> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gray, Tom
> Sent: Friday, March 10, 2000 10:27 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: More pro-vinyl siding stuff..
>
>
> Hummm, headed for that lecture next week.  "Cheap, Quick and Easy:
> Imitative Architectural Materials, 1870-1930", Dr. Pamela Simpson,
> Washington and Lee Univ., at UALR


Here's another angle on this issue, illuminated for me from doing the
research on my Craftsman-style bungalow catalog house.  For many years these
vernacular interpretations were scorned by architectural historians as
cheap, shoddy "knock-offs."  Some of them _are_ pretty awful designs, but
the whole sweep of the arts & crafts aesthetic's promotion to the middle
class is fascinating.  I could go on and on about how thoroughly the Arts &
Crafts movement and its social living theories penetrated into American
society during the first 20 years of the 20th century through the home
economics movement, the sanitation movement, but I'll spare you.

To the point:  Ideal Arts & Crafts-style bungalows (such as those designed
by Greene and Greene) were custom architectural commissions and inordinately
expensive for the middle and lower class American since they were almost
entirely hand-crafted.  It was up to the mail order industry to bridge the
gap between the Arts and Crafts theories promoted by Stickley and Hubbard
(further popularized through periodicals like _Ladies Home Journal_, _House
and Garden_, and _House Beautiful_) and the financial capabilities of the
middle and lower class.  The whole catalog industry sprang up to provide
affordable plans and ready-cut houses that would provide stylish shelter at
a good value for the purchaser.  It was aggressive promotion by the national
periodicals that the form was established as a fashionable and highly
marketable item.  Except that you couldn't afford the "real thing."

So we created the "simulant craftsman bungalow."  This is a great term
coined by Ralph Charles Bond in his excellent unpublished masters thesis
(_The Simulant Craftsman Bungalow_, 1981, available at Avery Architectural
Library on film) to describe the attempt by builders to satisfy the demand
for an inexpensive bungalow, imitating the appearance of the expensive
craftsman bungalow as it was promoted by the leaders of the American Arts
and Crafts movement.  What would have been a solid 16" square timber became
a three-sided box that was open on the top where you couldn't see it.
Instead of true through tenons in heavy open beam-work, you'd just get a
block nailed on the end of the board where the element should have
projected.

Cheap, cheap, cheap.  A shell of its former self.  Of course, 90 years
later, that cheap wood knock-off is at least made of real wood, and we
preservationeers run around trying to save all these wonderful bungalows in
our historic districts, 75 % of which were probably bought from a catalog.
So what was one era's cheezy imitation, is the next era's prize.

EIFS brackets, anyone?
_________________________________________________
Dan Becker,  Exec. Dir.      "Conformists die, but
Raleigh Historic                   heretics live on forever"
Districts Commission                     -- Elbert Hubbard
[log in to unmask]               Proud member of Team Heretic