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7.B. - Page 24 of 54 <br />William Kostura, Historic Resource Evaluation of the Redwood City Woman Club <br />Contemporary with Stickley were the Pasadena, California architects Greene and Greene <br />(Charles and Henry). Their Craftsman style houses of the 1900s and 1910s were usually <br />large, were always free-standing, and expressed their wooden construction dramatically <br />through exposed structural elements. In more recent decades their houses have often <br />been called the "ultimate bungalows." <br />Greene and Greene's houses for wealthy clients were showy, and so, in their way, were <br />the tremendous numbers of small Craftsman houses built in American cities and towns <br />for the working and middle classes from the 1900s into the mid -1920s. In a clear <br />departure from Arts ands Crafts ideals, these houses were mass-produced at low cost. <br />They were meant to look as if they had been hand-crafted, perhaps as if by medieval <br />carpenters, but their studs, joists, rafters, shingles, and siding were always inexpensively <br />manufactured by steam -powered saws. Quite often, exposed rafters, purlins, and beams <br />were not structural, as they were meant to appear, but were instead nailed on as ornament. <br />A picturesque effect, rather than simplicity, or honesty in the use of materials, was often <br />the goal of the builders. <br />The main characteristics of the Craftsman style in Dingee Park were steeply -pitched roofs <br />with broadly overhanging eaves; broad, comfortable porches with conspicuous posts; and <br />a wooden exterior, usually of shingles. The roofs could be front -gabled, side -gabled, or <br />cross -gabled. If side -gabled, they often had shed or gabled dormers. Typically, side - <br />gabled roofs extended past the wall plane to cover the porch, sometimes in a dramatic <br />ski -slope curve. The extended eaves were either boxed, with supporting knee -braces, or <br />had exposed rafters and purlins. Sometimes rafter tails were carved to further the <br />impression of craftsmanship on the part of the builder. <br />A small number of houses had porches and posts made of stone or brick. The best <br />example that survives may be 150 Fulton Street, whose stone porch wraps around to meet <br />a stone chimney. 1627 Brewster Avenue has thick, tapering porch posts of clinker brick. <br />Naturally, most of the early houses in Dingee Park were built on Arch Street, Birch <br />Street, and Broadway, close to El Camino Real, an easy walking distance to the train <br />station. This is also the area where numerous medical office and apartment buildings <br />were built in later decades, with the result that most of the early Craftsman houses in <br />Dingee Park no longer stand. Those that do are important not only for their striking <br />architecture, but for their ability to evoke the founding of Dingee Park. The same is true <br />for the Redwood City Woman's Club, as it was built in the Craftsman style only a few <br />years after the tract was created. <br />17 <br />532 <br />