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The home stayed in the Gamble family until 1966, when it was deeded to the city of Pasadena in a joint agreement with the USC School of Architecture. Today the home is a museum, with two 5th-year USC architecture students living in the house year-round. Similar to the rest of the residences on the tours, a connection to the outdoors is inseparable from the history of the house and to this day, the restoration team is keeping the intention alive.
The Wood Cake House
He ran Pasadena’s famed Gamble House for 28 years and now he’s leaving over ‘differences of approach’ - The Pasadena Star-News
He ran Pasadena’s famed Gamble House for 28 years and now he’s leaving over ‘differences of approach’.
Posted: Fri, 10 Aug 2018 07:00:00 GMT [source]
At that point, Karla raised her hand and let Nancy know that she could help provide an appropriately sized, correct period icebox for their cold room. Karla was then connected with the Executive Director, Ted Bosely, and other Gamble House staff, to start the conversation about the icebox. During her tour, she mentioned that the icebox in the cold room was too small for the house. Nancy asked if that if anyone came across a larger icebox to please contact the Gamble House and let them know. In 1985, the home gained worldwide notoriety as Emmett "Doc" Brown’s house in Back to the Future. While the Greene brother’s design wasn’t initially popular, it is now cemented as a cultural icon.
Benefits for National Trust Members
Meanwhile the garage used in the 1985 sequences was a facade built on location next to the Burger King seen in the film, and built in Burbank. Pasadena, with its deep roots in history, culture, architecture and science is home to several museums and educational... "An architect is a builder employing the process of art," Charles Greene once wrote. This is proven to be their governing belief, not only in the final product but also throughout the process. The brothers were known to veer from the initial blueprints, showing that they were enthralled with transition and process, the blueprints as a point of departure rather than a set of instructions. Exterior porches are found off three of the second-floor bedrooms and were used for sleeping or entertaining.
Clowning for Novices: History and Practice With Rose Carver
In 1907 they decided to build a permanent home in their adopted hometown, and hired the firm of Greene and Greene to design the home. The Greene brothers were known for their Ultimate Bungalows (think supersized Craftsman homes) which were heavily influenced by traditional Japanese architecture, and the Gamble House is without a doubt the finest example of their work. Also found throughout the house are complete collections of art tile, pottery, and art glass that were compiled by the resident family. The Greene brothers took these key pieces into consideration when designing the house, and they still exist there today.
California Historical Landmark Marker
Gamble House tours (one-hour tours, specialty and group) are offered on Tuesdays, and Thursdays through Sundays. Please click HERE for photography and film reservations (fees apply) and policies. The third floor was planned as a billiard room but was used as an attic by the Gamble family.
Along with precise joinery throughout the entire home, our docent tour guides pointed out multiple other influences including overhanging eaves, darkened mortars, and scarf joints. The most prominent motif that's repeated in groups of three is the Suba, a Japanese design that references the protective plate between the blade and handle of a samurai sword. The essential nature of architecture by Greene & Greene begins with intense attention to detail and craftsmanship, as their bungalows mark the height of the American Arts and Crafts style. The brothers were inspired by the concept of total design, or gesamtkunstwerk, which was stressed in the German-designed rooms at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase International Exposition in St. Louis. When they met David and Mary Gamble, they already had developed a list of rich couples who commissioned them to design their houses, with generous budgets and relatively free reign.
Hand-carved Wood Details
The architects worked closely with the Gambles in the design of the house, incorporating specific design elements such as the family crest among its motifs. Drawings for the house were completed in February 1908, and ground was broken in March. Ten months later, the house was finished, the first pieces of custom furniture were delivered, and The Gamble House became home to David Gamble, his wife Mary, and their youngest son Clarence. (Their oldest son Cecil was already working for Procter & Gamble; their middle son Sidney had just started at Princeton University.) Mary’s younger sister, Julia, also came to live with the family. The woods, the low and horizontal room shapes, and the natural light that filters through the art glass exterior windows coexist with a relatively traditional plan, in which most rooms are regularly shaped and organized around a central hall.
SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. The Gamble House in Pasadena, California, is an outstanding example of American Arts and Crafts-style architecture.
To protect the exposed structure, they started to apply a preservative, which ended up oxidizing and turned the exterior green and some of the wood black. When a team revisited the project to try and achieve its original colors, they removed the old preservative and replaced the original screens with ones made of copper. They also had to manually remove a toxic epoxy that had filled the wood in the past.
Low-pitched roofs, deep terraces, and titanic, unscreened sleeping porches dominate the exterior of the house. The street view is especially striking for the monumentally deep eaves that shelter the northeast porch, which visually expands the boundaries and overall form of the house well beyond the confines of its shingled walls. In the early years of the twentieth century, sleeping porches were popular and national periodicals promoted them to health seekers and the culturally alert, many of whom came to Pasadena for the winter season. Nowhere did these porches proclaim more boldly the promise of outdoor life than in the Gambles’ winter residence. Using Douglas fir posts and beams, redwood split shakes, local river stones, clinker brinks, and a creeping fig vine that literally and figuratively roots the house to its site, the Greenes skillfully choreographed a seamless integration of house and landscape.
The Gamble House, designed by Charles and Henry Greene, is regarded as one of the finest examples of Craftsman architecture in the United States, employing architecture as fine art. Over one century later, our country is experiencing a revitalization of the Craftsman movement. We find a renewed interest in handcrafted details, warm colors, and nature-inspired elements in the Craft Revival style trending for 2022. So, it only seems appropriate to go back and analyze one of the most popular homes constructed in the style. In our Gamble House architectural case study, our team of Austin architects reviews the history of the home, the influences of the Greene brothers, as well as the materials and design elements used in construction.
Although the house is not as spatially adventurous as the contemporary works of Frank Lloyd Wright, or even of the earlier New England "Shingle style," its mood is casual and its symmetries tend to be localized. The Greenes used an experienced team of local contractors who had worked together for them in Pasadena on several previous homes, including the Hall brothers, Peter and John, who were responsible for the high quality of the woodworking in the house and its furniture. The Gamble family crest, a crane and trailing rose, was integrated in part or whole in many locations around the house. The Gamble House in Pasadena, California, is an outstanding example of American Arts and Crafts style architecture.
Thankfully Cecil and Louise were fully aware of their home’s architectural significance and in 1966 they gave the house to the city of Pasadena, but with a joint agreement with USC’s School of Architecture, which is the state in which the house remains today. As a unique part of the USC co-ownership, select students of the School of Architecture may have the honor of staying in the servants’ quarters for one year. It was commissioned by David and Mary Gamble, of Cincinnati, Ohio, as a winter residence. Teak, maple, oak, Port Orford cedar, and mahogany surfaces are placed in sequences to bring out contrasts of color, tone, and grain. Inlay in the custom furniture designed by the architects coordinates with the inlay in the tiled fireplace surrounds, and the expressed, interlocking joinery on the main staircase was left exposed.
The Gamble House represented an American-style which sat amidst an abundance of imitations and interpretations of classical European buildings, the influence for many mansions at the time. It was designed to be very suitable for the southern California climate, with a sleeping porch and beautiful transition spaces from the inside to outdoor patios, a garden and a pond. The design details throughout are clearly influenced by Japanese architecture, which they first became enamored with during a cross country trip. While making their way from Ohio to Pasadena, they first experienced it when they stopped by the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago—also known as the Chicago World’s Fair—and visited the Ho-o-den Japanese Pavilion. The house is filled with repeated motifs that are regularly found in traditional Japanese design.
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