Harmonizing within Beverly’s Wooded Landscape
Because Beverly–Morgan Park was an attractive, wooded respite miles away from Chicago’s Loop, it proved to be an ideal setting in the early twentieth century for Craftsman style architecture. Many residents chose Craftsman for its materials that harmonized with natural surroundings, informal plans, and broad porches. The Craftsman style grew out of the nineteenth century English Arts and Crafts movement that emphasized natural materials and a high level of craftsmanship, a philosophy encouraged by renowned English designers John Ruskin and William Morris. On this side of the Atlantic, acclaimed architect and furniture maker Gustav Stickley offered leadership in the Arts and Crafts movement. When Stickley published The Craftsman, an important trendsetting American magazine between 1901 and 1916, Craftsman homes were particularly fashionable. Inspiration also came from the work of California architects Greene and Greene. Plan books, architectural periodicals, and popular home magazines of the day, many of which were published in Chicago, including House Beautiful, Inland Architect and News Record, and Western Architect, also increased Craftsman’s popularity. Ultimately, Craftsman influences were regional. Chicago was one of the most important American centers of the Arts and Crafts movement. Interest in Craftsman style and ideology flourished in the hands of numerous local artists, architects, and craftspeople who came together at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Craftsman buildings are characterized by roofs with deep overhanging eaves, front or side dormers, and a deep front porch. Often, visible exposed rafter ends (or tails), decorative brackets or triangular knee braces under gable roofs, battered columns, foundations, or parapet walls (where the bottom is thicker than the top and slopes outward), and half-timbering details are present. Roofs can be gabled (most often side gabled), jerkinhead (also known as a truncated or clipped gable roof), or hipped with shallow pitches reminiscent of Prairie architecture. Dormer roofs also vary and can be gabled, hipped, jerkinhead, or even shed. Materials are typically wood, wood shingle, or stucco, but some brick examples are found after 1915 with cut stone trim. Even stone is introduced in some designs for rich, earthy texture. To bring the outdoors indoors, windows are grouped and typically double-hung sash with three or four vertical panes in the upper sash and one in the lower. Casement windows with geometric glazing are also common. Porches, important elements that link the home with nature, are supported by thick square or round porch columns that lend to the sturdiness of each Craftsman design. On the interior, homes exhibit built-in Arts and Crafts features such as fireplaces, hutches, and bookcases.
Craftsman residential architecture thrived in Chicago’s Beverly–Morgan Park neighborhood between 1894 and 1929. Chiefly architect-designed examples for their residential clients, neighborhood Craftsman homes display the style’s signature clean lines, solidity, and genuineness. While there are large-scale, high-style examples in the neighborhood, more common are unassuming designs in which Craftsman detailing is combined with the one- to one-and-a-half story bungalow form, called Craftsman Bungalows.
The earliest Craftsman homes in Beverly–Morgan Park are expressions of the Arts and Crafts movement in Chicago. Inspired by the medieval period, these Craftsman homes feature tall gables and half timbering. Advocates of the late-nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts movement considered medieval society the “ideal,”[i] so medieval elements are appropriately symbolic. The carefully crafted Charles P. Campbell House at 9324 South Damen is a fine residential example with tall gables and half timbering. Campbell, who hailed from a family of Beverly real estate brokers, built his home in a growing residential development in 1894 near the Longwood or 95th Street Railroad Station. The architect was believed to be Daniel Everett Waid, who trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia University. He opened his practice in the same year as the Campbell House design after working as a draftsman for the noted Chicago firm of Jenney & Mundie.[ii] This romantic and lofty two-and-a-half story frame home has picturesque half timbering in its gable peaks.
Just down the street is another English Arts and Crafts–inspired Craftsman home of the late nineteenth century, the Henry D. Shontz House, built for a physician in 1894 at 9210 South Damen. English Arts and Crafts–inspired homes continued to be built into the first decades of the twentieth century. Two similar but fine examples are the Victor H. Munnecke House at 9241 South Pleasant (1913), designed by architect John Todd Hetherington, and the William H. Roberts House at 10520 South Longwood (1914), designed by architect Robert S. Smith. Both are substantial designs for businessmen with brick at the first floor and half timbering at the second. Terracing and porches link the homes with nature outdoors.
In the heyday of the Craftsman style, homes such as the C. D. Nill House at 1722 West 101st Street (1906) and the F. K. Stevens House, 10754 South Hoyne (ca. 1905) are wide and sturdy examples. With heights of two to two-and-a-half stories, steeply pitched side-gable roofs, and front dormers with gable roofs, these homes appear more vertical then contemporaneous Prairie designs.
More typical are Craftsman homes sporting front-gable roofs. Gable front residences include a speculative home for O. J. Buck at 9840 South Walden (1912) whose small-scale, two-story stucco design by architect John Todd Hetherington is large in Craftsman detail; the W. H. Corey House at 9926 South Winchester (1914), with half-timbering detail in the gable peak and battered (sloping) piers; and the Donald H. McGilvray House at 9647 South Vanderpoel (c. 1915) with a flared roofline, prominent knee braces in the front gable, front terrace, trellised porte cochere, and a hint of Asian inspiration for its first owner, an attorney.
Craftsman homes with cross-gable roofs are also apparent in the neighborhood. An important example is the two-and-a-half story C. Lauron Hooper House at 9022 South Damen (1911), designed by builder W. R. Ashton for a school principal. Design interest is added to its simple stucco exterior through its wood double-hung windows with three-over-one and four-over-one configurations. Another notable Craftsman home with a cross-gable roof is the Timotheus H. Ingwersen House at 9812 South Longwood Drive (1908–09). Stained wood shingle siding above the brick first floor adds a natural quality to the home, integrating the house with its wooded surroundings on the Ridge. Its plan allows nature within the house through porches at the both front and rear and a porte cochere that reaches outward from the main body of the home. Ingwersen served as a buyer for Swift & Company at the Chicago Union Stock Yards.[iii]
Since Chicago was a core city in America’s Arts and Crafts movement, inspired local architects and their culturally sophisticated clientele experimented in Craftsman design. Beverly–Morgan Park’s unusual high-style Craftsman designs include the Axel L. Todd House at 9236 South Winchester, built in 1906 and designed by architect John Todd Hetherington. Emphasis is firmly placed on its romantic roof, with rolled false thatching influenced by English Arts and Crafts models, prominent front chimney with multiple chimney pots, and rafter tails.
Rafter tails are also important in the stucco-clad and two-story Robert C. McManus House, 9005 South Hoyne (1911). The McManus House, designed by local architect and Chicago Normal School instructor Oscar McMurry, is a ground-hugging Craftsman design emphasized in the low-pitched rooflines of its main side-gable roof, hipped porch roof, and dual shed roof dormers. Triangular knee braces, signatures of the Craftsman style, also embellish the McManus House.
Another distinctive Craftsman is the two-story James R. McKee House at 10415 South Seeley. Built in 1908 and designed by architect John M. Schroeder, the McKee House design exaggerates a common Craftsman design element called battering, in which elements flare out at the bottom. Battered parapets of brick are at both ends of the main body of the house and the central front porch. The porch also sports a flanged segmental arch, which gracefully frames the home’s grouped leaded glass casements and transoms. First owner James R. McKee was a proprietor of a hay and grain company in nearby Englewood.
The Luther S. Dickey, Jr. House at 10900 South Prospect (1911–12) is arguably one of Beverly–Morgan Park’s finest Craftsman residences. Designed by the architectural firm of Chatten & Hammond, this house exhibits many elements of the Craftsman style. Expressive half timbering at the second floor coupled with a brick exterior below is well-suited for this home on an expansive wooded lot. Also enhancing the design is a flanged segmental arch over the front entry, repeated paired brackets, and multiple-gable roofs.
Architect-designed Craftsman homes are not limited to multiple-story
dwellings. An enchanting one-story example is the Olin M. Pague House, 10036 South Longwood (1908), whose
design is attributed to architect Harry Hale Waterman. Texture is critical to
this Craftsman design, whose ceramic tile roof and water table of rough-faced
rubble brownstone contrast with the home’s smooth and stark stucco exterior.
The home’s original sprawling U-shaped plan also linked the interior with the
outdoors. This courtyard was later enclosed.
[i] Wilson, 1987, p. 210.
[ii] Withey, Henry F. and Elsie Rathburn Withey. Biographical Dictionary of American Architects (Deceased). Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, Inc., 1970, p. 622.
[iii] Chicago City Directory, 1911, p. 664.