The suburban dream homes of yesteryear are hot items today.
New construction does not necessarily mean new design.
From the outside, many of today’s brand new residences echo the past and other lands: ancient Greece and Rome, England, France, Holland and Spain.
Fashions repeat themselves, and home designs are no different. Just wait long enough and your favorite residential style will come around again. In home design, the past frequently foretells the future.
House shoppers in 1899 might have run across a newspaper ad like this for one of the most popular styles of that era:
“FOR SALE?Beautiful Queen Anne, loaded with gingerbread, wraparound front porch, three-story turret, price $10,000.”
Elements of Victorian architecture can be found today in neo-traditional homes, which are enjoying a revival. Front porches are popular again, but the turret has disappeared and the price has ballooned to almost $200,000.
“We’ve come full circle, from the traditional homes of the late 19th Century to a renewed interest in traditional designs today,” said Kevin Kazimer, director of business development for the national architectural firm of Bloodgood Sharp Buster, which has designed many homes in the Chicago area.
What was a winner in the 20th Century could likely come back into favor in the 21st Century. This 100-year timeline of suburban housing winners of the past could well give clues to what is ahead.
Queen Anne style is what people think of as a Victorian. In the “Gay ’90s,” these homes presented a cheerful appearance because many sported multicolored paint jobs, accounting for their nickname, “Painted Ladies.”
Their front porches provided two benefits: a cool place to sit on warm nights and social interaction at a time before radio and television.
Building these elaborate residences, which combine a mix of architectural parts, was possible because of the availability of skilled craftsmen in that era.
However, the future may not hold a true Victorian revival. “Victorians are difficult to duplicate,” said Orren Pickell, a Bannockburn-based designer and builder of custom homes. “Plus, there is the maintenance factor: $10,000 for repainting every five years.”
At the turn of the century, a new style emerged that was to offer home buyers the opposite of the Victorian look.
Frank Lloyd Wright disliked Victorian homes, particularly because of the closed-in nature of the separate rooms on the first floor, which he felt kept people apart.
Wright responded with Prairie Style, noted for its external simplicity and lack of ornamentation. Characterized by low-pitched roofs, overhanging eaves and horizontal lines, Prairie style also featured an open interior floor plan, which has become standard in today’s new homes.
While Wright’s designs were on the cutting edge of modern architecture, the most popular homes in the first half of the century were the one-story bungalows in Craftsman style.
Often built for the average homeowner, bungalows were simple and functional, with front porches and gabled roofs. Bungalows became one of the most popular designs for smaller houses between 1900 and 1930, and many were built in the Chicago area.
They could be constructed on small lots because many people walked to public transportation, and garages were usually in the rear on alleys.
Home construction declined during the Depression of the 1930s and the World War II years of 1941 to 1945. But then came the postwar housing boom that transformed suburban America.
“Builders learned how to manufacture housing almost on an assembly-line basis,” said Barry Berkus of Berkus Design Studio in Santa Barbara, Calif.
Veterans formed families, and the Baby Boom generation was born. New highways paved the way for new suburban subdivisions. The dwelling of choice was the ranch. As its name implies, it had its origins in the wide open spaces of the American Southwest.
Ranches rambled. Never before had so much land been used for moderate-priced housing. A wider lot was necessary to accommodate the garages of the rapidly expanding car culture.
“In the ’50s, we were proud to have fins in the front yard,” said Berkus. “But mass-produced homes resulted in less detail and ornamentation, and the architecture suffered.”
“Before the housing boom of the 1950s, most people lived in either a palace or a box, depending on their income,” commented Gopal Ahluwalia, director of research at the National Association of Home Builders, based in Washington, D.C.
As families grew, people wanted more space. So the basic ranch began to expand. One answer was the split-level, which added a lower level, usually for a family room. The television set then moved from the living room to a more appropriate location in the family room.
The escalation in size continued in the 1970s with the increasing popularity of the two-story Colonial, a design dating from pre-Revolutionary America. It was to dominate the housing scene for the last quarter of a century.
In the Midwest, most homes being built by production builders are based on ecclectic designs, a combination of Colonial and Williamsburg, according to Al Bloom, president of Bloom & Fiorino Architects Inc., based in Oak Brook. “These homes are characterized by horizontal siding, shutters, six-panel front doors and a boxy look,” said Bloom.
The NAHB has documented the bulking up of housing.
Fifty years ago, the average single-family home had 1,400 square feet of living area. Today, the average new home is 2,200 square feet. Two-story residences have grown in popularity, accounting for 50 percent of new homes now but only 17 percent back in 1970.
The return to neo-Colonial architecture was not what futurists had predicted. They thought that people would live in aluminum-and-stainless-steel geodesic domes. These ultra-modern dome homes were touted as economical, fireproof and weather-resistant.
Many of these far-out ideas sprang from the fertile mind of inventer R. Buckminster Fuller in the mid-1950s. But apparently his crystal ball was a bit cloudy.
Rather than zooming ahead into fantasy, new home designs in the 1980s and 1990s retreated further into the mists of the past for inspiration.
Far from looking “modern,” they recall the nostalgia of yesteryear. From the outside many of them look like grandmother’s house.
“Today, people don’t want to live in outer space; they want to live in the house where they grew up. They want to return to an age of simpler times,” said Kasimer of Bloodgood Sharp Buster.
One Chicago architect maintains that all houses are traditional because they borrow from what has been built before. Howard Decker of DLK Architecture noted that a “powerful neo-traditional movement” is under way.
But recycling of old architectural styles is not the only force shaping homes now. “Increasingly, what homes look like is dictated by governmental regulations that control the bulk and dimensions of new residences. Many suburbs, especially those that want to preserve an old look, have design guidelines and monotony codes,” said Decker.
He pointed out that architecture is only the outer four inches of a building. But that outer shell can be all-important.
Kazimer of Bloodgood Sharp Buster said that home designs are driven by two forces: the developer, who has a certain look in mind that will cater to a certain market; and the municipality, which has a longer-range vision and is considering the future of the town.
“Then the architect steps in and tries to blend the two views,” said Kazimer.
If the builder proposes a unique project, the community may have to amend ordinances that have been on the books for decades. So change can be slow.
While some new developments, such as Prairie Crossing in Grayslake, Centennial Crossing in Vernon Hills and the residential redevelopment of Glenview Naval Air Station, have revived the front porches of 100 years ago, Greystone in Gurnee is offering a whole spectrum of historic styles.
The Hoffman Homes subdivision of 91 homes is showcasing traditional styles that they call Prairie, Federal, Colonial, New England and Southern Plantation.
The architect for Greystone was Jeff Letzter of Direct Design Ltd. Architects in McHenry. “The true architectural styles of yesteryear don’t fit today’s lifestyle, so we had to modify them,” he said. One of the challenges was to include attached garages but to minimize them so that they do not detract from the period architecture.
Mark Englund, a partner in HomeStyles, a St. Paul, Minn.-based firm selling mail-order home plans confirmed that people want traditional designs. “Our top-selling plans are a throwback to the past. People want the look of earlier in the century.”
Of more than 20,000 plans sold for an average price of $500 last year, 88 percent had covered front porches, 80 percent had half-circle windows on the facade, 68 percent had dormers on the roof and 60 percent had shutters.
The country look was the most popular design (48 percent), followed by what HomeStyles refers to as Southern Colonial (28 percent), Federal (12 percent), Spanish/Floridian (8 percent) and Victorian (4 percent).
He stressed that HomeStyles plans are being purchased by people who want to build their own home and may not be satisfied with what local builders are offering.
The modern, or contemporary, look is not in vogue right now, noted Englund.
However, architect David Hovey would not agree. Hovey’s Optima Inc., based in Glencoe, has built a number of projects in contemporary style, and he and his family reside in a glass house.
He noted that in Europe, “everything is ultra contemporary. They want something new because the are surrounded by magnificent old buildings, structures that may go back 2,000 years. In America, we go back only about 300 years.”
Designing custom homes relies even more on inspiration from the past. Custom builder Pickell praised European homes of 200 or 300 years ago. “They had an eye for balance. Even the Romans had it.”
He noted that curb appeal is less important as you go down the line in price. “Architecture is not very significant in less expensive homes, but in the custom market the exterior is critical. People buy before they even go inside.”
“What you want to say about yourself as people walk by is reflected in the facade of your house,” said Joan Pomaranc, program director for the Chicago office of the American Institute of Architects.
Explaining the appeal of traditional designs, she commented: “When a child draws a house, it suggests the pseudo neo Victorian look. It’s comforting. Everybody likes bay windows and front porches.” Today’s open floor plans are another throwback to the past. “The openness is like the cabins of 300 years ago.”
Alice Sinkevitch, executive director of the AIA in Chicago, added: “Most home buyers can’t identify styles of architecture, but they know what they like. In the back of their mind they have an image of a house they loved as a child. It is what a house should look like.”
Appearing in Life magazine’s May issue is its 1999 Dream House, which features a gabled roof and evokes the simplicity of a farmhouse. It was designed by the Minneapolis-based architectural firm of Mulfinger, Susanka, Mahady & Partners.
“People are not satisfied with today’s starter castles. Because builders are pressured to build the most square footage at the least cost, the result is frequently very bland; anything interesting costs money,” said Sarah Susanka, author of “The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live.”
While the neo-traditional look?most frequently characterized by street-friendly front porches?has made inroads in the Chicago area, architect Bloom noted, “People don’t socialize that way anymore. The jury is still out on neo-traditional.”
Berkus also is not a fan of neo-traditional planning with detached garages off an alley. “With today’s concern for security, alleys don’t make a lot of sense.”
What’s ahead in the next millennium?
“Typical regional styles will spread out to all parts of the country,” said the NAHB’s Ahluwalia, who expects more changes on the outside of homes than inside in the next 10 to 15 years.
Bloom believes what is popular today will stay in vogue with Baby Boomers. “But it’s anybody’s guess what Generation Xers will want.”
“Chicago can discover clues for its homes of the future by standing back and examining its homes of the past,” advised Berkus.