Slate contributor Witold Rybczynski discusses the quintessential American Ranch House.
The casual, spread-out ranch house (it was also known as the California ranch and the rambler) had enormous appeal and by 1950 accounted for nine out of 10 new houses. In hindsight, the rancher's most striking feature was its diffidence. Low to the ground, it lacked traditional domestic status symbols, such as porticoes and tall gables. Its one extravagance was a large window facing the street—the picture window
Of course no good historical perspective can go without the author abusing the soapbox so here we are treated to chastizment for excess and a healthy dollop of blame heaped upon California's Prop 13. Still a fascinating read on what homeownership used to be like.
Slate contributor Witold Rybczynski discusses the quintessential American Ranch House.
15 comments:
first
M U R S T :-)
murst and this place is dead!
damn you benoit you SOB!!! :P
Now aaron, you know by now that non-Casey threads involve a little thought. Give it time.
good article. My house was built during this craze. We have a 2 story rambler/ranch. 5 windows together in the front are 7 ft by 3 ft each. The only part I don't like about the house...is this massive bank of windows. great for natural light though.
Ranches and split-levels are still very common out in North Dakota and rural Minnesota. Maybe that's because they are behind the trend, or the fact that many are built to be lived in for life. Also, our land is still much cheaper than elsewhere.
You do see craftsman/arts & crafts influence and/or country style homes too.
The houses that are replacing the ranch are two story houses crammed in on dinky lots. I have always considered these new houses to be slums in waiting. The two story house is impractical for an elderly person (e.g. the baby boomers in the not to distant future) The small yards are impractical for non couch potato kids. The neighborhoods do not engender a sense of community.
Long term we will go back to ranch style houses
At 6:43 AM, Rob Dawg said...
Now aaron, you know by now that non-Casey threads involve a little thought. Give it time.
Because it's so simple to just copy and paste his comments daily...
Get over your obsession psycho-freak-girlfriend!
Is this the first working URL to an external article in a post from Rob? Congratulations!
fiveflat/paul e.; Ahhh a new "fan." Of the five most recent articles 3 have working external links. Perhaps you'd like me to change to default open in a new window? I think that is cluttery and prone to abuse but if the audience prefers I can do the new window bit.
Serinitis, yes, you are correct. I fear most of developed California is already too cramped but we can hope for the future. Single stories are great. There's no step higher than 4 inches anwhere in my 2600sf California Rambler circa 1961-2.
The demise of the rancher, the Cape Cod, and the split-level is to be mourned.
What the author may have forgotten were that these were "entry-level" homes...
...they were also retirement homes.
The entry-level housing market has been taken over by the condo and the townhome,(horizontal apartment buidings).
Retirement homes have been captured by the ghastly "Active Adult 55+" condos, (stale urine smell is a standard feature), and the senior "patio home",(from all appearances, a front-to-back oriented rambler with small yards to hold garden gnomes, plastic angels, concrete bunny-rabbits and other such shit).
What all this MEANS is that neighborhoods will be oriented by age...and I don't know about you, but when I'm in my dotage, the last thing I'd want to do is spend my "Autumn Years" with a bunch of other decrepit old geezers.
Ahhh;
And, since you will be expected to follow the condo-townhome-SFH-Senior community-Mortuary, you will expect to be moving along every 10-20 years or so.
That being the case, folks will have a profound disconnect with the long-term health and viability of their community.
No-one gets an oil change for a rental car, right?
Good comments Sharky.
No-one gets an oil change for a rental car.
Well said, well said.
I bought this "last house" in my 30s. Enough land and extremely well built, I've made so many changes the previous owner wouldn't recognize it. Well, truth be told, the previous owner was a bank. IMO I stole more than Casey in this deal but the bank thanked me at the close nonetheless.
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