Spinks House

William Ward Spinks House
William Ward Spinks House
General information
Type	House
Location	1344 Hillcrest Avenue, Pasadena, California
Construction started	1909
Design and construction
Architect	Greene & Greene

Last updated February 23, 2019

The Spinks House, also known as Margaret B. S. Clapham Spinks House, (constructed 1908 - 1909) is a restored example of a California bungalow in Pasadena, California, USA. The house and grounds were designed by Henry Mather Greene of the architectural firm Greene and Greene as a home for Margaret B. S. Clapham Spinks and the retired judge William Ward Spinks.^[1]

Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, located 10 miles northeast of Downtown Los Angeles.

California is a state in the Pacific Region of the United States. With 39.6 million residents, California is the most populous U.S. state and the third-largest by area. The state capital is Sacramento. The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions, with 18.7 million and 8.8 million residents respectively. Los Angeles is California's most populous city, and the country's second most populous, after New York. California also has the nation's most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The City and County of San Francisco is both the country's second-most densely populated major city after New York and the fifth-most densely populated county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs.

Greene and Greene was an architectural firm established by brothers Charles Sumner Greene (1868–1957) and Henry Mather Greene (1870–1954), influential early 20th Century American architects. Active primarily in California, their houses and larger-scale ultimate bungalows are prime exemplars of the American Arts and Crafts Movement.

Design

Designed and built as a permanent home for retired judge William Ward Spinks, who had recently moved to Southern California from Victoria, Canada, the three-story (plus basement) Spinks House is a classic example of a California bungalow built during America's Arts and Crafts movement.^[2]^[3] Though a far simpler version of such a house than its more grandiose, up-the-street neighbor, the Blacker House, its style shows influence from traditional Japanese aesthetics and a certain California spaciousness born of available land and a permissive climate. The Arts and Crafts Movement in American Craftsman style architecture was focused on the use of natural materials, attention to detail, aesthetics, and craftsmanship. The Spinks House is unique in that it is among a small handful of Greene & Greene houses with its entire original property intact. With re-development in Pasadena, the Spinks house's initial interior and exterior design integrity may be comprised if sold again.^[4]

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea in the south.

American Craftsman American domestic architectural, interior design, landscape design, applied arts, and decorative arts style and lifestyle

The American Craftsman style, or the American Arts and Crafts movement, is an American domestic architectural, interior design, landscape design, applied arts, and decorative arts style and lifestyle philosophy that began in the last years of the 19th century. As a comprehensive design and art movement, it remained popular into the 1930s. However, in decorative arts and architectural design, it has continued with numerous revivals and restoration projects through present times.

Aesthetics Branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of art, beauty, and taste

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of art, beauty and taste and with the creation or appreciation of beauty.

Interiors

Rooms in the Spinks house were built primarily with plaster walls adorned sparingly with redwood and some Port Orford Cedar fascia boards. The main staircase, well lit by a large second-story skylight, was created using a significant amount of wood and incorporates two landings. Although much of the wood was covered in paint over the years, it was painstakingly restored by owners around 1970. The more-or-less square layout of the house remains largely intact as originally built, and very few modifications have been made to the house in its over 100 years of existence. The only significant changes to the house include an early 20th-century garage expansion to allow the formerly one-car garage with workroom and chauffeur's quarters to accommodate three cars, and a one-story expansion of the house to the south to accommodate two maid's rooms. The latter change was designed by the original architectural firm of Greene & Greene.

A chauffeur is a person employed to drive a passenger motor vehicle, especially a luxury vehicle such as a large sedan or limousine. A woman employed to drive a passenger motor vehicle is a chauffeuse.

Exterior and gardens

The grounds of the Spinks House comprise nearly 1.5 acres (0.6 hectares) along the edge of a deep wooded canyon. The original landscape plan called for simple plantings with several oak trees and a small orange grove. Aside from the long, narrow driveway with a wide turnaround in front of the garage, the grounds were designed to be largely free of any formal hardscape elements. The only notable exception is an extensive winding river rock-lined pathway, approximately 400 feet long, that gently climbs down into the canyon. Subsequent landscaping projects in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s saw the construction of several terraces and other outdoor areas, including a formal kitchen garden and north terrace designed by the architect's granddaughter, Isabelle Greene.

Hardscape refers to hard landscape materials in the built environment structures that are incorporated into a landscape. This can include paved areas, driveways, retaining walls, sleeper walls, stairs, walkways, and any other landscaping made up of hard wearing materials such as wood, stone, concrete etc. as opposed to softscape, the horticultural elements of a landscape.

Related Research Articles

A bungalow is a type of building, originally developed in the Bengal region of the subcontinent. The meaning of the word bungalow varies internationally. Common features of many bungalows include verandas and being low-rise. In Australia, the California bungalow associated with the United States was popular after the First World War. In North America and the United Kingdom, a bungalow today is a house, normally detached, that may contain a small loft. It is either single-story or has a second story built into a sloping roof, usually with dormer windows.

The Gamble House, also known as the David B. Gamble House, is an iconic American Craftsman home in Pasadena, California, designed by the architectural firm Greene and Greene. Constructed in 1908–09 as a home for David B. Gamble of the Procter & Gamble company, it is today a National Historic Landmark, California Historical Landmark, and museum.

An Ultimate bungalow is a large and detailed Craftsman style home, based on the bungalow style. The style is associated with such California architects as Greene and Greene, Bernard Maybeck and Julia Morgan. Some of the hallmarks of Greene and Greene's ultimate bungalows include the use of tropical woods such as mahogany, ebony and teak, and use of inlays of wood, metal and mother-of-pearl. As in their other major projects, Charles and Henry Greene—and to a lesser extent Bernard Maybeck and a few other Craftsman-era architects who built such homes—sometimes designed the majority of furniture, textiles, fixtures and other interior details of these homes specifically for their location both in the house and in the larger landscape.

The Batchelder House is a historic home built in 1910 and located at 626 South Arroyo Boulevard in Pasadena, California. An important center of Pasadena cultural life in its day, the home was designed and built by Ernest A. Batchelder, a prominent leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and his wife, Alice Coleman, an accomplished musician. The house, a large bungalow, has a "woodsy" design with elements of a Swiss chalet style. Batchelder's first craft shop was located in the structure, where decorative tiles were made for Greene and Greene, the Heineman Brothers, and other noted local architects of the era. Coleman also used the house's backyard stage to host chamber music concerts.

The Sequoyah School is a non-profit, co-ed, independent in Pasadena, California. The school, which was founded in 1958, is located at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, situated on 2.25 acres (9,100 m²) of property leased from the California Department of Transportation.

The William R. Thorsen House, often referred to as the Thorsen House, was built in 1909 in Berkeley, California for William Randolph Thorsen and his wife Caroline Canfield Thorsen (1858-1942). Designed by Henry and Charles Greene, of the renowned Pasadena firm of Greene & Greene, in the American Craftsman style of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The house is considered the last of four Greene & Greene designed ultimate bungalows and is the only one located in Northern California.

The Thomas Gould Jr. House is a historic house located at 402 Lynn Drive in Ventura, California. Architect Henry Mather Greene designed the American Craftsman style California bungalow, which was built in 1924. The house is considered one of the best examples of Henry Greene's independent work; most of his other designs were created alongside his brother Charles as Greene & Greene. The two-story house has a wood frame and redwood siding and window casings. The gable roof features truncated ends and a small gable on the front side which resembles a dormer. The house's interior decorations include ceiling moldings, a leaded glass china cabinet, and a carved mirror, the latter being the only piece of furniture designed by Greene himself.

Bungalow Heaven is a neighborhood in Pasadena, California named for the more than 800 small craftsman homes built there from 1900 to 1930, most of which still stand. Much of the area became a landmark district in 1989 and annual historic home tours have been conducted in Bungalow Heaven every year since then.

Garfield Heights is a neighborhood in Pasadena, California. The original tract name registered with the city of Pasadena in 1904. In 1998, the area was designated a landmark district. It is bordered by Washington Boulevard to the north, Mountain Street to the south, North Marengo Avenue to the west, and Los Robles Avenue to the east.

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Elmer Grey, FAIA was an American architect and artist based in Pasadena, California. Grey designed many noted landmarks in Southern California, including the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Huntington Art Gallery, the Pasadena Playhouse and Wattles Mansion. He is credited with being one of the pioneers in the development of the new American architecture in the early 20th century, with a focus on harmony with nature and eliminating features not belonging to the local climate and conditions. Grey was also a noted artist whose paintings are in the permanent collection of the Chicago Art Institute.

The USC School of Architecture is the architecture school at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. It is one of USC's 17 professional schools, offering both undergraduate and graduate degrees in the fields of architecture, building science, landscape architecture and heritage conservation.

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Harold Desbrowe-Annear was an influential Australian architect who was at the forefront of the development of the Arts and Crafts movement in this country. During the 1890s he was an Instructor in architecture at the Working Men's College where he founded the T-Square in 1900. The club acted as a meeting point for Melbourne’s architects, artists and craft workers and helped to develop a strong Arts and Crafts culture in the city. Desbrowe-Annear was also a supporter of the Victorian Arts and Crafts Society, founded in 1908.

In the United States, the National Register of Historic Places classifies its listings by various types of architecture. Listed properties often are given one or more of 40 standard architectural style classifications that appear in the National Register Information System (NRIS) database. Other properties are given a custom architectural description with "vernacular" or other qualifiers, and others have no style classification. Many National Register-listed properties do not fit into the several categories listed here, or they fit into more specialized subcategories.

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References

↑ Greene, Charles Sumner; Greene, Henry Mather; Spinks, Margaret B. S. Clapham; Spinks, William Ward (1909). "Residence for Mrs. Margaret B.S. Clapham Spinks at Oak Knoll, [Pasadena], Cal" . Retrieved 3 January 2018.
↑ "The Spinks House - California- - Arts & Crafts Home". achome.co.uk. Retrieved 3 January 2018.
↑ "Greene & Greene - images_NYDA89-F780". www.columbia.edu. Retrieved 3 January 2018.
↑ "Greene for Sale". Hewn and Hammered. Retrieved 3 January 2018.