How this L.A. suburb fell in love with Craftsman homes

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When Annette Yasin and her husband, Tom, moved to Pasadena from Michigan much than a decennary ago, they purchased a condo adjacent Bungalow Heaven, a 16-block country northeast of Old Town known for its important postulation of Craftsman bungalows. After regular walks successful the neighborhood, the mates came crossed a location connected Mar Vista Avenue and rapidly fell successful love.

The residence, known arsenic the Dr. Robert H. Sutton Bungalow, is simply a large illustration of what makes Craftsman architecture truthful seductive to truthful many. Outside, its low-sloped roof, wide eaves, textured wood and ceramic surfaces, and its shaded structure acceptable down wide overhangs are welcoming and quality scaled. Inside, cocoa brownish wood is everywhere: walls, beams, model sills, paneling, wainscoting, furniture, not to notation built-in cabinets, benches and model seats. A ample slope of windows lets successful tons of light, but is protected by each those overhangs, truthful you don’t consciousness exposed — oregon overheated. Everything fits and flows unneurotic — spaces, furnishings, lighting fixtures, artworks.

Annette Yasin's Craftsman benignant location connected Mar Vista Ave successful Bungalow Heaven.

“It’s cozy. It’s warm,” says Yasin, lasting successful her eating room, which is filled with Craftsman-style furnishings either purchased oregon built by her now-late hubby — a G.E. technologist who retired aboriginal and leaned into his passionateness for woodworking.

For implicit a century, Craftsman homes person been beloved crossed Southern California, from Orange and Long Beach to West Adams and Santa Barbara. But obscurity are they arsenic prevalent arsenic Pasadena. And successful caller years, popularity has soared, arsenic radical crave its well-made, no-nonsense, and nature-embracing ethos. So overmuch so, Pasadena Heritage’s Craftsman Week, taking spot Oct. 12-19, has expanded from a play to a weeklong lawsuit this year.

“It’s the rusticity of it,” adds Juan Dela Cruz, a Bungalow Heaven nonmigratory and Craftsman homeowner who is guiding maine connected a circuit of the vicinity on with John G. Ripley, different section Craftsman proprietor and co-author of the publication “Pasadena’s Bungalow Heaven,” up of Craftsman Week. “You announcement the timbers overhanging. Sometimes you’ll spot the roughness successful the wood, oregon you’ll spot a three-dimensional alleviation successful the grain. It gives you that transportation with nature; that transportation with the root from which it came — the tree,” says Dela Cruz.

A tiled fireplace and bluish country rug.

A pistillate stands adjacent to a doorway successful a country filled with woody touches.

Annette Yasin, left, stands successful the doorway of her room successful her Craftsman home, which includes a tiled fireplace. (Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

The surviving country successful Annette Yasin's location looks retired to the thoroughfare connected Mar Vista Ave successful Bungalow Heaven.

Craftsman had its heyday from astir 1900 to the aboriginal 1920s. It grew retired of the British Arts and Crafts Movement, a plan doctrine reacting to the Industrial Revolution, with its wide produced goods and fast-paced lifestyle, and the Victorian era, with its frivolous excesses and formal, boxy spaces. It promoted, among different things, handcraft, honesty, unified design, earthy materials and plan simplicity.

American designers and architects soon imported these ideals, led by the likes of decorator Gustav Stickley, with his Craftsman Farms analyzable successful Morris Plains, N.J., and his fashionable magazine, the Craftsman, and artist, writer and entrepreneur Elbert Hubbard, whose Roycroft Artisan Community successful upstate New York would go a spiritual and architectural template for the movement.

Soon Craftsman, its sanction derived from Stickley’s magazine, had dispersed astir the country, and successful California, nary Craftsman architects were much ascendant than Pasadena’s ain Greene and Greene, whose bonzer Gamble House is 1 of the astir fashionable location museums successful the state. Greene and Greene would nutrient implicit a 100 “California Bungalows,” including their larger “Ultimate Bungalows,” and the Craftsman fever that followed would marque Pasadena crushed zero for California Craftsman, and the Craftsman question nationwide.

A multi-story Craftsman location covered successful shingles.

Most Craftsman homes were not designed by well-known architects similar the Greenes, oregon John C. Austin, designer of Yasin’s Sutton Bungalow. (Austin besides designed Los Angeles City Hall.) They were made by creative, yes, craftsmen, architects oregon builders, imagining their ain designs oregon utilizing kit plans, sold by companies similar Sears and Montgomery Ward. Most of the homes were not portion of ample developments, similar aboriginal mid-century homes often were. Many were bespoke creations — tailored to one’s ain family.

On the Bungalow Heaven tour, we analyse location aft artful home, nary precisely alike. While sharing akin tenets similar low-slung horizontality, earthy materials and lukewarm informality, immoderate incorporated elements of Colonial oregon Spanish architecture, others instrumentality connected a spot of Swiss Chalet. Many are predominantly wood, portion others showcase ceramic oregon unsmooth stucco. Some see textured shakes and shingles, oregon particularly wide rafters, giving them the nickname “airplane bungalows.” A fewer person Asian-inspired elements similar flared oregon upturned columns oregon dormers, portion others incorporated floral motifs and stained glass. One adjacent has a partial 2nd floor, but inactive feels rooted to the ground.

A Craftsman benignant location connected Mar Vista Ave successful Bungalow Heaven.

A greenish and brownish Craftsman location with a ample porch.

Famous oregon not, each are being celebrated during Craftsman Week. The event, which has been happening successful 1 signifier oregon different since the aboriginal 1990s, features tours, lectures, themed get-togethers and a trade fair, celebrating some the celebrated homes and the mundane ones. Its enlargement from a play to a weeklong lawsuit this year, notes Bridget Lawlor, preservation manager for Pasadena Heritage, allows for much organization partnerships.

The Pasadena Museum of History, for instance, volition big events with Cha-Rie Tang, laminitis of Pasadena Craftsman Tile — who makes intricate tiles inspired by the enactment of Southern California Arts and Crafts fable Ernest Batchelder. She’s the namesake of the grounds “Cha-Rie Tang: 48 Years of Artistic Innovation successful Pasadena,” which opened astatine the depository Oct. 4. The Gamble House volition big respective events, including a “Fire and Light” tour, showing disconnected the home’s omnipresent leaded glass, a “Details and Joinery” circuit and “Musical Storytime,” an outdoor performance hosted by the Pasadena Conservatory of Music. And there’s a circuit of the 125-year-old Judson Studios, which supplied overmuch of Southern California Craftsman homes’ stained glass.

A cardinal diagnostic of the week is the lineup of walking tours — galore person sold out, and Pasadena Heritage is engaged adding much to support up with demand. They showcase a fewer of the city’s galore Craftsman neighborhoods. Arroyo Terrace is filled with the exquisite, and often expensive, enactment of Greene and Greene. Bungalow Heaven — which became Pasadena’s archetypal Landmark District successful 1989, acknowledgment mostly to the persistence of section nonmigratory Bob Kneisel — contains much modest, middle-class dwellings. South Marengo showcases homes by famed Craftsman designer Louis B. Easton arsenic good Craftsman bungalow courts, featuring bunches of Craftsman homes grouped astir communal spaces.

Craftsman, said Lawlor, is much fashionable than ever successful Pasadena, and nationwide. Following a dip successful the aboriginal aughts — it was supplanted successful popularity by mid-century modern for rather a portion — it has surged for the aforesaid crushed it came to the fore successful the archetypal place: a absorption to our flimsy, generic, wide produced ethos, which has lone multiplied arsenic products progressively travel to america with conscionable a interaction of our phones.

“It’s an appreciation for things that are made well, that past a agelong time,” Lawlor said. “When I was increasing up, you got your furnishings from Target. If your vacuum broke, you bought a caller 1 alternatively of fixing it. I deliberation we’ve present turned a corner. We privation things that are quality. That are going to last. The aforesaid goes for Craftsman homes. They’re not flimsy, cookie-cutter achromatic boxes that you determination into. It’s each this beauteous wood oregon exposed beams. It’s artful and handmade, not a particle committee happening that volition interruption soon.”

Juan Dela Cruz, successful a reddish fastener down, chapeau and glasses, stands successful beforehand of a Craftsman benignant location with a stained solid model adorning the door.

John Ripley, successful a plaid shirt, stands successful beforehand of a home's beforehand lawn.

Bungalow Heaven committee subordinate Juan Dela Cruz, left, and John Ripley, writer of “Pasasdena’s Bungalow Heaven.” (Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

That taste ascension is typified by the Apple TV+ bid “Shrinking,” which takes spot successful Pasadena and features respective section Craftsman homes arsenic shooting locations. Its accumulation designer, Cabot McMullen, has talked astir however Craftsman’s consciousness of warmth and information helps offset the aggravated affectional experiences of immoderate of the show’s characters.

“It’s the go-to benignant for warmth. That homey feeling of coziness. Which is wherefore a batch of filming is done successful this area,” says Dela Cruz. Other productions changeable successful Pasadena Craftsman homes oregon neighborhoods see the films “Father of the Bride” and “Monster-in-Law” and the shows “Parenthood” and “Brothers & Sisters.” The Gamble House, by the way, played a relation successful “Back to the Future,” arsenic Doc Brown’s mansion.

A pistillate walks dogs past a Craftsman benignant location successful Bungalow Heaven.

The appeal, adds Dela Cruz, is moreover a absorption to our integer age’s profound consciousness of disconnection and our trouble distinguishing information from fiction.

Craftsman porches supply comfy communal spaces wherever radical tin interact with their neighbors. Their entries unfastened straight into surviving rooms successful a welcoming gesture. Bungalow courts make instant communities. The operation is exposed, and sturdy materials are good enactment together, not conscionable designed to look that way.

“The thought was to beryllium frank and honest,” says Dela Cruz’s chap circuit guide, Ripley.

“We person planned houses from the archetypal that are based connected the large cardinal principles of honesty, simplicity, and usefulness,” wrote Stickley successful his 1909 book, “Craftsman Homes: Architecture and Furnishings of the American Arts and Crafts Movement.”

That inactive sounds beauteous bully close now.

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