Arts and Crafts Styles: Craftsman, Prairie and Four-Square

J. M. Edgar, CRC

Photo: Lancaster County Register of Deeds Craftsman Clapboard Bungalow The classic clapboard 1-1/2 story Craftsman bungalow on Park Street in the Near South. The Arts & Crafts period from the turn of the 20th century to World War II is unique in American architectural history for two reasons. First, it was the only period in which houses that ordinary people could afford were enriched with all manner of finely crafted detail. Rich wood trim, art glass and colorful tile mosaics has been used in houses for a long time, but only the Rothschild and Rockefellers could afford them. The rest of us had to do without — at least until the Arts & Crafts movement made rich detailing a mainstay of home design.

Second, all of the Arts & Crafts architectural styles — Prairie, Craftsman, Mission, Four-Square — are purely American styles. Unlike previous house styles that were adopted from European models, Arts & Crafts homes are a wholely American in origin — so far the first and only uniquely American styles. No other nation, with the exception of our Canadian neighbor has anything like them.

If you are fortunate enough to own an Arts & Crafts home, you own a gem — a uniquely American house full of hand-crafted details that are rarely seen in modern housing. That 6,000 square foot Mac-Mansion that your boss just bought is full of 1/2" gypsum board walls, painted MDF mouldings and carpeting over OSB subflooring. Yours is full of thick, plaster walls, varnished quarter-sawn oak with oak strip flooring over a thick pine subfloor. Of course, your floor squeaks and his doesn't, but you have to put up with a few little quirks to live in a work of art.

Arts & Crafts Philosophy

It all began with the Industrial Revolution and ended with the 2nd World War.

Victorian architecture was largely a celebration of the mass production made possible by industrialization. Inexpensive turned mouldings could be made by machines in previously unheard-of quantities. So they were used in great quantities to embellish Victorian homes — to the point that in the late Victorian era the shear amount of elaborate decoration began to border on the ridiculous. (For more information on Victorian house styles, see: Victorian Styles: Queen Anne, Italianate, Gothic Revival and Eastlake.)

By the final years of the 19th century, people had had enough of mechanization. Many were rebelling against the numbing imensity of massive industrialization. The rebellion began in England, where industrialization was the most advanced and its side effect the most onerous. Largely inspired by the writings of John Ruskin, an influential moralist and social critic of the time, the Arts & Crafts movement was a rejection of the dehumanizing effects of the early Industrial Age, the factory system and mass production processes. Earlier days of villages, craft shops and artisans were thought healthier and more humanizing than assembly-line work in smoke-shrouded factory towns.

The movement failed in its main aim: the Industrial Revolution did not go away, or even slow down very much. But before finally dying out around 1910 the Arts & Crafts movement spawned a stunning revolution in architecture and design that dominated the 20th century until the 1940s. Since this period is when most prewar Nebraska homes were built, the Arts & Crafts home styles are generously represented in our older urban neighborhoods.

It lasted about 50 years, then, with the end of the 2nd World War, it died. Challenged to build huge numbers of houses to meet the ravenous Postwar appetite for new housing, homebuilders quickly abandoned the hand-crafted detailing of the Arts & Crafts period. It was just too time consuming and had to go in favor of mass production techniques that built as many as 5,000 sturdy new homes in a single day. It was sad to see such wonderful craftsmanship go by the wayside, but it was time. It was a new era. American had changed, and so had its housing needs. (For more on postwar modern housing, see Postwar Architecture: Cape Cod, Colonial and Ranch.)

Ancestor Styles

No architectural style is born in isolation. It borrows from earlier styles, emphasizing some features, deemphasizing others until a new, identifiable style emerges. The Arts & Crafts styles are no exception. While the Arts & Crafts Movement provided the philosophy and rationale, the nuances of the architecture were taken from a great many sources: late Victorian shingle-style and other purely American influences such as Shaker and Southwest Spanish Mission and some distinctly Asian influences, particularly the broad horizontal lines, low roofs and use of well-crafted natural materials characteristic of the traditional Japanese house.

Photo: Lancaster County Register of Deeds Craftsman Bungalow Another classic Craftsman bungalow on Sheridan. Slightly more upscale that the example above, all of the typical design elements are represented: Low hip roof, open rafter tails, heavy brick piers supporting the porch roof, and art glass windows in the hip dormer. The Craftsman, Prairie and Four-Square styles also borrow freely from each other. Although distinct and identifiable styles, with some common characteristic features such low pitched hip roofs, minimal decoration, and extensive hand crafting, they each have elements unique to their style. But they blend into each other to such an extent that it is often impossible to cleanly classify a particular house as one or the other style. A Craftsman bungalow with Prairie elements is as common as a Prairie house with Craftsman elements. They also borrowed freely from Art Deco and other "modernism" decorative styles — and just Sears Model 102 House Kit Sears, Roebuck & Co. sold thousands of Arts & Crafts kit houses from 1908 to 1940. They arrived in two boxcars and included a 75 page leather-bound assembly manual. as freely were borrowed from by modernist designers. So while these uniquely American styles are identifiable and excellent examples of each can be found in Nebraska communities, most Arts & Crafts era houses are hybrids of the three main styles — incorporating many of the best features of each.

Craftsman

Craftsman homes are distinguished by quality construction and simple but handsome exterior and interior details. Nearly every city and town in the state has a few Craftsman houses. The most popular Craftsman style home was the 1-1/2 story bungalow. In fact, for most people, "bungalow" and "Craftsman house" are synonymous terms. Bungalows were modest, inexpensive and low-profile houses constructed of brick, wood siding, or stone, with contrasting wood bands or courses. Characteristically, they possess broad gables or hip roofs, usually with one or two large front dormers, decorative brackets under the eaves and open rafter tails, prominent chimneys, and simplified window sashes. Craftsman houses feature open front porches with heavy masonry or wood piers. Windows are abundant and distinctive: "4 over 1" (4 panes in the upper sash to one pane in the lower sash) or "6 over 1" double-hung. These are now commonly called "Craftsman" windows. Bungalow designs were spread by the practice of using mail-order plans available from illustrated catalogs. A variety of firms offered pre-fabricated homes, which were shipped by rail and assembled on site by the owners or local builders.

Interiors are composed of airy rooms with simple surfaces of plaster and wood. Rooms are often divided by low wood and glass partitions rather than walls. In addition, art glass might be used throughout the interior in dividers and cabinet doors — more likely in architect-designed houses than in builder-designed or kit houses. The front door or a window facing the front of the house would typically be glazed with a stained glass art work of some kind.

Prairie House This house in South Lincoln was built in 1991 in the Prairie Style by the current owner. Its kinship to the Craftsman style is very evident, but it is typically less rectangular and often organized around a central chimney. Prairie houses featured very strong horizontal lines emphasized by flat or low roofs with extended eaves. Unlike Prairie style houses that were almost always designed by an architect, Craftsman houses, like Four-Squares (see below) were "just built" — often from widely available pattern books. A builder got comfortable with a certain style and floor plan and built the same house with minor variations in detail over and over again — often on the same block. (For more information on how most pre-war homes were built see A Brief History of Homebuilding.)

Prairie

The defining characteristics of Arts & Crafts interiors are openness, light, distinct horizontal lines, handsome, high-quality materials and lots of hand crafted glass-, stone- and wood-work. The layout of a Craftsman interior was largely dictated by common sense and a drive for simplicity in reaction to Victorian excess. Long sight lines gave the viewer a sense that the house was larger than it actually was — a technique still used today to make small houses seem more spacious (See architect Sarah Susanka's "Not So Big House" design philosophy for 21st century housing that has rapidly become a philosophy of living well amid beautiful surroundings). It is not uncommon to be able to look completely through an Arts & Crafts house from front to back.

Defining a Four-Square

American Four Square Boxy Shape: The house is nearly a cube, often slightly deeper than wide to better fit narrow city lots, with two full storeys and an attic with large dormers.

Hipped Roof: Exceptions exist, but most Four-Squares feature a hipped or pyramidal roof with wide overhangs on all sides. Rafter ends are typically exposed.

Wide Front Porch of the type architects call a "piazza" that extends the full width of the house, but rarely wraps to either side.

Large Windows Grouped windows became popular with this style, admitting plenty of light. Usually double-hung with single large panes in the bottom sash and vertical divided panes in the upper.

Minimalist Style: There are Four-Squares with art glass, bays, and tiled roofs, but in general the “style” of the house is subtly announced in the use of simplified motifs. The house's condensed floor plan made use of all available space. A single living room replaced the front and rear parlors, entry hall, and library characteristic of the Victorian house. The living room always had a fireplace, often set in a niche called the "inglenook". It opened directly into the dining room, which also served as a multi-purpose family room. The dividing wall usually was only five feet high so the rooms were connected visually. The kitchen connected to the dining room through a swinging door that provided easy access but kept food odors out of the rest of the house. (These have usually been removed now that kitchen ventilation is available, and most are lost, but the swinging door hardware often remains attached to the door jamb.)

The Prairie School attempted to refine American housing by designing houses with low horizontal lines and open interior spaces. Rooms were often divided by leaded glass panels rather than walls. Both American Southwest and Japanese influences are most apparent in this Arts & Crafts style. Furniture was either built-in or specially designed. This new style of housing was coined the prairie style after a 1901 article in Ladies Home Journal by Frank Lloyd Wright entitled, "A Home in a Prairie Town." The first Prairie houses were usually plaster with wood trim or sided with horizontal board and batten. Later Prairie homes used concrete block. The spacious, open floor plans of Prairie homes took on many forms: Square, L-shaped, T-shaped, Y-shaped, and even pinwheel-shaped. The style was popularized by pattern books, but few Prairie style homes were built without the involvement of an Architect. They never received the wide-spread builder acceptance of the Craftsman and Four-Square styles, and are consequently much less common.

The American Four-Square

In 1890 there were no Four-Square houses in Nebraska. By 1914 there were thousands. Where the style came from is still somewhat a mystery. The Craftsman and Prairie styles can be traced to specific architectural schools or historical antecedents. But the Photo: Lancaster County Register of Deeds American Four Square An American Four-Square house in brick and stucco on Harrison Avenue in South Lincoln. Four-Square style seems to have no such precise parentage: no renown architectural advocates, no underlying philosophy, no school of thought. It just happened.

Arts & Crafts Resources

Associations

Historic Chicago Bungalow Association

Twin Cities Bungalow Club

Arts & Crafts Interiors

Thomas Strangeland, Artist Craftsman Beautiful and authentic period furniture (see photo below).

Ephraim Pottery Arts & Crafts style pottery.

Jax Rugs Reproduction period carpets and rugs.

Mission Studio Fine furniture and lighting in the Arts & Crafts style.

Modern Bungalow Colorado's largest collection of authentic Arts & Crafts and craftsman home furnishings.

Tile Restoration Center Reproduction Arts & Crafts tiles.

The Craftsman Home Arts & Crafts furniture, lighting, ceramics, artwork, textiles, metalwork and interior design services.

More resources

Publications

Bungalow Shop Books

American Bungalow Magazine

Style 1900 Magazine

Arts & Crafts Homes Magazine Some believe that it appeared when builders squared off the Folk Victorian house, stripped it of its elaborate ornamentation, lowered the roof pitch, extended the eaves and added Arts & Crafts-influenced interior features. (In fact, Northeast Lincoln still has numerous examples of houses that are clearly transitional between late Victorian and the emerging four-square style — neither one or the other but containing bits of both.) Others feel the Four-Square is little more than the two story version of the Craftsman bungalow house. Still others see distinct Prairie influences in the large rooms and open floorplan; but there is also evidence that the open plan four-square house influenced the Prairie style rather than the other way 'round. We suspect that a great many different influences combined with a large dose of Midwestern common sense intersected to create this distinctive house that has become one of the most widespread and recognizable of American home styles.

The American Four-Square is plain, unassuming and spacious. It is a simple square two-story house with a low-pitched, hipped roof and widely overhanging eaves. Its square or nearly square footprint is perfect for making the most efficient use of narrow city lots. The term "four-square" comes from its square shape and interior layout. Typically, each floor contains four rooms, one neatly tucked into each corner. On the first floor you will find an entry foyer, living room, dining room, and kitchen. Upstairs, three bedrooms and a bath all politely sit in their own corners.

Photo: Lancaster County Register of Deeds Four Square Transition This transitional house on Sewell Street still has many elements of the Victorian Shingle Style, including the complex roof and obvious Victorian chimneys. But the basic lines of the American Four-Square that it will become over the next decade or so are clearly visible, especially the characteristic boxy shape. Arranging each floor in quadrants eliminated the need for long hallways and made the most efficient use of interior space. Simple, symmetrical Four-Square homes were less costly to build than earlier, more complicated houses with protruding wings and complex roof lines. The houses are incredibly energy efficient and often designed so that the upstairs and downstairs were distinct heating zones separated by a door at the top or bottom of the stairs. The downstairs was heated by day, and upstairs at night.

Large tracts of Four-Squares exist in older Lincoln neighborhoods, particularly in the old "streetcar suburbs" in the Near South, but the design was universal and can be found in remote farmhouses as well as in homes in the urban core of nearly all Nebraska cities. The Four-Square was a popular mail-order era style along with the Craftsman bungalow. Sears alone offered a dozen different kits and other manufacturers as many as twenty. It arrived crated in a boxcar with a "free" assembly manual and all the parts pre-cut and numbered for "easy assembly" (uh-huh).

Four-Square houses were built with a variety of exterior finishes, including brick and narrow-strip wood clapboard siding. A few feature shingle siding or stucco, but these are relatively rare in Nebraska. The second story was often finished in a different siding than the first - shingles over clapboard, for example. A wood band usually separated the two treatments. Its centered or off-centered front entrance was the focal point of the front facade, and it often had a front and sometimes side-hipped dormers in its pyramid-shaped roof. The interior and exterior spaces of these houses were usually linked by a full-width first-floor front porch with massive, square porch supports.

Arts & Crafts Interiors

Morris Chair The slatted Morris Chair and Ottoman, an Arts & Crafts period icon. The defining characteristics of Arts & Crafts interiors are openness, light, distinct horizontal lines, handsome, high-quality materials and lots of hand crafted glass-, stone- and wood-work. The layout of a Craftsman interior was largely dictated by Photo: Taunton Press Inc. Craftsman Interior The Arts & Crafts interior showing typical elements: Fireplace, built-in storage, wood-strip floors and lots of windows. The floor plan is typical of a Four-Square or bungalow house. The fixed lite windows with transoms above are unusual and probably replaced the original double-hung windows. common sense and a drive for simplicity in reaction to Victorian excess. Long sight lines gave the viewer a sense that the house was larger than it actually was — a technique still used today to make small houses seem more spacious (See architect Sarah Susanka's "Not So Big House" design philosophy for 21st century housing that has rapidly become a philosophy of living well amid beautiful surroundings). It is not uncommon to be able to look completely through an Arts & Crafts house from front to back.

The house's condensed floor plan made use of all available space. A single living room replaced the front and rear parlors, entry hall, and library characteristic of the Victorian house. The living room always had a fireplace, often set in a niche called the "inglenook". It opened directly into the dining room, which also served as a multi-purpose family room. The dividing wall usually was only five feet high so the rooms were connected visually. The kitchen connected to the dining room through a swinging door that provided easy access but kept food odors out of the rest of the house. (These have usually been removed now that kitchen ventilation is available, and most are lost, but the swinging door hardware often remains attached to the door jamb.)

Photo: Thomas Strangeland, Artist Craftsman Craftsman Interior The Craftsman living room. Extensive built-ins to reduce the need for furniture were a revolt against the over-furnished rooms of the Victorian era. Less furniture also contributed to the airy and open feel of the house. The middle-class housewife of the Craftsman era did not usually have full-time servants and would be doing most of the domestic chores herself, as well as watching the children and taking care of the garden. These added roles made it important that the kitchen be integrated into the main house with easy sight lines into the dining and living rooms as well as into the back yard. The sink centered on a back window is a Arts & Crafts kitchen feature that has become the enduring custom for all American kitchens. Commonly, the butler's pantry of the Victorian Era was replaced with built-in dining room cabinetry. The kitchen, separated from the main life of the house in Victorian times, became the gathering point of the house, often with a built in breakfast "nook".

Photo: American Bungalow Craftsman Dining Room Typical built-in cabinetry in an Arts & Crafts dining room. Furniture was typically oak and dark, but other native woods such as elm and maple were also used (usually painted). Arts & Crafts color schemes kept the subtle earth tones of the Victorians but in a more monochromatic palette as opposed to the kaleidoscope of contrasting colors on the Victorian home. Colors were often specified by the architect and incorporated into the final plaster coat rather than being painted on. The walls were banded in wood, often at several heights: at the ceiling, above and below the windows and at the base of the wall — a feature unabashedly borrowed from the traditional Japanese house. The banding gave the house a distinct horizontal aspect, visually enlarging it (and discouraging hanging pictures — most Craftsman designers thought pictures were an unnecessary adornment to an already perfectly decorated house). Final plaster coats often contained sand to give them a rough coat to better reflect light and to discourage wallpaper, a Victorian holdover that designers also hated. Built-in cabinets made the home more functional by minimizing the need for furniture. Less furniture contributed to the open, uncluttered, airy look of the house.

Arts & Crafts Kitchens

The Arts & Crafts era was the beginning of built-in kitchen cabinets to replace movable tables and cupboards. In terms of modern kitchen design, these were primitive and not very functional by today's standards, but some cabinets were better than no cabinets. Photo: Midcontinent Cabinetry 1930s Kitchen The Arts & Crafts period saw the beginning of the modern built-in kitchen. This is a reproduction using Midcontinent cabinetry in Thermofoil with chrome-edged Formica countertops, accessories and melamine dishware appropriate for the period.

prairie Kitchen Abundant natural light, Arts & Crafts interior details and soapstone countertops enhance this modern Prairie kitchen. Arts & Crafts kitchens incorporated a number of distinctive door and drawer styles. Often the cabinets were painted. But wood was also left in its natural state or stained and varnished. Oak, elm, maple, and ash were commonly used with oak and elm being by far the predominant woods. A built in drop-down ironing board was a standard feature. Most have been converted to cup and mug cabinets.

Today's 36" height became the standard for countertops about this time, although heights of 32" to 38" are not uncommon. Cabinets were often sized by architects to the house owners. Large windows were common in Arts & Crafts kitchens, reducing the space available for wall cabinets. Undercabinet lights were not invented yet, so abundant ceiling lights were used to provide working or task lighting (although they largely failed to do so). To ensure enough light, at least in the daytime, sinks and stoves were usually located near windows. (Amazingly, the kitchen lighting problem was not actually solved until the advent of small fluorescent undercabinet fixtures in the 1950s.) The Varied Appearance of Oak
Photo: J. M. Edgar

Oak boards How oak is sawn affects its appearance and price. Rift oak is characterized by straight, close set, parallel grain; quartersawn by rift grain with perpendicular "flecks" (sometimes called "flakes"). The darker the wood is stained, the more obvious the flecks become. Flat-sawn oak has a coarse arched grain. Oak Sawing Diagram Flat or plain sawn is the most common cut because it produces the most usable wood, but it is rarely seen in Arts & Crafts furnishings or cabinets. Quartersawn and riftsawn oak wastes more wood and is therefore pricier, but much more authentic.

Cabinets: Photo: J. M. Edgar Craftsman Doors Typical Arts & Crafts cabinet door styles often reflect the grid patterns in period window sashes. The door on the left is rift-sawn oak. The other two are plain-sawn and, therefore, not as authentic. Craftsman cabinets are very plain but made of well figured, high quality wood. The color and grain of the wood is considered all the decoration needed. The doors are flat 1- or 2-panel doors with square, unadorned frames — clearly influenced by Shaker design. The wood of choice is usually red oak either rift cut or quartersawn. Although major cabinet manufacturers use flat sawn oak in most of their Craftsman cabinet doors, it is not actually authentic to the period. Elm and chestnut are also good choices. Maple was used, but it was usually painted. Today Thermofoil is a good substitute for painted Craftsman cabinets.

Craftsman Countertop A stone look laminate counter top with wood edge banding to match the cabinetry. Bivel House, Lincoln, Nebraska Countertops: Countertops were usually soapstone or, in later years, laminates, typically with wood banding on the edges. Granite and artificial stone will work if the color is kept dark to look a little like soapstone. Slate countertops were used, but rarely. Zinc-plated steel is also an option (or dull stainless that looks like zinc plating). Ceramic tile was not often used except in the Southwest, but stone tiles are appropriate.

Flooring: Craftsman Painted Kitchen Painted Arts & Crafts kitchen with shallow custom cabinetry made to fit the space. The bump-out at the sink allows the use of an inexpensive standard sink and full-size faucet. For flooring, strip wood — usually red oak, stone tile — especially slates, or true linoleum are the first choices. Vinyl sheet flooring can simulate linoleum and modern laminate flooring to simulate the look of wide plank wood is also an option. Sometimes wood floors were painted. Cork was also used, primarily in the East.

Moldings: Moldings are plain, but of handsome, well-figured wood. Heavy angled crown treatment is inappropriate, although common in reproduction kitchens. Flat ceiling molding is more appropriate. Base molding should be deep, at least 5", and at least 3/4" thick. Banding around the room at the top of the windows is common. The banding forms the top casing of the windows and doors and contributes to the horizontal feel of the room.

Most Requested Feature: We have never seen an original Arts & Crafts kitchen with a glass door. But glass doors were common in built-in dining room break fronts. Kitchen designers simply adopted the style of of these glass doors and Craftsman windows to kitchen cabinets. It may not be original, but it is authentic, and the most requested kitchen feature of Arts & Crafts kitchen renovations. Put a little low-voltage light inside the cabinets, and you have a built in display case for grandma's German china.

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