TUDOR ARTS & CRAFTS HOUSES

THE MELDING OF TWO STYLES WITH SIMILAR ROOTS, 1890–1920. By Patricia Poore

English-inspired houses are part of the same architectural movement that spawned the English Queen Anne Revival style, American Queen Anne houses, the Shingle Style, and Tudor Revival. All mark a transition between late-Victorian sensibility and the beginning of modern architecture—which includes houses of the Arts & Crafts movement. Earlier American Tudor houses could be academic, with flattened facades and no half-timbering. Arts & Crafts Tudor is more playful and includes such elements as over-scaled brackets and knee braces, decorative half-timbering, and pergolas. Despite steep roofs, these houses tend to be horizontal, whereas the suburban (e.g., “Stockbroker Tudor”) houses that followed often have vertical emphasis.

Tudor styles took hold here ca. 1905, concurrent with the American Arts & Crafts movement. Architects working in the Tudor and Arts & Crafts idioms were dipping from the same well. Many Craftsman houses and Tudor Revivals share the same old-world precedents, especially elements copied from the late-medieval and Tudor periods in England. Hallmarks of both residential styles include halftimbering and projecting bays, diamondpane windows, steep roofs covered with graduated slates or shingled “thatch,” and flattened Tudor arches. Inside, they share high oak wainscots, ceiling beams, important hearths, and inglenooks. In most cases, the style was a true revival, not pure in its mimicry. Late medieval details were mixed with finer Elizabethan conventions, just as elements might have been borrowed from both thatched cottages and stone manors.