| Architectural Style |
| Friday, 01 October 2010 09:03 |
 As in all matters of architectural style there is the layman's definition and then the academic's. There are really very few pure examples of any architectural style, Craftsman, Spanish Revival, Prairie etc…For the most part, structures are eclectic mixes of styles and client preferences that get lumped into larger stylistic categories for convenience. The layman calls a house Craftsman, but an academic would say it is really Dutch Farmhouse Revival or Elizabethan/Tudor Revival. Yet when the layman says Craftsman, he's not so far off, as these structures fall into the period between 1900 and 1917 when large roofs, heavy eaves and the hearth as a central unifying theme for interior design were important stylistic elements the Craftsman aesthetic introduced to the local vernacular. Spanish to the layman is pretty much anything with stucco walls and a clay tile roof. It could be anything from the local Taco Bell to Union Station. For the academic however there is Spanish Colonial Revival, distinct from Mediterranean Revival or Mission Revival. Spanish Colonial Revival grew out of a regional interest in establishing, or preserving, a historic identity for the new cities of Southern California. Historians say that the novel "Ramona" was instrumental in the establishment of the Spanish Colonial Revival style in Southern California. "Ramona" was a romantic novel from the late 1800's, set in Ventura County of just after the Mexican-American war c.1850, whose sentimental view of Mexican Colonial life is said to have established the stylistic movement. It was a hugely popular novel, and the film was released in 1936, starring Loretta Young and Don Ameche. California was still new to the union and the indigenous culture still "foreign". Tourists and economic emigrants who came to the area wanted to learn about the place they were going to and often did so through novels. There's not much architecture in the novel, more like a veranda and thick walls and roof tile (more adobe than Spanish Colonial Revival or Mission Revival stylistically) but the scene is certainly Spanish Colonial. After the novel was published movements to save the historic Missions of Southern California, our regional "heritage", which had fallen into disrepair from neglect, gained interest. Probably the establishment of the railroads and tourists coming to the area also lead to this need to establish a "true regional" identity. Maybe it was some collective insecurity that any "real" city like European cities, had history where Los Angeles had no historic buildings whatsoever. But it was also out of interest in regional identity. Basically what happened for architecture is the efforts to preserve the Missions created some forms of spin-off architecture in pavilions for Fairs and large public buildings and things like railroad stations (think Union Station etc). This then lead to the larger interest in Spanish Colonial Revival in residential architecture and its spinoffs. All that is to say...that for the layman, This Old House's Los Angeles Project house is Spanish Style. For the academic it is Spanish Colonial Revival. The "Moorish" influences, like the arches, are a part of the Spanish palate but something you see in Craftsman architecture as well, so is interestingly, not really unique to the Spanish Colonial Revival package but more a part of the emerging entrepreneurial classes of Los Angeles's search for legitimacy. Basically- it’s a really cute house, with lots of curb appeal as they say in the real estate business. |