Three brilliant designers unknowingly collaborated on a style revolution 115 years ago

By Michael Good | HouseCalls

At the dawn of the 20th century, three very different guys in three somewhat different lines of work in three sort-of-different parts of the world got more or less the same idea, which was to create a new design esthetic for a new century. As it turned out, they helped shape the urban landscape of cities across America, particularly here in San Diego, where their legacy remains in the city’s once-again-stylish bungalow neighborhoods.

In 1901, Alphonse Mucha, a Czechoslovakian artist, combined his experience as a graphic and theater designer to create a fantastical environment for Paris jeweler George Fouquet (the store, in its entirety, has been preserved and can be found online, which is my way of saying you’ve got to see it to believe it). In Paris, Mucha had already popularized the Art Nouveau style (which at first was called “Style Mucha”) with a series of theatrical posters, beginning in 1895, for actress Sarah Bernhardt. Art Nouveau, which is distinguished by its flowing, natural lines and curvaceous anthropomorphic detailing, was the official style of the 1900 Paris Exposition Universalle, which was widely attended, photographed and studied by designers around the world.

That same year in New York, Gustav Stickley, who up to that point had been a fairly conventional furniture manufacturer, launched what he called his “New Work.” It was remarkable for what it was not — not classical, not Victorian, not like anything America had seen — spare, minimalistic and built of oak, a wood that, until then, no one had figured out what to do with. The following year he expanded the line and simplified the look, creating what we now recognize as Craftsman furniture.

Within a few years, Stickley was offering not just Craftsman furniture, but hardware, lighting, rugs and designs for interiors as well as complete houses, which he promoted in his “Craftsman Magazine” and sold in the showroom of his New York skyscraper, which included what may have been Manhattan’s first farm-to-table restaurant (from Craftsman Farms to a Craftsman table).

Meanwhile in Chicago, Frank Lloyd Wright had his own light bulb moment. He called it his “New Idea in Architecture.” But on his drawing for a design published in February of 1901 in “Ladies Home Journal,” he wrote “Prairie House.” Wright attracted many talented architects and designers, some of who were, surprisingly, allowed to do their own thing. They moved on to form their own firms and partnerships, and develop their own design approach, and as a result the Prairie style is very, well, varied.

Besides each having a new idea for the new century, Mucha, Stickley and Wright had another thing in common: They believed interior design (particularly their interior design) should be unified. From ceiling to floor, paper to paint, curtains to rug, everything should work in harmony to create a complete whole. For the modern homeowner, it’s hard to imagine what that unified whole might have looked like, since most of today’s old houses have been looted by past owners of their original lighting, art glass, furniture, stencils, woodwork and hardware. To help you imagine what might have been and figure out where your house fits in the Prairie/Craftsman spectrum, I offer this guide to the three turn-of-the-century styles.

Art Nouveau: This one is easy, because there aren’t any Art Nouveau houses in San Diego, although the design was incorporated into many Prairie and Craftsman houses. Louis Sullivan, mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright and Irving Gill, used Art Nouveau ornament. Tiffany lamps and metal work are Art Nouveau. Stickley designer Harvey Ellis used Art Nouveau in furniture and interior designs. Charles Rennie Mackintosh developed a Scottish version. Here in North Park, David Owen Dryden favored Art Nouveau hardware (pulls and door escutcheons), which he combined with Prairie style millwork in Craftsman bungalows.

Prairie: The overarching theme is horizontality. The hipped roof makes the house seem lower to the ground. The band of windows emphasizes the horizontal. The course of wood trim below the windows makes the second story seem lower. Inside, a band of thick wood trim along the top of the windows also emphasizes the horizontal.

Details: In general, designs (art glass, stencils, furniture, rugs, painted decoration) are geometric, not curvaceous. Molding is angular, not classical. (No ogees, if you know what those are.) Colors are earthy, natural. Exteriors are brick or stucco. Eaves are deep, often boxed-in. Here in San Diego, builders had their own spin on the style, perhaps influenced by Irving Gill. Frank Meade and Richard Requa, for example, employed a Gill-like symmetry and a deep-inset front entrance. Nathan Rigdon infused his Prairie houses with classical proportions and details, such as columns.

Layout: There’s an element of discovery as the visitor moves through the house, with rooms and vistas appearing around corners, walls and screens. Typically, there is an L-shaped plan for the principal rooms, with the fireplace at the corner of the “L” and the dining room and music room at either end. Sometimes only partial walls or a ceiling treatment set one room apart from another. Square spindles were frequently used to screen areas, such as stairways.

Philosophy: Prairie architects designed from the inside out, for the benefit of the people living in the house, not those outside looking in. The walls were a canvas to be decorated, a work of art in their own right. Prairie was democratic, available for all, not just the wealthy. It was informal, not elitist, wide open like the prairie — and the possibilities in this great country of ours, circa 1900.

Craftsman: While the Prairie house is supposed to feel open and flowing, the Craftsman bungalow is supposed to feel cozy and closed-in. In simplest terms, if it feels small, it’s a Craftsman bungalow. If it feels open and big, it’s a Prairie. (Craftsman bungalows didn’t need to be made to appear low; they were low.) On the outside, the Craftsman bungalow is wood-covered, dark, hunkered down — it blends in with nature. It accepts its unobtrusive place on the earth.

Details: Everything should appear handmade: embroidered curtains and tablecloths. Hand-knotted rugs. Objects reflected the locale of the house — wood and stone from nearby, handmade tile from local kilns, paintings of nearby landscapes by local artists (or by the homeowners), simple sturdy furniture. Unlike the Prairie style, which broke from the past, Craftsman style embraced classical (i.e. Roman or Greek) design in molding, columns and proportions.

Layout: Simplicity itself. In San Diego, the bungalow was typically laid out like a six-pack, with three bedrooms in a row on one side and the living room, dining room and kitchen on the other. The front door typically entered directly into the living room. The front porch typically ran across the entire width of the house, forming an outdoor room.

Philosophy: William Morris said, famously, that he would have nothing in his house that he did not know to be beautiful or useful. The bungalow esthetic, which grew out of the arts and crafts movement and was promoted by Stickley, tended to focus a little more on the useful, rather than the beautiful. Those beautiful things could be quite expensive, especially if bought from Stickley, but it was just fine if they were handmade by the homeowner (or looked as if they were). The Arts and Crafts movement marked the last time in America when it was cool to be humble. The Craftsman bungalow was designed to make everyone feel welcome. It appealed to the heart. It embodied comfort and home.

If 1900 marked the beginning of the Prairie, Craftsman and Art Nouveau styles, 1915 marked the beginning of the end for these trends, with the Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park introducing the world to their replacement, San Diego’s version of Spanish Colonial architecture. Or at least that’s one way to look at it. The first world war, the Spanish flu and the economic downturn of the late teens and early twenties put a damper on America’s mood as well. And it suddenly became much harder to get a drink, which can also make a fellow cranky.

While this change in mood led to a change in design, just as significantly, a 1923 change in the California building code, which required a 4-foot set back from the lot line for bungalows, provided a financial disincentive for builders to continue constructing any house with wide eaves or protruding rafter tales. The new setback rule essentially eliminated a bedroom from every 50-foot-long Craftsman bungalow, with the result being that builders switched to styles with narrower eaves — or no roof overhang at all, such as the Spanish and Tudor style. In a sense, the Prairie house and the Craftsman bungalow were legislated out of style. Or at least that’s one way to look at it.

—Contact Michael Good at [email protected].