neutral shades of white, taupe, gray, and beige paint.

There’s A Reason Original Craftsman Style Homes Are Still Around After 100 Years

If late-19th century Victorian homes were built to show off the advances of American manufacturing and the innovation of industry (with their over-the-top details in every direction), then the Craftsman movement that followed was a direct counter response to that, emphasizing hand-worked goods and buildings over the mass-produced. At the turn of the 20th century, the American Craftsman architectural movement spun out of the British Arts and Crafts movement, a similar response to the Industrial Revolution in Europe, which proponents felt devalued human labor.

According to Grant Marani, a partner at New York’s Robert A.M. Stern Architects, a considerable amount of credit for the popularity of the Craftsman movement must be given to Gustav Stickley, a “furniture maker turned promoter of the English Arts and Crafts movement in America who popularized the style through his influential magazine The Craftsman in the early twentieth century.”

Stickley’s furniture—and the magazine—emphasized simplicity in form, use of local materials, and honesty in construction. The Craftsman began publishing and selling house plans that embodied these characteristics, which made what Stickley considered to be superior home design available to the masses. Initially, the specific home plans in Stickley’s magazine were called “Craftsman homes,” but eventually, the moniker was given to the increasingly popular style at large.

What makes Craftsman homes so popular?

Craftsman homes have several common features that make them recognizable and just as popular today as they were more than 100 years ago. In stark contrast to the verticality of Victorians, Craftsman homes emphasize horizontal lines, with low-pitched gable (triangular) roofs that extend far out past the home’s exterior walls, often with exposed beams or rafters. Craftsman homes “showcase hand-worked local materials with decorative elements such as brackets, lintels, and rafters,” Grant says, “and display an artisanal approach to surface decoration.”

The over-extended eaves of Craftsman roofs lend themselves to having spacious porches on the front of houses, which featured thick, tapered columns along the perimeter. Typically, the exterior of these homes had painted wood siding, but accents of stucco or stone were used fairly often as well—the common theme being an emphasis on earthy tones.

The interiors of Craftsman homes are just as distinct and important to the builder as the exterior. Wooden features abound: thick trim around doors and windows, built-in bookshelves and window seats, boxed beams along the ceiling, etc. A prominent fireplace (or two) is also a key feature inside Craftsman homes. Smaller Craftsman homes, with their distinct, cozy rooms, are a favorite to convert to “open-concept floor plans” on home renovation shows, which quite frankly can strip these historic structures of many of the features and charm that first made them so desirable.

Are bungalows and craftsman homes the same thing?

Craftsman style is often associated with bungalows, a style of house with origins in the Bengal region of India. A bungalow refers to a simple, small (typically only one or one-and-a-half stories) house with a sloping roof and wide porch along the front. While the Craftsman bungalow is a very popular pairing, the two are not necessarily linked. For example, Spanish Colonial Revival bungalows were quite popular during the 1920s and 30s, and grander displays of Craftsman architecture are also common.

The Craftsman architectural style that gained a strong foothold in California thanks to architect brothers Henry and Charles Greene. “The houses of the architects Greene and Greene of Pasadena, responding to both local building traditions and the influence of Japanese architecture, stand as paragons of Craftsman style,” Grant explains. One of their most well-known residences is the Gamble House (pictured below), which brilliantly shows off their take on Craftsman style, with heavy Japanese influence.

“Though mostly found in California, Craftsman houses appeared throughout the United States in the early twentieth century, thanks to pattern books and the popular press,” Grant says, meaning these well-constructed homes are still widely prevalent across the country, even at 100 years old. They also continue to be an architectural style new construction homes are built in today, especially in areas that value connections to the mountains and forests.

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