Gamble house

Arts and crafts movement

. In the United States, the terms American Craftsman or Craftsman style are often used to denote the style of architecture, interior design, and decorative arts that prevailed between the dominant eras of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, or approximately the period from 1910 to 1925. The "Prairie School" of Frank Lloyd Wright, George Washington Maher and other architects in Chicago, the Country Day School movement, the bungalow and ultimate bungalow style of houses popularized by Greene and Greene, Julia Morgan, and Bernard Maybeck are some examples of the American Arts and Crafts and American Craftsman style of architecture

Gamble house

The Gamble House was designed in 1908 by architects Greene & Greene. It was commissioned by David and Mary Gamble, of Cincinnati, Ohio, as a retirement residence. The architects worked closely with the Gambles in the design of the house, incorporating specific design elements to complement art pieces belonging to the family. Drawings for the house were completed in February 1908, and ground was broken in March. Ten months later, the house was completed

Notable aspects of the house as seen from the street are the traditional gabled elevation on the south contrasted with the deep terrace and heavilytimbered sleeping porch on the north. These elements are unified by a shared horizontal line of deep eaves and exposed rafters and beams, and by the simple rhythm of the split-redwood, shake-shingle surface.

Gamble house

These elements are unified by a shared horizontal line of deep eaves and exposed rafters and beams, and by the simple rhythm of the split-redwood, shake-shingle surface. The broad mass of the house is given height and balance by a one-room, third-level attic space and sleeping porches challenge the distinction between interior and exterior on the second level of the house. Outdoor terraces are elevated behind picturesque clinker-brick and pebbledash retaining walls.

The design of the broad entrys leadedglass doors was inspired by the California live oak. Inside, carefully crafted exotichardwood paneling, furniture, light fixtures, custom-woven rugs, cast and wrought andirons, fireplace tools, and other hardware express the spirit of the Greenes' Asian-inspired design vocabulary

Greene and Greene was an architectural firm established by brothers Charles Sumner Greene (18681957) and Henry Mather Greene (18701954), influential early 20th Century American architects. Active primarily in California, their houses and larger-scale ultimate bungalows are prime exemplars of the American Arts and Crafts Movement .it was established in Pasadena in January 1894 eventually building toward the crescendo of their "ultimate bungalows", such as the 1908 Gamble House in Pasadena, generally considered one of the finest examples of residential architecture in the United States.

Greene and Greene

The structure of the Greene & Greene house is essential not only to the immense feeling of security that such an overlysupported structure brings, but also accentuates the importance of the Arts & Crafts fundamentals in the Greene & Greene style. The visual importance of the aesthetic nature of the joints, pegs, and complex wood-work symbolizes the structure of the house, and coincides with the principles taught in the Manual Training School of their youth. The structure of the house is externalized, or exploded, rather than hidden in decoration. Each element of the structure asserts itself. This extravagance of support takes its origins from the elaborate joinery and framing of traditional Japanese architecture.

William R. Thorsen House

This was the last of the elaborate wooden houses to be designed by Greene and Greene. Mr. Thorsen was a lumberman, and Mrs. Thorsen was the sister of Mrs. Blacker, the Greenes Pasadena client of 1907. For the northern California climate the Greenes designed a house with a more vertical orientation as compared with the well-defined horizontality of their Pasadena houses. The L-shaped plan of the Thorsen house was dictated by the shape of its urban, corner lot and by the desire for a private and sheltered garden space

The teak entry hall leads first to the living room, which is panelled in mahogany, lined with book cabinets, and furnished with a built-in desk. A fireplace in mauve Greuby tile was fitted with a chased steel fire screen designed by Charles Greene in 1914. The mahogany dining room was the only space for which the Greenes were originally commissioned to design furniture. Decorative inlay, depicting a delicate periwinkle design, is carried out in abalone, oak, and fruitwoods

Robert R. Blacker House

Spinks House