BEFORE 1900: Victorian styles

Less than 1% of Seattle’s existing homes were built before 1900. In the building boom that followed the Gold Rush, commercial structures replaced most of the larger Victorians as the new trolley lines allowed people to build their homes on top of Queen Anne Hill, on Capitol Hill, in Madison Park or Leschi. Most of Seattle’s surviving homes from the 1890’s were built away from the center of the city as modest farm houses or workers’ homes, such as this one of a group of five remaining together near Garfield High School.

Of the many Queen Anne Victorian homes that gave Queen Anne Hill its name, few recognizable Victorians remain. Some of the best examples of Victorian homes date from shortly after the turn of the century and are not on Queen Anne.

1900-1920: Bungalows, Boxes, Craftsmen, and Traditional Styles

The Bungalow, the Box, and the Craftsman were the contemporary designs of the first decades of the century. The Bungalow, a California invention, was a modest one- or 1.5-story home which provided the minimum spaces for polite middle class living. Almost always frame structures, bungalows have low-pitched roofs. The bungalow could be developed into a spacious house, and some examples were enhanced with a variety of exterior detail. The style is associated especially with Montlake, Wallingford, and Green Lake.

The Box style, associated with Capitol Hill and parts of Queen Anne, was a more pretentious 2-story home. In its classic form it has four corner bedrooms upstairs with corner windows projecting about a foot beyond the walls supported by exposed braces. Other decorative elements were used, most frequently an ornate window at the center of the upstairs portion of the facade.

The term Craftsman is used both for a style of interior detailing and for exterior styling. The Craftsman interior is characterized by box-beam ceilings, built-in bookcases flanking the fireplace, and simple door framing; details frequently show elements of mission styling. For the exterior, the Craftsman was essentially a free-hand style. Usually of 1.5 or 2 stories, the Craftsman exterior can be identified as a comfortable, homey design characterized by shingled siding and simple, straightforward detailing.

Several Traditional Styles were popular on into the twenties. Probably the most common traditional style, the Tudor, is distinguished by the steep pitch of its roof and a cross-gable which usually faces the street. Tudors are available in all sizes and quality, from very simple frame homes to mansions with exquisite detailing.

 

True Colonials are always two-story homes, frequently in brick, with little eave over-hang. Purists will distinguish among colonials on the basis of detailing–a Georgian colonial, a Federal colonial, etc.

One of the most distinctive designs is the unassuming Dutch Colonial. Its gambrel roof is unmistakable. Almost always a frame house, the Dutch colonial works well on narrow lots with the entrance on the side.

Styles associated with stucco exteriors are less common, for stucco is designed for drier climates than Seattle’s. Nevertheless some good examples of Mediterranean and Italianate homes can be found, some complete with red tile roofs.

1920-1940

The 1920s and 1930s were not decades of innovation. For the most part homes of these years continued the styles of the previous decades, especially the traditional styles. The contemporary design of this period came from Europe, the Modernistic house. Modernistic houses tended to be severe, horizontally accented buildings with smooth stucco walls and flat roofs. They introduced such features as windows that wrapped around corners, pipe railings, glass block, open decks on the upper level. The exterior of the modernistic house was usually undecorated; when decorations were added, they were usually in the Art Deco mode, relatively vertical, mostly geometrical patterns. In Seattle art deco is more common on commercial buildings than on homes.

1940-1960: Boeing Bungalows, Cape Cods, Ramblers, Split-Levels

Homes built during World War II were minimalist versions of traditional styles–suggesting the popular traditional forms but both small in size and without ornamentation. The classic of the period is the “Boeing Bungalow,” built in large numbers in West Seattle to house the workers flooding Seattle to build airplanes.

After the war the pent-up demand led to a tremendous building boom. Most homes built during the 1940s and 1950s were no-nonsense, straightforward efficient housing. The only traditional style built in any numbers was the Cape Cod, which had been very rare in the earlier periods; with its steep-pitched roof without cross-gabling, the Cape Cod provided a lot of living space at modest cost. The most important builder of Cape Cods was Albert Balch, who developed Wedgwood in northeast Seattle.

Apart from the Cape Cod, most homes of the era were in the contemporary designs of the period: ramblers and split-levels. They were built by the thousands in neighborhoods at both the north and south ends of the city. As implied by the name used elsewhere in the country, the rambler or ranch-style house was associated with the plains, not the hills of Seattle. The true ranch style was a single level home built on grade.

On Seattle’s wet hills the rambler usually acquired a basement; where the slope was steep enough this led to the daylight rambler, where one side of the basement opened out on ground level, providing plentiful daylight to the lower level.

The split-level is less common than the rambler. The split-level combines a one-story and a two-story element; the roof-lines of the two parts are perpendicular to each other, and the floor of the one-story part lies half-way between the two floors of the other.

1960-1980: End of Large Developments

By the end of the 1960s most large parcels of land within the city had been developed. Large residential developments became suburban projects, especially after the Evergreen Point Bridge made the near Eastside readily accessible. City projects were small, and the styles of the 50s and 60s–ramblers and split-levels continued to be most common.

A new design was the mid-entry home, in which the entry was positioned mid-way between lower and upper levels–a blend of the rambler and the split-level. The design was not elegant but it was practical. On sloping lots this design provided a lower level with a minimum of excavation; in this way relatively spacious houses could be built with limited expense in foundation work.

A variety of homes began to appear during this period which are simply called “contemporary.” Contemporary homes abandoned all effort to remind people of traditional styles and relied on such elements as large floor-to-ceiling windows, exposed structural beams, and wooden ceilings finished with a clear sealer. Living space extended visually beyond the walls with decks or patios reached through sliding doors or French doors.

During this period a distinctive regional design–the “Northwest Contemporary”–became an unmistakable tradition. The Northwest Contemporary reflected local materials and conditions as well as a strong Asian influence. Often adapted to steep hillside lots, the Northwest Contemporary frequently has several stories and emphasizes vertical lines rather than the horizontal lines of the rambler; siding, for example, was frequently installed vertically rather than in the horizontal pattern of traditional styles.

1980–Present: In-fill Building

For the past 25-30 years most single family homes in Seattle have been constructed as in-fill building–building on parcels with 1-4 building sites that got left over in the larger developments of early days. In the older neighborhoods in-fill buildings appeared on what had been side yards of older homes.

The only distinctive style emerging from recent in-fill building has been the “skinny house,” a design developed to exploit narrow (25’-30’ wide) sites. In some areas older homes built on two were demolished and two new homes built where one had been before.

For the most part, however, in-fill homes reflect a wide range of designs. In some cases new homes built in older neighborhoods were carefully designed to fit in with existing houses.

In others various contemporary designs were used, ranging from architect designed custom homes to versions of current eclectic suburban building designs.