Recent Articles From The Craftsman Bungalow
Frank Lloyd Wright grew up in the Upper Midwest and honed his skills as an apprentice with the prestigious Chicago architectural firm of Adler & Sullivan in the 1890’s, before branching out on his own. At the turn of the 20th century, Wright had completed over 50 projects and began to develop his groundbreaking “Prairie...
UPDATE: You voted and the results are in! In a closely contested race, “A Resurrection in New Orleans: Restored Bungalows of the 9th Ward” emerged as YOUR favorite article of 2013. Thank you to everyone who voted! As I did last year, I thought it would be fun to countdown our Top 5...
In my previous post, A Pilgrimage to The Gamble House: Part I, I walked you through the many breathtaking vantage points that abound on the exterior of The Gamble House. While the exterior of the house is spectacular – with its incongruity often highlighted and celebrated – it is gracefully contrasted by the interior’s rigorous...
I was fortunate to recently travel to Hawaii for business and while looking for a place to stay – away from the hustle and bustle of tourist-packed Waikiki – I was thrilled when I came across the beautiful Manoa Valley Inn. Originally built in 1915 by an Iowa lumber baron named Milton Moore, the house...
Recently I wrote about Frank Lloyd Wright’s magnificent Darwin D. Martin House in Buffalo, NY. Earlier this summer I was able to return to Buffalo and had an opportunity to tour the lakefront home that Darwin Martin had built for his wife, Isabelle. In the twenty-some years that followed Wright’s design and construction of their...
The Architectural Heritage Center’s Portland Kitchen Revival Tour is one of my favorite days of the year, and 16th annual edition was again full of beautiful homes, whose kitchen – and in most cases much more – have been impeccably restored to reflect the home’s original period design. This is my third year covering the...
When photographer Jett Loe came to Los Angeles in 2012 in search of a home for he and his wife, he was amazed at what he found – hiding in plain sight. Almost by accident, Loe stumbled upon West Adams, a once forgotten central Los Angeles enclave located halfway between Downtown LA and Santa Monica,...
Diana Gillispie’s eye for design and acute attention to detail has made her a fixture in the Asheville, North Carolina art scene for more than three decades. Having first moved to the area in 1978, she became one of the pioneering artists of Asheville’s River District when she started a small pottery studio with a...
The Mission Hills neighborhood of San Diego, California has long been a bastion of early 20th century homes, with nearly all of era’s requisite architectural styles well-represented. From compact single-story bungalows to expansive Spanish haciendas – and everything in between – Mission Hills exhibits the same architectural prowess today as it did when it was...
This April, the Architectural Heritage Center in Portland hosted its 15th Annual Kitchen Revival Tour. Last year was the first time I attended the tour, and I was hooked after the very first home I visited. This year’s tour was just as good and featured noteworthy kitchens of several early 1900’s bungalows. All of the...
The Fall 2014 issue of American Bungalow magazine is out now, and my article about the restoration of the Bernard Maybeck-designed George H. Boke House (below) can be found on page 28. There are actually two articles about the house in the issue, one by Arts & Crafts historian and scholar, Robert Winter, who focuses...
My latest two articles for American Bungalow magazine are in the current Summer 2014 issue! The first article, entitled A Tale of Two Owners, chronicles the decade-long restoration by Steve and Deb Moskowitz of a grand 1909 craftsman home (below) in Portland’s historic Irvington neighborhood, and the subsequent passing of the torch to the home’s...
Whenever I’m out-and-about and see a sign saying there’s an estate sale going on nearby, I almost always do a drive-by to check out the house and take a peek inside. A few weeks ago, that same scenario played out, and when I pulled up to the house where the sale was (below), my jaw...
With its rich history and sunny Mediterranean climate, Santa Barbara has been an immensely popular destination since being settled by Spanish Missionaries in the late 1700’s. Following its annexation by the United States in 1846 after the Mexican-American War, Santa Barbara quickly expanded. Through the mid and late 1800’s, the city was home to countless...
From the late 1800’s until the mid-1940’s, Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was the largest brewer in America, and at times, the world. Originally established in 1844 as the Best Brewery – named after its founder, Jacob Best – the name changed to Pabst in 1889 when Best’s son-in-law, Frederick Pabst, became majority stockholder in...
William Randolph Hearst was a wealthy businessman who inherited a family fortune as a young man and expanded it into a vast newspaper and magazine publishing empire during his adult life. In 1919, he inherited his family’s 250,000 acre retreat property in San Simeon on the Central California Coast and aspired to build a vast...
This article is a continuation of The Sagamore Hotel, Part I: The History Of The Iconic Resort On New York’s Lake George, which covered the hotel’s first 30 years (1883-1914). This article picks up from there and takes you through the 20th Century and right up to today… The Sagamore II, prior to the 1914...
On a recent business trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, I opted to stay at a hotel that’s steeped in history and in a little less than two years will celebrate its 100th year in operation. The Claremont Hotel, located on the border of Berkeley and Oakland, is one of the most picturesque hotels...
This year the Architectural Heritage Center expanded their Annual Kitchen Revival Tour beyond just kitchens to showcase entire homes, and re-named the tour the Portland Old House Revival Tour. I’ve covered this tour for the past three years, and now in its 16th year overall, the tour never disappoints. In case you missed it, here...
In July 1906, Charles and Henry Greene presented their original design to Frank W. Hawks for a home that he had commissioned the brothers to design for his property on Arroyo Terrace, a quiet and artistic enclave in Pasadena, California. While visionary in its scope, and for reasons still not entirely known today, Hawks chose not...
After completing the restoration of our first home, we knew that at some point in the not-too-distant future, we would be starting a family. With that in mind, we quickly came to the realization that while our home had served us very well for the previous 5 years, a growing family would need more room...
This post is part of our “Peek Inside” series where we showcase Arts & Crafts homes from across the country that are currently for sale, or were recently sold. Some of them may be fixers that are just begging to be restored (like this one), others may be fully restored and move-in ready, and still...
The Frank Lloyd Wright Home & Studio in Oak Park, Ill., is a microcosm of the prolific designer’s ever-evolving architectural aesthetic. It’s an expression of his early formative years, and through a series of additions, it embodies the changes that his philosophy and style underwent during the twenty year span (1889-1909) that he lived in...
Perhaps it was serendipitous that a internationally recognized horticulturist would end up living in a home that once belonged to a descendant of John Olmsted, the prominent landscape architect who designed countless parks and public spaces across the country. But that’s exactly what happened. First moving to the property as a renter in 1995, Sean...
The bungalow that we’re currently restoring is actually the second bungalow restoration that we’ve undertaken. Our first was a 1927 English Cottage style bungalow, also in Portland. Below is a picture of the finished kitchen… The house was in overall good condition, and while the kitchen was functional, it was rather tired looking and in need...
In my previous post, I gave you a tour of the exterior of the Greene & Greene’s Duncan-Irwin House in Pasadena. Now we go through the doors below for a personal tour of the amazing interior of this quintessential Greene & Greene home… From the inside (below), the wisteria vine motif shines through the door’s...
Some time ago, we took a trip down the California Coast during which we explored some of the countless arts & crafts cottages in and around the oceanside artist community of Carmel. The highlight of our time there was getting to take a tour of Tor House – the handcrafted stone cottage of poet Robinson...
Welcome to The Craftsman Bungalow! My goal for this site is for it to become a resource for people who love old homes – and more specifically – Arts & Crafts, Craftsman, and Bungalow home enthusiasts. Hopefully along the way, I’ll learn some things, you’ll learn some things, and knowledge, experience, and inspiration about living...
A couple weeks ago my wife and I traveled down to attend a friend’s wedding in Cayucos, California – a quaint little beach town about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. When we started looking at flights a few months back, we realized that in order to get to Cayucos from Portland, we’d have...
Boise, Idaho is tucked away in plain sight in America’s Inland Northwest, and although it’s often overlooked due to its relative isolation, Boise is a lovely town with a rich history of pioneers, agriculture, and of course, bungalows. Boise’s bungalows run the gamut of all shapes, sizes, colors and styles, and were built from the...
