Ranch-style house
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ranch-style houses are also called American Ranch or California Ranch. First built in the 1930s, the ranch style house was extremely popular in America during the 1950s to 1980s, as new suburbs were built for baby boomer families. In the Eastern United States the Ranch is often called a "Rambler," which is a similar house but typically is seen as lacking the attached garage in the Western US.
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[edit] Features
Not all Ranch homes have all these features. These are considered the key elements of the original Ranch home style.
- Single story
- Long, low roofline
- Asymmetrical rectangular, L-shaped, or U-shaped design
- Simple floor plans
- Open floor plans
- Attached garage
- Sliding glass doors opening onto a patio
- Large windows
- Vaulted ceilings with exposed beams
- Windows often decorated with shutters
- Exteriors of stucco, brick and wood
- Large overhanging eaves
- Cross-gabled, side-gabled or hip roof.
[edit] History and Development
Cliff May is credited with creating the Ranch style home in San Diego, California in the 1930s. He fused the Hispanic Ranchería home style with elements of Modernism to create a hybrid, the California Ranch. May's Ranches are known for their walls of windows, bringing the outside gardens in, vaulted ceilings with exposed wood beams, clean lines with little decoration, attached garages, large patios with sliding glass doors, and rooms that flow into each other. The total effect was a blend of the Modernism style, often seen by Americans as sterile, with the Hispanic Adobe Rancheria, creating a warm, modern, home that was filled with natural light. This explains the vast appeal of the design to Americans of the mid century era, the Ranch was a modern house with touches of Western influence and an open floor plan suggesting family, entertaining, heritage and the future. The home style became the dominant American house from the post World War 2 era, 1945, into the 1980s.
Later Ranch homes were often mere echos of Cliff May's early works, as builders made cost cutting measures to sell the maximum number of homes. Windows were reduced in size and number, ceilings lowered, eaves reduced in size, porches shrunk or vanished, patios often reduced to a small concrete slab, and kitchens shrunk into "galley kitchens". These later Ranches often have their garage as the most prominent feature, jutting towards the street, which some mockingly call "garage homes".
In recent years, since the mid-90s, the Ranch home has begun to experience a rebirth of interest. As the average Ranch of 1970 was around 1400 square feet it is more affordale than the larger "neo-eclectic" houses, sometimes disparagingly called McMansions, in vogue since the 1980s whose average size now, 2006, approches 2400 square feet. Some see the home as more "honest" than the faux Europeon/Traditional styled neo-eclectics and "McMansions" of the last 20 years, as the ranch style is often perceived as hiding the true size of the interior of the house when viewed from the street. Others are drawn to the Ranch homes which follow closely the original Cliff May pattern and exude mid century modern chic. The publication of "Atomic Ranch" magazine reflects the growing interest in the style.
[edit] Criticisms
Ranch style houses often are criticized for lacking style. Some feel that the style is sterile and utilitarian. Many associate the style closely with cookie cutter style houses built after World War II in America. Many of the cheaper versions of the house lost the sense of natural light and free flowing interior spaces of the larger and more expensive versions have and often seem dark and generic. Much of the criticism of the style is focused on these smaller and cheaper Ranch homes, which are the most common versions to be found.
Ranches also require a larger lot size for the same amount of square footage as compact multi-story homes. Ranches typically are built in the middle of their lots with large front yards and expansive grass areas. Water usage in a Ranch can be quite high to maintain the turf areas, a problem in dry western states. This type of low-density housing is also a contributor to sprawl, though debate exists over this. (see the sprawl article)
