The Arts & Crafts and Prairie Styles

The rise of mass production in the late 1800's led to large quantities of cheaply produced furniture and other household objects. It also made possible the inexpensive wooden "bric-a-brac" that covered so many American homes in the 1880's and 1890's.

The late 19th century saw a reaction against this production of "soul-less" objects. Groups of people in Britain, Europe and America began advocating the learning of handcrafts so that we could each have our own "simple" and "honest" objects in our daily lives. From this the Arts and Crafts movement was born.

Prairie style architecture was the creation of Chicago architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright observed that the Midwest was essentially a land of the horizontal. We have few mountains or other towering natural landmarks so our homes should reflect this horizontality and their designs should unite them harmoniously with their surroundings.

This is the A.C. and Margaret Beeson house on Warren Street, built around 1910. Arts and Crafts and Prairie are distinct styles, but in Huntington County they were most often used together. The two styles have much in common. One is the use of natural looking materials. Unglazed brick and tile and the use of earth tones for painted wood trim are typical of both. Also, a general emphasizing of the horizontal is common to both styles. As we see here, one way of accenting the horizontal is the use of a low pitched hipped roof with deep overhanging eaves that reach outward. Casement windows were arranged in long bands to show a parallel with the horizon. Flat dormers, called shed dormers, with low sloping roofs are preferred to gabled dormers because they don't interrupt the flow of the roof line. Large, low chimney masses, exposed rafter ends and carpenter- made braces contributed to a look of honest hand craftsmanship.

Here above is another brick example, this one on Cherry Street in Huntington, from about 1910. Note the low, heavy chimney mass, deep eaves and band of casement windows, all emphasizinghorizontality. The hipped roof features a shed dormer.

This is a frame example of Arts and Crafts. The pointed gable on the front gives the building a somewhat vertical emphasis. This is down played by the two (2) low sloping shed dormers and by the wide "eye-brow-like" awning above the door. Note also the low sweep (front to back) of the overall roof line and the squat chimney. This house on Warren Street in Huntington was built about 1920.

The Andrews Public Library of 1926 has the low sloped, hipped roof and deep eaves we expect, as well as the horizontal bands of windows. The eaves are supported by exceptionally fine Arts and Crafts brackets.

SUMMARY

Huntington County builders combined the use of natural building materials and horizontally composed building designs to give us many uniquely Midwestern structures.

Proceed to the Art Moderne Exhibit.