An American Vernacular Cliff May’s Ranch Homes

AN AMERICAN VERNACULAR Cliff May’s Ranch Homes

Ed FitzGerald

ARCH 391 Prof. Woods 05/03/07

Vernacular architecture buffs often argue that we can learn the most about life in a particular society not by scrutinizing the monumental works of its great architects but rather, by examining those buildings common to ordinary men. In this vein, a study of the America Ranch Style home, a form of suburban housing so popular in the post-World War II period as to be considered banal, can elucidate the cultural intricacies and fashions of its time. The ranch house can be viewed as an ethnographic artifact of American society, demonstrating the values, ideals, attitudes, and living patterns of a society every bit as much as a pot sherd provides information to an archeologist or a bone fragment to a paleontologist. As a style born of the Western United States, the ranch house offers a uniquely American form of vernacular1. This essay will briefly explore romantic perceptions of the Western US and changes in the suburban landscape as represented in the Ranch Style. In their Field Guide to American Houses , Virginia and Lee McAlester have noted that the popularity of “rambling Ranch houses” during the 1950s and the 60s was made possible by the country’s growing dependence on the automobile.2 Streetcar suburbs of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries still used relatively compact house forms on small lots because people walked to nearby street car lines. As the automobile replaced street cars and buses as the principle means of personal transportation in the decades following World War II, compact houses could be replaced by sprawling designs on much larger lots. Never before had it been possible to be so lavish with land. The

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The term “vernacular” has used to connote a plethora of different meanings within the discourse of architectural forms. I use the term here to refer to architecture that has, through time, been adopted and refined into culturally accepted solutions, and has, through repetition, become “traditional”. I find that this definition is the most widely applicable to the diverse spectrum of buildings (from log cabins to kivas to prairie farm houses and igloos) that are generally viewed as vernacular. 2 Virginia and Lee McAlester, Field Guide to American Houses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 991), 479.

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rambling form of the ranch house emphasizes this by maximizing façade width, which is further increased by the inclusion of a built-in garage. (Fig. 1) The twentieth century suburban ranch house has its roots in the Spanish colonial architecture of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Like their modern derivative, these buildings seldom rose more than a single story from the ground. This was in large part due to the limitations of the native material, adobe brick, which necessitated thicker walls as building grew in height. (Fig. 2) The early Spanish settlers usually kept their designs simple to meet the barest needs of their inhabitants. Walls were built low and thick to support the roof and insulated the interior from the Southwestern climate. Roofs were low and simple as there was no snow to necessitate a high pitch. The eaves projected in a wide overhang to shade the windows from the sun and create a protected loggia. Buildings often had interior courtyards which were surrounded by an Lor U-shaped floor plan. These squat, thick walled, rustic working Spanish ranchos were common throughout the Southwestern states. With an amazing range of variations, the modern Ranch Style remains surprisingly true to its antecedent (save the use of adobe). The contemporary Ranch Style originated in 1930s California amidst a design atmosphere that embraced the International Style championed by European architects like Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Richard Neutra. (Fig. 3) By abandoning historical precedents, stripping away all superfluous ornament, and stocking kitchens with the latest in gadgetry, these architects sought to bring an intellectual sophistication and machine-like efficiency to the home. Yet while the International style offered functionality, its glass space frame boxes, flat roofs and rectilinear forms were foreign additions to the American suburban landscape. Opponents of the style argued that

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it lacked historical precedent—in fact these designers sought to distance their work from the architecture of the past—and ignored the tradition of national design in favor of something foreign.3 It was in this environment that the work of designers like Cliff May excelled. May, a self-taught San Diego architect, is credited as the foremost pioneer of the modern Ranch Style.4 Working with the California lifestyle periodical, Sunset Magazine, May promoted the ranch house as an American vernacular form with its roots in colonial Spanish California. While not entirely dismissing the Internationalists’ conception of a form of modern aesthetics and planning appropriate to the latest views of domestic life, he drew on an established precedent of American design. The Ranch Style incorporates the earth-hugging silhouette of the Prairie Style houses pioneered by Frank Lloyd Wright and common in the informal Bungalow styles of the early twentieth century. (Fig. 4) May’s work represents a compromise in the debates regarding the suitability of modern architecture and the appropriateness of historic nostalgia in house design. The popularity of the ranch house suggests that this compromise was necessary to satisfy consumers who, apparently, could only accept modernism in small doses. The suburban Ranch Style homes that grew so popular in the three decades following the Second World War originated in pre-war west Los Angeles with the construction of May’s Riviera Ranch development in 1939.5 Twenty-four homes were placed on two-thirds to one-acre lots. May prompted the development as having “recreated ‘the romantic charm of early-day California Ranch-life’ but with all the 3

Alan Gowans, Images of American Living (New York: J.B. Lippincot, 1964), 447; Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (London: John Rodker, 1931). 4 Mary von Balgooy, “Designer of the Dream: Cliff May and the California Ranch House.” Southern California Quarterly 86 (Pasadena: Historical Society of Southern California, 2004), 133. 5 Ibid.

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modern conveniences.”6 Though wartime restriction of materials brought a temporary halt to the development of the style, the housing boom at war’s end saw a resurgence in its popularity. In the tradition of Andrew Jackson Downing and his nineteenth-century residential pattern books, Cliff May took his theories and plans for the ideal suburban home directly to the potential home owner. Sunset Magazine published a book on May’s ranch style homes in 1946, and a revision in 1958. In Sunset Western Ranch Houses and a second volume, Western Ranch Houses, May presented potential builders with a picturesque version of the history of the ranch house and its colonial predecessors.7 He offered arguments on why it was so well suited to the modern family and, of course, provided plans to suit the readers’ tastes. The inclusion of a section devoted to historical precedent is indicative of May’s desire to imbue the public with a cultural connection to the ranch house and to link design to the Cold War fervor over national identity. By illustrating the lineage of the ranch house, May anchors it in a vernacular tradition. Juxtaposed to the theory-based designs of the International Style architects, the Ranch Style places populist notions of domesticity and ornament before scientific or artistic form. Yet, in touting the superiority of the ranch house, May’s argument demonstrates more similarity than dissonance with the philosophy of modernism: Practicality, material availability and the needs of daily life dictate design in both styles. The most striking similarity can be seen when compared with the work of Richard Neutra. Both men designed for the California lifestyle, promoting a close relationship to the temperate environment. Their work erases the boundary between indoor and outdoor 6

Ibid., 135. Cliff May, Sunset Western Ranch Houses (San Francisco: Lane Publishing, 1946; Santa Monica CA: Henness & Ingalls, 1999); Cliff May, Western Ranch Houses (San Francisco: Lane Publishing, 1958; Santa Monica CA: Hennessy & Ingalls, 1997). 7

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space, bringing the garden inside with floor-to-ceiling glass in place of traditional walls. May even suggested that living space should be a total calculation of indoor and outdoor space.8(Fig. 5 and 6) The Ranch Style further drew from the modernist palette in its use of space. May’s designs incorporate dual purpose rooms with visual connection between spaces. Kitchens, living and dinning rooms are seldom separated by full-height or unbroken walls. In addition to giving a perception of greater space without increasing costs, this spatial planning demonstrates May’s commitment to functionality and the realities of modern living. While his ranch homes did not make extensive use of the steel favored by International Style designers, May often exposed materials in rough hewn timber rafters and field stone fireplaces. The successful use of these modernist elements demonstrates May’s skill in straddling the boundary between two approaches. Furthermore, this accounts, in part, for the appeal of the Ranch Style for the postwar homebuyer, conflicted by the gap between tradition and progress. In contrast to the modernist solution to the postwar housing dilemma, the essence of which is embodied in the ambitious Case Study Houses of Arts & Architecture magazine, May’s ranch house designs were widely adopted and mass produced. May’s ranch design sold almost 15,000 plans, making up the entire neighborhoods of Long Beach and Anaheim.9 Fittingly, May had spent the war designing low-cost military housing for California military bases.10 The end of the war brought the homecoming of millions of American troops who took the opportunity to escape from the congested neighborhoods of the city for the single-family homes of the suburbs. A half a decade of 8

Sunset, 94. Patricia Ward Biederman. “Prefab Rehab: Low-Cost Home Has Rich Pedigree.” Los Angeles Times 21 Oct. 2004: B2. 10 Ibid. 9

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war and a decade of depression had left the country with a housing shortage. These young families created a market that demanded inexpensive housing and fast. The livability, economy, and unpretentious character of the ranch house offered an ideal solution. To answer this demand, May adapted the sprawling 4,000 square foot models showcased in his earlier book to more affordable ranches and split-levels that could be more easily situated in the smaller lots of the suburbs in the 1958 edition. These plans were offered for sale in domestic magazines like Better Homes and Gardens and along with an even more simplified version developed specifically for subdivisions, rocketed May’s designs into widespread use. The popularity of his designs grew such that by 1955, eight out of ten tract houses in the United States were built in the Ranch Style and most with a Cliff May plan.11 The mass application of the Ranch Style in Levittown and other suburbs was especially ironic considering that the design was originally intended to ramble out onto the Western landscape. The houses which were widely built in the 1950s and 1960s were visibly the offspring of May’s original ranches, but no matter how much he asserted the adaptability of this design, much was lost in the translation to small, inexpensive homes. (Fig. 7) A home of 800 to 1,200 square feet confined to a subdivision lot simply can not sprawl across the landscape as did the earlier designs. Coupled with substitutions of mass-produced, economy building materials such as plywood and vinyl in place of the natural stone and wood originally called for, the tract ranch housing does not achieve the same rustic or historical character. In this respect, May’s designs suffered much the same fate as many of the other modern, idealistic housing plans of postwar era.

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von Baloogy, 138.

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Despite the best of intentions, the utopian solution offered by visionary modernist projects like Pruitt-Igoe and the Case Study Houses failed without the proper economic support. The reduction of a window wall to a picture window or substitution of brick with vinyl amounted to modernism on a budget. When the suburban developer Levitt & Sons began using the Ranch Style in the early 1950s, Architectural Record applauded this shift and the hope it offered in the modernists’ struggle to steer subdivision design toward their form of architecture.12 Yet many of the “ranches” built in subdivisions looked less like May’s designs than they did a half-height Levittown Cape Cod. They certainly did not maintain the flowing access between the interior and a grand natural landscape as May had intended: “I rebelled against the boxy houses … I wanted a design that was about sunshine and informal outdoor living.”13 While May’s statement marks the greatest irony of the Ranch Style, it is nonetheless influential as an element in the modern vernacular landscape. Its wide-scale application in the postwar era simultaneously evades the heritage of the Spanish ranchos while cementing the Ranch Style in the American architectural lexicon. As with many examples of vernacular building, the abundance of ranch homes in many parts of the country today relegates them to pedestrian status and an odd sort of obscurity. Alan Hess of Architectural Digest has noted this saying, The ranch house is the poor stepchild of American architecture. Unpretentious, low-slung, cranked out like Big Macs by tract-house builders in the 1950s, it was America’s most widely built single family home its very success casting a spell that doomed it to invisibility.14 12

N.A., “4,000 Houses Per Year,” Architectural Record 90, no. 4 (1949), 86. Alan Hess. “Romantic Mandalay: Recalling the Architect’s Dream House in West Los Angeles.” Architectural Digest Special Edition (2005) : 298 14 Hess, 296. 13

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It has not been until recently that May’s designs have received the interest they deserve. In March of 2003, Architectural Digest advertised a Cliff May Estate in the Santa Ynez Valley, California, for $2.295 million.15 Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the Ranch Style became so popular in post-war America when cowboy and western frontier themes prevailed in film and television. By illustrating the lineage of the ranch house, Cliff May made clear that his was a vernacular form which grew from a unique American situation. In another sense, large-scale construction of Ranch Style homes in the decades following the Second World War has by sheer number anchored their vernacular status. These homes, nostalgic of the American past, are today reminders of that generation which grew of age during the Depression, fought a world war and sought the American dream. They did care about style, and wanted styles which fit within their consumerist image of the ideal home. Yet there were clearly limits to the level of style that could be purchased on a GI mortgage. Finally, they did not want to abandon a connection to the national past, especially not their link with the frontier as they pioneered new frontiers of their own in the workplace and at home.

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N.A., “Editors Select Properties Around the World,” Architectural Digest 60 (2003), 97.

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The millions of families who have embraced the suburban way of life have embarked upon a larger adventure then most of them dream of. In our national experience it can only be compared to that pioneering venture, the frontier itself. 16 Good Housekeeping, January, 1955

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N.A., “What Makes A Good Suburb,” Good Housekeeping (January, 1955), 30.

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FIGURE 1. Typical ranch by Cliff May with built-in garage to the right.

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FIGURE 2. Page from Sunset Western Ranch Houses showing Spanish colonial design.

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FIGURE 3. Rendering of a 1927 International Style house designed by Robert Neutra.

FIGURE 4. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo, NY, 1904.

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FIGURE 5. Early Cliff May custom designed home.

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FIGURE 6. Richard Neutra interior/exterior view.

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FIGURE 7. A Levittown ranch before landscaping. 1952.

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WORKS CITED van Balgooy, Mary A. “Designer of the Dream: Cliff May and the California Ranch House.” Southern California Quarterly 86. Pasadena: Historical Society of Southern California, 2004. p. 127-144. Biederman, Patricia Ward. “Prefab Rehab: Low-Cost Home Has Rich Pedigree.” Los Angeles Times. 21, Oct. 2004, sec. B2. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture. London: John Rodker, 1931. N.A., “Editors Select Properties Around the World.” Architectural Digest. 60. 2003. p. 97. Gowans, Alan. Images of American Living. New York: J.B. Lippincot, 1964. Hess, Alan “Romantic Mandalay: Recalling the Architect’s Dream House in West Los Angeles.” Architectural Digest. Special Edition. 2005. May, Cliff. Sunset Western Ranch Houses. San Francisco: Lane Publishing, 1946. Santa Monica CA: Hennessy & Ingalls, 1999. May, Cliff. Western Ranch Houses. San Francisco: Lane Publishing, 1958. Santa Monica CA: Hennessy & Ingalls, 1997. McAlester, Virginia and Lee. Field Guide to American Houses. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. N.A., “What Makes A Good Suburb,” Good Housekeeping. January, 1955. N.A., “4,000 Houses Per Year,” Architectural Record. 90, no. 4, 1949. IMAGES 1. May, Cliff. Sunset Western Ranch Houses. San Francisco: Lane Publishing, 1946. Santa Monica CA: Hennessy & Ingalls, 1999. p 87. 2. Ibid., 13. 3. “Neutra Architecture.” available online, http://www.neutra.org, (accessed 5/3/07). 4. Wikipedia. “Frank Lloyd Wright.” available online, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lloyd_Wright (accessed 5/3/07). 5. “Rancho Style Newsletter. March, 2004.” available online, http://www.ranchostyle.com/newsletters/RanchoStyle_4pa_402b.pdf (accessed 5/3/07) 6. “Neutra Architecture.” available online, http://www.neutra.org, (accessed 5/3/07). 7. “Levittown, PA: Building the Suburban Dream.” available online, http://server1.fandm.edu/levittown/images/lg_jpegs/H32P4.jpg (accessed 5/3/07).

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