6/27/13

Is it Craftsman, Foursquare, Prairie, Hybrid...?

I tend to want to call the house a Craftsman, but some internet research has left me confused. It does have elements of a Craftsman, but the exterior tends to more resemble an American Foursquare (an off-shoot of Prairie, sometimes called a Prairie Box). The primary difference is that almost all examples of Foursquares are two (to two and a half) stories. This is a good article on the American Foursquare, and it does make mention of the "lesser known" One-Story Foursquare. http://www.oldhouseweb.com/architecture-and-design/american-foursquare-1890-1930.shtml

This is a good article on the Craftsman: http://historichouseblog.com/2012/08/02/historic-style-spotlight-the-craftsman-bungalow/ (and looks to be a fascinating blog which I look forward to exploring in more detail). The Craftsman tends to be the style in which the porch is incorporated under the same roof line as the house (as ours is). Both styles feature the interior columned room divider.

This photo came from an images search (hope it's not copyrighted), and is actually called a Craftsman although it doesn't include many of the traditional defining features of a Craftsman. It looks very similar to ours.

Here is the current floorplan of our house. Mr. D.H. did this with something called Visio...he promised a version incorporating our proposed changes, which I have been waiting for before doing this post, but he hasn't gotten to it yet. I'll add it later.

We kept puzzling over the the isolated middle bedroom, which would have seemed to be only accessible from the outside before the back porch was enclosed. I had noticed that there used to be a window between the back bath and the former back porch, but it hadn't occurred to me that maybe it hadn't always been a bath. Last weekend, Mr. D.H. discovered a walled-up door between the kitchen and back bath, and, ah hah! That bath used to be a hallway between the kitchen and middle bedroom. We theorize that they enclosed the back porch and turned the hallway into a bath as their family grew.