Due to the many diffent architecural styles used in the building of homes in Southern California over the past 200 years, and the numerous questions I receive each day related to them, each week I’ll define one specific style of architecture. My hope is that this will provide you with a better understanding of the homes of the past, present and future.

This week we’ll focus on the Craftsman style home, which flourished in the United States from 1900 to 1930. It was popularized by architect and furniture designer Gustav Stickley. In his magazine, The Craftsman, Stickley said, “a house reduced to it’s simplest form… its low, broad proportions and absolute lack of ornamentation gives it a character so natural and unaffected that it seems to blend with any landscape.”

The style, which was also widely billed as the “California bungalow” by architects such as Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene, featured overhanging eaves, a low-slung gabled roof, and wide front porches framed by pedestal-like tapered columns. Material often included stone, rough-hewn wood, and stucco. Many homes have wide front porches across part of the front, supported by columns.

All Craftsman homes share a unifying design approach, which includes:
- A low pitched roof, gabled or hipped.
- Deep, overhanging eaves.
- Exposed roof rafters or beams, sometimes with decorative braces.
- Windows featuring many small panes.
- Full or partial width porches featuring battered, square columns.
- One or one-and-a-half stories tall.

The style is characterized by simplicity and an easy informality. Craftsman houses emphasize the horizontal rather than the vertical. Those long sloping rooflines and wide overhangs seem to nestle the homes into their surroundings. Porches blur the difference between indoors and out.