Recent Articles From The Craftsman Bungalow
If you haven’t had the opportunity to see an authentic Greene & Greene-designed home up close, then a visit to The Lodge at Torrey Pines might be the next best thing. Taking its design cues from two of the Greenes’ most iconic “ultimate bungalows,” The Blacker House (1907) and The Gamble House (1908), both in Pasadena, the...
Those of you who are fans of J.R.R. Tolkein and his work may recognize some of the images below from the Lord of the Rings films and most recently, The Hobbit. Tolkien grew up in rural Western England around the turn of the last century, and his writings were heavily influenced by the romantic prose...
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...
While Asheville, North Carolina has been home to the National Arts & Crafts Conference for over 30 years, it’s been a destination for those seeking solace in its picturesque setting and holistic laid back vibe for long before that. Once part of the aboriginal Cherokee Nation, and first visited by Europeans in the mid 1500s,...
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...
I’ve written about our previous home in Portland a few times – I bought it in 2004 and painstakingly restored it over the next 5 years that we lived there. In 2010, when we moved to our current home in Laurelhurst, we kept our previous home as a rental and were fortunate to find wonderful...
As far back as he can remember, Brett Johnson owner of Craftsmen Studio has always been a do-it-yourself kind of person. Growing up in rural Missouri, he got his start helping family members with building and remodeling projects, and eventually went out on his own – doing everything from carpentry to masonry. At the age...
The Spring 2014 issue of American Bungalow is out now, and I’m very excited that my article entitled, “Wharton Esherick: Integrating Life, Art and Craft” made the cover! If you’re not a subscriber or haven’t received your copy yet, you can read the article here. Wharton Esherick (1887-1966) was a classically trained Impressionist painter in...
Filmmaker Joaquin Montalvan always knew he wanted to live in a bungalow – even before he knew what a bungalow was. Growing up, he had lived in a Spanish Mission style home with a welcoming front porch, hardwood floors and a fireplace that his family frequently used. Those three features were ingrained in his mind...
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...
For a time, the Ross House was known by everyone who lived near it as simply “The Purple House.” It had lilac trim on the windows, and there was an odd purple-ish addition that had been added to the front. It was an authentic Frank Lloyd Wright house, built in 1916, but its current state...
This past weekend was the Architectural Heritage Center’s Annual Kitchen Revival Tour. Now in its 14th year, the tour showcases the efforts of Portland homeowners who have restored their home’s kitchens to its original glory. Most of the homes featured were professional restored by local contractors who concentrate on period homes, however one home’s kitchen...
If you’ve ever sought the perfect antique or architectural element for your home or business, then you probably know just how exhausting a search like that can be. On a recent trip to Western Pennsylvania, I stumbled upon one such place where all those hard-to-find items can be found – neatly organized, and all under...
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...
Last weekend my brother was in town visiting from the East Coast and we braved the rain and headed down to Silver Falls State Park located about an hour and a half south of Portland near the town of Sublimity, Oregon. Designated as a Recreational Demonstration Area by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935, the...
Everyone remembers the heart-wrenching and tragic photos of Hurricane Katrina’s cataclysmic effect on New Orleans in 2005. In the eight years since that calamitous storm, you may have moved on with your life and forgotten just how devastating the damage was, but the people of New Orleans, and especially those who live in the 9th...
Somewhere near the intersection of rustic charm and stately elegance is a place where natural beauty and cooperative humanity walk hand-in-hand. Nestled a few thousand feet beneath the rugged 11,249 foot peak of Oregon’s Mount Hood, the iconic Timberline Lodge has been welcoming weary hikers, giddy newly-weds – and everything in between – for over...
In light of the two recent great deals I’ve found on Craigslist (the oak desk and the Stickley nightstand), I thought I’d take the opportunity to show you some of the other Arts & Crafts items I’ve acquired through the site. It’s no secret that it can be very expensive to furnish your bungalow home...
The Spring 2015 issue of American Bungalow magazine has just come out, and an article that I co-wrote made the cover! The article, written in conjunction with Southern California-based writer Laszlo Remenyi, is about a truly unique recording studio (below and at left) built by film composer, record producer, and self-proclaimed ‘reformed rock musician,’ Richard...
To understand what we were dealing with when we initially bought the house, let’s go back to late 2009… This is what the exterior looked like when we first moved in (we have since painted it). I came to find out later that the house had been for sale earlier in 2009 through a realtor,...
When I packed up my car and headed West to Portland, Oregon in November of 2000, I had no idea how that decision would impact the rest of my life. Like our pioneering forefathers who took a similar leap of faith – I didn’t know what I’d encounter, who I’d meet, or if I’d ever...
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...
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...
With all of the basic stuff done at our new house, the focus has shifted to the big stuff. Our wishlist started with just remodeling the kitchen and bathrooms and building a new garage, but has quickly ballooned to include adding on a new master suite above the garage, as well as adding a second...
In the Spring 2017 Issue #94 of American Bungalow magazine, I contributed an article about a Greene & Greene home that was designed in 1906, but for reasons still not known today, was ultimately never built by the Greenes. Almost 100 years later, an ambitious builder, fueled by his love for authentic craftsman architecture, acquired...
This week I traveled to Western New York State for business and while there I was able to spend some time in the Arts & Crafts artisan community of “Roycroft” in East Aurora, just outside of Buffalo. The Roycroft Campus was founded in the late-1890’s by Elbert Hubbard, who along with Gustav Stickley, is considered...
UPDATE: You voted and the results are in! It was neck-and-neck right up until the end, but “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Oak Park, Illinois Designs: 1889-1913” edged out the rest as YOUR favorite article of 2014. Thank you to everyone who voted, and Happy New Year! As I’ve done in years past, I thought it would...
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...
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...
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...
