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Arts and Crafts (1890
- 1940)
Origins
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Arts and Crafts Architecture
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Origins
Architects of the 19th century were bogged down in
"style'. Variations of revived Classical architecture vied
with variations on revived Gothic architecture and those were
both victims of excessive ornamentation and gross sentimentality.
The Crystal Palace, English train stations and marketplaces from
Paris to Milan provided an alternative to this battle of styles,
but the main stream in architecture, as well as in almost everything
else, was through mass production. It was against this backdrop
of tired revivalism and crass commercialism that William Morris
and his contemporaries developed a new and refreshing perspective
on architecture, furniture, pottery and the visual objects of
daily life.
The Arts and Crafts movement in Britain was a reaction
to the Industrial Age and the dehumanization of people that resulted
from the sudden restructuring of the population to accommodate
large factories. It was a social movement that encompassed artistic,
ideological, even political, ideals which affected many forms
of visual art from pottery and wallpaper to furniture design and
finally architecture. The roots of the movement can be found in
the writings of John Ruskin, the major critic of the century,
whose violent reaction to mass produced decoration and artifacts
found in the Great Exhibition in London 1851 can be read in The
Stones of Venice and The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Ruskin
argues that British decoration should be based on a Northern aesthetic
as opposed to an Italian one, and that art and architecture both
should reflect man's connection with nature and the curious kinship
between man and his craft. He argued that industrialization was
separating man from his tools and that the result was not simply
less beautiful, but also morally bankrupt.
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William Morris was one of the people who initiated
the Arts and Crafts movement in design with his fabric, wallpaper
and pottery. He believed that if a craftsman made good and heartfelt
designs based on a study of nature, and then connected with other
people who were making similar quality objects, then the character
of the craftsman was improved and society as a whole would then
also be improved.
In 1860 Morris commissioned a similar minded architect,
Philip Webb, to design a house for him and his new wife. The Red
House as it is called, was the first building of the Arts and
Crafts style.
Arts
and Crafts Architecture
By the time the Arts and Crafts movement had reached
Ontario, the defining elements were well set. The overlying theme
was that the house was to be a living element within the natural
environment; it was based on the function of the house as opposed
to the house being built in a style and with decoration that would
herald the owner's position in society. Houses were meant to fit
intrinsically with their sites: orientation of the house was based
on the relationship of the house to the garden. Rooms were oriented
so as to take advantage of the movement of the sun for warmth
and light during daylight hours. The grandiose central entrances
of so many other styles were replaced by side entrances that allowed
for useable space on the front facade for light or garden use.
The buildings are graceful and elegant, finely proportioned and
beautifully crafted.
In Canada Arts and Crafts buildings are called by
a variety of names: English Domestic Revival, English Cottage,
Cotswold Cottage, and a variety of other terms depicting the unassuming
country element of craftsman designs.
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Arts
and Crafts in Europe and America
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The Arts and Crafts style began in England, Oxford
England to be more precise, when William Morris, Philip Webb and
Edward Burne-Jones started working together towards a social and
artistic movement that would have repercussions around the globe.
The movement was based partly on the writings of John Ruskin who
preached not only a return to craftsmanship and the organic forms
of the Gothic, but also a form of socialism. The French Revolution
of 1789 - 1799 left all of Europe reeling with the possibilities
of a stronger working class. The beginning of the Industrial Revolution
in the 19th century was changing the fabric of society and inviting
autonomy for people other than those born into the aristocracy.
The social trends provided by these two influences plus the writings
of Ruskin channeled through William Morris became the Arts and
Crafts movement. It was not just a style, it was a philosophy.
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When Arts and Crafts as a movement entered the world
of design and architecture, it was barely noticed. The lack of
ostentation, the deliberate rejection of modern methods and materials,
and the fact that Arts and Crafts objects, be they houses or teapots,
illustrate the taste of the owner not the size of his pocket book,
all contributed to make the style unattractive to those with social
pretensions. The effect of the movement on artists, designers,
architects and thinkers, however, was huge. Art Nouveau, Art Deco,
the Prairie style and many revivals all owe some debt to Arts
and Crafts for reviving both attitudes and techniques from the
medieval past. When Richardson, Sullivan and Wright started defining
an architecture that was distinctly American, they all three looked
to the medieval period for truth in design and ornament. Respect
for materials, attention to sunlight and garden space, and ornament
based on natural objects were standard features in most of their
designs.
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Philip
Webb
The Red House 1859
The Red House in Bexley Heath, England is the
first example of Arts and Crafts architecture. It was built
by Philip Webb for the newly married William Morris, and it
is the only house that Morris ever had built.
The plan is a series of rooms connected by a long
corridor and constructed on an L shape providing a courtyard
around the well. The well was necessary as there was then no
main water. The stair tower at the crossing of the L has a lovely
view of the court.
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Bexley Heath, England
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Philip Webb
The Red House 1859
The plan of the house was revolutionary. Ruskin's
idea of architecture was that the function of each room should
be immediately apparent from the outside, in contrast to the
Classical penchant for rooms arranged inside to suit established
conventions of external appearance. Here Webb has provided a
series of rooms linked by a corridor. This had never been done
before in a small house.
The garden is faced by the corridor. Apparently
Philip Webb realized his mistake as soon as it was built and
from then on never wanted to hear about the Red House again.
It was this that lead him to say that "no architect ought
to be allowed to build a house until he was forty."
The courtyard is delightfully picturesque with
the local orange brick against the very green grass of England.
The bricks are placed masterfully creating two centered discharging
arches above the windows.
The interesting integration of forms in the chimney
illustrates the beauty of good craftsmanship.
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Bexley Heath, England
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Frank
Lloyd Wright Studio
The architects of the Prairie School were searching
for the same aesthetic as their Arts and Crafts counterparts
in England thirty years earlier. They were aiming at an architecture
that was democratic, that expressed the character of the American
people. They determined that buildings needed, primarily, to
respond to their surroundings.
Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings in the suburb of
Oak Park illustrate this aim. They are earth colours, hugging
the ground and unadorned in the way fashionable during the late
19th century.
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Oak Park - Chicago
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Frank Lloyd Wright Studio
The entrances to his buildings are never grandiose
and often are found on the sides or even the back of the building.
Entering a Wright home is like entering a cave.
It is protected, it is inviting, but it is not made for pomp
and circumstance. There are no monumental figures, no grand
set of stairs that provide a stage for the person entering,
instead there is an attention to natural materials integrated
with nature. The brick and stone are muted, free of historicing
detail, free of extraneous detailing, and free of any show of
wealth, social position or arrogance.
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Oak Park - Chicago
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Residential
Arts and Crafts in Ontario
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Scott Weir's excellent article on
Arts and Crafts homes in Toronto sums up the sad fate
of many of these homes beautifully. He says "It may
be that the Arts and Crafts house's lack of ostentation
has been its undoing." Many of these fine homes are
being torn down and replaced by monster homes that are beige
on beige monuments to the owner's pretensions and self delusions.
Where the Arts and Crafts aesthetic was to provide a beautiful
living space built in harmony with nature and the surrounding
area, many of these new buildings are
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simply overlapping masses of ill proportioned,
unrelated architectural features. Return On Investment building
(ROI Modern) is wiping out some of the best houses in the
province. Instead of fine homes where people actually live
and are part of the community, there is a growing trend
for 'renovators' to hop from one spot to another gutting
old homes and gutting established neighborhoods and leaving
behind houses, not homes, that can only be described with
Dickens' famous term "Architectooralooral".
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Aldershot
The thrust of the Arts and Crafts design imperative
was to have a building created around a living space. From the
outside you should be able to determine which 'shape' houses
which room or which activity. The house should also have discreet
entrances with covered porches or terraces that open out onto
a winding, informal garden.
This home in Aldershot is a perfect example of
that. The roof slope is very 'Philip Webb' and wonderfully incorporates
the porch below. Anyone who has ever tried to design something
like this will know what a masterpiece it is.
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Walter Scott - Aldershot - 1920
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Aldershot
By the 1920s, when these two
houses were built, the Arts and Crafts style had been around
for some time. Popular taste had reverted, as it always does,
back to the classical styles, for the most part, and Gothic
Revival was beginning to take on some ground, along with the
proliferation of ‘revival styles'. Walter Scott's conception
of the brick house can be found in the third volume of Plan
Book of Canadian Homes, a Macleans publication from 1938.
Scott has listed the house as "A Brick Colonial House".
The Aldershot version of this house has the medieval porch,
earthy colours, leaded windows and meandering garden paths that
place it squarely in the Arts and Crafts category.
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Plan Book of Canadian Homes
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Aldershot
The brick
used on this house is peculiar to the 1930s in Ontario, particularly
Southern Ontario. The effect is very different from the red,
orange or yellow monochrome bricks used in different areas around
the province.
The original leaded glass windows
are placed in a diamond pattern and have coloured glass in the
upper section. This effect cannot be reproduced in the dreaded
'vinyl replacement no matter how much the salesman may try to
convince you that it can.
The owners of the house are obviously
aware of the value of the property and have maintained it beautifully.
The winding garden paths remain, the windows remain, even the
characteristic plantings have been maintained in their original
glory.
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Walter Scott - 1920
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Aldershot
Both of the Scott houses in Aldershot
have deeply sloping roofs, leaded casement windows, and a noticeable
lack of tracery or other window decoration.
On both buildings can be found
a medieval porch supported by cruck framing, a medieval construction
method where a curved tree was felled then split in two vertically,
the curve of the tree providing a naturally pointed arch roof.
A Tudor porch would be much
more ornate with a superimposed battlement and stone carving.
Cruck framing was very popular in the Arts and Crafts era in
England as can bee seen by the cruck frame on this lychgate
in Portsmouth, England of 1897 below.
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Walter Scott - 1920
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Portsmouth England
This lychgate
probably replaces a medieval version. This is the spot where
the pall bearers rest while carrying their burden to its resting
place.
As an Arts and Crafts style lychgate,
this has many of the elements found on the the British style
A&C bungalows below, as well as echoing the cruck framing
found in the Aldershot porches.
Notice that the fascia has an
ornate continuous vine ornament. This is called a trayle or
vignette. As the term vignette (little vine) suggests, this
is a continuous band of ornament or enrichment carved onto the
stone in screens, canopies, and various parts of Gothic or medieval
architecture, particularly church, architecture. These terms
are also used in wallpaper and book illustrations.
Note also that this fascia and
the timber pattern are similar to the facade of the Dundas A&C
Bungalow below.
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Portsmouth, England
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Aldershot
The dining room is fully paneled
in oak. It has a fireplace with a stone surround and oak mantel.
The mantel has a band of geometric carving. The spandrels of
the surrounding arch are decorated with a leaf pattern, indicative
of the A&C imperative for designs taken from nature.
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Walter Scott - 1920
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Aldershot
Next door
to the house above is a different style of Arts and Crafts probably
by the same architect and definitely using the same hedge trimmer.
The roof slope is the same, the organic red lintel is the same,
and there is the same sense that the house 'grows out of' the
garden. It is very English in character with the high sloped
roof seen on Webb's Red House above.
Instead of brick, this house
is made of stone on the street level and roughcast stucco above,
yet the effect is similar in that it represents a modest country
home using local materials.
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Walter Scott - 1920
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Aldershot
The doorway
is inviting. The most striking feature are the multi-paned lead
glass casement windows, probably imported from England. There
is no decoration around the window, only a thin strip of red
for the mullion. The muntin bars are black.
The hedges that flank the walkway
give the house a country feel and are reminiscent of the picturesque
hedges found in drawings and children's books of the 19th century.
The doorway has a medieval hood mold and large pieces of finely
cut stone for quoins. The arch of the door is also medieval;
it is a three-centered arch found in such places as Cranford
England. The red strip looks as attractive against the stone
as it does against the stucco.
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Walter Scott - 1920
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Aldershot
A two
storey bay allows maximum light into the living areas of the
building. The house faces west, getting the afternoon sun. The
bay allows for light - and heat - into the room before the sun
has reached its full height for the day. The parapet of the
bay has a medieval crest.
The stonework on the bay is also
of a fine quality. The windows are encased in stone with an
ashlar finish (fine and smooth) where the spandrels between
the windows are rough cut. The slate roof nicely offsets this.
The slant of the roof on the left is as masterfully executed
as the house above.
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Walter Scott - 1920
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Oakville
Finding inns or hotels in the
A&C style is difficult. One beautiful spot is the Haslemere
House Bed and Breakfast in Oakville.
The layout of the inn is complemented by a beautifully
maintained pool and garden. There are gables on all façades,
some plain, some with jerkin heads, another typical medieval
design.
The exterior finish is white roughcast which emphasizes
the heavy timbers employed in the windows, doors and structural
elements. The back entrance to the house has a covered porch
with a round headed arch flanked by paired colonnetes. The lintel
is rough cut and substantial. On the gable of the porch is a
loophole, in medieval times this was a place for launching arrows.
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Oakville
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Oakville
Beside the porch is a lovely
leaded glass bay. The leading is in a diaper pattern on the
top and bottom panels in the pre-Elizabethan style.
Diapering is a diamond shaped
pattern either in wood or in leaded glass. The term was coined
from the small squares of cloth used to aid in the application
of stucco between the timbers on half-timber buildings. The
diamond shape was then emplyed in fences, interior woodwork
and leaded glass.
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Haslemere
House
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Arts
and Crafts or Craftsman Bungalow
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American's consider the Bungalow style to be
an American invention. The 'Craftsman Bungalow certainly
is, but the Bungalow as a house style was originally found
in England. It was the British, after all, not the Americans,
who lived in India with the East India Company and other
organizations, and thus saw the one floor houses with verandahs
called banglas meaning built in the Bengali style.
The term verandah also comes from the Hindi term varanda
meaning a railing or balcony. Sightings of the early use
of Bengale as a style can be found as early as 1676. Harry
Mount in his excellent book 'A Lust for Window Sills'
notes an entry from the diary of Streynsham Master, working
in the India Office, as follows.
"It was thought fitt to sett up Bengales
or Hovells for all such English in the Company's service".
One story cottages were constructed around Britain
from time immemorial, but the bungalow as a design statement
took off in the late 19th Century as seaside resort homes.
The first are found constructed in Kent dating from the
1860s. The bungalows from Flamborough and Dundas, below,
are in the British style.
When brought to Canada, these homes have a nostalgic
mixture of ornament, floral and animal designs with the
occasional addition of Gothic or Classical flourishes, often
on the same building. Pugin would NOT have approved.
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The Craftsman Bungalow came from the Midwest
and was popularized in California in the early 20th Century.
It was brought to Canada in the 1910s. This is perhaps the
best known form of Arts and Crafts in Ontario. It comes
from the United States through a man called Gustav Stickley
(1857 - 1942).
Stickley was a furniture maker and stone mason
in Wisconsin. He visited Europe in 1898 and became enamored
of the A&C style while viewing the works and workshops
of the British movement. Upon his return to America he changed
the name of his company to Craftsman Workshops and founded
a magazine called The Craftsman, dedicated to the
philosophy and craft work of Morris and his followers. The
magazine published many home designs, the first being a
two storey rubble design called the "Craftsman Home."
Like other American architects, Stickley's message was for
democracy in design. Every man should have the right to
plan out the house that he wants for himself with no allegiance
to European style. Like Pugin and Ruskin, Stickley was determined
to set people straight on the ‘correct' way to build.
Both Craftsman and British Bungalows are generally
one or one-and-a-half storey homes with broad, low-pitched,
roofs that seem to blanket the building. Large porches,
overhangs, and verandas link the bungalow with the usually
ample exterior space surrounding the building.
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West Flamborough
This house
is a good example of a British style Arts and Crafts Bungalow.
The steeply pitched roof generally found in Arts and Crafts
is here replaced by a more gently sloping roof. The stucco in
this case is white washed, a finish that both Philip Webb and
Norman Shaw found appealing. Like the other homes, this one
is brilliantly placed to appreciate the view and the surrounding
garden. The entrances are not ostentatious, The chimneys are
high, and the leaded windows retain their original glass.
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William J. Walsh - 1930
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West Flamborough
Notice
that the south façade is almost entirely windows. A huge
bay has windows on all sides. Small gables appear over the doors
which open up onto all sides of the property. A screened-in
porch makes living outside during the summer months both comfortable
and pleasant.
Like the
second house in Aldershot above, the base of the building is
stone and the upper section is finished in stucco.
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William J. Walsh - 1930
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West Flamborough
While small and unpretentious,
this home is an oasis of charm and comfort. It has that ephemeral
Midsummer Night's Dream quality that makes you want to stay
forever. The magic dream potion would be kept in this Picturesque
Gothic built-in.
This detail is referred to as
Picturesque because it has the tell tale Y shaped muntin making
two lancet arched windows into the cupboard. The overall shape
of the cupboard is a round-headed arch, not Gothic in the slightest.
Lovers of good wood working appreciate
the small ledge, held up by a scroll shaped console, beneath
the casements. This ledge is for placing dishes or objects momentarily
displaced while something else is removed. You won't find this
quality at Ikea.
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William J. Walsh - 1930
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West Flamborough
The door,
on the other hand, is purely Classical. A round-headed barrel
vault with scroll consoles provides a hood for protection over
the door. This hood is held in place by fluted, Roman Doric
columns and engaged pilasters.
Above the door is a plain lunette
above a series of decorative dentils.
Rough stucco is the finish on
the building, but rustic quoins are found in local escarpment
stone surrounding the windows. Note how the stones radiate around
the small foyer window on the left.
The roof overhang is large and
provides welcome shade.
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William J. Walsh - 1930
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West Flamborough
Oversized
columns and terra-cotta tiling characterize the verandah. All
parts of the building lead out into the garden. The hedges and
trees are an intrinsic part of the design.
The average
life of a tree in Toronto
is seven years. Houses are bought, upgraded into last weeks
cutting-edge design, as seen on TV, and the garden is massacred
along with the moldings. Here the trees have matured and are
home to a large variety of birds and squirrels. The home is
integrated into the surrounding park-like setting.
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William J. Walsh - 1930
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Dundas
Another
variation on Arts and Crafts can be found here in Dundas. Again
the house rests peacefully in a beautifully landscaped lot.
The exterior is half-timbered with roughcast stucco. On the
lower level is the suggestion of a cruck, seen above, which
was a popular motif in the Arts and Crafts Movement.
Characteristic of this type of
Bungalow is the very high chimney made of local stone. The windows
are casements, the preferred style for A&C.
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Dundas
The house gets more impressive
the closer you look at it. The fascia boards are in a delightful
pressed wood pattern popular in revival houses.
Also popular is the lip on the
roof, to the left. Note that the edge of the roof is slightly
higher around the edge. The roof finish is terra cotta tiles.
On slate, stone and terra cotta roofs, the edges are lifted
slightly to prevent ice build up when the snow melts. It also
gives that charming country look found on water colour post
cards.
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Craftsman
Bungalow
This classic California style
Bungalow in London Ontario is one of the best in the country.
The exposed structural roof brackets and two-tiered, low-pitched
roof are indicative of the California style.
The yellow brick
contrasts nicely with the earthy colours, sage green and terra-cotta
both on the door and the terra-cotta tile roof. A screened in
porch, unites the house with the garden. I'm told that the gin
and tonics served here are particularly good. The attention
to detail and masterful application of brick is indicative of
the Craftsman Bungalow.
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London Ontario
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Interior - London
Once built, these homes were
furnished with the products of Craftsman studios. Mission
furniture, Morris wallpaper and fabrics, and MacIntosh or Moorcroft
pottery would complete the interior picture. These furnishings
are highly desirable and collectable still.
The owners of this bungalow have
been meticulous in providing authentic furnishings and lighting.
The couch is a Stickley, the dining table and chairs are A&C,
even the light fixtures are from either the Mica Lamp Company
or Arroyo Craftsman.
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London Ontario
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Art Glass - London
The Arts
and Crafts movement was about fine craftsmanship. One permanent
feature in good Arts and Crafts homes is the stained glass used
in doors, windows and light fixtures.
The patterns for this glass are
usually floral in nature. They can be easily distinguished from
the earlier Art Nouveau designs
which are more fluid, much more ornate, and often have a lithesome
goddess as the central image.
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London Ontario
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Thunder
Bay
Of all the houses on this site,
this is the one that I get the most requests for information
on.
The front windows on this are
classic Arts and Crafts: the style is a large pane below and
a series of small panes above. The original designer of this
type of window was Charles Rennie Macintosh
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Thunder Bay
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Arts
and Crafts in Toronto
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By the time the Arts and Crafts movement had
reached Canada, the defining elements were well set. The
overlying theme was the house as a living element within
the natural environment; it was based on the function of
the home as a shelter for the family, not a banner building
relentlessly trumpeting the owner's status. Houses were
meant to fit intrinsically into their sites: orientation
of the house was based on the relationship of the house
to the garden. Rooms were positioned to take advantage of
the movement of the sun for warmth and light during daylight
hours. The grandiose central entrances of so many other
styles were often replaced by side entrances that allowed
for manipulation of the front façade for light or
garden use. Entrances were often recessed, accessed through
a covered porch, giving the impression of solidity and permanence,
almost like entering a cave dwelling.
The foremost architect of the Arts and Crafts
movement in Ontario was Eden Smith (1859-1949). Smith was
born in England and studied art in Birmingham, a stronghold
of the A&C movement. Burne-Jones was born in Birmingham,
and both Morris and Webb spent a great deal of time there
lecturing at the Central School of Art. Like many architects
of his day, Smith's academic training was in drawing and
painting. He learned the builder's craft while working with
his father's construction firm, also in Birmingham. When
the firm went bankrupt in 1885, Smith and his family
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moved to Toronto. The attitudes and design
principles of the A&C style that he learned in Birmingham
stayed with him for the rest of his life. Smith's work,
being taken almost directly from England, makes Toronto
a focus for the Arts and Crafts movement.
Although historians and enthusiasts have been
busy trying to identify all of Smith's work, much has been
lost to the wrecker's ball. W. Douglas Brown produced a
fine book on Smith, complete with a catalogue of existing
work in 2003. Barely six years later some of them have already
disappeared.
Rounding a corner in search
of a house that looks like this and finding, instead,mock-Georgian
with plastic muntin bars or a monster house that squashes
not just the old house but the carefully thought-out grounds
is a deflating experience. In England, Arts and crafts houses
that have not been altered are worth twice what any other
house in the neighborhood is going for. In Toronto, they
tear them down. Those who know what they have got, however,
generally keep them up beautifully.
Some excellent photos of
Eden Smith interiors can be found on Flickr Photo Sharing
- some beautiful shots by Scott Weir can be found at:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=eden+Smith
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Eden
Smith
MacPherson St.
Smith's first work in Ontario was as a draughtsman
in various established architectural firms in Toronto. He was
an active member of St.Thomas's church on Huron Street and this
led to a few commissions for the Church of England and its followers.
By 1898 he had established himself as an architect in the neighborhood
now known as the Annex and had started doing residential work.
As in England, the Arts and Crafts style quickly became the
predominant style, and Smith was kept very busy with houses
in the more desirable neighborhoods of Toronto.
His most notable buildings are the Group of Seven
studios on Aylmer Avenue and three public library branches done
in the medieval style. His most famous house is this one on
10 MacPherson Avenue Street, Toronto. It is a miracle of design
in an "Infill" house. An Infill is a house that fits
into a small lot in the inner city.
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Toronto Ontario
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Toronto
Eden Smith's designs fall into
a few categories. The most obviously Arts and Crafts are the
two-storey buildings made of wood, brick and shingles, like
this one.
Most of these have a ribbon of
windows on the south side and a slightly recessed door. Many
are tall and slim, fitting gracefully onto an urban lot, but
with enough space surrounding for a few hedges and trees.
This house has a wonderful gable
front with a few corbie steps. A two storey bay has casement
windows with small leaded glass panes. A second storey sunroom
has a ribbon of windows that is protected in the summer by the
shade of a deciduous tree.
Smith rarely used primary colours.
The greens, like this one, are generally muted sage.
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Toronto Ontario
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Toronto
Wychwood Park
Some of Smith's most notable
work can be found on a charming little crescent brilliantly
hidden in the midst of Toronto's bustling downtown. This house
at number 7 is similar to Wright's Studio home in Oak Park.
On the ground level is a bank of six leaded casement windows
set within white roughcast. The door is recessed. The facade
is asymmetrical. The oversized gable that makes up the upper
two floors is finished with dark stained cedar shingles.
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Toronto Ontario
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Toronto
Wychwood Park
When you walk into Wychwood Park,
you are immediately transported back to the 19th Century. This
is a suburb that was designed for pedestrian use. It is a reproduction
of a rural village. Rather than being laid out to provide the
maximum profit for the developer with all services running as
close to the road as possible, the landscape beaten into submission
for easy access by trucks, this suburb meanders around berms
and trees providing privacy and individual space for each home.
There is no grid pattern. Each house is designed so that the
large windows have optimum access to the sun and gardens provide
walkways from one home to another.
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Toronto Ontario
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Toronto
Another set of Arts and Crafts
style buildings is represented by 165 St. George Street, Toronto.
These are more like medieval
manor houses in character, fortress-like, solid and impenetrable.
The asymmetrical gable front design has a recessed door surmounted
by a corbel table providing a ledge for an otherwise unadorned
window. The other windows are plain, balanced but not symmetrical.
The chimney crashes through the gable in a completely unconventional
form terminating in a Romanesque compound arch with radiating
stone and brick components.
This façade is completely
original, interesting for architecture enthusiasts, but too
far from the default classical styles to be accepted by many
homeowners.
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Toronto Ontario
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Page & Warrington
Smith's gable front design, like
Hanseatic architecture in Northern Europe, was adopted for many
homes and small offices.
The Dr. Geoffrey Boyd House (1921)
by Page & Warrington is a particularly fine example in that
the front gable extends above the roof in the medieval method,
used to prevent the wind from lifting the roof thatching or
tiles. The fire of 1666 put an end to high ceilings and thus
lofty gables like this in London England. The triple chimney
stacks, geminated chimney stack, and broad chimney stack of
this house are also reminiscent of the chimney explosion that
took place during Elizabethan and Jacobean times in Britain.
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Toronto Ontario
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Toronto
Another
fine example of Arts and Crafts in Toronto is this beauty in
Forest Hill. Most of the upscale neighborhoods 'went Arts and
Crafts' at the turn of the 19th century.
This house has the pleasing mixture
of wood, stucco and brick used by Smith as well as the medieval
radiating arch used in Romanesque architecture. Those who have
visited Chicago will recognise this style, used widely in the
downtown area.
The windows have the classic
A&C multi-panes on the top with a single pane beneath. The
colours are earth tones. There is a lot of detailing, but none
of it is historicising.
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Toronto Ontario
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Eden
Smith Door detail
Like many
of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie style homes, the front door
often looks like the entrance to a cave more than a grand entrance.
The door itself is recessed, you know that inside is shelter
and warmth.
On this entrance Smith has masterfully
orchestrated a series of small paned, leaded casements, strung
together with a band of dark brown, the door accessed through
a round-headed arch. Even in the coldest months of the year,
this house is welcoming and warm.
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Toronto Ontario
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Philip Webb - London England
In contrast,
the residences in London are usually closely knit together and,
if the property is of some value, it overlooks a square that
acts as a common garden. In many ways this is preferable to
the small patch of grass surrounding most Toronto properties.
The owners are not obliged to cut the grass on their microscopic
lawns every week, but instead pay a maintenance fee for the
park and have the luxury of walking around a substantial area
of green.
There is no space between the
houses in London's terraces. One building juts into the next,
and the styles are often uniform through out a square, having
been built 'on spec' at the same time period.
This Webb town house in Lincoln's
inn Field may look like 'a townhouse' to the untrained eye,
but consider the effect of the Arts and Crafts movement on this
door surround as opposed to the one below.
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Toronto Ontario
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London England
This classical aedicule is the
standard door of most 17th, 18th and 19th century terraces in
England.
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Toronto
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Extra Reading and resources for
Arts and Crafts
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Books
Brown, Douglas, Eden Smith,
Toronto's Arts and Crafts Architect, New York, Twayne
Publishers 2003
Davey,Peter, Arts and Crafts Architecture,
Chatham G.B. , W.H.MacKay Limited, 1980
Kalman, Harold "Domestic Architecture"
in A Concise History of Canadian Architecture 2000
Kaplan, Wendy, Encyclopedia of Arts
and crafts: The International Arts Movement 1850 - 1920,
London: Quatro Publishing, 1989
Kristofferson, Robert B, Craft Capitalism
Craftworkers and Early Industrialization in Hamilton Ontario,
1840-1872 , Toronto, University of Toronto Press,
2007
Weaver, Lawrence, Small Country Houses
of Today , London, Country Life, 1890
Weir,
Scott, "The beauty of function"
National Post, Saturday, March 24, 2007
Wilson, Richard Guy, From Architecture
to Object: Masterworks of the American Arts and crafts Movement,
New York, Dutton Studio Books, 1989
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