By Michael Good | House Calls

Colonial Revival represents American values of persistence and respectability

As 20th-century house styles go, Colonial Revival is as American as apple pie. Colonial is America’s first house style — the chosen abode of George Washington and the founding fathers. It’s the go-to style whenever the country is in doubt, under threat, or just feeling patriotic.

America’s original house styles — like Craftsman or Prairie — were mere fads compared to Colonial. They were popular with builders and architects for a few years — a decade or two at most. But Colonial has proven resistant to social and economic changes; it has been adapted to bungalows and ranch houses; has survived wars and economic downturns. It’s the four-century-old style that keeps on keeping on. Like another American original, the Constitution, it can be adapted to the times and the mood of the nation. The Colonial is always open to a new interpretation.

The Colonial may be America’s favorite house style, yet your average North Park millennial likely wouldn’t recognize one if he was drinking a pint under its pedimented entablature. Part of the problem is our point of reference. George Washington didn’t sleep here. There are no old-school Colonials here. In San Diego, a “colonial” is an adobe hacienda from the 1830s. Our Colonial Revival is a Cliff May hacienda from the 1930s.

San Diego didn’t really embrace the East Coast version of the Colonial Revival until after World War I. By then, Easterners had already lost and rekindled their affection for Colonials many times over, having been seduced by sexy Italianates and having lost it to lusty Victorians. By the 1920s, when San Diegans were finally embracing the Colonial, Easterners had already experienced “revivals of revivals of revivals,” as historic house expert Kiley Wallace puts it. Wallace has seen his share of Southern California Colonials doing Mills Act investigations for Legacy 106, the local historic house research firm. He’ll share his knowledge of the builders of the style Jan. 30, as part of the latest installment of the Mission Hills Heritage annual lecture series, “Colonial Revival Hits Mission Hills.”

Colonial Revival may be America’s favorite house style, but its origins are distinctly un-American. They’re British, as were most of the Colonists. The first Colonial style was Georgian, as in King George I through IV. (And Georgian grew out of the Italian Renaissance style.) Virginia Savage McAlester, author of “A Field Guide to American Houses,” explains that Italian Renaissance style “emphasized classical details and reached England only in the mid-16th century.” By “classical,” McAlester means Greek and Roman; between roughly 1650 and 1750 in England, architects such as Inigo Jones, Christopher Wren and James Gibbs produced buildings with Greek and Roman detailing. The carpenters and builders who constructed those buildings brought the style with them to the New World.

Still other American Colonists learned the Georgian style from books. McAlester estimates there were 100 architecture tomes available to the Colonists in 1776. Some were academic, but most were “carpenter manuals showing how to construct fashionable doorways, cornices, windows, and mantels.” These American Georgians were the first “Colonials.”

Georgian style was followed by the Federal style, which was distinguished by its use of fanlights over the front door and Palladian windows throughout. During the 19th century, the Georgian and Federal styles were followed by a series of revivals, each introducing new classical elements, such as two-story porticos with double height pillars reminiscent of “Gone With The Wind.” For the amateur student of the style, Federal, Georgian, French, Dutch and the various revivals make for a dizzying assault of elements and characteristics — pediments, entablatures, porticos and polygonal projections. Add to that the confusion of columns: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. Then there’s the plethora of roof orientations: front gable, side gable, green gable … can this get any more complicated? With a little prodding, Kiley Wallace agreed to break it all down to three simple characteristics.

“The first is symmetry,” Wallace explains. “Colonials are always very symmetrical. They almost always have a central doorway.” Add the two identical front windows flanking the doorway, and you have the universal house of childhood crayon drawings. Compare this to a Craftsman- or Prairie-style house — in those types, the doorways are offset and the windows are of different sizes.

“The second thing to look for is an accentuated front doorway,” Wallace adds. In other words, there is something about the Colonial that draws your eye to the entrance. “There is an arch, or a pediment. You might find Greek revival columns, a balustrade and, almost always, sidelights.”

“The third thing,” Wallace continues, “is the windows are almost always in pairs, with multiple glazing.” Rather than the Craftsman and Prairie “Chicago-style” window, with a large picture window in the middle, flanked by two operable double-hungs, the Colonial has “multi-light windows with six-over-six or eight-over-eight.”

For better or worse, houses say something about their occupants, and Colonials are no exception. They’ve always been rooted in the past, never been modern, never been hip. Colonials have always been slightly retro, because they are slightly retro. They are a revival of a revival of a revival after all.

The Colonial projects certain respectability. Its owner has arrived, and gotten there through steadiness and persistence. Its motto might well be, “Keep calm and carry on.” There are no loud parties here, no celebrities in the pool, no paparazzi in helicopters hovering overhead. Or at least there better not be or the neighbors in the Craftsman houses will complain.

The Colonial’s design characteristics lend themselves to easy alterations of already existing floor plans. With just a simple change of the façade, builders could turn a Craftsman into a Colonial. Plan books offered many varieties of Colonial, and the plans themselves could be purchased from the publisher for a nominal fee.

In San Diego, Colonials usually came in two basic sizes: extra small and extra large. There were many one-bedroom, 500-square-foot Colonials built in the 1920s on small lots on North Park’s side streets; and there were many large two-story Colonials built on double-size lots on prominent Mission Hills thoroughfares. The big houses projected gravitas, stolidity, calm. They were popular with bankers, according to Wallace. The smaller North Park versions were the domain of aspiring bankers. Or bank tellers, perhaps?

Wallace laughs. “Maybe the janitors at the bank,” he suggests. Today, as any recent house-shopper knows, not even a pair of bank tellers could afford a one-bedroom Colonial in North Park’s West End. It would take a couple of bank presidents to buy one of today’s two-story Mission Hills Colonials or, better-yet, the pooled incomes of a bank president and a law partner with a substantial stock portfolio. The houses have stayed the same, but the economics surrounding them have certainly changed.

But we can all dream. The Mission Hills Heritage Lecture Series is as much slide show as it is TED Talk. And when it comes to firing the imagination of the American Dreamer, a picture is worth a thousand words.

In addition to Kiley Wallace’s talk on Colonial builders, Legacy 106 owner Ronald May will discuss the symbolism and social implications of the style, carpenter William Van Dusen will be talking about the interior millwork and designer Anne Kellett will cover Colonial Revival furnishings. The lecture begins at 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30, at Francis Parker School, 4201 Randolph St.

—Contact Michael Good at [email protected].