Arts and Crafts fireplace similar in design to the Prairie in Wayzata
Gh
2 years ago
last modified: 2 years ago
I am trying to buld a fireplace similar to the Arts and Crafts fireplace in the Wayzata.
I have a 10' foot ceiling and we allowed 13 feet of space to accomodate the fireplace. I think the fireplace is about 12'-13 wide and my guess is the overall height of the fireplace about 10' which would put the top of the of glass of the fireplace 7-8 feet from the floor. Does anyone know the height of the stone columns or the the height of the TV and weather it is flat or slightly tilted down for better viewing?
Craftsman Living Room · More Info
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Who has an arts and Crafts style interior?
Comments (7)The arches could be original. If not, someone sure went to an awful lot of trouble to make them, and they do look nice. Are your crown moldings all original, and all match up through the main rooms? Are the floor boards original? If so, look at the boards on either side of the arches and between them. Sometimes that can tell you a lot. Craftsman, Mission, Prairie all were popular about the same time. Most houses built then borrowed a bit of this from one style a bit of that from another. The Craftsman and Mission styles both started in southern California. People didn't say they were building a Prairie style house, and only using the appropriate doors and windows, etc.,they were just building a house to live in. A book of the period, "Hodgeson's Practical Bunglows and Cottages" describes those new smaller homes. "They are the simple and unconscious expression of the needs of their owners, and as such they can be credited with the best kind of architectural propriety". The preface descibes how they can be covered with most any kind of material, shingles, clapboards, etc. The interiors can be plastered or not. People liked the houses because they were cheap to build and were a brand new style, unlike the then same old basic Eastern farmhouse. No I'm not an architect. If I hadn't listened to my high school guidence counselor when I was 16 I might have been. He said that since I didn't like math and my grades in it were just so so I'd never be accepted to architectural school. Years later I learned that I still could have gotten into the field. Ah well. I used to draw old houses when I was 7 and 8 years old. I had never seen a floorplan, so I drew the interiors in the only way I knew how. I used to do sectional drawings, like a dollhouse. I found my first library book of old floorplans in high school. I love to have lunch with a book of old floorplans spread out on the kitchen table. Yeah, I'm kind of nuts. I never was that interested in the architecture of public buildings. Even the grand mansions of the 18th and 19th centuries never interested me as much as THE HOUSE. A couple of years ago I got a yen to build an old house for myself in miniature form, a dollhouse. For my second house I went crazy looking for pictures of old chimneys and fireplaces from the 17th c., and English kitchen ranges that could fit into the mid 19th c. Believe me, I had to look far and wide, high and low. Whenever I look for information about one thing, I always find information about something else that interests me and that I may find useful in the future. I save it all. I started sharing with other miniaturists who wanted to reproduce times past in small scale. I kept hearing "I want it to look right, but I don't know just what is right and I can't find out anything about it." Well, I'm around to help when I can. We always lived in old houses when I was growing up. My father used to buy them and turn them into duplexes and triplexes. I used to look at everything and wish they could remain as lovely as they were long ago. Even the basic brick workingman's row house had a lot of charm and details. The first time I saw what was behind the plaster I thought it was so cool. Now that I've been finding all these online books I'm in heaven. I've gone through everything of interest in the libraries I've belonged to. And I've checked out all kinds of websites. Good thing I'm a very fast reader. Now as long as I stay on the ball with my filing system, I'll be ok..... Oh one more thing. My grandfather built his house with his own hands on his farm in northern Europe back around 1914. When he died he left it to two of his sons who lived there with their families. The house needed a facelift and repairs after some years and the brothers got into an arguement about what should be done. In the end, one took one side of the house, the other brother the other side. The house is now painted two different shades of green with two different clapboard treatments and trim. A home is not just a house, it's the people who live in it....See MoreCraftsman/Arts and Crafts exterior columns: pics?
Comments (11)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....See MoreBoxerpups, I Could Use Help - Art Deco Floor Discovered
Comments (29)Feel free to copy Pinch Me! I showed pix to my friend today, who is my ex-box, who is an architect. He nearly fell off his chair lol. He assured me that it can be cleaned up, and said that it needs to be regrouted, but certainly should be kept by all means. His opinion was just find a solid tile which matches one of those colors to finish off the floor where there is none, and don't worry about it - so big deal it won't be perfect. I agree. It will be part of the character of the room. My BF is all excited to get cracking and try to clean it up now. We're going to just try some liquid Lysol, diluted first (Architect's suggestion), and gently scrub if necessary. We'll see how that goes. As for regrouting, I'll have to have a tile person come in for that, I don't think either of us is equipped for that chore (me for sure - I have two bum knees)....See More1920s Eclectic Prairie House Projects
Comments (21)Some quick updates a month later: The buyers on our current home should be closing as I type this. Our closing is scheduled for Wednesday, then we move everything in between then and Saturday, when the professionals are scheduled to move the big items over. At the same time all of the carpet in the house is getting pulled and everything is being given a good cleaning. The most uncertain part of the move-in so far is that we need to have various locks repaired and re-keyed. That's going to be essential to the move-in since the front door is currently locked with no key and the back door is currently unlockable and secured only with a padlock. We have to trust our locksmiths have ordered the correct cylinders to get both doors working again. Finding parts for 100 year old locks was definitely one of the unanticipated challenges in buying a historic home. Luckily no part of the actual mortise locks seem to be damaged, but they are of a size that has made ordering replacement parts difficult, total hardware replacement is basically impossible without making major modifications to the door.Here's our back door. This lock set is completely functional except that the city tried drilling into the cylinder before finding they couldn't break a mortise lock that way and kicked in the door. What's especially frustrating, is just finding people who can and will do the work. Many declined the job knowing that mortise locks or old doors were involved without even seeing pictures. And several times in the process we've been told that we are better off just replacing the door, even when we were just looking for someone to replace or repair the door frame. I suspect this will be a reoccurring theme as we continue to work on the house. On the subject of trim, while repairing the aforementioned door jamb (a project that we've started before closing knowing that we need to get the doors locked right away), the casing that was pulled off is most definitely walnut. Since this was in the service stairs down to the basement, I can only assume that all of the woodwork in the house is walnut, with the exception of the front door, which appears to be quarter sawn white oak, I presume chosen for it's ability to stand up to the exterior elements. When I get a chance I still want to make a post on the research that I've done so far on this house, and what I've found about it's style and potential architect. Someone that we ran across who knew about the house had the same suggestion that we create a blog on our work and experiences....See More- PRO
Gh
2 years agolast modified: 2 years ago 
PROMark Bischak, Architect
2 years ago
JJ
2 years ago- PRO
Gh
2 years ago 
cpartist
2 years ago- PRO
Gh
2 years ago - PRO
Gh
2 years ago - PRO
Gh
2 years ago - PRO
Gh
2 years agolast modified: 2 years ago RoyHobbs
2 years ago- PRO
Gh
2 years ago cpartist
2 years ago- PRO
Gh
2 years ago - PRO
Mark Bischak, Architect
2 years ago
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