I'm curious what you had in mind when you mention Sullivan. I am a huge fan of Sullivan (the fact that his kindergarten chats and ideas on the relationship between form and function are always misquoted/misunderstood notwithstanding). When I think of Sullivan, I don't think of craftsman style or even really residential architecture, and certainly not vernacular. Sullivan and FLW are as close to high style as you can get! Maybe that's why you are not finding any images that work for you.

I would look instead at things like old sears kit houses. I'm including a link, there are charming porches galore on these things. I can't believe your posts are 2x2, that's not a column - that's a baluster! YIKES.

Also think about potentially doubling posts, either at corners alone or everywhere as a design option for some interest in addition to having some kind of masonry base and wood top.

Here is a link that might be useful: sears kit houses

You might find some inspiration photos at Cottagewood Homes. They have quite a few exterior photos with porches. Love their photos!

Thanks, you guys! Kgwlisa, you're right about Sullivan not being the right term here. But I think his work is wonderful, have loved it since I was a child, and I fantasize about ripping down the ugly '80s tract house elements of my home (can we say, popcorn ceilings?), Arts &Crafts-ing it up a bit, and bringing in Sullivan-style stencils/motifs in unexpected places... not sure exactly how, but I know I'd find it beautiful. Ideas welcomed, btw. I lump Sullivan in with FLW, but architecturally speaking that doesn't quite make sense, I know.

Thank you for the link: I grew up near Libertyville, actually, and I love the look of those homes. And yes re the 2x2s -- you should see how silly they look. Scrawny, ridiculous. I'm bummed about the cost of rebuilding the roof, but am glad for the chance to rework the columns.

Pattibee, thanks! Others? (I"m hoping Mari will see this thread and chime in...)

What does the exterior of your home look like now? Perhaps some of the more skilled photoshop experts would be willing to paste-a-porch to the image so you can try before you buy. :^)

Well, my first thought is probably utterly stupid, but did you run a Google Images search for "bungalow porch"?

There are some nifty pictures on the Craftsman Perspectives site. The Bungalow Company, a house-plan company, has some good pictures and drawings. The architecture firm Ross Chapin has some lovely A&C-esque projects featured on their site.

If hardcopy is feasible, get your hands on a copy of Jane Powell's Bungalow Details: Exteriors. That's probably the best book I know of that really examines these exterior details closely. Paul Duchscherer's The Bungalow: America's Arts & Crafts Home is another book with amazing eye candy, although it'd be more appropriately entitled "California's Arts & Crafts Home"! (Don't bother with his "Bungalow Basics: Porches" book though, it's overpriced, undersized, and just generally a ripoff.) Robert Schweitzer's Bungalow Colors: Exteriors has nifty pix too. (I need to get a new copy, I was dumb enough to lend mine out.)

I too would want to see a picture of the existing house before making more specific suggestions. The description of "ugly 80's tract house" makes me a little nervous, having lived in two 1980s subdivisions - there are so many things that could mean, and overlaying a few isolated A&C details like a few knee braces and tapered porch columns on many of those houses could be as incongruous as wearing Birkenstocks with a ballgown. (I just got a flash of a Craftsman porch glommed onto the front of a raised ranch and thought my head was going to explode. *chuckle*) Although I was recently dissed for making distinctions between different subtypes of Arts & Crafts style, that is something that you should research well before your remodel so that you know which, if any, elements are going to work with your existing structure, keep consistent with what bits you're combining so you don't end up with "architectural goulash", and know when to say when.

I'm happy to see so many fans of Louis Sullivan (or at least, fans of his work) on this board. Count me as another. Over a ten-year period, I had the good fortune to be deeply involved in the restoration of one of America's greatest buildings, Adler & Sullivan's Auditorium Building of 1889--a structure so amazing that when it opened, it was immediately referred to as "the Parthenon of America"--and one of the many small projects that comprised the larger restoration (and one which I proposed & headed up myself) made the front page of the Chicago Tribune a while back. That was pretty cool, and I'm pretty sure that no matter how many living rooms I work on before I retire, or how pretty the end results may be, none of them will ever get me another Page One quote. No, it's all downhill from here.

Anyway, Sullivan's designs are as familiar to me as my own, and I can't think of a single house of his that had columns holding up the porch. Part of that is because most of his residential work (and there wasn't that much, maybe because, as his chief draftsman George Elmslie said later, Sullivan, who married late & then only briefly, had absolutely no idea what normal 'family life' was--or how to design for it) was for row houses here in the city, and they didn't have porches to begin with, just uncovered stoops. Here, however, is a picture of his own vacation cottage at Ocean Springs Mississippi, (whose destruction-by-hurricane he described in his 1924 Autobiography of an Idea as though it had already occurred although it didn't actually happen until Katrica wiped out the whole area a few years ago) and you can see that the roof of the wide veranda--like that of the neighboring cottage designed for his Chicago friends the Charnleys--was supported by broad piers finished in the same wooden siding as the house. Most scholars give FLW the credit for the house, but either way, it a was a handsome and well-designed place, with a strong cross-axis & windows all around for a good cross-ventilation. You can study the plans online at the Historic American Buildings Survey's website at the Library of Congress.

Anyway, even after Sullivan gave FLW the boot for his 'bootlegged' after-hours houses, Wright stayed with the program & gave his houses the same massive piers. Only when Wright was playing coy with Sullivan and trying to disguise his extracurricular work behind a twee Colonial Revival mask did he ever use columns, and even then they were just unclassic enough to draw Sullivan's notice--and suspicion--on his daily walks. Genius can run but it can't hide.

So, as you work on your place, rather than use cheesy builder-grade aluminum columns or a cluster of flimsy 4x4s or even handsome-&-accurate-but-wrong-for-a-Craftsman-house classic wooden columns from a place Chadsworth, think about having piers built strong & broad like this, maybe wih a solid lower wall instead of a flimsy balustrade.

Only one other thing: before you do anything else, do as Johnmari suggests and make sure that such a treatment is right (or at least, not WRONG) for your house. These days, in certain suburbs where money runs ahead of taste, I see lots of those Birkenstock-&-Ballgown houses that Johnmari mentions, and people seem to think they're sooooo beautuiful.

On the other hand, whenever I see those B-&-B houses, I always remmeber Cyndi Lauper's very uber-apropos expression: Gag me with a spoon!

Meanwhile, howzabout a photo so we can, you know, play around with it?

Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.

I'm honored by these posts, which are not just helpful but also beautifully written, and I'll post a picture in the next week if I can. In the meantime, Magnaverde, just as food for thought: how would you describe Sullivan's approach to interior design and ornamentation? How might it be adapted to a contemporary setting?

Walkin Yesindeed, a reporter once asked Louis Sullivan the same basic question you just asked me, and got back one of Sullivan's typical cryptic responses: "I would describe it as the successful solution of a problem." Thanks a lot, Louis. Big help.

And when somebody else asked Sullivan to describe the style of the Auditorium's own decoration, he said "I would prefer not to describe it at all. I would perfer for you to look at it yourself and make up your own mind." Let's just say that Sullivan would have gotten himself eliminated on the first round of something like "Design Star" that are less about design ability or artistic vision and more about personality & sense of humor. And those things are fine, but they have nothing to do with design.

Anyway, here's the thing: like I said above, most of Sullivan's mature work was on major commissions: the Auditorium, the Chicago Grand Opera House, the Chicago Stock Exchange, department stores, banks, railway stations. After Adler & Sullivan becamse famous with the opening of the Auditorium, he seldom designed anything as small as a residence again, and most of the residential designs that came out of the office were in fact Wright's, or George Elmslie's, with Sullivan directing the overall design & the ornamental detailing. Even in this somewhat limited role, it was his vision that determined the aesthetic form of the finished buildings and the look that we think of as Sullivanian, in the same way that Fritz Kreisler & George Solti & Daniel Barenboim put their individual stamps on the sound of the Chicago Symphony, even though they weren't the ones playing all the instruments.

Unfortunately, since Sullivan didn't really do residences, and never furnished the interiors of the houses that came out of the A&S offices, we have to look at his other buildings to find what motivated him, but it's not hard to see. In a letter to a banker client, he talked of the decorative scheme of the interior as a 'color symphony' and he wasn't kidding: the finished banking room has literally dozens of intermingled colors, mostly soft greens, yellows & oranges. It also has an elaborate stenciling scheme that blends all those contrasting colors with such subtlety that they seem to dissolve into a green haze that floats in front of the wall plane. Not only that, the main banking room is lit with a pair of gigantic arched windows of golden yellow & white glass, and at night the room glows with the light from four immense electroliers that hang from the corners of the room, fixtures in the form of gigantic clusters of sea green foliage & coiling, intertwined stems, all studded along their length with electric light bulbs. And don't forget the honey-colored Roman bricks on the walls, the intricately molded paster ceiling ai more tinys of green, the green terra cotta moldings, the bronze teller cages or the green marble counters.

What's amazing was that this incredibly rich scheme was designed not for a sophiticated city audience but for a small-town farming community, where the people in line were likely to be standing in muddy boots & dirty overalls, and when he was designing for the really fancy people, it was amazing. But rather than intimidating the locals, it enobled them and their daily activities. Sullivan was a color genius, that's all I can say.

After dinner I'll look up the description of his color scheme for the McVickers' Theatre here in the city, which, even as mere words on a page--the theatre was demolished decades ago--is one of the most striking combinations you'll ever see.

magnaverde, when I saw Sullivan's Ocean Springs cottage, I did a double take. Pre-Katrina I lived near Pass Christian in Long Beach, MS and my neighbor and I would walk each morning on E. Scenic Drive. There was a house that was practically identical to the Ocean Springs one. Did he build/design in Pass Christian or do you think someone was inspired by his design? Since we all "blew away" and my neighbor left, and Scenic Drive is still a challenge to drive, I haven't been back lately. Just curious. Thanks.

I think this is the one that reminds me of Sullivan's Ocean Springs cottage. (There were several along E. Scenic that were similar.)

Here is a link that might be useful: tour pass christian

Wodka, the similarity you see in the 2 houses is a perfect illustration of Sullivan's most famous quote, "Form follows function". Sullivan would have had nothing to do with the classic-style columns of the Greek Revival house, but the overall features of his own house--the broad, low roof, the high porch, the covered veranda stretching across the whole front of the house--resemble those of the earlier house because that house, too, was built for function. In the 185Os house, the design was gussied up with classic details, but the basic form is merely the logical result of building to withstand the realities of the gulf's unpredictable weather. Well, at least till you-know-what happened. Anyway, similar causes produce similar effects.

And here's that description of the McVicker's Theater interior, from American Architect & Building News of December 24, 1887:

"The general effect of the color is salmon & dull bronze. The tones of the wall start from the bottom with a decided salmon tint as a ground, fading out as it rises until in the center of the ceiling, it becomes a delicate buff. Over this is is a large pattern formed in relief, with heavy rosettes like the center of a sunflower and lines of long spiky leaves touched up with strong red bronze...The columns and girders under the galleries are of a deep bronze or rather brass tone. The corridors are finished with a very effective combination of pale blue and bronze and the openings...into the auditorium are hung with heavy peacock blue curtains...The upholstery of the seats is all in deep red plush."

Even today, in the era of "There are no rules" , when lots of people boast "I'm not afraid of color!" few designers would have the courage--or the imagination--to use a combination of colors like that. But I have no doubt that Louis sullivan pulled it off brilliantly.

There are, unfortunately, only a few blurry black-&-white photos & a single newspaper sketch of that interior, but here's a photo of the bank at Owatonna that I mentioned above.