But a bit of historical and geographic background first, so it all makes sense…

The town of Powell River is tucked away on the coast of British Columbia, Canada. A town of around 20,000 people, it is at the most northerly end of the world’s longest highway [‘Highway 101’] that connects Canada south all the way to Chile in South America. Powell River is about five hours drive north of Vancouver, and requires a couple of ferry rides to traverse the deep fjords along this part of the remote British Columbia coastline.

The town of Powell River, British Columbia. The pulp mill is at the left, with the original townsite on the hill above the Mill. Stretching to the south on the right were later additions of the 1920’s. A further, more modern extension of the town continues to the right, out of the picture. The mountains of the Coast Range rise to the east behind the town.Mill and townsite of Powell River from the air by James Blake. AirPhoto courtesy Wikipedia Commons

A pulp mill, the first in Western Canada to produce newsprint, began construction in Powell River in 1908, and production of newsprint commenced in 1912. The pulp mill grew to being the world’s largest newsprint mill in the 1960’s.

In 1910, the townsite began to be laid out by The Powell River Company, with the majority of the townsite being designed by Scottish-born John McIntyre when he was townsite manager between the years 1919 to 1931. Streets of bungalows were constructed over about a ten block area, most having views of the ocean. Neighbourhoods that placed workers in the same occupation together were planned.

As the mill expanded in the 1920’s, the original town plan was extended and additional housing of sympathetic design was constructed to the south along gentle crescents laid out on the heavily forested hillside.

The houses that were built consist of groups of houses having a number of standardized designs, all recognizable today as variations on ‘bungalow’ lines – even with inevitable later changes.

A small downtown was also built by the Company with some frankly amazing civic buildings that are still there today. The old townsite of Powell River, British Columbia was designated a National Historic District in 1995.

The Historic Townsite is one of only a few professionally planned, single-industry towns dating from the early modern period in Canadian town planning that has been caringly preserved and restored by its residents.

A view of the earliest part of the Powell River townsite, looking down towards the commercial district and the harbour. Early 20th century.

Newly constructed bungalows in Powell River with front porches overlooking the ocean, c1920’s. These brown shingled houses were typical of the ‘California Bungalow’ style popular at the time.

After several years, the mature street trees and civic plantings of Powell River added a sense of lushness to the town. Civic pride was evident throughout the townsite.

The cohesive architecture and the care given to the well-planted boulevards made for a special ambience found throughout the town. A variety of house styles gave variety to the planned neighbourhoods.

Interior of one of Powell River’s bungalows – with correct accessories of wicker furniture, a brick fireplace and Indian baskets on the mantelpiece.

The rustic style incorporated elements such as construction using logs with the bark still on, rough stonework, and a particular sensitivity to the blending of landscape to structure.

The rustic style may look rough-hewn, but the execution was as careful as in any other house of the period. Woodwork was carefully and strongly made, and stonework was laid with a view to careful fitting and natural beauty of the materials.

It was a bit of a ‘folly’ type of architecture, meant to evoke feelings of a building or structure ‘at one’ with its landscape. Gazebos, bridges, picnic shelters, benches, and small cabins (and occasionally large lodges as seen in National Parks) all benefited from being built in the Rustic Style.

This delightful small house used the rustic style to great advantage for fitting in the home to its forest setting.

The owners of this cozy little cottage, Theodore Fisher and Victor Wise, were also the architects and they showed good taste and careful planning in the arrangement of this rustic forest retreat. Clad with lumber with the bark left on, and using cobblestones or river rock for the foundation, this summer home blends well into its setting. In 1913, the home cost about $ 1,400. (without plumbing), a bargain that we wish we could replicate today.

The porch of the forest retreat has a rustic railing encircling it, and the overflowing window box is also instrumental into making the cottage a part of its forested environment.

The Living Room is lighted on three sides, and with its stone fireplace and window seat, makes a cheerful room. The woodwork was stained a green brown and the spaces between the vertical woodwork is covered with green burlap. The wicker furniture adds to the lightness of a summer retreat.

The floorplan of this forest home shows a basic layout, the position of the window seat – overlooking the lush window box – and a screened sleeping porch at the rear, connected by a passage and a bathroom to the main house.

This rustic-style retreat gave its owners a true get-away home from city bustle. Natural materials, used with an eye to beauty and charm, and set into a forest setting allowed a peaceful retreat with the modern amenities of the day.

Built in classic bungalow styling, the green of the roof, the grey of the shingled walls, the river-cobble foundation and chimneys, and the white trim lent a delightful air of freshness to the building.

The exterior of the Boat House is set on the shore of the Lake, looking like a boat about to launch.

The exterior stairway leads up to the living quarters; the door to the boathouse is below

The furniture was especially adapted in size and form to the rooms. The charm of the boathouse is largely due to the harmony and appropriateness of the woods, colors, and fittings chosen, and to the general air of refinement in evidence throughout.

The Hall and Living Room woodwork was a grey brown with doors of solid brown ash without panels.

The floor plan of the Boat House shows the cozy arrangement of the rooms and the balcony overlooking the lake.

Bungalow style architecture seems particularly suitable for a permanent structure overlooking a lake, where the natural materials used in its construction are in harmony with the surrounding forest and lakeshore. In such a summer home, you can escape from the worries of day to day life, and be soothed by the murmur of waves, and living with the movements of the sun and the moon.

Earlier summer dwellings or shelters were, of necessity, more responsive to both their settings and to their occupants, relying less on technology for both cooling and entertainment, and more on environmentally-friendly solutions to staying cool, such as screened sleeping porches, and lake-side balconies connecting us with the natural world that surrounds us.

As we consider today what might constitute a ‘summer retreat’, we might, once again, look at a simpler solution that may be just as enjoyable as modern alternatives.

This concrete block-built Bungalow features a concrete Ionic porch column and a matching garden wall. When this house was built in 1915, the moulded concrete blocks were called “Artificial Stone”, and the plans showed more than six different designs of pressed blocks used on this house.

Concrete block construction calls up mental images of ugly, utilitarian structures for storage or public washrooms. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, nothing was further from the truth.

In those inventive decades of architecture and construction – when new technology like drywall and even built-in vacuums were being introduced – concrete-block machines were being touted as money saving devices for the small contractor.

For as little as $ 40., a contractor could purchase a Block Machine which, with the change of a mould, could produce three different kinds of hollow blocks, able to be used for foundations, exterior walls, or even garden walls.

The popularity of machines that could make concrete block hit its height in the early years of the twentieth century. With a simple change of moulds, a contractor could make different designed blocks for each part of the house, using the same building material and method of manufacture. Sold through magazines for the contracting industry as seen in this 1914 advertisement, they were aimed at the small contractor as a money-saving device.

Moulded concrete blocks were known by several names. Sometimes called “Art-Blocks”, and other times “Artificial Stone”, the attempts to append a new descriptive name to the product at the time showed that even then there was some resistance to the concept of “Concrete Blocks”.

This method of construction, with its potential rich appearance, and variety of shapes, was meant to provide an expensive ‘stone’ look to an inexpensive method of construction. Additional moulds could be purchased for the block machines, widening the scope for decorative effects and architectural detailing

Although touted as being easy to use and “providing a profitable business for every man who wishes to be his own boss”, in hindsight it appears that manufacturing blocks for houses was not the all-encompassing construction solution that small contractors were looking for.

Even with all of the purported benefits of this new method of construction, few houses appear to have been constructed using this method. That is not surprising when you consider the immense effort it would take to mix the concrete, form the blocks under some pressure, dry them, and then hoist these heavy items, and finally mortar them into place.

Allowing for the wide press coverage and promotion for the method in the national magazines of the day, houses built of concrete blocks are still relatively unusual, but they are valued as good examples of their kind, and distinctive products of their time period.

Three clinker brick porch pillars on an Arts & Crafts home.

Arts & Crafts homes embody an appreciation of all that is natural. The philosophy of the Arts & Crafts movement – remembering that it was a philosophy and not a style – was to do without the fancy ornamentation of the Victorian period, and instead appreciate the natural and organic elements in decoration and ornamentation.

Close-up of a porch pillar that shows a mix of regular and clinker bricks

Accordingly, natural fabrics such as linens were used for curtains and upholstery. Oriental or Navaho carpets were the preferred designs for floor coverings, and wood was to look like the species of tree that it came from, and not ‘grained’ to resemble a more expensive wood.

On the exterior of Arts & Crafts houses, when bricks were required for chimneys or porch piers, the design question was how to impart the natural or organic approach, to a manufactured item like a brick?

Clinker bricks were discovered to answer the designer’s requirements for a ‘natural’ brick product. Rough and misshapen, clinker bricks had a history of being discarded at brick works.

Clinker bricks were the result of wet bricks being placed to close to the fire in the kiln, resulting in bricks that were darker-coloured and in either ‘melted’ or ‘exploded’ shapes. The surface texture of the bricks could range from glassy to pock-marked from the uneven heat. Richer, darker colours of the ‘clinker’ bricks were another welcome result from the extra heat.

Two walls with clinker bricks: Left: Clinker bricks often were larger than ordinary bricks and were often used over two or even three regular courses of bricks. Right: Sometimes clinker bricks were just warped, and added an irregular thickness to the mortar joins in a brick wall.

During Victorian times, these uneven bricks were tossed on the garbage heap, but with the advent of Arts & Crafts construction, they became prized for their organic shapes and colours. Used as accent bricks in a larger wall, they add a roughness and texture, which was perfect for Arts & Crafts sensibilities.

Sometimes a designer or architect would use more clinker bricks at the base of a porch pier or chimney, and gradually reducing the number of them higher up. That resulted in the appearance of the pier or chimney ‘growing’ out of the living earth – rougher and more tree-like at the base, and more finished and man-made, as it ‘grew’ higher.

Such artistic construction usually relied on a close collaboration between the architect and a talented craftsman, in order to translate the designer’s vision into actual construction. When you see one of these collaborations, the striking artistry stands out as a defining feature of the Arts & Crafts time period, truly representing the philosophy of the Arts and Crafts movement, of hand-crafted, well-designed products being more beautiful than anything machine-made.

A corner that was more than a 90º angle incorporated bricks in a stepped fashion, along with clinker bricks to give an appealing rustic appearance to a wall.

A cautionary warning: Sometimes fireplaces were not designed to have tiles. Especially in the Arts & Crafts period, but also in the late Victorian period, brick was sometimes used to be the facing material for a fireplace surround. To add tiles to this sort of fireplace, thinking that it was ‘left bare’ or ‘unfinished’ is doing the house a disservice. Learn to appreciate the original design of the house before altering an original historic feature.

An original brick fireplace from 1912.

Often, when tiles were used on a fireplace from 1900-1920, they were plain tiles, even in good houses. The design was focused on the colour of the tile, and the placement of the tiles, which gave a pleasing pattern in the lines of grout.

A beautiful pale yellow tiled fireplace in a Tudor Revival house from 1908. The ‘Arbutus’ wallpaper by William Morris designed by Kathleen Kersey in 1912 is available from Historic Style

A small library fireplace with dark green tiles c 1912

A bedroom fireplace c 1912 with plain yellow English 2″ x 6″ tiles laid vertically, surrounding a polished steel surround

When one is restoring fireplaces in an older home, it is usually impossible to find enough old tiles to do the job. Therefore, rather than falling back on an alternative (and inappropriate) material like marble, one can use reproduction historic tiles.

Reproduction historic tiles are the best to use, because a fireplace is part of the architecture of a house. If a fireplace has the wrong tiles, it inevitably looks dated in a few years. I am sure that all those people who put the orange sunburst tiles on fireplaces in the 1960’s thought they were terrific, but why are people tearing them off now? Because they were not appropriate for the fireplace, or the age of the house.

Tiles need to be the correct size – usually 6″ x 6″; or 3″ x 6″; 2″ x 6″ or even 1 1/2″ x 6″. They also need to be the correct colour – and that means getting tiles with the correctly coloured glazes, with the right chemical content. Old dark green tiles for example, (and good reproduction tiles), are made with copper based pigments, which give the wonderful, deep lustrous dark green colour that is right for the old fireplaces.

Approximately 80% of fireplaces built between 1900 and 1920 had fireplaces that were tiled in dark green or burgundy tile. Other colours sometimes used included pale pink, yellow or pale blue or cream, but those colours were often reserved for bedrooms.

Fireplace tiles can be a good place to start when choosing an effective interior design for an early home. Starting with an architectural feature such as a fireplace (or a stained glass window perhaps) can effectively inspire an entire colour scheme appropriate for your home.

We have several original photographs of interiors from Bungalow and Arts & Crafts homes in this article, with captions explaining the design details found in them.

One has to remember that many people moving in to their cozy, new Arts & crafts houses had all their old Victorian furnishings from their old houses.

Cartoon – Bungalow Magazine 1913. For home builders, nothing much has changed over the years!

Few people were able to afford to purchase all new furnishings for their new house. Some people were unable to fully make the adjustment of the demands of these stylish, new homes, and they slowly reverted back to the familiar manner of furnishing that they were used to in their old home, swagging their curtains, scattering lace anti-maccassars onto their tufted furniture, and wondering somehow why it did not look right…

The revival of Arts & Crafts styling has gone on longer than the original movement in North America that only lasted from 1900 to 1920 or so.

As explained in the previous article, the smaller, cozy, artistic bungalows were a great design departure on city streets for those people used to vertical, Victorian houses trimmed with fancy millwork and turned porch posts. It is difficult to imagine just how radical these new houses looked to the citizens of the day.

The interiors of these homes also were changed dramatically from homes built just a decade before. In the 1890’s, interiors were full of gilt and velvet, peacock feathers in jars, and mosaic floors. Cornices and plasterwork and stained glass dominated interiors, along with Turkish corners, and tufted furniture that was scattered across the heavily patterned carpets throughout the house.

In the new, smaller bungalows, unnecessary decoration was stripped away. Materials were supposed to be honest. That is, oak was supposed to look like oak, and be proudly displayed in all its true character. Curtains became simpler, being made of linen or cotton. Carpets were inspired by ‘natural’ designs – often in geometric Navaho designs or traditional Persian designs – instead of the overwrought roses and ribbons of Victorian rooms.

A living room from 1913. Navaho carpets add warmth to the floor.

Living spaces flowed from one room to another in the new homes, aided by the pillared colonnades between rooms, making the smaller spaces appear bigger than they actually were.

The trick of Arts & Crafts interiors was simplicity in all things. Built-in furniture was standard in the new houses, requiring less furniture in each room. Closets, window seats, built-in sideboards and bookcases all eliminated the need for extra furniture.

California bungalows in the Pacific Northwest. The predominant horizontal design of Arts & Crafts houses was a great departure from the verticality of Victorian house design.

The start of a new century in 1900, the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 – which cut ties going back sixty years – and a new stylish monarch on England’s throne in the persona of Edward the VII, all symbolized a time of great beginnings. All things were being reassessed – housing, the place of women in society, and the introduction of new technology and services.

The early years of the new century were blessed by a time of economic prosperity that affected all human activity. House building – and more importantly, house buying – was no exception. The economy made it possible for great numbers of people to purchase their own homes for the first time. Cozy, economically designed homes allowed all these first-time owners to break into the housing market, with purchase prices that rivaled the rents of the end of the previous century. The great economic boom increased steadily up to just before the First World War.

In North America, the California bungalow was introduced as an affordable house style, in reaction to the tall, rambling Victorian homes covered with wooden ‘gingerbread’ of a decade earlier. Entire neighbourhoods were built in the Bungalow or Arts & Crafts style, expanding the suburbs of almost every city in North America.

This California bungalow has shingle cladding, with ‘roughcast’ stucco in the gable. A slight upturn in the roof was an influence from Japanese architecture, popularized by the Oriental pavilions at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition held in Seattle in 1909.

California bungalows were designed to be inexpensive.

Construction techniques were carefully checked to keep houses affordable. A single floor home, which is the main feature of a true California Bungalow, did not include expensive stairways or the digging of basements.

The average size of a late Victorian house was around 2,500 square feet in size. The average Bungalow home was much smaller – at around 1,500 square feet – making these new-style homes affordable.