Pasadena Heritage Tour Shows Off Craftsman Homes at their Best

A unique three gable design is featured in this Orange Heights Historic District home.

Tour goers come away with design inspirations for future projects

By Kris Grant

You might call it the mother lode of design ideas for aficionados of everything Craftsman.
Pasadena is one of the, if not the, showplaces for Craftsman design in the United States, the location where architects William and Henry Greene set up shop, where Ernest Batchelder began designing unique tiles that found themselves onto fireplaces and fountains, and where preservationists today have come together to stage the largest and most comprehensive celebration of the Craftsman movement in the Western United States.
There were walking tours, seminars and three stories of vendors at Pasadena’s Masonic Temple, tempting attendees with antique Stickley pieces, Batchelder tile reproductions and Arts & Crafts inspired greeting cards.  There were lamps and pillows and curtains and hardware and rugs and plein aire paintings.  And then there was “the tour.”
The signature event of the Pasadena Heritage weekend held Oct. 17 and 18 and now in its 18th year is the Craftsman house tour, a drive-yourself tour to five homes that have been fully restored, furnished and decorated in the Craftsman style.
Here are highlights of four of the five homes. (Next year, I’ll be sure to step across the threshold of the first home promptly at 9 a.m. to allow enough time in the day to take in every home!)

Goodbye aluminum; welcome home, wood
Six years ago on Christmas Eve, Lisa Brault closed escrow on her 1911 home on Casa Grande. The home was built by Foss Design and Building Co., with Harry Banfield serving as the chief architect. Banfield put his own distinct touches into the home, most notably the “railroad” patterns in the windows, built-in cabinetry, large wide elephantine entry columns and the scoring of the steps up from the sidewalk. The home had gone through several renovations including the installation of aluminum siding.
“It didn’t really look that bad,” said Brault, “but if you were to knock up against it, it would sound like you had bumped into a car, kind of ‘ting-y.’ We really wanted to return it to its original shingles.”
Docent Barbara Schneider explained that the home had gone through many owners over the years and that one of them replaced the “creaky wood windows” with “smoothly operating weatherproof windows that last forever.”
“Tragically, they do,” chimed in one tour guest.
Schneider has been leading Pasadena Heritage tours for 27 years and says it’s like having a historic home of her own, “but without the blood sweat and tears.”
“Any of you have a historic home you’re in the process of renovating?” she asks the group.  “I usually have at least one hard-working masochist per group.”
The Braults also replaced 23 aluminum windows with Craftsman wood windows, including one with the railroad pattern in the upstairs window. Lisa Brault had been assured by experts that when the aluminum siding was removed, the underlying shingles would be in unusable shape – “baked and disintegrated” is the condition she expected.  However, three out the four sides were in near perfect condition, so only the front needed to be reshingled.
The home features a Batchelder fireplace, two original Stickley rockers, and matching china cabinets, again sporting the railroad wood motif, that flank a long window seat in Brault’s favorite room of the house, the dining room. “The Craftsman architects thought of everything,” said the dining room docent. There was no air conditioning in those days, but the cross ventilation from the French doors and front windows kept the room cool.
The kitchen features a 1943 Wedgewood double-burning oven, and marmoleum flooring, a natural linoleum floor tile made with all natural ingredients of linseed oil, cork, limestone, tree rosin and natural minerals, explained the kitchen docent.  “The color goes all through the flooring, so that if it is scratched, it can be buffed out and the color remains.” It’s also softer than a tile floor. The kitchen renovation also features a farmhouse-style sink, big enough for large pans.
An L-shaped countertop was designed in two heights:  one a few inches lower that allowed for lower shelves above and easy lifting of serving pieces.  It also allowed the two sides to not require dovetailing.

Stucco on a Craftsman home?
This year’s homes included a Grable & Austin-designed 1910 Craftsman in Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco historic neighborhood that featured the “innovation” of the day: dash-coat stucco, which was “flicked” onto the home by paint brush. Grable & Austin, a design/build firm, catered to an affluent audience and their median construction price one hundred years ago was $7,500. Their homes infused a Prairie-style influence with strong longitudinal lines and oversized beams, giving the house a sense of grandeur. This home received a 2009 City and State Preservation award.  Inside the home features the original picture rails in the living rooms and a collection of Kathleen West prints and an original.
In 1918 the home was expanded with the addition of a sunroom, a downstairs sun porch and an upstairs sleeping porch. The current owners removed 16 layers of paint to bring the wood back to its original luster.
Upstairs, docent Robert Bilheimer pointed out the birds-eye cherry wood flooring, which has been sanded and refinished as much as it can ever be. As tour goers stepped across a creaky board or two, Bilheimer said, “They’ve earned their squeaks.”
The home’s basement was enlarged, by lowering the floor eight inches. In this downstairs area that now functions as a warm and inviting guest quarters, a bedroom and full bath were added and the main room features deep cherry wood ceilings and paneling and a floor-to-ceiling flagstone fireplace. A retaining wall was put to good use as the base of a window seat in the living room.
A triple dormer home and a triple-digit lifespan
In Orange Heights, a 1909 bungalow sold for $2,264, an average cost for that year. No architect of record was associated with the property and a tour guide noted that plans were probably borrowed from another property in the vicinity. The home was commissioned by George Frank Thompson, the original subdivider of the Orange Heights Tract. This was the last house, and one of the largest, built in Pasadena by the architect W. D. Peckham. The first residents of the house were John William and Katherine Munroe. Mr. Munroe owned Munroe Hardware in Pasadena and established Munroe Motors, one of the first automobile dealerships in the city. In 1920, the home was sold William and Katherine Rempel. William was 20 years old at the time and lived there for 82 years until his death at the age of 102.
Perhaps because of its pedigree of just two owners before its present owner, the home is loaded with original features – all the wood had been painted white and was painstakingly renovated. Box beam ceiling surrounds remain in the living room and adjoining sitting room; the dining room includes all the original beams intact. The home contains a Batchelder fireplace and an Arroyo stone fireplace. Many of the 100 year old windows still contain the original rolled glass panes. Quarter stone oak floors are original, as is an extra-wide window seat.

A modest bungalow
A beautiful yet modest bungalow on Elizabeth Street in the Historic Highlands neighborhood, also won a 2009 City and State Historic Preservation Award for a property that had gone through a long list of owners and had been used most recently as a rental property.
It was purchased in 2001 by newlyweds Anthony Molinaro and Bridged Fennell, who received a call from their realtor while on their honeymoon in Ireland.  Luckily, the home was still on the market when they returned to the states and they moved in a few months later. Anthony then updated his woodworking skills from his middle school days by enrolling in the “Woodworkers Place” classes at Cerritos College. He then put those skills to work, refinishing woodwork in the living room and dining room and constructing the home’s dining room table and a rocker. The kitchen and bath areas were completely renovated under the direction of Lisa Henderson, AIA or Harvest Architecture. The homeowners shared a list of 12 contractors and subs who worked on the project, many of whom were on hand to share design ideas.
In the front yard, one side contains a small vegetable garden and the other, a labyrinth of Arroyo stone, both features replacing a thirsty grass lawn.  Outside decking in the back and around the sides invites indoor/outdoor living
Yes, children do live in Craftsman homes today as they did yesterday! And it’s a sure bet that the kids who play in the back yard swing set here are sure to derive as much pleasure as those who might have swung on similar sets nearly a century ago. (And inside, they’ll probably enjoy swinging on Dad’s rocker, too.)