Bay Area home styles.

I am going to be stepping up on my blogging.  I've got to get optimized into the search engines.  The way to do that is to get content out there.

I want to address home styles here in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I think that it is important for the Realtor and the client to be on the same page.  I have studied homes in the San Francisco Bay area since 2002.

Storybook Style. These homes were designed by architects who served in Europe during the first World War.  These young architects brought back images of the Old World and incorporated it into their designs.  Architects Carr Jones, William Raymond Yelland, Hugh Comstock, Harry Oliver and Walter W. Dixon were masters of this design style.  The style originated out of Hollywood and spread out across the United States.  The San Francisco Bay Area has some of the finest examples.

These homes were intended to look centuries old when built new. Pigment was added to the stucco and the homes were never intended to be painted.  A storybook home is small in actual scale but designed with forced perspective at times to make them appear to be much larger. The term Storybook Style was coined by author Arrol Gellner in his book of that same name.  Read more about it  Click here to be taken to Amazon.com to purchase Storybook Style:America's Whimsical Homes of the Twenties by Arrol Gellner

Mission Revival Style These homes originated out of San Diego and the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park. Mission revival pays honor to the restoration efforts at the time of the California Missions but during colonial Spanish California. These homes often have red clay tiled roofs and Spanish tile accents.

Inside the living rooms often had cathedral ceilings with large timber beams. These beams are often adorned with stenciled embellishments.

These home have been labeled by uninformed Realtors as Lovely Mediterraneans. This mislabeling of the homes has given license for people to paint these homes in Mediterranean colors. These homes are intended to mimic California Missions made of whitewashed adobe walls. The only real proper colors are white and tan in shades of what adobe would have been found in.

For more information about Mission revival I suggest the following book.   Click here to be taken to Amazon.com to purchase Red Tile Style: Americas Spanish Revival Architecture by Arrol Gellner.

Art Deco Style These homes are all about the optimistic world of the future from the 1939 New York Worlds Fair. Streamline Moderne, a subset of Art Deco features buildings that looked like ships and trains in motion.  South Beach in Miami is all about a tropical flavor of Art Deco.

Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the best designers with the famous "Fallingwater" house and the Marin County Civic Center

Most Art Deco has common features such as porthole windows and step backs. I would recommend reading the following book. Click here to be taken to Amazon.com to purchase The Art Deco House by Adrian Tinniswood

Craftsman Style The Craftsman style of homes it's all about the craftsman ship of the home.  Fireplaces made of rounded river rocks or clinker bricks. Stained glass windows let in color filtered light artfully into the rooms.

California brothers Henry Mather Greene & Charles Sumner Greene were the masters of this design style.  They are most famous for the Gamble House in Pasadena.  Locally near the UC Berkeley campus is another of their amazing designs the Thorsen House.

Click here to be taken to Amazon.com to purchase Bungalow: The Ultimate Arts & Crafts Home by Jane Powell

Ranch Style Soldiers returning from World War II wanting to stay in California created a building boom. Cities such as San Lorenzo were built at an amazing number and a lightning pace. These home pioneered modern tract home building as we know it today. Builder developers offered only three to four floor plans for a community and would flip flop mirror image plans to create a little variety to the street scape. Homes were built  by the thousands and the economy of scale allowed the homes to be affordable to the returning soldiers and their new families.

For the first time the automobile garage moved in great numbers from being detached sheds in the backyard to being up front as a main part of the homes architecture.

If you would like to read more about Ranch style homes, I suggest Click Here to be taken to Amazon.com to purchase Ranch House Style by Katherine Samon

Mid-Century Modern In the years leading into World War II the government wanting to conserve building materials put a challenge to architects to design homes using minimum materials. The architects would make case study homes showcasing design techniques that used these principles.

These homes most often had a roof that was also the interior ceiling with no attic, thus saving materials.  Mid-Century homes by default often had vaulted ceilings in all the rooms.

Joseph Eichler, a builder developer built some of the most famous neighborhoods of this style.  With Eichler the homes were all about indoor and outdoor California living.  Eichler chose building locations on ridgetops with views that made this California lifestyle so appealing.

Joseph Eichler used well-known architects:
Robert Anshen
Claude Oakland & Associates
Jones & Emmons
A. Quincy Jones
Raphael Soriano

Click here to be taken to Amazon.com to purchase Eichler: Modernism Rebuilds the American Dream by Paul Adamson

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