Los Altos City Council
January 27, 2026

advocates of zoning and subdivision
regulations. Nichols and other leading
members ofthe National Association of
Real Estate Boards (NAREB) sought
alliances with the National Conference
on City Planning (NCCP), American
Civic Association (ACA), and American
City Planning Institute (ACPI) to bring
the issues ofsuburban development
within the realm of city planning.33
Community builders often sought
expertise from several design professions, including engineering, landscape architecture, and architecture. As a
result, their subdivisions tended to
reflect the most up-to-date principles
of design; many achieved high artistic
quality and conveyed a strong unity of
design. By relying on carefully written
deed restrictions, as a private form of
zoning, they exerted control over the
character oftheir subdivisions,
attracted certain kinds of home buyers,
and protected real estate values. Many
became highly emulated models ofsuburban life and showcases for period residential design by established local
or regional masters.34
Historic view (c. 1940) of Colonial Village,
Arlington, Virginia, the first FHA-approved
large-scale rental community. Begun in 1935
with financing from the New York Life
Insurance Company, it was the first of many
such projects by operative builder Gustave
Ring which capitalized on the insurance industry's need for secure investments and the loan protection offered under the National Housing
Act of 1934. Designed by architects Harvey
Warwick and Frances Koenig in the Georgian
Revival style, the community was influenced
by models ofAmerican Garden City planning,
particularly Chatham Village and World War I
communities, such as Seaside Village and
Yorkship. (Photo courtesy Library of Congress,
Theodor Horydczak Collection, neg. LC-H814-
T-2497-001)
Historic Residential Suburbs 27

Crestwood (1920-1947) was one of many
subdivisions developed in Kansas City's
Country Club District by J. C. Nichols, one of
the Nation's most influential community developers. The high standard of design for which Nichols became known relied upon the use of
deed restrictions that were comprehensive and
renewable and the collaboration of designers
representing different professions. Landscape
architects Hare & Hare laid out the streets,
designed entry portals, and developed plans
for many small parks, while a host of local
architects designed spacious "garden homes"
in a variety of revival styles. The city's first
neighborhood association was founded here
in 1922. (Photo by Brad Finch, courtesy
Missouri Department of Natural Resources)
The Operative Builder
By the 1920s, developers were building
more apd more homes in the subdivisions they had platted and improved, thereby taking control ofthe entire
operation and phasing construction as
money became available. In the 1930s
when the home financing industry was
restructured, such “operative builders”
were able to secure FHA-approved, private financing for the large-scale development of neighborhoods ofsmall single-family houses as well as rental
communities offering attached
dwellings and apartments. Depressionera economics and the demand for defense-related and veterans’ housing
which followed encouraged them to
apply principles of mass production,
standardization, and prefabrication to
lower construction costs and increase
production time.

The Merchant Builder
Federal incentives for the private construction of housing, for employees in defense production facilities during
World War II and for returning
28 National Register Bulletin

veterans immediately following the
War, fostered dramatic changes in
home building practices. Builders
began to apply the principles of mass
production, standardization, and prefabrication to house construction on a large scale. Builders like Fritz B. Burns
and Fred W. Marlow of California
began to build communities of an
unprecedented size, such as Westchester in southeast Los Angeles, where more than 2,300 homes were builtto
FHA standards between 1941 and
1944.35
By greatly increasing the credit
available to private builders and liberalizing the terms of FHA-approved home mortgages, the 1948 Amendments to the
National Housing Act provided ideal
conditions for the emergence oflargescale corporate builders, called “merchant builders.” Because of readily available financing, streamlined methods of construction, and an unprecedented demand for housing, these builders acquired large tracts of land,
laid out neighborhoods according to
FHA principles, and rapidly constructed large numbers of homes. Since completed homes sold quickly, developers could finance new phases of construction and, as neighborhoods neared completion, move on to new
locations.

On Long Island, William Levitt
began building rental houses for veterans in 1947. Soon after he shifted to home sales and perfected the process of
on-site mass production which became
the basis for the large-scale “Levittowns” he created in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Outside
Chicago, Philip Kluztnick, former
administrator ofthe National Housing
Agency, with the expertise oftown
planner Elbert Peets, created the town
of Park Forest. In 1949 Fritz B. Burns
and HenryJ. Kaiser of Kaiser Community Homes built 1,529 single-family homes at Panorama City in California,
a suburban community which resulted
from the collaboration of Kaiser’s
industrial engineers and the Los
Angeles architectural firm of Wurdeman and Becket. In the late 1940s, Joseph Eichler began the first of his
forward looking subdivisions of contemporary homes in California.36 Merchant builders greatly influenced the character ofthe post-World War II metropolis. The idea ofselling
both a home and a lifestyle was not
simply a marketing ploy by developers
to ensure sales, it represented the integration ofthe suburban ideals of home ownership and community in a single
real estate transaction. For many, this
meantthe attainment of middle-class
status, financial prosperity, and family
stability—the fulfillment ofthe
American dream.

Financing Suburban
Residential Development
Early Trends
Until the mid-twentieth century, home
ownership was costly and beyond the
reach ofmost Americans. In the nineteenth century, most well-established families purchased their homes outright. By the early twentieth century, several organizations were making
home ownership possible for many
moderate-income families by offering
installment plans that required a small
down payment and modest monthly
payments. These included building and
loan associations, real estate developers, such as Chicago’s Samuel Gross, and even companies, such as Sears &
Roebuck, which were in the business of
selling mail order houses.

In the 1920s, it was common practice
for home owners to secure short-term
loans requiring annual or semi-annual
interest payments and a balloon payment ofthe principal after three to five years. This meant that home owners
needed to refinance periodically and
often carried second and third mortgages. This system worked well during times of prosperity, but during a period
of economic downturn and declining
real estate values, it was disastrous.37
Beginning in the early 1930s, a series
of Federal laws dramatically expanded
the financing available for the purchase
of owner-occupied dwellings and stimulated private investment in the home building industry through the construction ofsuburban subdivisions and rental apartment villages. The program
of Federal home mortgage insurance,
established under the National Housing
Act of 1934, set the stage for the emergence oflarge operative builders, and after World War II, merchant builders.

President's Conference on Home
Building and Home Ownership
President Herbert Hoover drew attention to housing as a national priority, especially in the aftermath ofthe stock
market crash in 1929 when the growth
ofthe home building industry came to
an abrupt halt and the rate of mortgage
foreclosures quickly accelerated.

Historic Residential Suburbs 29

Figure 2.

Federal Laws and Programs Encouraging Home Ownership
1932 Federal Home Loan Bank Act (47 Stat.
725) establishes home loan bank system
authorizing advances secured by home
mortgages to member institutions.
1942 Federal defense housing and home loan
programs consolidated in the National
Housing Agency under Executive Order
9070.
1933 Home Owners' Loan Act (48 Stat. 129)
establishes Home Owners' Loan
Corporation, an emergency program
(1933-36) introducing the concept of lowinterest, long-term, self-amortizing loans and enabling home owners to refinance
1944 Servicemen's Readjustment Act (58 Stat.
291), commonly known as the "Gl Bill,"
authorized Veteran's Administration to
provide loan guarantees for home mortgages for World War II veterans. mortgages with five percent, 15-year
amortizing loans.
1946 Veterans' Emergency Housing Act of 1946
(60 Stat. 215) authorizes Federal assistance in housing returning veterans and 1934 National Housing Act (48 Stat. 1246) creates Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to establish national standards for 1947
extends FHA authority to insure mortgages under Title VI, the home building industry and authorizes Federal insurance for privatelyfinanced mortgages for homes, housing National Housing Agency renamed
Housing and Home Finance Agency (61
Stat. 954).
subdivisions, and rental housing. First FHA
mortgages require a 20 percent down
payment and monthly payments amortized over 20 years.
1948 Housing Act of 1948 (62 Stat. 1276) liberalizes FHA mortgage terms by allowing insurance on up to 95 percent of a home's
value and loan payment periods extend1938 Amendments to the National Housing Act (52 Stat. 8) allow Federal mortgage insurance on as much as 90 percent of home's value and extend payments up to 25 years
(Title II). Law authorizes the creation of
the Federal National Mortgage
ing as much as 30 years (Section 203).

Also adds Section 611 to Title VI of the
National Housing Act to encourage the
use of cost-reduction techniques through
large-scale modernized site construction
of housing.

Association (Fannie Mae) to buy and sell
mortgages under the Reconstruction
Finance Corporation.
1949 Federal Housing Act of 1949 (63 Stat. 413)
establishes a national housing directive to
provide Federal aid to assist in community
1941 Amendments to the National Housing Act
(55 Stat. 31) adds Title VI, creating a prodevelopment, slum clearance, and redevelopment programs. gram of Defense Housing Insurance targeting the construction of housing in areas designated critical for defense and
defense production.
1954 Housing Act of 1954 (68 Stat. 590) provides comprehensive planning assistance under Section 701.

In December 1931, he convened the
President’s Conference on Home
Building and Home Ownership to
examine all aspects ofthe housing
industry. The conference attracted several thousand participants, including many ofthe Nation’s experts in home
financing, community planning, house
design, and zoning.

The conference was forward looking
in seeking solutions for lowering construction costs, for modernizing houses for comfort and efficiency, and for stabilizing real estate values. Conference committees strongly endorsed advances in zoning, construction, community planning, and house design. Of prime concern, however, was broadening home ownership and creating a system of home mortgage credit
that provided better protection for
both home owners and lending
institutions.38
Federal Home Loan Banking System
As an initial remedy, the Federal Home
Loan Bank Act ofJuly 22,1932, created
the Federal home loan bank system by
establishing a credit reserve and
30 National Register Bulletin

authorizing member institutions,
primarily savings and loan associations,
to receive credit secured by first mortgages. This was an important and lasting step in organizing the system of mortgage financing that remains in
place today. Legislation in 1938 created
the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as “Fannie Mae,” to buy and sell mortgages from
member institutions, making additional
money available for home mortgages.39
Home Owners' Loan Corporation
When the Roosevelt Administration
began in 1933, home foreclosures were
occurring at a rate of 1,000 per day.

Through the emergency Home Owners’
Loan Corporation, established by law
June 13,1933, the Federal government
forestalled the avalanche offoreclosures and began to stabilize real estate values. For the first time, home owners
were able to secure home loans that
were fully amortized over the length of
the loan-in this case 15 years at five percent rate of interest. Although the short-lived program lasted only three
years, it was considered a success economically and set an important precedent for the use oflong-term, lowinterest amortized home mortgages, which would a year later become the
foundation ofthe FHA mortgage insurance program.4°
Federal Housing Administration (FHA)
The creation of a permanent, national
program of mutual mortgage insurance, under Title II ofthe National Housing Act of 1934 signed into law by
President Franklin D. Roosevelt on
June 27,1934, revolutionized home
financing and set in motion a series of
events that effectively broadened home
ownership. The FHA was authorized to
provide Federal insurance for privatelyfinanced mortgages for homes, housing subdivisions, and rental housing.

Through the development ofstandards,
as well as its review and approval of
properties for mortgage insurance, the
FHA institutionalized principles for
both neighborhood planning and small
house design.

The Federal government insured
loans granted by private lending institutions for as much as 80 percent of a property’s value. Mortgages were to be
fully amortized through monthly payments extending over 20 years. Interest rates were to be relatively low, not
exceeding six percent at the time, and
required down payments were set at 20
percent ofthe cost of a home. Amendments to the Act in 1938 allowed Federal mortgage insurance on as much as 90
percent of a home’s value and extended
payments up to 25 years. The Housing
Act of 1948 further liberalized FHA
mortgage terms by allowing insurance
on as much as 95 percent of a home’s
value and extending the period of
repayment up to 30 years.41
Defense Housing Programs
The addition ofTitle VI to the National
Housing Act on March 28,1941, created
a program of Defense Housing Insurance, targeting rental housing in areas designated critical for defense and
defense production. This was continued to provide veterans’ housing after the War and eventually enabled operative builders to secure Federal mortgage insurance on as much as 90 percent of
their project costs. The FHA and other
World War II housing programs,
including the Defense Homes Corporation, financed through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and public housing projects, funded under
the Lanham Act (54 Stat. 1125), were
consolidated in the National Housing
Agency in 1942, which was renamed the
Housing and Home Finance Agency in
1947.42
The "Gl" Bill
Under the Servicemen’s Readjustment
Act of 1944, commonly called the “G.I.

Bill of Rights,” the Veterans Administration (VA) provided guarantees on home mortgages for veterans returning
from military service. The liberalized
terms of FHA-approved loans enabled
veterans to use their “GI” benefit in
place of cash, thereby eliminating the
down payment on a new house
altogether.

Planning and
Domestic Land Use
Beginning in the 1890s, the City
Beautiful movement sparked renewed
interestin the formal principles of
Renaissance and Baroque planning,
especially in the design of downtown
civic centers and planned industrial
towns. The Columbian Exposition of
1893 demonstrated the value of a comprehensive planning process that called for the development of a master plan
and the collaboration of public officials
and designers representing several professions. The writings of Charles Mulford Robinson and the example of
Daniel Burnham’s Chicago Plan (1909)
stimulated interest in city improvements and offered models for imposing a rational and orderly design upon the
Nation’s growing industrial cities.43
Calling for a synthesis of aesthetics
and functionalism, the City Beautiful
movement gained momentum in the
early twentieth century, becoming
inseparable from the broader movement for efficiency, civic improvements, and social reform that marked the Progressive era. The movement
exerted considerable influence beyond
the center city, principally in the form
of extensive boulevard and parkway
systems, public parks and playgrounds,
public water systems, and other utilities. In many cities, these measures established an infrastructure that
would support and foster suburban
development for decades to come.

Concerned with metropolitan
growth, city planners became advocates for a coordinated planning process that embraced transportation
systems, public utilities, and zoning
measures to restrict land use. Dialogue
took place among community builders,
who made up the National Association
ofReal Estate Boards (NAREB) and
typically relied on deed restrictions to
control land use, and planners in
organizations such as the American
Civic Association (ACA), American
City Planning Institute (ACPI), and
National Conference on City Planning
(NCCP). Together these groups promoted local zoning and comprehensive planning measures, and encouraged the
development ofresidential suburbs
Historic Residential Suburbs 31

according to established professional
principles oflandscape architecture
and community planning.

Deed Restrictions
Early land developers maintained
control over the development oftheir
subdivisions through the use of deed
restrictions. The placement of restrictions on the deed ofsale ensured that land was developed according to the
original intent; it also protected real
estate values for both home owners and
the subdivider, who expected to sell
improved lots over the course of many
years. According to Marc Weiss, restrictions "legitimized the idea that private owners should surrender some oftheir
individual property rights for the common good" and became the "principal vehicle by which subdividers and technicians tested and refined the methods ofmodern land use planning." Restrictions were attached to the sale of land and considered binding for a specified
period oftime, after which they could
be renewed or terminated. Restrictions
were enforceable through civil law suits
filed by the developer or other property
owners.44
Deed restrictions were used to
establish neighborhood character by
controlling the size of building lots and
dictate the design and location of houses. With the advice ofOlmsted and Vaux about 1870, the Riverside Improvement
Company introduced guidelines requiring a mandatory 30-foot setback and setting a minimum cost of construction. In the exclusive neighborhoods of St. Louis, called “private places,” deed
restrictions set a minimum cost on
dwellings to be built and established
mandatory setbacks to ensure that the
neighborhood assumed a cohesive and
dignified character. Developer Edward
H. Bouton’s Roland Park (1891), in
Baltimore, Maryland, became recognized as one ofthe Nation’s most successful residential developments in large part due to an extensive set of deed
restrictions that controlled numerous
aspects of design and land use, including lot sizes, building lines, setbacks, minimum dwelling values, and requirements for owner residency.45 The use ofsuch private restrictions
was upheld at the 1916 meeting ofthe
NCCP by leading representatives of
several professions, including Kansas
City community builderJ. C. Nichols,
city plannerJohn Nolen, and landscape
architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.

During the 1920s, deed restrictions
became the hallmark of a range of
planned residential communities, fashioned as country club or garden suburbs, that were attracting an increasing professional and rising middle class of
American cities.46
In 1928 the Institute for Research
in Land Economics and Public Utilities in Chicago published Helen C.

Monchow’s Use ofDeed Restrictions in
Subdivision Development, which set
forth a comprehensive list ofitems to
be included in deed restrictions,
including design factors such as the
height of buildings and lot frontage as
well as limitations on occupancy and
commercial activities. The Committee
on Subdivision Layout at the 1931
President’s Conference adapted
Monchow’s list in its recommendations
and endorsed deed restrictions-the
principal means for ensuring neighborhood stability, maintaining real estate values, and protecting residential
neighborhoods from nonconforming
industrial or commercial activities—
especially in jurisdictions lacking zoning ordinances. The idea that deed restrictions were the foundation of
good subdivision design was underscored by the committee’s membership, which included preeminent designers
John Nolen, Henry Hubbard, and
Henry Wright, and was chaired by
Harland Bartholomew, an urban
Streetscape of early Tudor Revival homes
in the Shaker Village Historic District (1919-
1950), Shaker Heights, Ohio. Covering almost
3000 acres and including more than 4500
contributing resources, the district retains the
cohesive architectural character envisioned by
original developers Oris P. and Mantis J. van
Sweringen. Set forth in the Shaker Village
Standards and enforced through deed restrictions, special design principles required that homes be professionally designed and adhere
to one of four architectural styles, a uniform
setback from the street, and a minimum cost
of construction. (Photo by Patricia J. Forgac,
courtesy Ohio Historic Preservation Office)
planner and theorist renowned for
work in St. Louis and Des Moines.47
Within the context of worsening
economic conditions, developers and
community builders alike examined the
use ofsuch deed restrictions in creating
pleasing neighborhoods of moderate
priced homes under the new FHA
programs. Real estate practices and the
rating system used to approve suburban
neighborhoods for FHA-insured loans
encouraged the use ofrestrictions in
the 1930s and 1940s as a safeguard for
maintaining neighborhood stability and
property values. The Urban Land
Institute’s Community Builder’s Handbook, first published in 1947, advocated deed restrictions, including ones establishing design review committees, to ensure that neighborhoods were maintained in harmony and conformity with the original design intent.

By mid-century the use of deed
restrictions to qualify prospective home
owners and residents based on factors,
32 National Register Bulletin

such as race, ethnicity, and religion,
became challenged in American courts.

In the landmark decision, Shelley v.

Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1,1948, the U.S.

Supreme Court determined such
restrictions based on race “unenforceable,” providing a legal foundation for the principle of equal access to housing
and influencing changes in Federal
housing policy.48
Zoning Ordinances and Subdivision
Regulations
Local governments began to impose
zoning ordinances in the early twentieth century as a means of controlling land use and ensuring the health, welfare, and safety ofthe American public.

In 1909 Los Angeles passed the first
zoning ordinance, creating separate
districts or “zones” for residential and
industrial land uses. In 1916 New York
City was among the first to impose
regulations on the height and mass of
buildings through local legislation.

In support of the Better Homes
movement following World War I, the
U.S. Department of Commerce joined
private advocacy groups, such the
NCCP, ACA, and ACPI, in encouraging
local legislation for zoning. The
Department began publishing an
annual report, Zoning Progress in the
United States, and a series of manuals
includingA Zoning Primer (1922), A
City Planning Primer (1928), The
Preparation ofZoning Ordinances
(1931), and Model Subdivision Regulations (1932). In 1924 the Department’s Advisory Committee on Zoning issued
a model zoning enabling act for State
governments. By 1926 zoning ordinances had been adopted by more than 76 cities, and by 1936, 85 percent of
American cities had adopted zoning
ordinances.49
Zoning proposals faced opposition
and legal challenges in many localities.

In the 1926 case, Village ofEuclid, Ohio
v. Ambler Realty Co. (272 U.S. 365), the
U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of zoning in which exclusively residential development of single-family houses was supported as
the most inviolate of land uses.5°
The 1931 President’s Conference
upheld zoning regulations and comprehensive planning measures as the primary means for controlling metropolitan growth and as an essential factor in designing and regulating stable residential neighborhoods. This was primarily the work of the Committee on City
Planning and Zoning, under the leadership of Frederic A. Delano who had previously chaired the committee for
New York’s Regional Plan, which concluded that zoning provisions should promote a sense of community and that
residential development throughout the
metropolitan region should be organized in neighborhood units based on Clarence Perry’s model.51
Comprehensive Planning and
Regional Plans
Comprehensive planning, coupled with
zoning and subdivision regulations,
became the focal point of discussions
between the Nation’s leading community builders and urban planners beginning in 1912. Organizations such as the ACPI, NCCP, and ACA brought planners, builders, and real estate interests together to promote controls over land
use in the Nation’s growing metropolitan areas.

A joint statement ofthe NAREB and
ACPI in 1927 led to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s issuance of a model statute, A Standard City PlanningAct, to encourage State governments to pass legislation enabling local and metropolitan land-use planning.

California became a leader in real
estate and planning reform, establishing the Nation’s first State planning statute and enabling subdivision regulations by local ordinance in the late 1920S.52
Regional planning commissions and
associations began to form in burgeoning metropolitan areas such as New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles,
for the purpose of planning and
Historic Residential Suburbs 33

coordinating metropolitan growth and
developing regional plans. Planning
documents such as the multiple volume
Regional Survey ofNew York and Its
Environs reflected some ofthe most
advanced thinking ofthe time and
addressed a variety ofsuburban issues
such as neighborhood planning, commercial and industrial zoning, recreation, and transportation. Plans would receive substantial attention at the 1931
President’s Conference, and would have
far-reaching influence on the development of FHA standards for the design of residential suburbs.53
Trends in
Subdivision Design
Beyond transportation, an important
set of “push and pull” factors motivated
families in the mid-nineteenth century
to establish their home in the “borderland” outside the city. First was the “push” factor: as American cities rapidly industrialized, they became increasingly crowded and congested places perceived to be dangerous and
unhealthy. Creating a “pull” factor,
domestic reformers, such as Catharine
Beecher and Andrew Jackson Downing, provided a strong antidote for urban living by extolling the moral
provided a compelling image oflife in a
semi-rural village where dwellings in a
host ofromantic revival styles blended
into a horticulturally rich, naturalistic
landscape. In such an environment, the
home became a sanctuary from the evils
and stresses oflife in the city and a
proper setting for the practice of democratic ideals.54 In the Treatise on the Theory and
Practice ofLandscape Gardening (1841),
Downing provided extensive instructions on the location, layout, and planting ofrural homes. For an American audience, Downing reinterpreted the
principles ofthe English landscape gardening tradition of Humphry Repton and Capability Brown and the writings
of English theoristJohn Claudius
Loudon. He introduced readers to the
principles of variety, unity, and harmony, which could be applied to the naturalistic design of home grounds that attained an aesthetic ideal characterized as “picturesque” or “beautiful.”55 In coming decades, Downing’s ideas
would transform the American countryside and attract many followers who would give material form to the suburban ideal. Naturalistic gardening principles espoused by Downing, Robert Morris Copeland, H.W. S. Cleaveland,
Maximilian G. Kern,Jacob Weidenmann, and others left their imprintin a variety ofsubdivision types from
gridiron plats to planned curvilinear
suburbs.56
In the 1890s advances in city planning associated with the City Beautiful movement began to influence both the
location and design of residential subdivisions. While the expansion of streetcar lines fostered widespread suburban development, park and parkway systems in many cities became a magnet for upper middle-income neighborhoods. Nineteenth-century influences ofinformal, naturalistic landscape
design gave way to more formal plans
based on the Beaux Arts principles of
Renaissance and Baroque design, often
mirroring the form of planned towns
and cities.

In the years preceding and following
World War I, American landscape traditions fused with English Garden City influences to form distinctive American
garden suburbs with gently curving,
Rows of bungalows characterize the rectilinear grid of the Santa Fe Place Historic District (1897-1925) in Kansas City, Missouri. Low in
profile and structurally simple, the bungalow
with an open floor plan and prominent porch,
replaced the ornate Victorian suburban home,
giving rise in the first decades of the twentieth
century to the ubiquitous "bungalow suburbs"
of many midwestern cities. (Photo by Patricia
Brown Glenn, courtesy Missouri
Department of Natural
Resources)
virtues of country living and domestic
economy. The Romantic
landscape movement,
often called the
Picturesque,
34 National Register Bulletin

Figure 3.

Trends in Suburban Land Development and Subdivision Design 1819 Early rectilinear suburb developed at 1904 American Civic Association (ACA) formed Brooklyn Heights, New York. by the merging of the American League 1851 Early curvilinear suburb platted at
Glendale, Ohio.
for Civic Improvement and American Park
and Outdoor Art Association.
1853 First village improvement society founded 1907-50s Country Club District, Kansas City, developed by community builder J. C. Nichols, at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. with landscape architectural firm of Hare 1857-59 Llewellyn Park, New Jersey, platted out­ and Hare. side New York City. 1909 Los Angeles passes first zoning ordinance 1858 First urban park in U. S., Central Park, creating separate districts or zones for developed in New York City by Olmsted residential land use. and Vaux. 1909 Raymond Unwin's Town Planning in
1869 Riverside, outside Chicago, platted by Practice published, adopted in England Olmsted and Vaux, establishes ideal model and United States. 1869-71
1876-92
of the Picturesque curvilinear suburb.

Garden City, Hempstead, Long Island,
platted by Alexander Tunney Stewart.

Sudbury Park, Maryland, designed by
1909-11 Forest Hills Gardens developed by Russell
Sage Foundation, with architect
Grosvenor Atterbury, and landscape
architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.
1889
Frederick Law Olmsted.

Camillo Sitte (Austria), author of Der
1909 National Conference on City Planning
(NCCP) founded; First National
Conference on City Planning and
Problems of Congestion convened. Stadtebau, calls attention to the informal character of Medieval towns, as a model
for village design. 1911-29 Shaker Village, near Cleveland, Ohio, by 1891-1914 Roland Park, Baltimore, developed by the van Sweringen Brothers.

Edward H. Bouton, designed by the 1915 Kingsport, Tennessee, laid out by city Olmsted firm using extensive deed restric­ planner John Nolen. tions and featuring cul-de-sacs. 1916 New York City establishes zoning 1893 Columbian World's Exposition, Chicago, ordinance.
introduction of comprehensive planning
and City Beautiful movement 1917 American City Planning Institute (ACPI) founded, renamed the American Institute
1898 Ebenezer Howard, Garden City diagram of Planners (1938). published in Tomorrow (republished as
Garden Cities of Tomorrow, 1902). 1918-19 World War I emergency housing programs under United States Housing Corporation
1902-05 Garden cities of Letchworth (1902) and (U.S. Department of Labor) and EmerHampstead Gardens (1905), England, gency Fleet Housing Corporation (U.S. designed by Parker and Unwin, introduc­ Shipping Board). ing cul-de-sacs, superblock planning,
open-court clustering, and other Garden
City features.
1922 Publication of The American Vitruvius: An
Architect's Handbook of Civic Art by
Werner Hegemann and Elbert Peets.
1902 Improvement of Towns and Cities by
Charles Mulford Robinson calls for civic 1923 U.S. Division of Building and Housing improvements such as roads, site plan­
(U.S. Department of Commerce) issues
ning, playgrounds and parks, street plantings, paving, lighting, and sanitation. model zoning enabling act for State
governments.

Historic Residential

Suburbs 35
Figure 3, continued 1935 First phase of construction begins at Colonial Village, Arlington, Virginia, the
first privately financed, large-scale rental
housing community insured by the FHA
under Section 207 of the National
Housing Act of 1934.
1921
1923
John Nolen makes the first plan for the
Garden City at Mariemont, Ohio.

Regional Planning Association of America
(RPAA) founded.
1924
1926
1927
1928
1928
1929
Sunnyside Gardens, New York City,
designed by Clarence Stein and Henry
Wright of RPAA for the City Housing
Corporation.

Standard State Zoning Enabling Act published by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover's Advisory Committee on Zoning.

U.S. Supreme Court upholds constitutionality of zoning (Village of Euclid, Ohio, v.

Ambler Realty Company, 272 U.S. 365,
1926).

Publication of John Nolen's New Towns
for Old: Achievements in Civic
Improvement in Some American Small
Towns and Neighborhoods.

Standard City Planning Enabling Act published by U.S. Department of Commerce's Advisory Committee on City Planning and
Zoning following 1927 joint resolution by
ACPI and NAREB. Helen C. Monchow's The
Use of Deed Restrictions in Subdivision
Development published by Institute for
Research in Land Economics.

Radburn, New Jersey, designed as a
"Town for the Motor Age" by RPAAplanners Clarence Stein and Henry Wright.

Clarence Perry's Neighborhood Unit plan
published in volume 7 of the Regional
Survey of New York and Its Environs.
1935-38
1936
1939
1941
1942
1946-47
Resettlement Administration establishes
greenbelt communities at Greenbelt,
Maryland; Greenhills, Ohio; Greendale,
Wisconsin; and Greenbrook, New Jersey
(never executed).

FHA publishes Planning Neighborhoods
for Small Houses, with the first standards
for the design of neighborhoods of small
houses, encouraging patterns of curvilinear streets, cul-de-sacs for safety and economy, and neighborhood character.

Urban Land Institute founded (independent nonprofit research organization).

Early large-scale FHA-approved neighborhoods of single-family dwellings developed, including Edgemore Terrace, Wilmington, Delaware, and Arlington
Forest, Arlington, Virginia.

Developer Fritz Burns begins Westchester,
Los Angeles, using FHA mortgage insurance
for housing defense workers under Title VI
of National Housing Act, as amended.

Establishment of the National Association
of Home Builders (NAHB), Home Builders
and Subdividers Division split from NAREB.

Former NHA administrator Phillip
Klutznick, and town planner Elbert Peets,
begin planning of Park Forest, Illinois;
and William Levitt begins development of
the first Levittown on Long Island.
1929 Wall Street Crash, Great Depression
follows.
1947 Urban Land Institute publishes first edition of Community Builder's Handbook. 1931 President's Conference on Home Building
and Home Ownership convened; Neighborhoods of Small House Design by Robert Whitten and Thomas Adams published.
1948 United States Supreme Court rules that
covenants based on race to be "unenforceable" and "contrary to public process" (Shelley v. Kraemer 334 U.S.1).
1932 U.S. Department of Commerce publishes
Model Subdivision Regulations.
1949 Joseph Eichler develops his first tract of
modern housing at Sunnyvale, California.
1932-36
1934
Chatham Village, Pittsburgh, developed
by Buhl Foundation, providing a model
for Garden City planning incorporating
superblock and connected dwellings.

The Design of Residential Areas by
Thomas Adams published.
1951
1961
Publication in England of Toward New
Towns by Clarence S. Stein.

Innovative proposal for 260-home subdivision published in Arts & Architecture's Case Study Series.
36 National Register Bulletin

tree lined streets; open landscaped
lawns and gardens; and attractive
homes in a panoply of styles. While
American designers looked to the
historic precedents offered by the
European continent for inspiration, the
residential communities they fashioned
were unequivocally American in the
treatment of open space, accommodation of the automobile, the entrepreneurship of real estate developers, and reliance on American industry to make
housing functional yet aesthetically
appealing.

By the end ofthe 1930s, the American automobile suburb ofsmall, moderately priced homes along curving tree lined streets and cul-de-sacs had taken
form. Reflecting a synthesis of design
influences thatspanned a century, it
was the product ofthe 1931 President’s
Conference on Home Building and
Home Ownership and the institutionalization of FHA housing standards among the Nation’s home builders and
home mortgage lenders. It provided the
template for the quintessential suburb
that in the years following World War II
would come to typify the American
experience.

Gridiron Plats
In the United States, the gridiron city
plan provided the most profitable
means to develop and sell land for residential use. Most American cities laid out in the second half ofthe nineteenth
century were platted in extensive grids.

These gridiron plats would guide their
future growth, many following the rectilinear land surveys called for by the Northwest Ordinance and the
Homestead Act.57
The introduction ofthe streetcar in
many cities extended the opportunity
for home ownership in suburban
neighborhoods to middle- and working-class households by the end ofthe nineteenth century. Streetcar lines
helped form the initial transportation
system, overlaying the grid plan of
streets and creating a checkerboard of
major arterial routes. The gridiron
remained the most efficient and inexpensive way to subdivide and sell land in small lots. Many cities extended outward between 1890 and 1920, fulfilling the demand for low-cost houses and
providing the template for what has
been named the “bungalow suburb.”?8
A similar pattern occurred in the
cities laid out after the introduction of
the mass produced automobile. In the
San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles,
development after 1940 took place on a
grid of arterial and collector streets that
conformed to the section lines ofthe
rectilinear survey; the grid, measuring
one square mile, was further subdivided
to allow more intensive development.59
Gridiron plats received serious criticism in the twentieth century for several reasons: the uniformity of housing, lack of fresh air and sunlight afforded
by their narrow lots, the lack of adequate recreational space, and the speculative nature of home building they fostered. Planners and landscape architects looked first to nineteenth-century Picturesque principles of design and
later more formal designs with radial
curves as an antidote to the endless
monotonous grid ofAmerican cities.

Planned Rectilinear Suburbs
The idea for a residential suburb—set
apart from center city and accessible by
some form of horse-drawn or mechanized transportation—is believed to have originated in the early nineteenth
century. These contrasted to urban
enclaves with enclosed private gardens,
such as Boston’s Louisburg Square, or
residential streets arranged around
public squares, such as the Colonialperiod plan for Savannah, Georgia, which were within walking distance of
the center city.

One ofthe earliest documented residential suburbs is Brooklyn Heights, established in 1819 across the East River
from lower Manhattan. Accessible by
ferry, the suburb featured a 60-acre plat
laid outin a grid with streets 50 feet in
width and blocks measuring 200 by 200
feet.6°
In 1869, merchant and philanthropist Alexander Tunney Stewart purchased a 500-acre parcel of land on Long Island for the purpose of creating
a model planned city, “Garden City,”
which was to be connected to Brooklyn
and New York City by a private
commuter railroad. Engineer
Delameter S. Denton developed a plan
subdividing the tract into uniform
building lots along two parallel streets,
and architectJohn Kellum designed
several model homes in picturesque
revival styles. Thousands of mature
shade trees were planted along the
streets, and 15 miles of picket fences
were constructed to give the new community the character of a small village.61 In the Midwest, landscape designer
and park planner, Maximilian G. Kern
exerted considerable influence on the
landscape design and embellishment of
neighborhoods based on the rectilinear
grid. Kern’s Rural Taste in Western
Towns and Country Districts (1884)
offered developers advice on improving
the design of residential streets and
public spaces while working within the
ubiquitous grid of western town planning. With civil engineerJulius Pitzman, Kern designed Forest Park
Addition (1887) in St. Louis, a residential subdivision featuring private streets and long landscaped medians, which
became a model for the city’s exclusive
neighborhoods known as “private
places.”62
Highly influential was the modified
gridiron plan used by community
builderJ. C. Nichols in developing the
Country Club District in Kansas City,
Missouri, and Kansas. Developed as a
garden suburb between 1907 and the
early 1950s, the District’s many residential subdivisions formed a grid of long, narrow rectangular blocks interspersed
by an occasional curvilinear or diagonal avenue or boulevard. The landscape architecture firm of Hare and Hare,
working for Nichols over a 20-year
period beginning in 1913, modified the
rectilinear grid so that many ofthe
roads running east to west followed the
contours ofthe rolling topography
rather than the straight, parallel lines
drawn by the land surveyor. Departure
from the grid enabled the designers to
create triangular islands at the site of
intersecting roads which were developed as small parks and gardens.6? Historic Residential Suburbs 37

Plan (1887) of Forest Park Addition, the
largest and most elaborate of St. Louis's
"private places," was the collaborative design
of engineer Julius Pitzman and the city's former park superintendent Maximilian G. Kern, who was also the influential author of Rural
Taste in Western Towns and Country Districts
(1884). (Lithograph by Gast, courtesy Missouri
Historical Society, neg. 21508)
Early Picturesque Suburbs
The Picturesque suburb with its plat of
curvilinear streets and roads, the product of the Romantic landscape movement, became the means by which upper-income city dwellers sought to
satisfy their aspiration for a suburban
home within commuting distance of
the city. Although Downing’s books
focused on the landscape design of
individual homes in a rural or
semi-rural setting, his ideas for the
curvilinear design ofsuburban villages
appeared in his essays, “Hints to Rural
Improvements” (1848) and “Our
Country Villages” (1850) which were
published in the Horticulturalist.64
Early Picturesque, curvilinear suburbs, such as Glendale (1851), Ohio, drew from the Picturesque theories of
Downing and Loudon as well as the
Rural Cemetery movement, which followed the example set in 1831 by Mount Auburn Cemetery outside Boston. By
mid-century, rural cemeteries exhibiting curvilinear roadways, naturalistic landscape gardening, and irregular lot
divisions that followed the natural
topography were appearing outside
most major U.S. cities. On a larger
scale, early subdivisions reflected similar principles of design, creating a naturalistic, parklike environment for domestic life.65
The most influential ofthe early
Picturesque suburbs was Llewellyn
Park, NewJersey, located west of New
York City, and platted in 1857 by
Llewellyn Haskell. Haskell carried out
his idea for a protected, gated country
park with the advice of Downing’s former partner AlexanderJackson Davis and landscape architects Eugene A.

Baumann and Howard Daniels. The
design featured a layout of curvilinear
roads and a common natural park,
called the “ramble,” and was influenced
in large part by Downing’s writings and
Olmsted and Vaux’s plans for Central
Park, which was taking form in nearby
New York City. Illustrated and
described in Henry Winthrop Sargent’s
supplement to the Sixth Edition of
Downing’s Theory and Practice (1859),
Llewellyn Park became one ofthe best
38 National Register Bulletin

known and most highly emulated
examples ofsuburban design.66
Riverside and the Olmsted Ideal
Riverside, Illinois, outside Chicago,
platted by Frederick Law Olmsted and
Calvert Vaux in 1869 for the Riverside
Improvement Company, further articulated the ideal for the Picturesque suburb, earning a reputation as the archetypal example ofthe curvilinear American planned suburb. Located on
the banks ofthe Des Plaines River
along the route ofthe Burlington
Railroad, Riverside is recognized as the
first clearly documented example in the
United States where the principles of
landscape architecture were applied to
the subdivision and development of
real estate.6?
Olmsted’s plan provided urban
amenities and homes that, built at a
comfortable density, afforded privacy
in a naturalistic parklike setting. The
first design requirement was a tranquil
site with mature trees, broad lawns, and
some variation in the topography. The
second was good roads and walks laid
out in gracefully curved lines to “suggest leisure, contemplativeness, and happy tranquility,” and the third was
the subdivision of lots in irregular
shapes. Designed to follow the topography, the curving roads were built without curbs and placed in slight depressions, making them less visible from the individual lots and enhancing the community’s pastoral character.68 Riverside established the ideal for
the spacious, curvilinear subdivision
which would be emulated by developers, planners, and home owners for generations to come. Between 1857 and
1950, Olmsted’s practice, which was
continued by Frederick Law Olmsted,
Jr., and John Charles Olmsted under
the Olmsted Brothers firm, planned
450 subdivisions in 29 States and the
District of Columbia, many ofthem in
conjunction with park or parkway systems.69
By the early twentieth century,
Olmsted’s principles had become the
basis for laying out suburban neighborhoods within the emerging professional practice of landscape architecture in
the United States. Olmsted had many
followers including, Ernest Bowditch,
Stephen Child, Herbert and Sidney
Hare, Henry V. Hubbard, George E.

Kessler, and Samuel Parsons,Jr.

Parsons and Hubbard became highly
influential through their writings,
which provided instructions in keeping
with the Olmsted principles ofsubdivision design. Parsons, who was the superintendent of New York’s Central
Park for many years and the designer of
the Albemarle Park subdivision in
Asheville, North Carolina, provided
detailed instructions on laying out
home grounds and siting houses along
steep, hillside slopes in How to Plan the
Homegrounds (1899) and TheArt of
Landscape Architecture (1915).7°
First published in 1917 and used as
the standard professional text into the
1950s, the Introduction to the Study of
Landscape Design by Hubbard and
Theodora Kimball, influenced several
generations of landscape architects. To
demonstrate the layout ofsubdivisions
to follow a site’s natural topography, the
text illustrated the example of Moss
Hill, a subdivision Hubbard and his
partnerJames Sturgis Pray designed in
the western suburbs of Boston that was
connected to the center city by
Olmsted’s “Emerald Necklace” of parks
and parkways. In a 1928 article in
Landscape Architecture on the influence oftopography on land subdivision, Hubbard showed his readers how a curvilinear plan could be fit to varying slopes and subdivided into small, regularly shaped lots.71
The 1930s brought renewed interest
in Olmsted’s principles after Landscape
Architecture reprinted Olmsted and
Vaux’s Preliminary Report upon the
Proposed Suburban Village at Riverside
(1868) and several other selections from
the papers of Frederick Law Olmsted.

Several months later in a well-illustrated article, “Riverside Sixty Years Later,” Howard K. Menhinick praised the village atmosphere, beauty ofthe mature plantings, and unified setting created
by spacious lots, planting strips, and
numerous parks. In the Design of
ResidentialAreas (1934), prominent city
planner Thomas Adams recognized
Riverside as a leading example of
American suburban design. The
example ofRiverside and later
advances in curvilinear subdivision
design would be applied to neighborhoods ofsmall homes by the FHA in the mid-i93os and the community
building standards ofthe Urban Land
Institute in the 1940s and 1950s.72
City Beautiful Influences
A movement for the design of cohesive
suburban neighborhoods in the form of
residential parks and garden suburbs
began to emerge in the 1890s and continued into the early decades ofthe twentieth century. A general plan of
development, specifications and standards, and the use of deed restrictions became essential elements used by
developers and designers to control
house design, ensure quality and harmony of construction, and create spatial organization suitable for fine homes in a park setting.

Boulevards and Residential Parks
City Beautiful principles, which were
expressed in the writings of Charles
Mulford Robinson and the creative
genius of designers such as George E.

Kessler and the Olmsted firm, resulted
in the design and redesign of many
American cities. They called for the
coordination oftransportation systems
and residential development, and fostered improvements in the design of suburban neighborhoods, such as tree
lined streets, installed utilities, and
neighborhood parks, many ofwhich
were part ofthe city park systems.

Across the Nation, suburbs following
naturalistic Olmsted principles
emerged such as Druid Hills (1893), in
Atlanta, begun by Olmsted, Sr., and
completed by the successor Olmsted
firm; Hyde Park (1887) in Kansas City
and the first phase of Roland Park
(1891) in Baltimore, both designs by
George E. Kessler.

They also gave rise to grand landscaped boulevards such as Cleveland’s Fairmount Boulevard and parkways
such as Boston’sJamaicaway, which
extending outward from the city center
became a showcase of elegant homes
and carriage houses on wide spacious
lots, often built by the Nation’s leading
Historic Residential Suburbs 39

GENERAL
k or -
<*«snD.umco landscapiarchitects
- IMO
— *—-2^225? 522 1,1 •" "“-1'
1869 Plan (above) for Riverside, Illinois, by
Olmsted, Vaux and Company with present
day streetscape. Riverside is considered the
archetypal example of the American curvilinear planned suburb. Along the broad, gently curving streets, houses on spacious facing lots
were offset and informal groupings of shrubs
and trees furnished to provide privacy and
create an informal, pastoral setting. (Plan
courtesy Frederick Law Olmsted National
Historical Site; photo courtesy National Historic
Landmarks Survey)
40 National Register Bulletin

architects and echoing popular Beaux
Arts forms. In more modest western
cities such as Boise, Idaho, boulevards
became major corridors from which
cross streets, following the city’s grid,
led to quiet neighborhoods ofmodest
homes built by local builders.

Subdivisions built for the upperincome and professional classes could be laid out according to Olmsted principles, with roads designed to follow the natural topography and natural features
such as knolls or depressions shaped
into traffic circles or cul-de-sacs. Deep
ravines or picturesque outcroppings
were often left undeveloped or retained
as a natural park for the purposes of
recreation or scenic enjoyment. The
spacious layout of curving streets and
gently undulating topography gave way,
however, to more compactly subdivided
tracts for rising middle-income residents by the 1890s.

Early Radial Plans
Influenced by the City Beautiful movement, a formalism unknown to the early Olmsted and Picturesque suburbs
began to influence the design ofresidential suburbs. Formal principles of Beaux Arts design, drawn from
European Renaissance and Baroque
periods, emphasized radial and axial
components that provided an orderly
hierarchy of residential streets and
community facilities.

Ladd’s Addition (1891) in Portland,
Oregon, would be one ofthe earliest
attempts to adopt a radial plan drawn
from Baroque principles of planning
for the design of a garden suburb built
to accommodate streetcar commuters.

Laid out by engineers Arthur Hedley
and Richard Greenleaf for developer
William S. Ladd, the plan makes use of
four wide, diagonal avenues emanating
from a central circular park to the four
corners of the parcel. Narrower streets
running east to west and north to south
extended outward to intersect with
diagonal cross streets, forming in each
quadrant a small diamond-shaped
park. A commercial corridor and the
streetcar line formed the subdivision’s
northern edge. The maintenance and
planting ofthe parks became the
responsibility ofthe city park authority,
and by 1910 city landscape architect E.

T. Mische had begun an active program
of planting. Ladd’s Addition predated,
yet appears to have anticipated, the formality of Ebenezer Howard’s English Garden City diagram, which was published several years later.73 Because radial plans were relatively
simple to lay out, especially on flat terrain, they maintained some popularity into the 1920s appearing in Tucson’s El
Encanto Estates in the late 1920s and in
Hare and Hare’s plan for Wolflin
Estates in Amarillo, Texas. Their greatest expression would occur later in response to the English Garden City
movement and relate to advances in
American city planning that went well
beyond the turn-of-the-century residential park to impose a garden-like setting on the larger and more comprehensive scale of a self-contained community.74
Twentieth-Century Garden
Suburbs
Garden Suburbs and Country Club
Suburbs
As developers like J. C. Nichols defined
their role as community builders, they
sought increasing control over the design
oftheirsubdivisions, devised ways to
enhance a neighborhood’s parklike setting and to reinforce the separation of city and suburb. Entrance ways with
plantings, signs, and sometimes portals,
reinforced a neighborhood’s separation
from noisy and crowded arterials and
outlying commercial and industrial activity. The circulation network, often laid out in the formal geometry of axial lines
and radial curves, imposed a rational
order on many new subdivisions.

Community parks and nearby country
clubs provided recreational advantages.

By the 1920s efforts were being undertaken to create compatible commercial centers on the periphery or at major points along the streetcar lines or major automobile arteries.

The laying out oftraffic circles,
residential courts, and landscaped
boulevards provided open spaces for
planting shade trees, ornamental trees,
and gardens. Community parks, often
having community centers or club
houses, and nearby country clubs provided recreational advantages.

Examples such as Myers Park in
Charlotte, North Carolina, developed
between 1911 and 1943 according to
plans by John Nolen, Earl Sumner
Draper, and Ezra Clarke Stiles, would
receive national recognition for their
quality of design and become important regional prototypes.75 Influence of the Arts and Crafts
Movement
The Arts and Crafts movement, with its
emphasis on craftsmanship, native
materials, harmony of building construction with natural environment, and extensive plantings became a popular idiom for suburban landscape improvements, especially on the West
Coast. Promoted by editors such as
Gustav Stickley and Henry Saylor, these
ideas were quickly imitated nationwide
by designers intent on creating residential parks that offered housing in various price ranges from clustered bungalow courts to spacious upper-income subdivisions such as Prospect Park
(1906) in Pasadena, in large part the
work of master architects Charles and
Henry Greene. Country club suburbs
by Hare and Hare, such as Crestwood
(1919-1920) in Kansas City, featured rusticated stone portals and corner parks.

In Henry Wright’s residential parks,
Brentmoor Park, Brentmoor, and
Forest Ridge (1910-1913) outside St.

Louis, service entrances were separated
from carriage drives, elegant homes
were arranged around common parkland, and signs of forged iron and trolley waiting shelters ofrusticated stone added to the Craftsman aesthetic.76
American Garden City
Planning
English Garden City planning had considerable influence in the United States, coinciding with advances in city planning spurred by the City Beautiful movement and widespread interest
during the Progressive era for housing
reform which extended to the design of
neighborhoods for lower-income residents. English social reformer Ebenezer Historic Residential Suburbs 41

Howard, introduced the Garden City
idea in Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to
Real Reform (1898), which was republished as Garden Cities ofTomorrow (1902). Howard diagramed his ideal city
as a series of concentric circles devoted
to bands of houses and gardens for residents of mixed income and occupations, A large park, public buildings, and commercial shops formed the center ofthe city, while an outer ring provided for industrial activities, an agricultural college, and social institutions and linked the community to an outlying greenbelt of agricultural land.

Howard’s conceptual diagrams were
first translated into the English garden
suburbs of Letchworth (1902) and
Hampstead Gardens (1905) by Barry
Parker and Raymond Unwin, whose
theories would have substantial influence on subdivision design in the United States. Designed as socially integrated communities for working-class families, the English suburbs resulted
from comprehensive planning and
encompassed a unified plan of architectural and landscape design. Limited in both geographical area and population to promote stability, they were designed to provide a healthy environment offering sunlight, fresh air, open space, and gardens. Innovative was the
subdivision ofthe land into superblocks
which could be developed in a unified
manner, with architectural groupings
alternating with open parks. A hierarchical circulation system made extensive use of cul-de-sacs that created a sense of enclosure and privacy within
each large block.77
English Garden City planning influenced American residential suburbs in several ways. It strengthened an already
strong interest in developing neighborhoods as residential parks, giving emphasis to both architectural character and landscape treatments as aspects of design. It was consistent with the
emerging interest in collaborative planning, whereby residential development 42 National Register Bulletin

was to be based on sound economic
analysis and draw on the combined
design expertise of planners, architects,
and landscape architects. It provided
models for higher-density residential
development that offered attractive and
healthful housing at lower costs.

Through traveling lectures and his
influential Town Planning in Practice
(1909), English Garden City designer
Raymond Unwin called for a formal
town center, often taking a radial or
semi-radial form that, extending outward in a web-like fashion, gradually blended into more informally arranged
streets and blocks. The Garden City
movement, under the influence of the
designers Frederick Law Olmsted,Jr.,
John Nolen and Werner Hegemann and
Elbert Peets, would give great complexity to town planning and subdivision design by integrating the principles of
English planning with the American
Olmsted tradition of naturalistic
design.

Forest Hills
In the United States, the influence of
the English garden suburbs melded
with interest in Beaux Arts planning
and first appeared in the design of
Forest Hills Gardens (1909-1911), a philanthropic project sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation. The design
was a collaboration between developer
Edward H. Bouton, landscape architect
and planner Frederick Law Olmsted,
Jr., and architect Grosvenor Atterbury.

Located on the route of the Long Island
Railroad, Forest Hills was designed to
Panoramic view of intersecting streets in
Guilford (1912-1950), a Baltimore suburb,
shows the formality and precision of design,
as well as conventions such as landscaped
medians, which characterized the work of the
Olmsted Brothers following Olmsted, Jr. 's
European tour as a member of the McMillan
Commission and the firm's introduction to
English Garden City principles. (Photo by Greg
Pease, courtesy Maryland Department of
Housing and Economic Development)
Historic Residential Suburbs 43

house moderate-income, working-class
families and served as a model of
domestic reform. The design of both
the community and individual homes
reflected progressive ideas that upheld
the value ofsunshine, fresh air, recreation, and a garden-like setting for healthy, domestic life. Unlike the spacious Olmsted-influenced curvilinear suburbs built for the rising middle
class, the early Garden City influenced
designs in the United States were intended to house lower-income, working-class families. The spaciousness ofthe American garden suburb was replaced by a careful orchestration
ofsmall gardens, courts, and common
grounds shaped by the architectural
grouping of dwelling units.78
Guilford
Guilford (1912), Edward Bouton’s second large suburb for Baltimore, built adjacent to Roland Park and also laid
out by Frederick Law Olmsted,Jr.,
applied many planned features such as
radial streets, landscaped medians, culde-sacs, and planted circular islands to the American idiom ofthe residential
park for the rising middle class.

Integrated with public parks and landscaped streets, it attained a highly controlled artistic expression based on Garden City principles.79
Washington Highlands
The plan for Washington Highlands
(1916) in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, by
Werner Hegemann and Elbert Peets
reflected a fusion offormal and informal elements-allees of evenly spaced trees, symmetrical formal plantings.
with curvilinear streets, including a
major street that formed a peripheral
arc and followed a low-lying stream
bed that functioned as a linear park.

Through The American Vitruvius:

An Architect’s Handbook ofCivicArt
(1922), Hegemann and Peets would
exert considerable influence on the
design ofmetropolitan areas in the
United States. During the New Deal,
Peets would design the Resettlement
Administration’s greenbelt community
at Greendale, Wisconsin.80
World War I Defense Housing
During World War I, the short-lived
United States Housing Corporation of
the U.S. Labor Department and the
Emergency Fleet Corporation ofthe
U.S. Shipping Board, encouraged town
planners and designers of emergency
housing communities for industrial
44 National Register Bulletin

workers to adopt Garden City models.

Under the leadership of prominent
planners and architects Nolen,
Olmsted,Jr., and Robert Kohn, these
programs encouraged the collaboration
oftown planners, architects, and landscape architects, and advocated a comprehensive approach to community planning. The AIA sent architect
Frederick Ackerman to England to
study the new garden cities with the
purpose ofinfusing American defense
housing projects with similar principles
of design.

For many young designers, working
on emergency housing provided an
unprecedented opportunity to work on
a project ofsubstantial scale and to
work collaboratively across disciplines.

Dozens of projects appeared across the
country in centers ofshipbuilding and
other defense industries. Many would
serve as models ofsuburban design in
subsequent decades. Among the most
influential were Yorkship (Fairview) in
Camden, NewJersey; Seaside Village in
Bridgeport, Connecticut; Union
Gardens in Wilmington, Delaware;
Atlantic Heights in Portsmouth, New
Hampshire; Hilton Village in Newport
News, Virginia; and Truxtun in
Portsmouth, Virginia.

Mariemont
John Nolen’s town plan for Mariemont
(1921), Ohio, was heralded for its
achievement in integrating a variety of
land uses into a well-unified community, which provided commercial zones, industrial zones, and a variety of housHilton Village (1918), Newport News, Virginia, one of the earliest and most complete examples of U.S. government-sponsored town planning during World War I. It was
designed by the short-lived Emergency Fleet
Corporation to house the families of defense
workers at the Newport News Shipbuilding
and Dry Dock Company. The community's
design illustrates the close collaboration of
town planner Henry V. Hubbard and architect
Francis Y. Joannes. Variations in the design of
roofs, entranceways, and materials in the
grouping of similar house types, as well as
landscape features, such as staggered setbacks and the retention of existing trees, were introduced to avoid the monotony and austerity characteristic of earlier industrial housing. (Photograph courtesy Mariners Museum,
Newport News)
ing types that ranged from apartment
houses to large period revival homes.

The plan embodied a combination of
formal and informal design principles
and integrated parks and common
areas.

American towns and the residential
suburbs that followed similar design
principles were frequently hybrid plans
where a radial plan of a formal core
area extended outward along axial corridors, interspersed by small gridiron areas, and eventually opened outward
along curvilinear streets that more
closely fit the site’s natural topography
and followed Olmsted principles.

Streets were laid outto specific widths
to allow for border plantings, landscaped medians and islands, and shaped intersections that gave formality
and unity to residential streets. Noted
architects were invited to design houses
in a variety ofstyles.

Mariemont received considerable
recognition as a model of community
planning. It was featured in Nolen’s
New Townsfor Old: Achievements in
Civic Improvements in SomeAmerican
Small Towns and Neighborhoods (1927),
which popularized suburban planning
and provided a number of highly emulated models including Myers Park in Charlotte, North Carolina, initially
planned by Nolen in 1911, and completed under landscape architect Earl Sumner Draper. Mariemont was also
highly praised in the Regional Survey of
New York and Its Environs (1929) and
Developed 1925 to 1929, Albers Place in
Mariemont, Ohio, illustrates one of planner
John Nolen's conventions for organizing space
to create a cohesive village setting by adopting a single architectural theme, clustering dwellings around a short court having a narrow circular drive and open central park, and unifying the space with common walls and
plantings of trees and shrubs. (Photo by Steve
Gordon, courtesy of the Ohio Historic
Preservation Office)
the proceedings ofthe 1931 President’s
Conference.

While providing a variety of housing
types for mixed incomes, the plan for
Mariemont introduced an innovative
design ofinterweaving cul-de-sacs and
avenues that accommodated a wide
range of housing types from rowhouses
to duplexes to spacious detached
homes that were grouped into clusters
serving particular income groups.

Often designed by a single firm, clusters
exhibited a cohesive architectural style.

The plan also called for convenient
commercial services at the core ofthe
community in cohesive architectural
groupings characteristic ofthe English
garden cities. Mariemont was designed
with a separate industrial zone intended to attract a number ofindustries.

English Tudor Revival influences blended with the American Colonial Revival to form attractive housing clusters and
a shopping district. In Nolen’s design,
tree lined streets were designed at varying widths to accentuate the village setting and accommodate transportation Historic Residential Suburbs 45

within the community and the needs of
each housing group.81
The RPAA and Sunnyside
In 1923 architect-planners Clarence
Stein and Henry Wright, along with
Frederick Ackerman, Charles Whitaker,
Alexander Bing, Lewis Mumford,
Benton MacKaye, and others, founded
the Regional Planning Association of
America (RPAA) to promote Garden
City principles as a basis for metropolitan expansion. Although the RPAA was broadly concerned with the retention
of open space and agricultural zones,
their practical accomplishments were
focused on the creation ofsatellite
communities that melded Garden City
principles with the immediate needs of
housing reform.

Its first project, Sunnyside Gardens
(1924-1928), was built in Queens outside
New York City as a model community
for moderate-income families and
funded by the City Housing
Corporation, a limited dividend company formed by the RPAA and headed by Bing. Although local regulations
required the designers to adhere to the
gridiron street system, the location’s
industrial use zoning allowed them to
develop each block as a single parcel
instead ofsubdividing it into separate
lots. Using architectural groupings to
create alternating areas of open and
closed space, the designers arranged
attached single- and multiple family
dwellings to form the perimeter of each
block, enclosing a central common set
aside for gardening and recreation.82
Radburn and Chatham Village
At Radburn, beginning in 1928, Stein
and Wright applied Garden City planning principles to the problem of creating an attractive and healthy community of moderately-priced homes.

Radburn, initially financed by the City
Housing Corporation, was envisioned
as a “Town for the Motor Age” derived
from the Garden City principles and
adapted to the practical needs of an
automobile age. Located 16 miles from
New York City in Fair Lawn, New
Jersey, Radburn was planned as three
interconnected neighborhoods each
housing up to 10,000 residents. Each
46 National Register Bulletin

neighborhood was to consist of a
superblock that was served by a circulation system that separated pedestrian and automobile traffic and instituted a
hierarchy of roads to reduce construction costs and promote traffic safety. A variety of house types—detached, semidetached, row, and apartment—was integrated into the design, as well as
schools, recreational facilities, and a
shopping center.

Each superblock was carefully
designed with an interior park or
green, which served as the backbone of
the neighborhood with houses fronting
on it and pedestrian walks running
along its length. The superblocks,
merged together to form a continuous
swathe of park, and underpasses were
to be introduced to allow pedestrians
to pass beneath the motor roads, making it possible for children to walk to school without crossing streets. Narrow
cul-de-sacs penetrated each superblock
from perimeter feeder streets. Houses
were oriented so that living rooms and
bedrooms faced private gardens and
the central green, while kitchens and
garages faced cul-de-sacs that provided
automobile access and functioned as
short service courts. Radburn’s hierarchy ofroads not only afforded the benefits ofsafety and convenience, but also significantly reduced construction costs
by limiting the amount ofspace occupied by streets and enabling the use of smaller water and sewer mains.83
A philanthropic venture ofthe Buhl
Foundation begun in 1929, Chatham
Village in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
further refined Garden City principles
and made important aesthetic and
functional advances in the design of
low-to-moderate income, multiple family housing. The design resulted from the collaboration of Stein and Wright,
who acted as site planners and project
advisors, and a team of local architects,
Charles T. Ingham and William T.

Boyd, and landscape architects Ralph
E. Griswold and Theodore Kohankie.

The designers utilized superblock planning, groups of connected dwellings efficiently adjusted to the steeply sloping site, and landscaped garden courts that blended with natural ravines and
woodland that surrounded the community on three sides. The project represented the ultimate fusion of Garden City planning and Colonial Revival
design and received international
acclaim as a highly successful model of
Garden City planning. It served as an
enduring model for large-scale, FHAinsured rental communities in the 1930s and 1940s.84
(far left) Aerial view (c. 1930) and Town
Plan (c. 1928), Radburn, New Jersey.

Designed by RPAA planners Clarence S.

Stein and Henry Wright as a satellite
Garden City for New York City, Radburn
was a radical departure from the typical
American suburb. Innovations included the
use of superblocks having a central swathe
of open park land, the grouping of residences to face gardens and grounds and back on service courts, separate circulation
networks for pedestrians and automobiles,
and a hierarchy of streets to reduce construction costs and ensure safety. The new town was the embodiment of Clarence
Perry's Neighborhood Unit, a model for
community planning presented in the
Regional Survey of New York and Its
Environs (1929) and enthusiastically
endorsed by the 1931 President's
Conference on Home Building and Home
Ownership. (Photo and plan courtesy
Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections,
Cornell University Library)
(left) Aerial view (1943), Chatham Village,
Pittsburgh. An enduring model ofAmerican
Garden City planning, Chatham Village (1932-
1936) resulted from a careful study ofeconomic
conditions and the collaboration oflocal architects Ingrahm and Boyd, landscape architects Griswold and Kohankie, and advisors Stein and
Wright. Developed as both a philanthropic venture and financial investment by the Buhl Foundation, the community received high
acclaim for its integration ofa large number of
moderately-priced rental units with spacious
grounds and woodland, the artistry of its
Colonial Revival styling, and its accommodation
ofinterconnected dwellings within a steeply
sloping site. (Photo byAerial Survey of Pittsburgh
Inc., courtesy Pennsylvania Historical and
Museum Commission)
The Neighborhood Unit and the 1931
President's Conference
Radburn exemplified the Neighborhood Unit Formula, developed by Clarence Perry ofthe Russell Sage
Foundation, and incorporated in
Volume 7, “Neighborhood and Community Planning,” ofthe 1929 Regional Survey ofNew York and Its Environs.

Perry’s formula called for the creation
of communities large enough to support an elementary school, preferably about 160 acres with ten percent
reserved for recreation and park space.

Interior streets were to be no wider
than required for their use with cul-desacs and side streets being relatively narrow. Community facilities were to
be centrally located, and a shopping
Historic Residential Suburbs 47

district was to be located on the edge of
the community where neighborhood
streets joined the main arterials. Perry’s
concept was overwhelmingly endorsed
at the 1931 President’s Conference and
laid a solid foundation for the development of FHA standards in the 1930s.85 The recommendations ofthe 1931
President’s Conference for the design
ofresidential neighborhoods reflected
widespread acceptance ofthe idea of
community planning and Perry’s concept of the self-contained neighborhood unit. Mention was made of the advances made in the 1920s, and
Radburn was praised for “producing
desirable homes with ample open
spaces at reasonably low cost.” Such
planning served two purposes-the
grouping of homes into “reasonably
compact residential neighborhoods
with spaciousness for health and recreation,” and creating “sub-centers for industry” with the object of “lessening
the density of congested centers.” The
report stated:

Stability ofinvestment in a home
is best assured when the subdivision is a community or neighborhood unit, which is amply protected by deed restrictions that supplement the zoning regulations, developed by real estate dealers of
proved ability, and in which there
is a strong homes association
permanently concerned with the
welfare ofthe neighborhood.86
Location was to be selected for “good
access, good setting, public services,
schools, parks and neighborhood unity,”
and subdivision plats were to be developed by an experienced landscape engineer orsite planner and were to follow a “balanced plan” that took advantage of
“topography, sunlight, natural features,
and all sensible engineering and landscape considerations.”8? Streets were to be designed for safety and economy and drawn at varying widths depending on the required setbacks, with deeper setbacks allowing for narrower streets. For example, a
6o-foot width allowed for a 26-foot
roadway and a sidewalk offour to six
feet. The size and shape oflots were to
be determined by the proposed type of
housing, with the width of each lot
48 National Register Bulletin
depending on the size and character of
the buildings, cost ofthe land, community tradition, and potential home owner. The use oflonger blocks with
fewer cross streets and the subdivision
ofland into wide, shallow lots were
encouraged, departing from previous
practices. Homes were to be “located
upon narrow winding streets away
from the noise and dangers oftraffic”
and to have proper orientation for
sunlight.88
Spaciousness was upheld as a “primary principle in good subdivision layout.” The ideal neighborhood was described as one protected by proper
zoning regulations, where trees and the
natural beauty ofthe landscape were
preserved, and where streets were gently
curving and adjusted to the contour of
the ground. Open space was viewed as
one ofthe most important considerations for home ownership. It could be achieved in three ways: (1) by subdividing into large lots, (2) by reserving large open areas in the interior of blocks, or
(3) by creating parks, playgrounds, or
large private spaces nearby. 89
FHA Principlesfor
Neighborhood Planning
The National Housing Act of 1934 created the Federal Housing Administration to restructure the collapsed private home financing system and stimulate
private investment in housing. It called
for the development of housing standards, a process for real estate appraisal, and a comprehensive program of review for approving subdivisions for
mortgage insurance.

Neighborhoods ofSmall Houses
FHA’s Land Planning Division under
Seward H. Mott, an experienced site
planner, was responsible for establishing principles for neighborhood planning and for reviewing subdivision plans submitted by developers seeking
FHA approval. This approval would
not only enable developers to secure
private financing but would also make
low-cost mortgages available for
prospective home owners. Mott’s staff
translated many ofthe prevailing ideas
about neighborhood design that had
been endorsed by the 1931 President’s
Conference, including Perry’s Neighborhood Unit Formula, into written standards and basic design principles
that could be uniformly applied across
the Nation to the design of neighborhoods ofsmall houses. Between 1936 and 1940, FHA published standards
and recommended designs in a series of
circulars, including Subdivision
Development, Planning Neighborhoods
for Small Houses, Planning Profitable
Neighborhoods, and Successful
Subdivisions.9°
The FHA set forth seven minimum
requirements for new subdivisions:

1. Location exhibiting a healthy and
active demand for homes.

2. Location possessing a suitable site in
terms oftopography, soil condition,
tree cover, and absence of hazards
such as flood, fog, smoke, obnoxious
odors, etc.

3. Accessibility by means of public
transportation (streetcars and
buses) and adequate highways to
schools, employment, and shopping
centers.

4. Installation of appropriate utilities
and street improvements (meeting
city or county specifications), and
carefully related to needs ofthe
development.

5. Compliance with city, county or
regional plans and regulations, particularly local zoning and subdivision regulations to ensure that the neighborhood will become stable
(and real estate values as well.)

6. Protection of values through
“appropriate” deed restrictions
(including setbacks, lot sizes, minimum costs of construction).

7. Guarantee of a sound financial set
up, whereby subdividers were financially able to carry through their sales and development program, and
where taxes and assessments were in
line with the type of development
contemplated and likely to remain
stable.

In addition, FHA issued a set of “desirable standards,” which, although not strict requirements, were additional
factors that influenced the approval of
a project.
• Careful adaptation ofsubdivision
layout to topography and to natural
features
• Adjustment ofstreet plan and street
widths and grades to best meet the
traffic needs
• Elimination ofsharp corners and
dangerous intersections
• Long blocks that eliminated unnecessary streets
• Carefully studied lot plan with generous and well-shaped house sites • Parks and playgrounds
• Establishment of community organizations of property owners • Incorporation offeatures that add to
the privacy and attractiveness of the
community.9i
In 1936, FHA published Planning
Neighborhoodsfor Small Houses as “a
subdivision primer” setting forth
standards for the design of new subdivisions that provided safe, livable neighborhoods and ensured stable real
estate conditions that justified mortgage lending and FHA mortgage insurance. The FHA encouraged large-scale operations, where development was
financed and carried out under the
direction of an “operative builder” who
arranged for the purchase ofland, the
design ofthe subdivision plat, and the
design and construction ofthe houses.

Such large-scale operations offered a
“broader and more profitable use of
capital” and permitted the introduction
of “industrial methods that resulted in
savings in overhead, construction, and
merchandising costs.” Developers were
able to develop neighborhood plans in
a consistent and harmonious manner,
and in addition develop “commercial
services such as retail stores and gasoline stations necessary to the life ofthe new community.”92
To Seward Mott, who headed FHA’s
Land Planning Division, the legislation’s
mandate provided an opportunity to
redirect the design ofsuburban
America and to create conditions that
would force public officials and
planners alike to adopt planning measures and to abandon the rectilinear grid in favor of plans of curvilinear streets.

Curvilinear plans had many advantages
when compared to rectilinear gridiron
plans: they provided greater privacy
and visual interest; could be adapted to
greater variations in topography;
reduced the cost of utilities and road
construction; and, by eliminating the
need for dangerous four-way intersections, provided a safer environment for domestic activities.93
The curvilinear layouts recommended by FHA in the 1930s set the standards for the design of post-World War II subdivisions. They evolved from
Garden City suburbs such as Seaside
Village and Radburn, and the organic
curvilinear designs ofthe nineteenthcentury Picturesque suburbs. Highly influential were Olmsted and Vaux’s
Riverside, with its spacious plan of
undulating and recessed, curvilinear
streets, and Roland Park with its careful
FHA redesigned plan for a subdivision
near Pontiac, Michigan, from Planning
Profitable Neighborhoods (1938). FHA's curvilinear plan featured irregularly shaped blocks of evenly-sized house lots and the integration
of long, sweeping feeder streets punctuated
by narrow courts, circles, and cul-de-sacs.

Such plans discouraged through traffic, eliminated dangerous four-way intersections, and reduced the cost of constructing roads and
utilities. (Plan courtesy Library of the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban
Development)
subdivision ofland based on topography and the development of curvilinear streets that joined at oblique and acute
angles and ended in cul-de-sacs in
hollows or on hillside knolls. By the
1930s, such principles of design had
been absorbed into the mainstream
practices ofthe landscape architectural
profession.

FHA-Approved Garden Apartment
Communities
Through its Large-Scale Rental
Housing Division in the 1930s, FHA
became involved in the approval of
Historic Residential Suburbs 49

designs and the creation ofstandards
for large-scale rental housing communities under Section 207 ofthe National Housing Act. Financed privately by
insurance companies or others with
large capital, or through public housing
bonds issued by municipalities or affiliated agencies, such developments offered low-cost rents for middle-and
low-income Americans while providing
incentives to the private building indus1949 aerial view (right) and present day streetscape (below), Arapahoe Acres, Englewood, Colorado. Built between 1949 and 1957, the 33-acre postwar subdivision reflects the vision of developer-architect Edward Hawkins and site planner-architect Eugene Sternberg for a community of moderately-priced small houses using modern principles of design. Breaking the ubiquitous grid of metropolitan Denver, the plan is distinctive for its curvilinear arrangement of streets, placement of houses on small uniformly sized lots to provide both views and privacy, and integration of landscape features, such as lawns, fences, hedges, shrubbery, and specimen trees, to organize space and give the landscape a flowing, sculptural quality. (Aerial photo courtesy of Clyde Mannon; streetscape by Diane Wray, courtesy Colorado Historical Society) try. FHA mortgage insurance minimized the risk of investing for lenders.

The program gained momentum in the
mid-i93os when the market for singlefamily housing was still uncertain, and expanded in the 1940s when additional
insurance was authorized for housing in
critical defense areas and later veterans’
housing. Rental housing developments,
especially those with a sizeable number
of units, could take advantage ofthe
economies oflarge-scale production and
the use ofstandardized components.

FHA architect Eugene Henry Klaber
worked closely with operative builders,
many of whom hired architects and
landscape architects to ensure that
approved projects were efficiently
designed cost-wise, had a solid plan for
management, and were likely to materialize into sound, long-term investments.

Efficiency of design required that each
housing community be built at a large
enough scale to take advantage ofthe
savings offered by superblock planning
and the use ofstandardized materials
and methods. Most of these communities incorporated two- and three-story, multiple family dwellings in a variety of
floor plans, often having private
entrances and sometimes intermingled
50 National Register Bulletin

with rowhouse or duplex units. A suburban location and neighborhood amenities further contributed to the
stability of real estate values and protected the investment of lenders. In 1940, the FHA issued a series of “Architectural Bulletins,” which provided economical and efficient designs for all aspects of multiple family house design,
from the layout of kitchens to the
planting of common areas.94
Many ofthe reforms and concerns
for safety that the RPAA had introduced at Sunnyside, Radburn, and Chatham Village were carried over into
the design of apartment communities.

These included: the arrangement of
housing units to afford privacy, sunlight, and fresh air; separation of internal pedestrian circulation from perimeter motor traffic; and provision of landscaped gardens and grounds away from the noise and activity of major arterial
streets. Housing units in developments
such as Colonial Village in Arlington,
Virginia, were carefully arranged to fit
the existing topography and designed
to provide visual appeal, variety, and a
village-like atmosphere.95
Such designs would provide attractive dwellings at a higher density and lower cost than neighborhoods of single family homes. To achieve the highest standards ofsafety and quiet, the standards for projects containing
several hundred units called for the
development ofsuperblocks with garden courts, ample throughways with pedestrian underpasses and walkways,
parking and garage compounds, centralized trash stations, and the elimination ofservice alleys. Clearance between buildings was carefully considered to provide adequate light, free circulation of air, and privacy. A maximum height ofthree stories was recommended unless elevators could be provided. Landscaping around foundations, common areas, and the circulation network, was recommended depending on rental costs and project’s
capitalization. In addition to playgrounds and common areas, larger developments included stores, recreation centers, and medical offices.96 The Postwar Curvilinear Subdivision
Through FHA’s publication ofstandards for neighborhood planning and its comprehensive review and revision
ofsubdivisions for mortgage approval,
curvilinear subdivision design became
the standard of both sound real estate
practice and local planning. As FHAbacked mortgages supported more and more new residential development on
the edge ofAmerican cities, local planning commissions adopted some form ofthe FHA standards as subdivision
regulations. Thus, by the late 1940s, the
curvilinear subdivision had evolved
from the Olmsted, City Beautiful, and
Garden City models to the FHAapproved standard, which had become the legally required form of new residential development in many localities in the United States. Based on the
Garden City idea, the greenbelt communities built by the U.S. government under the Resettlement Administration
during the New Deal became models of
suburban planning, incorporating not
only the Radburn Idea but also the
FHA standards for neighborhood
design.97
The curvilinear subdivision layout
was further institutionalized as the
building industry came to support
national regulations that would standardize local building practices and reduce unexpected development costs.

One ofthe most influential private
organizations representing the building
industry was the Urban Land Institute
(ULI), established in 1936 as an independent nonprofit research organization dedicated to urban planning and land development. Sponsored by the
National Association of Real Estate
Boards (NAREB) and serving as a consultant to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), ULI provided
information to developers about community developments that supported land-use planning and promoted the
idea ofmetropolitan-wide coordination as an approach to development.98 In 1947 the ULI published its first
edition ofthe Community Builder’s
Handbook. Providing detailed instructions for community development based on the curvilinear subdivision
and neighborhood unit approach, it
became a basic reference for the community development industry and, by 1990, was in its seventh edition. In 1950
the NAHB, the primary trade organization for the industry, published the Home Builders’ Manualfor Land
Development.

Thus, by the late 1940s, the concept
of neighborhood planning had become
institutionalized in American planning
practice. This form of development, in
seamless repetition, would create the
post-World War II suburban landscape.

Historic Residential Suburbs 51

House and Yard
The Design of
the Suburban Home
The central motivation for the invention ofthe suburban house was the desire ofAmericans to own a singlefamily house in a semi-rural environment away from the city—what would become the American dream. Several
factors influenced the evolution ofsuburban house design:
• The lowering of construction costs,
accomplished with the invention of
the balloon-frame method of construction in the 1830s and successive stages ofstandardization, mass
production, and prefabrication.
• The translation ofthe suburban ideal
into the form an individual dwelling
usually on its own lot in a safe,
healthy, and parklike setting.
• The design of an efficient floor plan
believed to support and reinforce
the ideal family.

The evolution ofthe American home
reflects changing concepts of family life
and the ideal suburban landscape.

From 1838 to i960, the design ofthe single-family, detached suburban home in a landscaped setting evolved in several
broad stages from picturesque country
villas to sprawling ranch houses on
spacious suburban lots.

The Suburban Prerequisite: The
Invention ofthe Balloon Frame
The widespread adoption ofthe balloon-frame method of construction, invented in Chicago in the 1830s, along
with the invention of wire nails and the
circular saw, transformed the character
ofAmerican housing in the mid-nineteenth century. The lightweight balloon frame consisted of narrow wooden
studs and larger joists arranged in a
box-like configuration capable of
absorbing load-bearing stresses. In
comparison to traditional post-andbeam and masonry methods, balloon framing could be quickly assembled at
a lower cost with fewer and less experienced workers. Allowing considerable freedom of design in both exterior massing and interior layout, it was well-suited for building homes in the Romantic
Revival and Picturesque styles thatwere
coming into vogue in the mid-nineteenth century.99
Rural Architecture and Home
Grounds, 1838 to 1890
The suburban home first appeared as a
rural villa for the fairly well-to-do family in the mid-nineteenth century.

Located “on the edge ofthe city,” it was
intentionally designed as a therapeutic
refuge from the city, offering tranquility, sunshine, spaciousness, verdure, and closeness to nature—qualities opposite
those of city. This ideal was aggressively
and persuasively articulated through
pattern books, the writings of domestic
reformers, and popular magazines. As
house designs became adapted for
more modest incomes and as advances
in transportation lowered the cost of
commuting, suburban living became
affordable to an increasingly broad
spectrum ofthe population.

Early Pattern Books
AlexanderJackson Davis’s Rural
Residences (1838) marked the transition
from builders’ guides, which focused
on techniques ofjoinery and architectural detailing, to a new generation of pattern books. Pattern books were
directed at the prospective home owner
and featured plans and elevations for
ornamented villas and cottages in a
variety ofromantic revival styles all set
in a semi-rural, village setting.

Catharine E. Beecher’s Treatise on
Domestic Econ-omy (1841) called for
domestic reform, promoting the idea
that rural living was ideally suited for
family life, and offering elevations and
floor plans for simple houses designed
for efficiency and family comfort. With
the publication of Cottage Residences
(1842) and Architecture ofCountry
Houses (1850), Andrew Jackson
Downing soon after popularized a market for pattern books that offered a variety of house types and styles suited
for country or village living.

Downing gave detailed architectural
expression to the ideal ofliving in a
semi-rural environment, offering
designs for villas for the well-to-do and
less expensive cottages for lowerincome households. Through designs that conformed to a romantic aesthetic
for the “beautiful” or the “picturesque,”
Downing promoted revival styles
described as “Italianate,” “Tudor Revival,” “Bracketed,” “Swiss,” “Gothic Revival,” and “Tuscan.” His books also
illustrated decorative architectural elements, such as brackets and vergeboards, that could be crafted by most country builders to embellish the
simplest home.100
Pattern books appeared by a number of architects, including Calvert Vaux, A. J. Bicknell, George E. Woodward, Orson Squire Fowler, William H.

Ranlett, and Gervase Wheeler. Godey’s
Lady’s Book, a popular magazine, also
offered its readers designs for rural villas and cottages, thereby establishing the important role of periodicals in fostering domestic reform and affecting popular taste.101
Landscape Gardening for Suburban
Homes
Downing’s Treatise on the Theory and
Practice ofLandscape Gardening (1841)
was the first American published guide
for laying out and planting domestic
grounds. A nurseryman by trade,
Downing fostered an avid interestin
horticulture, encouraging home owners to enhance village streets and domestic grounds with plantings drawn
from the vast numbers of native and
exotic trees and shrubs becoming available in the United States. His books offered simple layouts, extensive
52 National Register Bulletin

instructions, and plant lists for landscaping villas and cottages, often on modestly-sized rectangular parcels of
land. To Downing, even the smallest
domestic yard was a pleasure ground
that offered a sense of enclosure and
privacy from the outside world and
could be developed with curvilinear
paths, lawns, overlooks, tree plantations, specimen trees, and a variety of gardens.

Instructions and site plans for
embellishing the grounds ofsuburban
homes appeared regularly in a number
of periodicals, including The Horticulturalist, Hovey’s Magazine ofHorticulture, and Garden and Forest. Between 1856 and 1870, plan books appeared by
a number of other landscape gardeners,
including Henry W. Cleaveland, Robert
Morris Copeland, George E. and F. W.

Woodward, and Jacob Weidenmann.102
Frank J. Scott was among the first to
recognize that the new homes being
built outside cities formed neighborhoods that were suburban, not rural, in character. His comprehensive landscape manual, Art ofBeautifying Suburban Home Grounds ofSmall Extent (1870), was intended to help the middle-class home owner achieve beautiful landscape effects that were low in cost
and easy to maintain, including graded
lawns, ornamental trees and shrubs,
and foundation plantings. His influence
was extensive, and by the 1870s,
suburban streets began to take on a
unified landscape character with paved
roads, shade trees, entry walks, fences,
and stairways, giving definition to the
ideal suburban landscape.10?
Queen Anne cottage (1904) in the Harrison
Boulevard Historic District, Boise, Idaho, represents one of the city's modest "homedwellings," typically built by local builders. The imaginative treatment of houses to face street
corners and the presence of mature street
trees reflect a vernacular expression of landscape design. (Photo by Duane Garrett, courtesy Idaho State Historic Preservation Office) Historic Residential Suburbs 53

Eclectic House Designs and Mail
Order Plans
After the Civil War, a new generation of
pattern books appeared offering
greater variety and complexity in house
design and plans well-suited to suburban house lots. Henry Hudson Holly’s Modern Dwellings in Town and Country,
Adapted to American Wants and Climate
(1878) was among the first to advocate
architectural eclecticism in which visual
and artistic effects—in the design of
chimneys, gables, and porches, for
example— became important aspects of
stylistic appeal. Such books popularized late nineteenth-century styles including the Shingle, Stick, Eastlake,
Second Empire, and Queen Anne
Revival styles.IO4
Mail order services further democratized home building and added variety and complexity to Victorian-era house design. Model Homesfor the
People, A Complete Guide to the Proper
and Economical Erection ofBuildings
(1876) was the first in a series of bestselling, inexpensive catalogs by George and Charles Palliser which offered
detailed architectural plans by mail for
a small fee. The Ladies’ HomeJournal,
under the editorship of Edward Bok
beginning in 1889, and a host of catalogs by architects George F. Barber, Robert W. Shoppell, William A.

Radford, and others similarly made
available architect-designed plans for a
nominal cost. This practice continued
in the twentieth century, carried on by
architect-sponsored small house service bureaus and stock plan companies, such as Garlinghouse of Topeka,
Kansas.,o5
54 National Register Bulletin

The Homestead Temple-House
Working-class families sought separation from the city and privacy from neighbors in modest, detached homes
on the narrow, rectangular lots of gridiron subdivisions. By the 1860s, a freestanding house type, the “homestead temple-house,” gained popularity in the
rapidly growing industrial cities of the
Northeast and Midwest. Derived from
the earlier Greek Revival house and
typically adorned by a stylish doorway
or colonnaded porch, the house was
turned so that the gabled end faced the
(above) A regional expression of the
"homestead temple-house," the simple
one-story shotgun houses (c. 1925) in the
Rocksprings Shotgun Row Historic District
were built to house African American laborers
who settled in Athens, Georgia, following
World War I. (Photo by James R. Lockhart,
courtesy Georgia Department of Natural
Resources)
(far left) Gothic Revival house designed by
James H. McGill for LeDroit Park in
Washington, DC, exemplifies the romantic
revival designs promoted by mid-nineteenthcentury pattern books, such as Andrew Jackson Downing's Cottage Residences (1842)
and The Architecture of Country Houses
(1850). Developed between 1873 and 1877,
LeDroit Park was originally planned as an
architecturally unified subdivision of detached
and semi-detached houses, many designed by
McGill, an enterprising architect who advertised his services through the publication of LeDroit Park Illustrated (1877) and
Architectural Advertiser (1879). (Photo by Jack
E. Boucher, courtesy Historic American
Buildings Survey)
(left) Brick row houses (c. 1882) in Queen
Anne style designed for working-class families
(many immigrants from Germany and Ireland)
in the William D. Bishop Cottage Development
(c. 1840-1894), Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Attributed to George and Charles Palliser,
houses exhibit the eclecticism and complexity
of design for which the architects became
known through a series of inexpensive catalogs, such as Model Homes for the People (1876), which offered detailed architectural
drawings that could be purchased by mail for
a small fee. (Photo by D. Palmguist, courtesy
Connecticut Historical Commission)
Historic Residential Suburbs 55

street and the floor plan extended
deeply into the lot.106
The popularity ofthis house type
persisted throughout the nineteenth
century, allowing working-class families to live in suburban neighborhoods close to railroad stations and later
along streetcar routes. It appeared in
several forms from a simple one-story,
“shotgun” home in the South to the
double- and triple-decker multiple family dwellings ofthe Northeast, this type assumed a variety of architectural styles
ranging from Classical and Gothic
Revivals to Italianate and Queen Anne
Revival. The crowded and repetitious
character ofsuch neighborhoods would
attractthe criticism oftwentiethcentury reformers.

The Practical Suburban House,
1890 to 1920
The expansion ofstreetcar transportation in American cities coincided with fundamental changes in the perception
ofthe ideal family and a revision of
what constituted the best suburban
home. Progressive ideals emphasizing
simplicity and efficiency called for
house designs that reflected less hierarchical relationships, technological innovations, and a more informal and
relaxed lifestyle.10?
New subdivisions provided utilities
and amenities not available elsewhere.

In many places, they benefitted from
the street improvements, park and
boulevard systems, and public utility
systems that resulted from the City
Beautiful movement and an emerging
interest in city planning as the means
for Progressive reform.

Technological innovations introduced to improve household life— central heating, gas hot water heaters,
indoor plumbing, and electricity—
entailed expensive mechanical systems
that increased the cost of construction.

The reduction of floor space and the
use ofstandardized plans helped offset
the rising cost of home construction
and put home ownership within reach
of more Americans. First appearing in
the 1890s, the bungalow reflected the
desire for an affordable single-family
house for households without servants.
56 National Register Bulletin
These houses, and a somewhat large
type known as the foursquare, were
sold by catalog and became the first
mass-produced houses in the United
States.108
The Open Plan Bungalow
By 1910, the bungalow had become the
ideal suburban home and was being
built by the thousands, giving rise to
what has been called the “bungalow
suburb.” The typical bungalow was a
one- or one-and-a-half-story house
having a wide, shallow-pitched roof
with broad overhanging eaves. The
interior featured an open floor plan for
family activities at the front ofthe
house and private bedrooms at the
back or upstairs. The wide open front
porch, a distinctive feature ofthe ideal
bungalow, provided a transition
between interior and outdoors.IO9
The design ofthe bungalow was
influenced by the Prairie School movement ofthe Midwest, the California Arts and Crafts movement, and a number of vernacular housing types. Part of the bungalow’s appeal was its adaptation ofthese and other architectural influences in the form of a small comfortable house. The suburban bungalow—in styles ranging from English Cottage styles to the Mission Revival
style ofthe Southwest—was popularized nationwide by periodicals such as Western Architect, Ladies’ Home
Journal, Craftsman, and Bungalow
Magazine. Numerous catalogs and
books appeared, many in multiple editions, including William A. Radford’s Artistic Bungalows (1908), Henry L.

Wilson’s Bungalow Book (1910), Henry
H. Saylor’s Bungalow Book (1911), H. V.

Von Hoist’s Modern American Homes
(1913), Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman
Homes (1909) and More Craftsman
Homes (1912), and Charles E. White’s
Bungalow Book (1923).

The American Foursquare
The American foursquare made its
appearance in the 1890s, and by the
1930s, was a fixture ofAmerican neighborhoods. A typical foursquare was a two-and-one-half-story house having a
raised basement, one-story porch
across the front, and plan offour
evenly sized rooms on each floor. Often
crowned with a pyramidal roof and
dormers, the foursquare appeared in a
variety of architectural styles, the most
popular being the Colonial Revival.110
Factory Cut, Mail Order Houses
The availability of complete, factory cut
homes, which could be ordered by mail
from illustrated catalogs, was largely
responsible for the widespread popularity of the bungalow and foursquare.

The Hodgson Company of Dover,
Massachusetts, was one of the first to
market factory cut dwellings, sheds,
and cottages. During the first decade of
the twentieth century, several companies—Aladdin ofBay City, Michigan; Sears and Roebuck; and Montgomery
Ward—began to market pre-cut homes
that could be shipped by railroad and
assembled on site. This trend grew in
popularity and at the height ofits popularity in the 1920s the industry included a host of other companies, including the Gordon-Van Tine Company of
Davenport, Iowa, and Pacific ReadyCut of Los Angeles.

The success of mail order home
building depended on inexpensive
transportation, vast selection of housing types and prices, financial arrangements where home owners could pay in installments, and marketing programs
whereby designs were constantly being
revised and retired as new ones reflecting changing popular taste were introduced. Thousands of pre-cut houses were sold and shipped annually. Sears
alone offered approximately 450 readyto-build designs ranging in style, type, and size from small bungalows to multiple family apartment houses. Sears’s sales reached 30,000 by 1925 and nearly
50,000 by 1930.111
Introduction of the Garage
Shelter for the automobile became an
increasingly important consideration
after 1900. Driveways were readily
accommodated in the progressive
design of new neighborhoods having
road improvements such as paved surfaces, gutters and curbs, and sidewalks.

The earliest garages were placed behind
the house at the end of a long driveway
that often consisted oflittle more than

a double tract of pavement. By the end
ofthe 1920s, attached and underground
garages began to appear in stock plans
for small homes as well as factory-built
houses. Among the earliest homes with
built-in garages were the detached and
semi-detached models designed by
architect Frederick Ackerman in 1928-
1929 for Radburn, NewJersey. The
design of an expandable two-story
house with a built-in garage and additional upper-story bedroom was introduced by the FHA in 1940. By the 1950s, garages or carports were integrated
into the design of many homes.112
Keith’s Magazine, Carpentry and
Building, BuildingAge, and American
Carpenter and Builder were among the
first magazines to offer instructions for
building garages. William A. Radford is
credited with popularizing the term
“garage” and introducing the first catalog devoted to the type in 1910.

Manufacturers of pre-cut homes, such
as Aladdin Homes, began to offer a
variety of mail order garages, often
matching the materials and styles of
popular house types.n3
Home Gardening and the Arts and
Crafts Movement
The American Arts and Crafts movementspurred an avid interest among homeowners in gardening and a desire
to integrate a home’s interiorspace
with its outdoor surroundings. To unify
house and garden and integrate indoor
and outdoor living, many bungalow
designers used natural construction
materials, incorporated porches and
courtyards into their designs, and
encouraged the arrangement of yards
with simple terraces, rustic paths, and
garden rooms. Periodicals such as The
Craftsman featured articles for embellishing the grounds of bungalows with patios, gates, fountains, pools, arbors,
pergolas, and rockery. Features such as
hanging vines, water gardens, and
creeping ground covers added to the
variety and rich textures ofthe Arts and
Crafts garden.

Books by landscape architects educated home owners about domestic yard design; these included Ruth B.

Dean’s The Liveable House, Its Garden
(1917), HerbertJ. Kellaway’s How to Lay
Out Suburban Home Grounds (1907 and
1915), Elsa Rehmann’s The Small Place: Its
LandscapeArchitecture (1918), and Grace
Tabor’s GardeningBook (1911), Making
the GroundsAttractive with Shrubbery
(1912), Suburban Gardens (1913), and
PlantingAround the Bungalow (1914).

Plan books such as Eugene O. Murmann’s California Gardening (1914) provided gardening advice, planting plans, and plant lists for home owners according to local climate and growing conditions.

Garden writing flourished in popular
magazines, such as Ladies’ Home
Journal, House and Garden, Country
Life inAmerica, House Beautiful, Garden
Magazine, and Woman’s Home Companion. Garden columns—by Frances Duncan, Wilhelm T. Miller, and Grace
Compound garages flanking a central
service court accommodated automobiles in
Greenbelt, Maryland, one of three planned
Garden City communities built by the Federal
Resettlement Administration during the New
Deal. (Photo by Elizabeth Jo Lampl, courtesy
National Historic Landmarks Survey, NPS)
Historic Residential Suburbs 57

(right)A Monterey Revival house with garden of desertplants in Tucson's Colonia SolanaHistoricDistrict, which wasplatted in
1927and developed with the expertiseof
landscape architect Stephen Child. Inspired by
the native landscape, Child used naturalistica
ly curving linesand nativeplants in his designs
for both individual home grounds and neighborhood streets. (Photoby Larry Wilson, cour tesyArizona Office of Historic Preservation)
(bottom) Present day view across one of
Radburn'sinterior parks illustratesmature
plantings of native treesand shrubs designed
in the late 1920s by landscape architect
Marjorie Sewell Cautley and homes in the
popular revivalstylesof the period by "small
house" architect Frederick Ackerman. Stein
and Wright's vision for a garden city calledfor
the integration of landscape andarchitecture
into a unified designand required thecollaboration of designers having special areasof expertise. (Photoby Paula Reed, courtesy
National Historic Landmarks Survey, NPS)
58 NATIONAL REGISTER BULLETIN

Tabor—and articles by noted designers,
nursery keepers, and amateur gardeners,
showcased successful gardens, provided
horticultural information, and offered
gardening advice."4
Horticulturalist Liberty Hyde Bailey
ofCornell University bridged the gap
between science and practical landscape gardening. As editor of Country Life in America and author of GardenMaking: Suggestionsforthe Utilizing of Home Grounds (1898) and The Practical
Garden Book (1904), he translated his
extensive botanical knowledge into simple principles for suburban gardeners.n5 With the publication of Helena
Rutherford Ely’s A Woman’s Hardy
Garden in 1903, Victorian practices of
carpet bedding and lush displays of
exotic plantings gave way to simpler
gardens featuring harmonies of color,
seasonal changes, and perennial displays. Numerous books by successful amateur gardeners followed including,
Louise Shelton’s The Seasons in a
Flower Garden (1906), Louise Beebe
Wilder’s Colour in My Garden (1918),
and Nellie Doubleday’s American
Flower Garden (1909) written under the
pseudonym Neltje Blanchan."6
Better Homes and the Small
House Movement, 1919 to 1945
After World War I, improving the
quality of American domestic life took
on special importance. Alliances
formed among architects, real estate
developers, builders, social reformers,
manufacturers, and public officials—
at both national and local levels—to
encourage home ownership, standardized home building practices, and neighborhood improvements.

The Better Homes Campaign
Better Homes in America, Inc., a private organization founded in 1922, spearheaded a national campaign for
domestic reform focused on educating
homeowners about quality design and
construction. Promoted by The Delineator, a popular Butterick publication for women, the organization gained the
support of U.S. Secretary of Commerce
Herbert Hoover and formed a nationwide network oflocal committees that encouraged both the construction of
new homes and home remodelling
projects. A national demonstration
home, “Home Sweet Home,” a modernized version ofsongwriterJohn Howard Paynes’s Long Island birthplace, was constructed on the National Mall in 1923, and “Better Homes Week”
activities and competitions were held
nationwide. Annual competitions recognized the work of architects, such as Royal Barry Wills ofBoston and
William W. Wurster of San Francisco,
whose small house designs would influence popular taste nationwide for homes described as New England
Colonial or Monterey Revival.11?
Architect-Designed Small Houses
The Small House Architects’ Service
Bureau was established in Minneapolis
in 1919 with the purpose of providing
architect-designed plans and technical
specifications to builders ofsmall houses. A “small house” was defined as one having no more than six rooms. Sponsored by the AIA, the bureau was a nonprofit organization made up of
architects from all parts ofthe country
devoted to the problem of designing
small homes in a variety of popular
forms and styles. Home builders could
order complete working drawings from
The Small House, a periodical, or plan
catalogs such as Small Homes of
Architectural Distinction (1929). The
bureau endeavored to raise the public’s
awareness ofthe value of professional
design and encouraged homeowners
and buildersto secure a local architect
to supervise construction.118
In New York, the Home Owners
Service Institute, headed by architect
Henry Atterbury Smith in the 1920s,
ran the weekly “Small House Page” of
the Sunday Hew York Tribune, sponsored local design competitions and model home demonstrations, and published The Books ofA Thousand Homes (1923). The institute raised the variety
and quality ofAmerican homes by disseminating a large number ofworking drawings and plans nationwide—all the
work of professional architects such as
Frederick L. Ackerman and Whitman S.

Wick—and forming alliances with
private trade groups and manufacturers, including the American Face Brick Association, Curtis Woodwork
Company, and National Lumber
Manufacturers Association.n9
Popular magazines—including
Better Homes and Gardens, American
Home, House and Garden, Garden and
Home Builder, McCall’s, and Sunset—
reflected the growing interest in home
improvement and appealed increasingly to owners ofsmall homes. They carried articles on new house designs, interior decoration, and gardening, as
well as advertisements for the latest
innovations in manufactured products.

Trade pamphlets such as Richard
Requa’s Old World Inspirationfor
AmericanArchitecture by the Monolith
Portland Cement Company of Los
Angeles reflected emerging alliances
between the building industry and
designers interested in promoting
regional trends.

The small house ofthe 1920s
appeared in many forms and a variety
of bungalow and period revival styles,
the most popular being drawn from the
English Tudor Revival and a host of
American Colonial influences, including Dutch, English, French, and Spanish. The movement resulted in a great diversity of architectural styles and
types nationwide as regional forms and
the work of regional architects attracted the interest of an increasingly educated audience of prospective home owners.

Federal Home Building Service Plan
Although the demand for architect
designed small houses was seriously
curtailed during the Great Depression,
AIA-sponsored service bureaus continued to operate in a number ofmajor cities across the United States, including Boston, New York, Memphis, Houston, and Los Angeles, where they
found support from local savings and
loan associations interested in ensuring
that the homes they mortgaged were a
sound investment. In 1938, the Federal
Home Loan Bank Board, Producers
Council of the NAREB, and the AIA
joined together to sponsor the Federal
Home Building Service Plan, a program
of certification which, during the next
Historic Residential Suburbs 59

decade, helped make home financing
available to home owners who used
service bureau plans and retained the
services of registered architectsto
supervise construction. Although
regionally-inspired Colonial Revival
designs dominated, new forms such as
the California Ranch house, appeared
in the portfolios of approved architectdesigned plans.

Landscape Design for
Small House Grounds
By the late 1920s, professional landscape architects, such as Stephen Child and Sidney and S. Herbert Hare, had
well established reputations for subdivision design and small residential projects in upper-income planned suburbs, such as Tucson’s Colonia Solana and
Kansas City’s Country Club District. In
1923, the Home Owners Service Institute drew attention to the value of using the services of a professional landscape
architect to arrange dwellings on site,
lay out home grounds, and develop
planting schemes in neighborhoods of
small suburban homes. Garden City
planners Stein and Wright recognized
the profession’s role in creating moderate-income neighborhoods when they hired Marjorie Sewell Cautley to assist
their work at Sunnyside and Radburn,
and encouraged the Buhl Foundation
in Pittsburgh to hire Ralph E. Griswold
to assist with the layout and planting of
Chatham Village.120
Mrs. Francis King (Louise Yeomans
King), a leader in the garden club
movement, introduced the “Little
Garden Series” in 1921, marking an
increasing interest in the design ofthe
small suburban lot. The series, which
included Fletcher Steele’s Design in the
Little Garden (1924), brought home
owners practical and aesthetic advice
from professional landscape architects
and successful gardeners. Other books
by landscape architects reflecting this
trend included Myrl E. Bottomley’s
Design ofSmall Properties (1926),
Cautley’s Garden Design (1935), Frank
A. Waugh’s Everybody’s Garden (1930).

Helen Morgenthau Fox’s Patio Gardens
(1929) and Richard Requa’s Architectural Details ofSpain and the Mediterranean (1927), both featuring Spanish House A elevations and plan from Principles of Planning Small Houses (1936). Measuring 534 square feet. House A was the simplest FHA design and became known in the home building industry as the "FHA minimum house." The basic two-bedroom model could be varied by using different building materials, adding stylistic ornamentation, or by turning the house so that the gable faced the street. (Courtesy Library of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development)
and Mediterranean influences, encouraged the development of regional gardening forms that corresponded to emerging trends in house design and
were suited to the warmer climates of
California and Florida.121
Public and Private Initiatives:

The Efficient Low-Cost Home,
1931-1948
As the Great Depression deepened,
housing starts declined precipitously,
coming almost to a standstill.

Discussion ofthe ideal small house
took on new urgency with the collapse
ofthe home building industry and the
rising rate of mortgage foreclosures.

Findings of the 1931 President's
Conference
With the recommendations of the
Nation’s leading experts, the 1931 conference endorsed the objective of reforming the Nation’s system of home
financing, improving the quality of
housing for moderate and lowerincome groups, and stimulating the building industry. For house design,
these measures meant improving the
design and efficiency ofthe American
home while lowering its cost. Through
a combination of private and public
efforts, the design of efficient, low-cost
housing—in the of form single, twofamily, and multiple family dwellings— became a national priority, reflecting to
a large extent the recommendations
made by the conference committees.

The Committee on Design brought
together experienced architects and
developers who called for improvements in small house design such as building houses in well planned groups
to avoid the monotony created by the
repetition of uniform houses on narrow lots and siting houses to benefit from sunlight, air, and outdoor space.

Representatives from trade organizations, building associations, and materials manufacturers formed the
Committee on Construction, which
60 National Register Bulletin

upheld the need for labor and time
conserving methods, standard building
codes, improved standards of workmanship, education and research by trade associations, and economies of
prefabrication. Another committee
examined the affordabiliry of heating,
ventilating, and air conditioning, and
set basic requirements for plumbing
and sanitation, electric wiring, and
refrigeration.122
The Committee on Landscape
Planning and Planting, which brought
together landscape architects experienced in residential design and representatives of the organizations such as the Garden Club of America and
National Council of State Garden Club
Federations, upheld the importance of
attractive yard design and landscape
plantings to enhance a home owner's
comfort and enjoyment as well as
increase property values.I23
FHA's Minimum House and Small
HouseProgram
Through its approval of properties for
mortgage insurance and the publication
of housing and subdivision standards,
the FHA instituted a national program
that would regulate home building
practices for many decades. House
designs, first published in FHA's
Principles ofPlanning SmallHouses
(1936), were updated periodically.

Circulars, such as Property Standards,
RecentDevelopments in Building
Construction, and Modern Housing,
addressed issues of prefabrication
methods and materials, housing standards, and principles of design.

The five FHA house types that
appeared in Planning Small Housesin
1936 offered "a range in comfort of living," and in succession a "slightly increasing accommodation." Illustrated
by floor plans and simple elevations,
each type was void of nonessential
spaces, picturesque features, and
unnecessary items that would add to
their cost, following FHA's principle for
"providing a maximum accommodation within a minimum of means." Houses could be built in a variety of
materials, including wood, brick,
concrete block, shingles, stucco, or
stone. To increase domestic efficiency,
HISTORIC RESIDENTIAL SUBURBS 61

new labor saving technologies were
introduced: kitchens were equipped
with modern appliances, and the utility
room’s integrated mechanical system
replaced the basement furnace of
earlier homes.I24
The simplest FHA design became
known in the home building industry
as the “FHA minimum house.”
Measuring 534 square feet and having
no basement, House A was a one-story,
two-bedroom house designed for a
family ofthree adults or two adults and
two children. A small kitchen and larger multipurpose living room extended across the front ofthe house, while two
bedrooms and a bathroom were located off a small hallway at the back ofthe house. The slightly larger House B provided 624 square feet ofliving space and had more lasting appeal.I25
Houses C and D were two-story
homes, having two upstairs bedrooms,
with the latter offering a simple
attached garage. House E, a compact
two-story, three-bedroom house, was
the largest and most elaborate of FHA’s
early designs. Illustrated with a classically inspired doorway and semicircular light in the street-facing gable, it demonstrated that a house could be
“attractively designed without excessive
ornamentation.”126
FHA’s 1940 edition of Planning
Small Homes introduced a dramatically
different, flexible system of house
design based on the principles of
expandability, standardization, and
variability. Praised for its livability, the
simple one-story “minimum” house
became the starting point from which
many variations arose as rooms were
added or extended to increase interior
space, often forming an L-shaped plan.

Exterior design resulted from the combination of features such as gables, porches, materials, windows, and roof
types. Factors such as orientation to
sunlight, prevailing winds, and view
became as important as the efficient
layout ofinterior space. Fireplaces and
chimneys could be added, as well as
basements. The revised edition also
included designs for two-bedroom,
two-story houses having central-hall
and sidewall-stair plans, some offering
built-in garages and additional bedrooms.12?
The new FHA principles provided
instructions for grouping similarly
designed houses in cul-de-sacs and
along streetscapes by varying the elements of exterior design in ways that avoided repetition and gave the neighborhood an interesting and pleasing character, for example, by varying the
placement of each house on its lot and
introducing a variety of wall materials
and rooftypes. The principles were
directed at operative builders who,
taking advantage ofthe cost-reducing
practices ofstandardization and more
liberal financing terms, were becoming
increasingly aware ofthe advantages of
building homes on a large scale and, for
the first time, were creating what has
become known as “tract” housing.128
FHA’s Rental Housing Program
FHA’s Large-Scale Rental Housing
Division worked closely with operative
buildersto design apartment villages
that were efficient cost-wise, but also
attractive and desirable places for moderate-income renters. Utilizing superblock planning and incorporating
garden courts and common greens,
they were strongly influenced by Stein
and Wright’s Garden City projects at
Sunnyside Gardens, Radburn, and
Chatham Village, as well as the highly
recognized World War I defense hous62 National Register Bulletin

ing communities of Seaside Village at
Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Yorkship
Village at Camden, NewJersey.

The overall aesthetic effect of garden
apartment villages relied on the varied
and irregular massing of units within a
superblock, separation from automobile traffic, an interlocking arrangement of housing units to fit a site’s topography which avoided the appearance of either rowhouses or large apartment blocks, and the provision of
landscaped walkways, gardens, and
recessed entry courts. Staggered roof
lines and unifying cornices, fascia, and
dentil friezes, and the repetition of
modest and similar architectural
embellishments—doorways, transoms,
mouldings, window surrounds, roof
designs—unified each complex’s overall
design.

Economies ofscale and the use of
standardized building components dictated the design of communities such as Buckingham in Arlington, Virginia.

Functional efficiency and cost reduction
relied on the use ofstandardized components and appliances, the development of consolidated mechanical systems, and an efficient arrangement
ofrooms within each apartment, and of
apartments within each dwelling unit.

Influenced by Henry Wright, who had
advised on the design ofBuckingham
and whose Rehousing Urban America
was published in 1935, FHA architect
Eugene H. Klaber developed a series of
efficient “unit plans,” which published
in FHA’s monthlyArchitectural Bulletin
(1940), guided much market-rate rental
housing construction through World
War II.“9
Prefabricated Houses
The 1930s became a decade of experimentation. A number of private organizations assumed the role of “scientific housers” with the purpose of creating a
house that a majority ofAmerican wage
earners could afford. Others explored
the principles of mass production and
prefabrication to reduce the cost of
building materials and housing.^0
Bemis Industries, Inc., under the
direction ofAlbert Farwell Bemis,
experimented with prefabricated modular systems using a variety of materials including steel, gypsum-based blocks
and slabs, and composition board and
steel panelsto create a series of model
homes; this work established the principles for Bemis’s three-volume The Evolving House (1936), which became
a standard reference work on prefabrication. Bemis pursued a three-fold strategy: first, simplify the house by
eliminating seldomly used space;
second, streamline the construction
Tract housing had its origins in the late
1930s as builders sought ways to reduce the
cost of construction, capture the growing
market of FHA-gualified home buyers, and
take advantage of the time and cost saving
benefits of building homes on a large scale. By
moving the entrance to one side and using
newly-available asbestos shingles and steel
casement windows, local architects Schreier &
Patterson adapted FHA's House E (far left), a
popular two-story design, for houses in a new
neighborhood (middle) in metropolitan
Washington, D. C. (Illustration courtesy Library
of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development; historic photo courtesy Library
of Congress, Theodor Horydczak Collection,
neg. LC-H814-T-2387-016 DLC)
Built in 1936 by newspaper publisher
Charles A. Mitten, the Mesa Journal-Tribune
FHA Demonstration House in Mesa, Arizona,
sparked great local interest in home ownership and stimulated a local boom in FHAapproved construction in the late 1930s. (Photo by Shirley Kehoe, courtesy Arizona
Historic Preservation Office)
Historic Residential Suburbs 63

(above) Samester Parkway Apartments
(1939) in Baltimore, Maryland. A central garden court sheltered from nearby streets and a series of attractive entrances demonstrate the
value of superblock planning and use ofstandardized unit-plans in the design of largescale, FHA-approved rental communities. Sunfilled stairwells with glass-block sidelights, porthole windows, and streamlined aluminum
railings illustrate FHA's practical concerns for
creating a healthy, well-organized environment, as well as the aesthetic influences of European Modernism and the Art Moderne
style. (Photos by Betty Bird, courtesy Maryland
Department of Housing and Community
Development)
(far right) House made ofprefabricated
"Cemesto" panels at the U.S. nuclear
research facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. This
system ofprefabrication was originally developed by the John B. Pierce Foundation and Celotex Corporation for employee housing at
the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company near
Baltimore, Maryland. During World War II, it
was adapted on a large-scale for both singleand multiple family dwellings to house defense workers and their families. (Photo by
Kimberley A. Murphy, courtesy Tennessee
Historical Commission)
process by using time and labor-saving
equipment, materials, and techniques;
third, apply principles of modern industrial management for production based on economies ofscale and the sequential production of components.^1 The John B. Pierce Foundation of
New York City examined the American
home from the standpoint of efficiency.

Through space-and-motion studies of
family living habits, the foundation
developed the prototype for a 24 by 28
foot house, having four rooms and a
bath which became a community building standard. The foundation developed a number of models, including a demonstration village at its laboratory
in Highbridge, NewJersey, and worked
with manufacturers to develop small
marketable dwellings using innovative
materials and prefabricated components, which were manufactured on a large scale and purchased by the U.S.
government during World War II.B2
In 1935, the Forest Products
Laboratory ofthe U.S. Department of
Agriculture developed a “stress-skin”
plywood house, which spurred a series
of efforts to develop insulated, prefabricated wood panels that could be manufactured on a large scale and shipped for easy assembly onsite. Such prefabricated systems were adopted by a number ofmanufacturers, including the Celotex Company of Chicago and
Homasote Company ofTrenton, New
Jersey, which would both become leading manufacturers of housing for defense workers during World War
II.*33
In its annual revision of Recent
Developments in Building Construction,
FHA reported on new developments
and provided a list ofthe materials and
methods approved by the U.S. Bureau
of Standards. In 1940 the list included
methods ranging from a system ofsteel
panel construction manufactured by
Steel Buildings, Inc., of Ohio to
concrete construction methods
promoted by the Portland Cement
Association.x34
64 National Register Bulletin

Prefabricated methods took on
increasing importance with the onset of
World War II as the construction of
both temporary and permanent housing in places determined critical for defense production became a national
priority. The need to speed production
and lower construction costs guided
these efforts, many ofwhich were funded under the Lanham Act and public housing programs. After the war, manufacturers continued to shape the suburban landscape based on principles of mass production and prefabrication.

Federal loans for the construction of
manufacturing plants through the
Reconstruction Finance Corporation
made it possible for manufacturers
such as Carl Strandlund of Chicago and
Harvey Kaiser in California to fund
large-scale efforts to produce housing
components that could be shipped and
assembled onsite to provide housing
for the families of returning veterans.'35
Many attempts to produce factorymade prefabricated dwellings experienced limited success and failed, including the demountable Acorn
houses introduced in 1945 by Carl Koch
and John Bemis of Massachusetts and
the porcelain-enamelsteel Lustron
House, manufactured from 1947 to
1950, the invention of manufacturer
Carl Strandlund and architect Morris
Beckman.

To architects such as William
Wurster and Walter Gropius, prefabrication promised a solution to housing America’s lower-income families.

During the 1940s, Gropius worked
closely with Konrad Wachsmann and
the General Panel Corporation to
develop a system of prefabrication that
would markedly reduce the cost of
housing. Although the final model
called “the Packaged House” was technically a success, the company’s efforts to market the system and remain financially solvent failed.^6 More successful were house manufacturers such as National Homes Corporation of Lafayette, Indiana, and
Gunnison Homes of New Albany,
Indiana, which readily adapted their
factory operations to postwar conditions and offered a number of designs suited to the needs, incomes, and tastes
of postwar middle-income home buyers. These companies engaged the services ofwell-known architects, including Royal Barry Wills and Charles M.

Goodman, and offered expanding
portfolios with the latest in interior and
exterior features, such as heat-insulated
windows and exposed redwood
ceilings.'37
Postwar Suburban House and
Yard, 1945-1960
By 1945, several factors—the lack of
new housing, continued population
growth, and six million returning veterans eager to start families—combined to produce the largest building boom in
the Nation’s history, almost all ofit
concentrated in the suburbs. From 1944
to 1946, single-family housing starts
increased eight-fold from 114,000 to
937,000. Spurred by the builders’ credits and liberalized terms for VA- and FHA-approved mortgages by the end of
the 1940s, home building proceeded on
an unprecedented scale reaching a
record high in 1950 with the construction of 1,692,000 new single-family houses.’38
The experience of World War II
demonstrated the possibilities offered
by large-scale production, prefabrication methods and materials, and streamlined assembly methods. In 1947
developer William Levitt began to
apply these principles to home building
in a dramatically new way, creating his
first large-scale suburb, Levittown on
Long Island, which would eventually
accommodate 82,000 residents in more
than 17,500 houses.‘39
Historic Residential Suburbs 65

Levitt’s idea was to lower construction costs by simplifying the house, assembling many components off-site,
and turning the construction site into a
streamlined assembly line. The economy of using factory produced building components, such as pre-cut wall panels and standardized mechanical systems, significantly lowered the cost of construction. By adapting assembly
line methods for horizontal or serial
production, Levitt and Sons was able to
systematically and efficiently assemble
the components on site. The construction process was divided into 27 steps, each performed in sequence by a specialized crew. The tasks, skills, and manpower to complete each step were
precisely defined and each member was
trained to perform a set of repetitive
tasks, enabling work crews to move
efficiently and quickly through each
site, thus establishing the firm’s reputation for completing a house every 15 minutes.H0
The vast subdivisions ofCape Cods
and later Ranch homes, mocked by
critics as suburban wastelands, represent not only an unprecedented building boom, but the concerted and organized effort by many groups,
including the Federal government, to
create a single-family house that a
majority ofAmericans could afford.

Levitt actually perfected a construction
process that had been in the making for
more than two decades. Other developers did the same, including Harvey Kaiser at Panorama City, near Los
Angeles, and Philip M. Klutznick of
American Community Builders, Inc., at
Park Forest, Illinois. The success of
Levitt and others resulted in the emergence of large-scale developers, called “merchant builders,” who would apply
their successful formulas for building
large communities in one location after
another, often accommodating changing tastes, economics, and consumer demand in new and improved house
designs.'41
From the FHA Minimum House
to the Cape Cod
The Cape Cod provided most ofthe
low-cost suburban housing immediately following the war and was built in 66 National Register Bulletin
groups of varying sizes, sometimes
numbering the hundreds. Often located
on curvilinear streets and cul-de-sacs
that reflected the FHA guidelines for
neighborhood planning, Cape Cods
appeared in a variety of materials,
including sheets of insulated asbestos
shingles available after the war in an
increasing assortment of colors.

The Cape Cod that eager prospective renters lined up to inspect in the first Levittown in June 1947, was oneand-a-halfstories and built on a concrete slab. Its 750 square feet of living space was divided into a living room, a
kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bath. Set
on a lot of 6,000 square feet, the exterior of the house—with a steeply pitched gable roof pierced by two dormers
above a clapboarded first story—was a
variation on a Cape Cod cottage and
was a somewhat larger version ofthe
FHA minimum house, which had been
improved and expanded in FHA’s 1940
Principlesfor Planning Small Houses.1^2
Large-scale subdivisions not only
took form on the periphery ofthe
Nation’s largest metropolitan areas, but
also around many smaller cities. For
middle- and upper-middle-income
families, especially in the East, simplified versions of pre-war “small house” designs such as brick or clapboarded
Cape Cod and other Colonial Revival
forms continued in popularity, in large
part due to architect Royal Barry Wills,
who published numerous plan books,
including Housesfor Good Living
(1940), Better Homesfor Budgeteers
(1941), Housesfor Homemakers (1945),
and Living on the Level (1955).’43
The Suburban Ranch House
The suburban Ranch house ofthe 1950s
reflected modern consumer preferences and growing incomes. With its low, horizontal silhouette and rambling
floor plan, the house type reflected the
nation’s growing fascination with the
informal lifestyle of the West Coast
and the changing functional needs of
families.[44
In the 1930s California architects
Cliff May, H. Roy Kelley, William W.

Wurster, and others adapted the traditional housing of Southwest ranches and haciendas and Spanish Colonial
revival styles to a suburban house type
suited for middle-income families. The
house was typically built of natural
materials such as adobe or redwood
and was oriented to an outdoor patio
and gardens that ensured privacy and
intimacy with nature. Promoted by
Sunset Magazine between 1946 and 1958
and featured in portfolios such as
Western Ranch Houses (1946) and
Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May
(1958), May’s work gained considerable
attention in the Southwest and across
the nation.‘45
In the late 1940s popular magazine
surveys indicated the postwar family’s
preference for the informal Ranch
house as well as a desire to have all
their living space on one floor with a
basement for laundry and other utilities
and a multipurpose room for hobbies
and recreation. Builders of middle and
upper-income homes mimicked the
architect-designed homes ofthe Southwest, offering innovations such as sliding glass doors, picture windows, carports, screens of decorative blocks, and exposed timbers and beams, which
derived as much from modernistic
influences as those oftraditional
Southwestern design.’46
Builders oflow-cost homes, however, sought ways to give the basic form of FHA-approved houses a Ranch-like
appearance. By late 1949, Levitt & Sons
had modified the Cape Cod into a
Ranch-like house called “The FortyNiner,” by leaving the floor plan intact and giving the house an asymmetrical
facade and horizontal emphasis by
placing shingles on the lower half of
the front elevation and fitting horizontal sliding windows just below the eaves. Picture windows, broad chimneys, horizontal bands ofwindows, basement recreational rooms, and
exterior terraces or patios became
distinguishing features ofthe forwardlooking yet lower-cost suburban home.'47
In the 1950s, as families grew larger
and children became teenagers, households moved up to larger Ranch houses, offering more space and privacy.

With the introduction of television and
inexpensive, high-fidelity phonographs, increasing noise levels created a demand for greater separation of activPage 1038 of 1184 ities and soundproof zones. The splitlevel house provided increased privacy through the location of bedrooms on
an upper level a half-story above the
main living area and an all-purpose,
recreation room on a lower level. The
Ranch house in various configurations,
including the split level, continued as
the dominant suburban house well into
the 1960s.

The Contemporary House
The influence of Frank Lloyd Wright,
Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer,
Richard J. Neutra, Mies van der Rohe,
and other modernists inspired many
architects to look to new solutions for
liveable homes using modern materials
of glass, steel, and concrete, and principles of organic design that utilized cantilevered forms, glass curtain walls, and post-and-beam construction. The contemporary home featured the integration ofindoor and outdoor living area and open floor plans, which allowed a
sense of flowing space. Characteristics
such as masonry hearth walls, patios
and terraces, carports, and transparent
walls in the form of sliding glass doors
and floor-to-ceiling windows became
hallmarks ofthe contemporary residential design.'48
The principles of European modernism expressed in the International Style had been introduced to the
American public in the 1932 Museum of
Modern Art exhibition. The Century of
Progress World’s Fair at Chicago in 1933
introduced Americans to a number of
modern houses, including the House of
Tomorrow by George Fred Keck, noted
for its polygonal form, innovative use of
glass, and showcase of modern building
materials.>49
James and Katherine Ford’s Modern
House in America (1940) and professional magazines, such as the Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture, and Architectural Forum, promoted
modernistic architect-built homes and
featured the work of a rising generation
of modernists including Edward D.

Stone, Paul Thiry, William Lescaze,
George Howe, Alden B. Dow, Pietro
Belluschi, and Gregory Ain. Under the
editorship ofJohn Entenza, the “case
study series” in Arts andArchitecture
from 1945 and 1966 included designs for
36 houses that reflected new approaches to domestic design and featured mass production techniques, innovative
planning, and new materials. The series
not only featured outstanding examples
of upper-income homes in California
by noted designers such as Charles and
Ray Eames, Raphael Soriano, and
Ralph Rapson, but also a proposed but
never-executed 260-home subdivision
in San Fernando Valley, designed by A.

Quincy Jones,Jr., and Frederick E.

Emmons and co-sponsored by merchant builderJoseph Eichler and the Producers’ Council.r5°
Architects and others promoted the
development ofsmall houses reflecting
modernistic design principles to meet
the postwar housing shortage through
plan books and detailed instructions
that pointed outthe construction and
space efficiencies offered by modern
design. Such books included The Small
Ranch house (1952) in the Denver Court
Historic District, Galveston, Texas.

Developed by West Coast architects in the
1930s and promoted by Sunset Magazine in
books such as architect Cliff May's Western
Ranch Houses (1946), the sprawling Ranch
house attained great popularity and appeared
nationwide in the 1950s, often on the unbuilt
lots of early subdivisions. (Photo by Lesley
Sommer, courtesy Texas Historical Commission)
Historic Residential Suburbs 67

Contemporary house (1951) with innovative "butterfly" roof and carport by architect-planner Eugene Sternberg for Arapahoe Acres, a postwar suburb in Englewood, Colorado. The contemporary house of the 1950s offered families informal floor plans, window
walls that merged interior and exterior spaces,
and patios and terraces that provided outdoor
rooms. Private organizations, including the
Revere Quality House Institute and the
Southwest Research Institute, recognized the
value of such homes for their efficient
arrangement of space, the low cost of construction, and pleasing modernistic design. (Photo by Diane Wray, courtesy of Colorado
Historical Society)
House ofTomorrow (1945) by Los
Angeles architect Paul R. Williams;
Tomorrow's House: How to Plan Your
Post-War Home Now (1945) by designers George Nelson and Henry N.

Wright; and the Museum of Modern
Art’s IfYou Want to Build a House
(1946) by Elizabeth B. Mock.u1
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian houses ofthe 1930s were forward looking with their horizontal emphasis, flat and
sloping roofs, large windows, corner
windows, and combination of natural
wood and masonry materials. Wright
continued to explore the problem of
the small home, designing in 1938 an
interesting group of quadraplexes, the
Suntop Houses, at Ardmore, Pennsylvania. He gave new form to the Usonian house in the 1950s, and published The
Natural House (1954), where he elaborated on his principles of organic design to create livable dwellings that
integrated home and site.

Private organizations, such as the
Revere Quality House Institute,
Southwest Research Institute, and John
D. Pierce Foundation, promoted the
use ofmodern principles of design by
sponsoring award programs and offering seals of approval for successful innovative designs. These programs
encouraged the collaboration of developers and modernist architects and recognized the broadening array of
new and innovative home building
materials and prefabricated methods of
construction.^2
John Hancock Callender’s Before
You Buy a House (1953), a joint publication ofthe Southwest Research Institute and the Architectural League
of New York, was designed to educate
prospective home buyers about the efficiency, livability, and low-cost afforded by the “contemporary residential style.”
The book showcased dozens of communities ofsmall homes from all parts of the country, including Arapahoe
Acres in Englewood, Colorado; and
many ofmerchant builderJoseph
Eichler’s subdivisions in California.‘53
In the 1950s ALA sponsored a Homes
for Better Living award program in conjunction with House and Home, Better Homes and Gardens, and the National
Broadcasting Corporation. This program recognized successful merchantbuilt communities such as Hollin Hills in Alexandria, Virginia, which featured the
innovative domestic architecture of
Charles M. Goodman.I54
Appealing to an increasingly welleducated and prosperous audience, popular magazines heralded innovations in contemporary house design.

The distinction between the Ranch and
contemporary house became blurred as
each type made use oftransparent
walls, privacy screens of design concrete blocks, innovations in open space planning, and the interplay ofinterior
and exterior space. House Beautiful
promoted Wright’s designs as well as
68 National Register Bulletin

other upper-income homes in the modernistic styles. Better Homes promoted designs to meet the incomes of a wider
range offamilies and showcased successful owner-built designs alongside those of established architects, such as
architect Chester Nagel’s home in
Lexington, Massachusetts. In the late
1940s Better Homes began to recognize
outstanding examples, which were
showcased as “Five Star Homes.” Other
magazines offered similar awards,
including Parents’ Magazine, which
sponsored the “Best Home for Family
Living” competition.’55
Exploring the possibilities inherent
in combining modern design and prefabrication methods, architect Carl Koch and John Bemis introduced the
popular, mass-produced Tech-built
house in the early 1950s. From 1952 to
1956, the U.S. Gypsum Corporation
sponsored a well-publicized demonstration project at Barrington Woods, Illinois, which featured model homes
by a number ofleading designers. In
addition, sources such as Koch’s At
Home with Tomorrow (1958) and Jones
and Emmons’s Builder’s Homesfor
Better Living (1957) spurred a whole
series of contemporary homes, whose
facades by the end of the 1950s were
dominated by overhanging eaves, broad
gables, transparent walls, and aboveground balconies.

Postwar Suburban Apartment Houses
Modernism was embraced as the rental
housing market expanded in the suburbs of large cities. Title 608 ofthe National Housing Act, which guaranteed builders 90 percent-mortgages on multiple family projects conforming to
FHA standards, continued until the
mid-1950s. Publication of Clarence
Stein’s Toward New Towns (1951)
revived models for low- and mid-rise
apartment villages, such as the Phipps
Apartments at Sunnyside Gardens and
the modernistic Baldwin Hills in Los
Angeles. Housing Design (1954) by
Columbia University professor Eugene
Klaber set forth principles of unit-planning similar to those Klaber had developed for the FHA two decades earlier.

FHA began to provide mortgage insurance for apartment buildings having elevators in the late 1940s. By the 1950s
apartment buildings were equipped
with improved mechanical systems, elevators, up-to-date appliances, central air conditioning, outdoor balconies,
and newly available prefabricated components such as steelframed windows and sliding glass doors.1?6
Unlike their urban counterparts
built on the site of cleared slums, highrise suburban developments, which became increasingly popular in the late
1950s, were modeled after Le Corbusier’s vision for the “radiant city” and luxury high-rise apartment houses
in American cities, including Mies van
der Rohe’s PromontoryApartments
(1949) and Lake Shore Drive Apartments (1951) in Chicago; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Company Tower (1952)
in Bartlesville, Oklahoma; and 100
Memorial Drive (1950) in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, by the firm of Kennedy,
Koch, DeMars, Rapson, and Brown.

Their location along major expressways
leading from the center city was motivated by convenience oflocation as well as advances in air conditioning,
elevator design, mechanical systems,
and structural design.1??
Contemporary Landscape Design
New directions in landscape design
accompanied the development ofthe
Ranch house and contemporary residence in California. Emphasis on the integration of indoor and outdoor living encouraged the arrangement offeatures such as the patios and terraces, sunshades and trellises, swimming
pools, and privacy screens. Several of
the Case Study houses inArts and
Architecture featured the landscape
work of Garrett Eckbo. Architects such
as Paul Williams designed houses “with
the living side facing a private garden.”
Sunset magazine publicized western
gardens by Doug Baylis, Thomas
Church, and Eckbo, a number ofwhich
formed the grounds of Ranch houses
designed by Cliff May, and published
Landscapefor Western Living (1956). In
addition, Thomas Church’s Gardens
Arefor People: How to Planfor Outdoor
Living (1955), and Garrett Eckbo’s
Landscapefor Living (1950) and Art of
Home Landscaping (1956) brought to a
national audience simple principles for
organizing the domestic yard into dignified lawns, private patios, informal garden rooms, and activity areas with
simple, easy-to-maintain plants and
shrubbery.1?8
The modern style sought to achieve
an integration ofinterior and exterior
space by creating lines of vision
through transparent windows and
doors to patios, intimate garden spaces,
zones designed for special uses, and
distant vistas. Hedges, freestanding
shrubbery, and beds oflow growing
plants, arranged to form abstract geometrical patterns, reinforced the horizontal and vertical planes ofthe modern suburban house.’?9 Developers of contemporary subdivisions often secured the services of landscape architects as site planners to
lay outtheir subdivisions and advise on
the layout and planting of common
areas, street corners, streets, and sidewalks. Others urged home owners to consult with landscape architects on
the design oftheir suburban yards. The
Southwest Research Institute encouraged such collaboration and recognized its achievement in suburban neighborhoods of contemporary homes, such as Hollin Hills in Alexandria, Virginia,
where several landscape architects,
including Dan Kiley, drew up planting
plans for home owners and advised the
developer on the planting of common
areas.’60
Historic Residential Suburbs 69

Figure 4.

Suburban Architecture and Landscape Gardening, 1832 to 1960 1832 Balloon frame construction invented in
Chicago.
1838 Rural Residences by Alexander Jackson
Davis published.
1841 Publication of Treatise on Domestic
Economy, by Catharine E. Beecher and
Treatise on the Theory and Practice of
Landscape Gardening by Andrew Jackson
Downing.
1842-1850 Cottage Residences and Architecture of
Country Houses by Downing published.
1869 The American Woman's Home by Catharine
E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe published.
1870 Art of Beautifying Suburban Home
Grounds by Frank J. Scott published.
1876 Model Homes for the People: A Complete
Guide to the Proper and Economical
Erection of Buildings, the first of a series of
mail order plan catalogs by George and
Charles Palliser, published.
1878 Modern Dwellings in Town and Country
Adapted to American Wants and Climate
by Henry Hudson Holly published.
1907-1908 How to Lay Out Suburban Home Grounds
by Herbert J. Kellaway and Artistic
Bungalows by William Radford published.

Sears and Roebuck begins pre-cut, mail
order house catalog sales.
1913-14 Suburban Gardens and Planting Around
the Bungalow by Grace Tabor published.
1916 Frank Lloyd Wright's American System
Ready-Cut method of prefabrication used
in the Richard's Small House and Duplexes,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
1918 The Small Place: Its Landscape Architecture
by Elsa Rehmann published.
1919 Architects' Small House Service Bureau
founded in Minneapolis.
1921 The Little Garden published, introducing
"The Little Garden Series," edited by Mrs.

Francis King (Louise Yeomans King).
1922 Better Homes movement founded by the
Butterick Company and endorsed by
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover.
1922-23 Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, Missouri,
first automobile-oriented regional shopping center, developed by J. C. Nichols. 1923 Home Owners Service Institute sponsors
"Home Sweet Home," the official demonstration house for the Better Homes in America movement and publishes Books of
A Thousand Homes, edited by Henry
Atterbury Smith.
1926 Publication of Myrl E. Bottomley's The
Design of Small Properties.
1928-1932 Variety of moderately priced small houses
built at Radburn; grounds and plantings by
Marjorie Sewell Cautley
1929 Architects' Small House Service Bureau, Inc.,
publishes Small Homes ofArchitectural
Distinction, edited by Robert T. Jones.
1930 Park-and-Shop, Cleveland Park,
Washington, D.C., designed by Arthur
Heaton for Shannon and Luchs Real Estate.
1931 President's Conference on Home Building
and Home Ownership.
1932 Museum of Modern Art, New York, mounts
exhibition entitled, "The International
Style: Architecture Since 1922."
1932-36 Chatham Village, at Pittsburgh, developed
by the Buhl Foundation and designed by
architects Ingham and Boyd and landscape
architect Ralph E. Griswold.
1933-34 Century of Progress International
Exhibition, Chicago, features "House of
Tomorrow."
1934 Federal Housing Administration establishes
programs for insuring mortgages on small
homes and large-scale rental housing.
1935 Rehousing Urban America by Henry Wright
and Garden Design by Marjorie Sewell
Cautley published.

Demonstration of prefabrication at Purdue
Research Village, Lafayette, Indiana.

Forest Products Laboratory of the U.S.

Department of Agriculture introduces house
made of "stress-skin" plywood panels.
1936 Bemis Industries publishes three-volume
The Evolving House, which outlines principles of prefabrication. 70 National Register Bulletin

1936-39
Federal Housing Administration publishes
first standards for insurable neighborhoods
and introduces the FHA minimum house.

Buckingham Community, Arlington,
Virginia, developed by Paramount Motors
Company using the principles of economies
of large-scale construction and standardization of building components. 1947
1946 (60 Stat. 215) extends FHA authority
to insure mortgages under Title VI.

Elevator structures determined acceptable
for FHA rental housing.

Legislation to encourage private development of housing for veterans based on prefabrication methods in the form of shortterm loans to housing manufacturers. 1938
1940
Federal Home Loan Bank Board, Producers
Council, and AIA jointly introduce Federal
Home Building Service Plan, encouraging
home builders to use the services of registered architects to carry out construction according to architect-designed small house
plans.

Construction of Crow Island School,
Winnetka, Illinois, by architects Eliel and
Eero Saarinen and Perkins, Wheeler, and
Will.

Publication of Modern House in America by
James Ford and Katherine Morrow Ford.
1947-50
1948
Levitt and Sons builds first houses at
Hempstead on Long Island, New York;
Philip Klutznick forms American Community Builders to develop Park Forest, Illinois (planner Elbert Peets).

Prefabricated homes made of porcelainenameled steel panels manufactured by the Lustron Corporation (Carl Strandlund,
manufacturer).

Cameron Village Shopping Center, Raleigh,
North Carolina, first large retail shopping
center, planned by developer Wilke York,
and site planner, Seward H. Mott.
1940-41
1942
1945-46
1945-66
1946
FHA introduces new standards and an efficient, flexible system of house design and construction; issues "Architectural
Bulletins" with unit plans for large-scale
housing.

John Pierce Foundation with the Celotex
Company of Chicago, Illinois, introduces
cemesto boards in the construction of prefabricated houses for Glenn Martin Aircraft near Baltimore, Maryland.

Royal Barry Wills publishes Houses for
Good Living and Better Houses for
Budgeteers.

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill plans
defense-worker community at Oak Ridge,
Tennessee.

Publication of Tomorrow's House: How to
Build Your Post-War Home Now, by George
Nelson and Henry Wright; The Small House
of Tomorrow by Paul R. Williams; If You
Want to Build a House by Elizabeth B.

Mock.

Arts & Architecture publishes Case Study
House series.

Sunset Magazine publishes Western Ranch
Houses featuring work of Cliff May, Doug
Baylis and others.

Movement to provide veterans' housing
gains momentum especially in rental housing; Veterans' Emergency Housing Act of 1950
1952-54
1953
1952-56
1953
1955-56
1957
1957-58
Landscape for Living by landscape architect
Garrett Eckbo, published by Architectural
Record.

Northland Shopping Center, Detroit,
Michigan, planned by Victor Gruen and
Associates.

Southdale Shopping Center, Minneapolis,
Minnesota, first enclosed, climatecontrolled mall designed by Victor Gruen.

U.S. Gypsum Research Village in Barrington
Woods, Illinois, showcases contemporary
house designs.

Before You Buy A House published by New
York Architectural League and Southwest
Research Institute, promoting modern principles of house design and the collaboration of architects and developers.

Publication of Thomas Church's Gardens
Are for People: How to Plan for Outdoor
Living; Garrett Eckbo's Art of Home
Landscaping; and Sunset Magazine's
Landscape for Western Living.

Hollin Hills, Alexandria, Virginia, selected as
one of the "Ten Buildings in America's
Future" in AIA Centennial Exhibition.

Publication of A. Quincy Jones Jr., and
Frederick E. Emmons's Builders' Homes for
Better Living and Carl Koch's At Home with
Tomorrow.

Historic Residential Suburbs 71

Rosenberg’s Rules of Order
REVISED 2011
Simple Rules of Parliamentary Procedure for the 21st Century By Judge Dave Rosenberg

ii
MISSION and CORE BELIEFS
To expand and protect local control for cities through education and advocacy to enhance the quality of life for all Californians.

VISION
To be recognized and respected as the leading advocate for the common interests of California’s cities.

About the League of California Cities
Established in 1898, the League of California Cities is a member organization that represents California’s incorporated cities.

The League strives to protect the local authority and automony of city government and help California’s cities effectively serve their residents. In addition to advocating on cities’ behalf at the state capitol, the League provides its members with professional development programs and information resources, conducts education conferences and research, and publishes Western City magazine.
© 2011 League of California Cities. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Dave Rosenberg is a Superior Court Judge in Yolo County. He has served as presiding judge of his court, and as presiding judge of the Superior Court Appellate Division. He also has served as chair of the Trial Court Presiding Judges Advisory Committee (the committee composed of all 58 California presiding judges) and as an advisory member of the California Judicial Council. Prior to his appointment to the bench, Rosenberg was member of the Yolo County Board of Supervisors, where he served two terms as chair. Rosenberg also served on the Davis City Council, including two terms as mayor. He has served on the senior staff of two governors, and worked for 19 years in private law practice. Rosenberg has served as a member and chair of numerous state, regional and local boards. Rosenberg chaired the California State Lottery Commission, the California Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board, the Yolo-Solano Air Quality Management District, the Yolo County Economic Development Commission, and the Yolo County Criminal Justice Cabinet. For many years, he has taught classes on parliamentary procedure and has served as parliamentarian for large and small bodies.

1 Table of Contents
About the Author............................................................................................................ii Introduction....................................................................................................................2 Establishing a Quorum...................................................................................................2 The Role of the Chair......................................................................................................2 The Basic Format for an Agenda Item Discussion........................................................2 Motions in General.........................................................................................................3 The Three Basic Motions................................................................................................3 Multiple Motions Before the Body.................................................................................4 To Debate or Not to Debate............................................................................................4 Majority and Super-Majority Votes ...............................................................................5 Counting Votes................................................................................................................5 The Motion to Reconsider..............................................................................................6 Courtesy and Decorum ..................................................................................................7 Special Notes About Public Input..................................................................................7

2 Establishing a Quorum
The starting point for a meeting is the establishment of a quorum.

A quorum is defined as the minimum number of members of the body who must be present at a meeting for business to be legally transacted. The default rule is that a quorum is one more than half the body. For example, in a five-member body a quorum is three.

When the body has three members present, it can legally transact business. If the body has less than a quorum of members present, it cannot legally transact business. And even if the body has a quorum to begin the meeting, the body can lose the quorum during the meeting when a member departs (or even when a member leaves the dais). When that occurs the body loses its ability to transact business until and unless a quorum is reestablished.

The default rule, identified above, however, gives way to a specific rule of the body that establishes a quorum. For example, the rules of a particular five-member body may indicate that a quorum is four members for that particular body. The body must follow the rules it has established for its quorum. In the absence of such a specific rule, the quorum is one more than half the members of the body.

The Role of the Chair
While all members of the body should know and understand the rules of parliamentary procedure, it is the chair of the body who is charged with applying the rules of conduct of the meeting. The chair should be well versed in those rules. For all intents and purposes, the chair makes the final ruling on the rules every time the chair states an action. In fact, all decisions by the chair are final unless overruled by the body itself.

Since the chair runs the conduct of the meeting, it is usual courtesy for the chair to play a less active role in the debate and discussion than other members of the body. This does not mean that the chair should not participate in the debate or discussion. To the contrary, as a member of the body, the chair has the full right to participate in the debate, discussion and decision-making of the body. What the chair should do, however, is strive to be the last to speak at the discussion and debate stage. The chair should not make or second a motion unless the chair is convinced that no other member of the body will do so at that point in time.

The Basic Format for an Agenda Item Discussion
Formal meetings normally have a written, often published agenda.

Informal meetings may have only an oral or understood agenda. In either case, the meeting is governed by the agenda and the agenda constitutes the body’s agreed-upon roadmap for the meeting. Each agenda item can be handled by the chair in the following basic format:

Introduction
The rules of procedure at meetings should be simple enough for most people to understand. Unfortunately, that has not always been the case. Virtually all clubs, associations, boards, councils and bodies follow a set of rules — Robert’s Rules of Order — which are embodied in a small, but complex, book. Virtually no one I know has actually read this book cover to cover. Worse yet, the book was written for another time and for another purpose. If one is chairing or running a parliament, then Robert’s Rules of Order is a dandy and quite useful handbook for procedure in that complex setting. On the other hand, if one is running a meeting of say, a five-member body with a few members of the public in attendance, a simplified version of the rules of parliamentary procedure is in order.

Hence, the birth of Rosenberg’s Rules of Order.

What follows is my version of the rules of parliamentary procedure, based on my decades of experience chairing meetings in state and local government. These rules have been simplified for the smaller bodies we chair or in which we participate, slimmed down for the 21st Century, yet retaining the basic tenets of order to which we have grown accustomed. Interestingly enough, Rosenberg’s Rules has found a welcoming audience. Hundreds of cities, counties, special districts, committees, boards, commissions, neighborhood associations and private corporations and companies have adopted Rosenberg’s Rules in lieu of Robert’s Rules because they have found them practical, logical, simple, easy to learn and user friendly.

This treatise on modern parliamentary procedure is built on a foundation supported by the following four pillars:

1. Rules should establish order. The first purpose of rules of parliamentary procedure is to establish a framework for the orderly conduct of meetings.

2. Rules should be clear. Simple rules lead to wider understanding and participation. Complex rules create two classes: those who understand and participate; and those who do not fully understand and do not fully participate.

3. Rules should be user friendly. That is, the rules must be simple enough that the public is invited into the body and feels that it has participated in the process.

4. Rules should enforce the will of the majority while protecting the rights of the minority. The ultimate purpose of rules of procedure is to encourage discussion and to facilitate decision making by the body. In a democracy, majority rules. The rules must enable the majority to express itself and fashion a result, while permitting the minority to also express itself, but not dominate, while fully participating in the process.

3 Ninth, the chair takes a vote. Simply asking for the “ayes” and then asking for the “nays” normally does this. If members of the body do not vote, then they “abstain.” Unless the rules of the body provide otherwise (or unless a super majority is required as delineated later in these rules), then a simple majority (as defined in law or the rules of the body as delineated later in these rules) determines whether the motion passes or is defeated.

Tenth, the chair should announce the result of the vote and what action (if any) the body has taken. In announcing the result, the chair should indicate the names of the members of the body, if any, who voted in the minority on the motion. This announcement might take the following form: “The motion passes by a vote of 3-2, with Smith and Jones dissenting. We have passed the motion requiring a 10-day notice for all future meetings of this body.”
Motions in General
Motions are the vehicles for decision making by a body. It is usually best to have a motion before the body prior to commencing discussion of an agenda item. This helps the body focus.

Motions are made in a simple two-step process. First, the chair should recognize the member of the body. Second, the member of the body makes a motion by preceding the member’s desired approach with the words “I move … ”
A typical motion might be: “I move that we give a 10-day notice in the future for all our meetings.”
The chair usually initiates the motion in one of three ways:

1. Inviting the members of the body to make a motion, for example, “A motion at this time would be in order.”

2. Suggesting a motion to the members of the body, “A motion would be in order that we give a 10-day notice in the future for all our meetings.”

3. Making the motion. As noted, the chair has every right as a member of the body to make a motion, but should normally do so only if the chair wishes to make a motion on an item but is convinced that no other member of the body is willing to step forward to do so at a particular time.

The Three Basic Motions
There are three motions that are the most common and recur often at meetings:

The basic motion. The basic motion is the one that puts forward a decision for the body’s consideration. A basic motion might be: “I move that we create a five-member committee to plan and put on our annual fundraiser.”
First, the chair should clearly announce the agenda item number and should clearly state what the agenda item subject is. The chair should then announce the format (which follows) that will be followed in considering the agenda item.

Second, following that agenda format, the chair should invite the appropriate person or persons to report on the item, including any recommendation that they might have. The appropriate person or persons may be the chair, a member of the body, a staff person, or a committee chair charged with providing input on the agenda item.

Third, the chair should ask members of the body if they have any technical questions of clarification. At this point, members of the body may ask clarifying questions to the person or persons who reported on the item, and that person or persons should be given time to respond.

Fourth, the chair should invite public comments, or if appropriate at a formal meeting, should open the public meeting for public input.

If numerous members of the public indicate a desire to speak to the subject, the chair may limit the time of public speakers. At the conclusion of the public comments, the chair should announce that public input has concluded (or the public hearing, as the case may be, is closed).

Fifth, the chair should invite a motion. The chair should announce the name of the member of the body who makes the motion.

Sixth, the chair should determine if any member of the body wishes to second the motion. The chair should announce the name of the member of the body who seconds the motion. It is normally good practice for a motion to require a second before proceeding to ensure that it is not just one member of the body who is interested in a particular approach. However, a second is not an absolute requirement, and the chair can proceed with consideration and vote on a motion even when there is no second. This is a matter left to the discretion of the chair.

Seventh, if the motion is made and seconded, the chair should make sure everyone understands the motion.

This is done in one of three ways:

1. The chair can ask the maker of the motion to repeat it;

2. The chair can repeat the motion; or

3. The chair can ask the secretary or the clerk of the body to repeat the motion.

Eighth, the chair should now invite discussion of the motion by the body. If there is no desired discussion, or after the discussion has ended, the chair should announce that the body will vote on the motion. If there has been no discussion or very brief discussion, then the vote on the motion should proceed immediately and there is no need to repeat the motion. If there has been substantial discussion, then it is normally best to make sure everyone understands the motion by repeating it.

4 as follows:

First, the chair would deal with the third (the last) motion on the floor, the substitute motion. After discussion and debate, a vote would be taken first on the third motion. If the substitute motion passed, it would be a substitute for the basic motion and would eliminate it. The first motion would be moot, as would the second motion (which sought to amend the first motion), and the action on the agenda item would be completed on the passage by the body of the third motion (the substitute motion). No vote would be taken on the first or second motions.

Second, if the substitute motion failed, the chair would then deal with the second (now the last) motion on the floor, the motion to amend. The discussion and debate would focus strictly on the amendment (should the committee be five or 10 members). If the motion to amend passed, the chair would then move to consider the main motion (the first motion) as amended. If the motion to amend failed, the chair would then move to consider the main motion (the first motion) in its original format, not amended.

Third, the chair would now deal with the first motion that was placed on the floor. The original motion would either be in its original format (five-member committee), or if amended, would be in its amended format (10-member committee). The question on the floor for discussion and decision would be whether a committee should plan and put on the annual fundraiser.

To Debate or Not to Debate
The basic rule of motions is that they are subject to discussion and debate. Accordingly, basic motions, motions to amend, and substitute motions are all eligible, each in their turn, for full discussion before and by the body. The debate can continue as long as members of the body wish to discuss an item, subject to the decision of the chair that it is time to move on and take action.

There are exceptions to the general rule of free and open debate on motions. The exceptions all apply when there is a desire of the body to move on. The following motions are not debatable (that is, when the following motions are made and seconded, the chair must immediately call for a vote of the body without debate on the motion):

Motion to adjourn. This motion, if passed, requires the body to immediately adjourn to its next regularly scheduled meeting. It requires a simple majority vote.

Motion to recess. This motion, if passed, requires the body to immediately take a recess. Normally, the chair determines the length of the recess which may be a few minutes or an hour. It requires a simple majority vote.

Motion to fix the time to adjourn. This motion, if passed, requires the body to adjourn the meeting at the specific time set in the motion. For example, the motion might be: “I move we adjourn this meeting at midnight.” It requires a simple majority vote.

The motion to amend. If a member wants to change a basic motion that is before the body, they would move to amend it. A motion to amend might be: “I move that we amend the motion to have a 10-member committee.” A motion to amend takes the basic motion that is before the body and seeks to change it in some way.

The substitute motion. If a member wants to completely do away with the basic motion that is before the body, and put a new motion before the body, they would move a substitute motion. A substitute motion might be: “I move a substitute motion that we cancel the annual fundraiser this year.”
“Motions to amend” and “substitute motions” are often confused, but they are quite different, and their effect (if passed) is quite different. A motion to amend seeks to retain the basic motion on the floor, but modify it in some way. A substitute motion seeks to throw out the basic motion on the floor, and substitute a new and different motion for it. The decision as to whether a motion is really a “motion to amend” or a “substitute motion” is left to the chair. So if a member makes what that member calls a “motion to amend,” but the chair determines that it is really a “substitute motion,” then the chair’s designation governs.

A “friendly amendment” is a practical parliamentary tool that is simple, informal, saves time and avoids bogging a meeting down with numerous formal motions. It works in the following way: In the discussion on a pending motion, it may appear that a change to the motion is desirable or may win support for the motion from some members. When that happens, a member who has the floor may simply say, “I want to suggest a friendly amendment to the motion.” The member suggests the friendly amendment, and if the maker and the person who seconded the motion pending on the floor accepts the friendly amendment, that now becomes the pending motion on the floor. If either the maker or the person who seconded rejects the proposed friendly amendment, then the proposer can formally move to amend.

Multiple Motions Before the Body
There can be up to three motions on the floor at the same time.

The chair can reject a fourth motion until the chair has dealt with the three that are on the floor and has resolved them. This rule has practical value. More than three motions on the floor at any given time is confusing and unwieldy for almost everyone, including the chair.

When there are two or three motions on the floor (after motions and seconds) at the same time, the vote should proceed first on the last motion that is made. For example, assume the first motion is a basic “motion to have a five-member committee to plan and put on our annual fundraiser.” During the discussion of this motion, a member might make a second motion to “amend the main motion to have a 10-member committee, not a five-member committee to plan and put on our annual fundraiser.” And perhaps, during that discussion, a member makes yet a third motion as a “substitute motion that we not have an annual fundraiser this year.” The proper procedure would be

5 Motion to close nominations. When choosing officers of the body (such as the chair), nominations are in order either from a nominating committee or from the floor of the body. A motion to close nominations effectively cuts off the right of the minority to nominate officers and it requires a two-thirds vote to pass.

Motion to object to the consideration of a question. Normally, such a motion is unnecessary since the objectionable item can be tabled or defeated straight up. However, when members of a body do not even want an item on the agenda to be considered, then such a motion is in order. It is not debatable, and it requires a two-thirds vote to pass.

Motion to suspend the rules. This motion is debatable, but requires a two-thirds vote to pass. If the body has its own rules of order, conduct or procedure, this motion allows the body to suspend the rules for a particular purpose. For example, the body (a private club) might have a rule prohibiting the attendance at meetings by non-club members. A motion to suspend the rules would be in order to allow a non-club member to attend a meeting of the club on a particular date or on a particular agenda item.

Counting Votes
The matter of counting votes starts simple, but can become complicated.

Usually, it’s pretty easy to determine whether a particular motion passed or whether it was defeated. If a simple majority vote is needed to pass a motion, then one vote more than 50 percent of the body is required. For example, in a five-member body, if the vote is three in favor and two opposed, the motion passes. If it is two in favor and three opposed, the motion is defeated.

If a two-thirds majority vote is needed to pass a motion, then how many affirmative votes are required? The simple rule of thumb is to count the “no” votes and double that count to determine how many “yes” votes are needed to pass a particular motion. For example, in a seven-member body, if two members vote “no” then the “yes” vote of at least four members is required to achieve a two-thirds majority vote to pass the motion.

What about tie votes? In the event of a tie, the motion always fails since an affirmative vote is required to pass any motion. For example, in a five-member body, if the vote is two in favor and two opposed, with one member absent, the motion is defeated.

Vote counting starts to become complicated when members vote “abstain” or in the case of a written ballot, cast a blank (or unreadable) ballot. Do these votes count, and if so, how does one count them? The starting point is always to check the statutes.

In California, for example, for an action of a board of supervisors to be valid and binding, the action must be approved by a majority of the board. (California Government Code Section 25005.) Typically, this means three of the five members of the board must vote affirmatively in favor of the action. A vote of 2-1 would not be sufficient. A vote of 3-0 with two abstentions would be sufficient. In general law cities in Motion to table. This motion, if passed, requires discussion of the agenda item to be halted and the agenda item to be placed on “hold.” The motion can contain a specific time in which the item can come back to the body. “I move we table this item until our regular meeting in October.” Or the motion can contain no specific time for the return of the item, in which case a motion to take the item off the table and bring it back to the body will have to be taken at a future meeting. A motion to table an item (or to bring it back to the body) requires a simple majority vote.

Motion to limit debate. The most common form of this motion is to say, “I move the previous question” or “I move the question” or “I call the question” or sometimes someone simply shouts out “question.” As a practical matter, when a member calls out one of these phrases, the chair can expedite matters by treating it as a “request” rather than as a formal motion. The chair can simply inquire of the body, “any further discussion?” If no one wishes to have further discussion, then the chair can go right to the pending motion that is on the floor.

However, if even one person wishes to discuss the pending motion further, then at that point, the chair should treat the call for the “question” as a formal motion, and proceed to it.

When a member of the body makes such a motion (“I move the previous question”), the member is really saying: “I’ve had enough debate. Let’s get on with the vote.” When such a motion is made, the chair should ask for a second, stop debate, and vote on the motion to limit debate. The motion to limit debate requires a two-thirds vote of the body.

Note: A motion to limit debate could include a time limit. For example: “I move we limit debate on this agenda item to 15 minutes.” Even in this format, the motion to limit debate requires a twothirds vote of the body. A similar motion is a motion to object to consideration of an item. This motion is not debatable, and if passed, precludes the body from even considering an item on the agenda. It also requires a two-thirds vote.

Majority and Super Majority Votes
In a democracy, a simple majority vote determines a question. A tie vote means the motion fails. So in a seven-member body, a vote of 4-3 passes the motion. A vote of 3-3 with one abstention means the motion fails. If one member is absent and the vote is 3-3, the motion still fails.

All motions require a simple majority, but there are a few exceptions.

The exceptions come up when the body is taking an action which effectively cuts off the ability of a minority of the body to take an action or discuss an item. These extraordinary motions require a two-thirds majority (a super majority) to pass:

Motion to limit debate. Whether a member says, “I move the previous question,” or “I move the question,” or “I call the question,” or “I move to limit debate,” it all amounts to an attempt to cut off the ability of the minority to discuss an item, and it requires a two-thirds vote to pass.

6 Now, exactly how does a member cast an “abstention” vote? Any time a member votes “abstain” or says, “I abstain,” that is an abstention. However, if a member votes “present” that is also treated as an abstention (the member is essentially saying, “Count me for purposes of a quorum, but my vote on the issue is abstain.”) In fact, any manifestation of intention to vote either “yes” or “no” on the pending motion may be treated by the chair as an abstention. If written ballots are cast, a blank or unreadable ballot is counted as an abstention as well.

Can a member vote “absent” or “count me as absent?” Interesting question. The ruling on this is up to the chair. The better approach is for the chair to count this as if the member had left his/her chair and is actually “absent.” That, of course, affects the quorum. However, the chair may also treat this as a vote to abstain, particularly if the person does not actually leave the dais.

The Motion to Reconsider
There is a special and unique motion that requires a bit of explanation all by itself; the motion to reconsider. A tenet of parliamentary procedure is finality. After vigorous discussion, debate and a vote, there must be some closure to the issue. And so, after a vote is taken, the matter is deemed closed, subject only to reopening if a proper motion to consider is made and passed.

A motion to reconsider requires a majority vote to pass like other garden-variety motions, but there are two special rules that apply only to the motion to reconsider.

First, is the matter of timing. A motion to reconsider must be made at the meeting where the item was first voted upon. A motion to reconsider made at a later time is untimely. (The body, however, can always vote to suspend the rules and, by a two-thirds majority, allow a motion to reconsider to be made at another time.)
Second, a motion to reconsider may be made only by certain members of the body. Accordingly, a motion to reconsider may be made only by a member who voted in the majority on the original motion. If such a member has a change of heart, he or she may make the motion to reconsider (any other member of the body — including a member who voted in the minority on the original motion — may second the motion). If a member who voted in the minority seeks to make the motion to reconsider, it must be ruled out of order. The purpose of this rule is finality. If a member of minority could make a motion to reconsider, then the item could be brought back to the body again and again, which would defeat the purpose of finality.

If the motion to reconsider passes, then the original matter is back before the body, and a new original motion is in order. The matter may be discussed and debated as if it were on the floor for the first time.

California, as another example, resolutions or orders for the payment of money and all ordinances require a recorded vote of the total members of the city council. (California Government Code Section 36936.) Cities with charters may prescribe their own vote requirements. Local elected officials are always well-advised to consult with their local agency counsel on how state law may affect the vote count.

After consulting state statutes, step number two is to check the rules of the body. If the rules of the body say that you count votes of “those present” then you treat abstentions one way. However, if the rules of the body say that you count the votes of those “present and voting,” then you treat abstentions a different way. And if the rules of the body are silent on the subject, then the general rule of thumb (and default rule) is that you count all votes that are “present and voting.” Accordingly, under the “present and voting” system, you would NOT count abstention votes on the motion. Members who abstain are counted for purposes of determining quorum (they are “present”), but you treat the abstention votes on the motion as if they did not exist (they are not “voting”). On the other hand, if the rules of the body specifically say that you count votes of those “present” then you DO count abstention votes both in establishing the quorum and on the motion. In this event, the abstention votes act just like “no” votes.

How does this work in practice?
Here are a few examples.

Assume that a five-member city council is voting on a motion that requires a simple majority vote to pass, and assume further that the body has no specific rule on counting votes. Accordingly, the default rule kicks in and we count all votes of members that are “present and voting.” If the vote on the motion is 3-2, the motion passes. If the motion is 2-2 with one abstention, the motion fails.

Assume a five-member city council voting on a motion that requires a two-thirds majority vote to pass, and further assume that the body has no specific rule on counting votes. Again, the default rule applies.

If the vote is 3-2, the motion fails for lack of a two-thirds majority. If the vote is 4-1, the motion passes with a clear two-thirds majority. A vote of three “yes,” one “no” and one “abstain” also results in passage of the motion. Once again, the abstention is counted only for the purpose of determining quorum, but on the actual vote on the motion, it is as if the abstention vote never existed — so an effective 3-1 vote is clearly a two-thirds majority vote.

Now, change the scenario slightly. Assume the same five-member city council voting on a motion that requires a two-thirds majority vote to pass, but now assume that the body DOES have a specific rule requiring a two-thirds vote of members “present.” Under this specific rule, we must count the members present not only for quorum but also for the motion. In this scenario, any abstention has the same force and effect as if it were a “no” vote. Accordingly, if the votes were three “yes,” one “no” and one “abstain,” then the motion fails. The abstention in this case is treated like a “no” vote and effective vote of 3-2 is not enough to pass two-thirds majority muster.

7 Appeal. If the chair makes a ruling that a member of the body disagrees with, that member may appeal the ruling of the chair. If the motion is seconded, and after debate, if it passes by a simple majority vote, then the ruling of the chair is deemed reversed.

Call for orders of the day. This is simply another way of saying, “return to the agenda.” If a member believes that the body has drifted from the agreed-upon agenda, such a call may be made. It does not require a vote, and when the chair discovers that the agenda has not been followed, the chair simply reminds the body to return to the agenda item properly before them. If the chair fails to do so, the chair’s determination may be appealed.

Withdraw a motion. During debate and discussion of a motion, the maker of the motion on the floor, at any time, may interrupt a speaker to withdraw his or her motion from the floor. The motion is immediately deemed withdrawn, although the chair may ask the person who seconded the motion if he or she wishes to make the motion, and any other member may make the motion if properly recognized.

Special Notes About Public Input
The rules outlined above will help make meetings very publicfriendly. But in addition, and particularly for the chair, it is wise to remember three special rules that apply to each agenda item:

Rule One: Tell the public what the body will be doing.

Rule Two: Keep the public informed while the body is doing it.

Rule Three: When the body has acted, tell the public what the body did.

Courtesy and Decorum
The rules of order are meant to create an atmosphere where the members of the body and the members of the public can attend to business efficiently, fairly and with full participation. At the same time, it is up to the chair and the members of the body to maintain common courtesy and decorum. Unless the setting is very informal, it is always best for only one person at a time to have the floor, and it is always best for every speaker to be first recognized by the chair before proceeding to speak.

The chair should always ensure that debate and discussion of an agenda item focuses on the item and the policy in question, not the personalities of the members of the body. Debate on policy is healthy, debate on personalities is not. The chair has the right to cut off discussion that is too personal, is too loud, or is too crude.

Debate and discussion should be focused, but free and open. In the interest of time, the chair may, however, limit the time allotted to speakers, including members of the body.

Can a member of the body interrupt the speaker? The general rule is “no.” There are, however, exceptions. A speaker may be interrupted for the following reasons:

Privilege. The proper interruption would be, “point of privilege.” The chair would then ask the interrupter to “state your point.” Appropriate points of privilege relate to anything that would interfere with the normal comfort of the meeting. For example, the room may be too hot or too cold, or a blowing fan might interfere with a person’s ability to hear.

Order. The proper interruption would be, “point of order.” Again, the chair would ask the interrupter to “state your point.” Appropriate points of order relate to anything that would not be considered appropriate conduct of the meeting. For example, if the chair moved on to a vote on a motion that permits debate without allowing that discussion or debate.

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Santa Clara
81 Pepper Dr. Los Altos 94022
Primary Elevation
(Los Altos Planning Dept)
W/K Joseph Living Trust
81 Pepper Dr. Los Altos, CA 94022
Circa: Historic Property Development
1 Sutter St., Ste. 910
June-08
Intensive
Los Altos Historic Resources Inventory Update - Phase III (Circa: Historic Property Development, 2011).

This one-and-a-half story, simplified Colonial Revival style residence has a side gable roof with three gabled dormers on the front elevation and a one-story shed extension to the rear. All roof surfaces are clad in composition shingle and the exterior walls appear to be clad in wood lap siding. Notable architectural details include a dentiled cornice along the front elevation and eave returns at the side gables. Six-over-one wood windows with shutters punctuate the first level and six-over-one wood windows are set in the gable dormers. All windows are framed by flat wood trim and simple moulding. The glazed, wood panel front door with sidelights is also framed with this wood trim and sheltered my a modern arbor/trellis. A stucco-clad chimney with brick coping pierces the gable peak. A side-gabled detached garage is set at the northwest corner of the lot. 3 APN: 170 41 007
✔
✔
✔
✔ ✔
June-08
HP2. Single familyproperty
San Francisco, CA 94104
Built 1933

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81 Pepper Dr.

Residence Residence
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Circa: Historic Property Development
April 2011
Built 1933. Reroof, 1994 (Permit # 44466); W/H (#60954).

Detached garage.

Los Altos Historical Commission: Los Altos Historic Resources Inventory (9.28.1997); McAlester, Virginia and Lee. A Field Guide to American Houses.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002; Building permit records; Chamber of Commerce website - http://www.losaltoschamber.org/history_two_cities.html.

Sketch map created by Circa using Google Maps aerial photograph. ✔
HRI#
CA/Local
Present day Los Altos became part of Santa Clara County in 1851. Associated with the Fremont Township, the area remained largely rural through the latter half of the 19th century, with much of the land devoted to cultivation of wheat crops, orchards and vineyards.

By the end of the century, the larger ranches began to give way to a number of smaller farms and orchards. The initial establishment of Los Altos is attributed to Paul Shoup, a Southern Pacific Railroad executive who proposed it as a stop on a commuter rail line between Palo Alto and Los Gatos. Shoup formed the Los Altos Land Company in 1907 and, with the help of his business partners, purchased and laid out the original townsite along the east side of what is now Foothill Expressway, then the future rail line. The Land Company began selling lots for development in 1907 and many of the early houses were used as summer homes for wealthy San Francisco families while others served as year-round residences for commuters. The first steam train service from Los Altos to San Francisco began in 1908 and by 1911, some fifty residences had been constructed and a number of commercial office buildings had been built in the small downtown core. The rail line brought prosperity and growth to Los Altos and existing farms and orchards gradually gave way to residential subdivisions. Better roads and the availability of the automobile continued this development through the 1920s and 1930s when a number of (See Continuation Sheet).

Page of *Resource Name or # (Assigned by recorder)
*Recorded by: *Date
Continuation
Update
State of California — The Resources Agency Primary #
DEPARTMENT OF PARKS AND RECREATION HRI #
CONTINUATION SHEET Trinomial
3 3 81 Pepper Drive
Circa: Historic Property Development April 2011
B10. Significance (cont.)
automobile suburbs were developed. The post-World War II population boom led to increased residential and commercial development for the community and the city officially incorporated on December 1, 1952.

The residence at 81 Pepper Drive was constructed in the community's early period of development, prior to the city's incorporation in 1952, and is a good example of the Colonial Revival style in Los Altos. The Eclectic movement, characterized by the popularity of period revival style houses built in the Mediterranean, Italian Renaissance, Tudor, Chateauesque or Colonial Revival styles, began in the last decades of the 19th century and came to dominate domestic building in the 1920s and 1930s.

Character Defining Features: Side gable roof with three gabled dormers; one-and-a-half story form, wood lap siding; dentiled cornice; eave returns; six-over-one wood windows with (and without) shutters; flat wood trim and simple moulding around windows; glazed, wood panel front door with sidelights and wood trim; chimney with brick coping.

Evaluation: 81 Pepper Drive is a good representative example of its style, and retains a good degree of integrity of location, workmanship, feeling, design and materials. Therefore, it is eligible for listing on the Los Altos Historic Resources Inventory and is assigned the California Register Status Code 5S3: "appears to be individually eligible for local listing or designation through survey evaluation."
Note: This finding is based on architectural merit alone and further research for association with historically significant events and/or people should be conducted.
✔

JP ENGINEERING & CONSTRUCTION
81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, CA 94022
Phone: (408) 438-1200 | Email: [email protected]

Owners
James (Jamshid) Parivash
Effat Parivash
81 Pepper Drive / Los Altos, CA / 94022
408-438-1200
[email protected]
March 24, 2025
City of Los Altos
Community Development Department
1 N. San Antonio Road
Los Altos, CA 94022
RE: Request to Remove 81 Pepper Drive from the City of Los Altos Historic Resources Inventory
Dear City of Los Altos Planning Staff,
I am writing to formally request that the property located at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, CA 94022 (APN: 170-41-006) be removed from the City of Los Altos Historic Resources Inventory (HRI).

This request is based on the findings of the Historic Resource Evaluation (HRE) prepared by Evans & De Shazo, Inc., dated March 4, 2025. The report concludes that the existing structures on the property — including the 1929 residence, the ca. 1933 detached garage, and surrounding landscape — do not meet the criteria for individual listing on the California Register of Historical Resources, nor do they appear eligible under the standards of the Secretary of the Interior. As such, the HRE recommends that the property be delisted from the local register.

It is important to note that the HRE was prepared by a licensed historic preservation firm selected from a list of consultants previously provided by the City of Los Altos.

In accordance with the application instructions, I am submitting this letter as part of the required documentation to initiate the City’s evaluation and hearing process regarding this request. I understand that a peer review of the HRE may be conducted by an independent consultant selected by the City and that further steps may be required based on that review.

Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to working with City staff throughout this process.

Sincerely,
James Parivash
JP Engineering & Construction

Evans & De Shazo, Inc
1141 Gravenstein Highway South,
Sebastopol, CA 95472
707-823-7400
www.evans-deshazo.com

A HISTORIC RESOURCE EVALUATION AND

UPDATED LOCAL ASSESSMENT OF THE
PROPERTY AT 81 PEPPER DRIVE, LOS

ALTOS, SANTA CLARA COUNTY,

CALIFORNIA
SUBMITTED TO:

James Parivash
SUBMITTED BY:

Stacey De Shazo, M.A.

Principal Architectural Historian
and
Nicole Wyton, M.S.

Architectural Historian
with
Bee Thao, M.A.

March 4, 2025
(updated April 21, 2025)

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................................... 3 PROPERTY LOCATION................................................................................................................................................. 3 REGULATORY SETTING ............................................................................................................................................... 5 CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ACT .............................................................................................................................5 LOCAL ...............................................................................................................................................................................6 METHODS................................................................................................................................................................... 7 CULTURAL RESOURCE INVENTORIES.........................................................................................................................................7 ONLINE RESEARCH...............................................................................................................................................................8 REPOSITORIES .....................................................................................................................................................................8 PREVIOUS DOCUMENTATION..................................................................................................................................... 8 HISTORICAL SETTING.................................................................................................................................................. 9 MEXICAN PERIOD (1822 – 1846) .........................................................................................................................................9 EARLY AMERICAN PERIOD (1848 - 1851) ...............................................................................................................................9 HISTORY OF LOS ALTOS (1850 – 1960S)...............................................................................................................................10 PROPERTY HISTORY............................................................................................................................................................20 PERMIT HISTORY (1994 – 2024).........................................................................................................................................30 ARCHITECTURAL CONTEXT ....................................................................................................................................... 31 COLONIAL REVIVAL (1880 – CA. 1955) ................................................................................................................................31 HISTORIC ARCHITECTURAL SURVEY.......................................................................................................................... 31 1929 HOUSE....................................................................................................................................................................31 CA. 1933 DETACHED GARAGE .............................................................................................................................................39 LANDSCAPE ......................................................................................................................................................................41 EVALUATION OF HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE ............................................................................................................ 42 CALIFORNIA REGISTER OF HISTORICAL RESOURCES ...................................................................................................................42 CRHR EVALUATION...........................................................................................................................................................43 LOCAL ASSESSMENT AND RECOMMENDATION........................................................................................................ 44 ASSESSMENT ....................................................................................................................................................................45 RECOMMENDATIONS..........................................................................................................................................................48 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................................................ 48 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................................................... 49 ATTACHMENTS: Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) 523 forms (Appendix A)

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 3

INTRODUCTION
Evans & De Shazo, Inc. (EDS) completed a Historic Resource Evaluation (HRE) and updated local assessment for the 0.23-acre property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California, within Assessor Parcel Number (APN) 107-41-007 (Property). The Property consists of the 1929 house, ca. 1933 detached garage, and landscape. The proposed project consists of rehabilitating or demolishing the 1929 house and demolishing the ca. 1933 detached garage (non-legalized Assessory Dwelling Unit), 1 allowing for the
construction of a two-story addition or a new house (Project).2In 2011, as part of the Los Altos Historic Resources Inventory Update (Circa: Historic Property Development, March 2012), the 1929 house was documented on Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) 523 forms and subsequently locally listed on the Los Altos Historic Resources Inventory (HRI).3 As such, the 1929 house is considered a Historical Resource as defined in Section 15064.5 of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines. However, the Property, including the 1929 house, ca. 1933 detached garage, and landscape, has not been previously evaluated for individual eligibility for listing on the California Register of Historical Resources (CRHR). As such, EDS completed an HRE to determine whether the Property is eligible for listing on the CRHR. Although the 1929 house is currently locally listed on the Los Altos HRI, the City has requested an “updated” local assessment, completed in accordance with Los Altos Municipal Code Section 12.44.040 to advise the city on the continued local listing of the Property, including the 1929 house.

The HRE follows specific guidelines and evaluation criteria of the California Register of Historical Resources (CRHR, 36 CFR 68; Code of California Regulations [CCR], Title 14, § 15064.5 and Public Resources Code [PRC] § 21084.1). The HRE was completed by EDS Principal Architectural Historian Stacey De Shazo, M.A., and Architectural Historian Nicole Wyton, M.S., both of whom exceed the Secretary of Interior's qualification standards in Architectural History and History, and Researcher Bee Thao, M.A. The results of the HRE and local assessment are presented herein.

PROPERTY LOCATION
The Property is located at 81 Petter Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California within APN 107-41-007 (Figure 1). The Property is on the north side of Pepper Drive, approximately 47 feet east of South Antonio Road.
1 Per the City of Los Altos Permit Search webpage, on 9/17/2024 an application was submitted to the City of Los Altos for the “Legalization of existing detached cottage to an ADU.” 2 The Project is dependent on the outcome of the HRE and future decisions by the City of Los Altos for potential delisting of the 1929 house within the Property.
3 The 1929 house was not assigned a “California Register Historic Status Code.”

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 4 Figure 1. Location Map

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 5

REGULATORY SETTING
The CEQA regulations, and the City of Los Altos local historical resources pertaining to cultural resources are outlined below.

CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ACT
CEQA and the Guidelines for Implementing CEQA (State CEQA Guidelines § 15064.5) give direction and guidance for evaluating properties and preparing Initial Studies, Categorical Exemptions, Negative Declarations, and Environmental Impact Reports. Under California State law, the City of Los Altos is legally responsible and accountable for determining the environmental impact of any land use proposal it approves.

Cultural resources are aspects of the environment that require identification and assessment for potential significance under CEQA (14 CCR § 15064.5 and PRC § 21084.1).

There are five classes of cultural resources defined by the State OHP. These are:
• Building: A structure created principally to shelter or assist in carrying out any form of human activity. A “building” may also be used to refer to a historically and functionally related unit, such as a courthouse and jail or a house and barn.
• Structure: A construction made for a functional purpose rather than creating human shelter.

Examples include mines, bridges, and tunnels.
• Object: Construction is primarily artistic in nature or relatively small in scale and simply constructed.

It may be movable by nature or design or made for a specific setting or environment. Objects should be in a setting appropriate to their significant historic use or character. Examples include fountains, monuments, maritime resources, sculptures, and boundary markers. • Site: The location of a significant event. A prehistoric or historic occupation or activity, or a building or structure, whether standing, ruined, or vanished, where the location itself possesses historic, cultural, or archaeological value regardless of the value of any existing building, structure, or object.

A site need not be marked by physical remains if it is the location of a prehistoric or historic event and if no buildings, structures, or objects marked it at that time. Examples include trails, designed landscapes, battlefields, habitation sites, Native American ceremonial areas, petroglyphs, and pictographs.
• Historic District: Unified geographic entities which contain a concentration of historic buildings, structures, or sites united historically, culturally, or architecturally.

According to CCR § 15064.5, cultural resources are historically significant if they are:
(1) A resource listed in or determined to be eligible by the State Historical Resources Commission for listing in the California Register of Historical Resources (PRC §5024.1, 14 CCR § 4850 et seq.). (2) A resource included in a local register of historical resources, as defined in PRC § 5020.1(k) or identified as significant in a historical resource survey meeting the requirements PRC § 5024.1(g), shall be presumed to be historically or culturally significant. Public agencies must treat any such resource as significant unless the preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that it is not

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 6 historically or culturally significant.
(3) Any object, building, structure, site, area, place, record, or manuscript which a lead agency determines to be historically significant or significant in the architectural, engineering, scientific, economic, agricultural, educational, social, political, military, or cultural annals of California may be considered to be a historical resource, provided the lead agency's determination is supported by substantial evidence in light of the whole record. Generally, a resource shall be considered by the lead agency to be “historically significant” if the resource meets the criteria for listing on the California Register of Historical Resources (PRC § 5024.1, 14 CCR § 4852), including the following:
(1) Is associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of California's history and cultural heritage;
(2) Is associated with the lives of persons important in our past; (3) Embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, region, or method of construction, or represents the work of an important creative individual, or possesses high artistic values; or (4) Has yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history. (4) The fact that a resource is not listed in or determined to be eligible for listing in the CRHR, not included in a local register of historical resources pursuant to PRC § 5020.1(k), or identified in a historical resources survey meeting the criteria in PRC § 5024.1(g) does not preclude a lead agency from determining that the resource may be a historical resource as defined in PRC § 5020.1(j) or § 5024.1.

LOCAL
Although the 1929 house is currently locally listed, the City of Los Altos has requested an “updated” local assessment in compliance with the following criterion.

12.44.040 - Criteria for designation.

A structure, property or object may be eligible for designation as a historic resource or historic landmark, if it/they satisfy each of the three criteria listed below:

A. Age. A structure or property should be more than fifty (50) years in age. (Exceptions can be made to this rule if the building(s) or site(s) is/are truly remarkable for some reason - such as being associated with an outstanding architect, personage, usage or event).

B. Determination of Integrity. A structure or property should retain sufficient historic integrity in most of the following areas:

1. Design: The combination of elements that create the form, plan, space, structure and style of a property.

2. Setting: The physical environment of a historic property.

3. Materials: The physical elements that were combined or deposited during a particular period of time and in a particular pattern or configuration to form a historic property.

4. Workmanship: The physical evidence of the crafts of a particular culture or people during any

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 7 given period in history or prehistory.

5. Feeling: A property's expression of the aesthetic or historic sense of a particular period of time.

C. Historic Significance. A structure or property should be clearly associated with one or more of the following areas of significance:

1. Event: Associated with a single significant event or a pattern of events that have made a significant contribution to broad patterns of local or regional history, or cultural heritage of California or the United States;

2. Person/People: Associated with the lives of persons important to the local, California or national history;

3. Architecture/Design: Embodies the distinctive characteristics of a design-type, period, region or method of construction, or represents the work of a master or possesses high artistic value; or

4. Archaeology: Yields important information about prehistory or history of the local area, California or the nation.

The city's historic resource evaluation methodology, which provides more details about the above listed criteria, is available from the planning division.
(Ord. No. 2011-363, § 1, 3-8-2011; Ord. No. 2017-437, § 1, 3-13-2018)

METHODS
The methods used to complete the HRE included a database search conducted by the Northwest Information Center (NWIC) of the California Historical Information Systems (CHRIS) to determine if the Property has been previously evaluated or documented. EDS also conducted in-person research, including at the Santa Clara County Assessor and Recorder offices, and the City of Los Altos. EDS also conducted extensive online research and reviewed digital documents on file with EDS, such as historical maps, Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, historical aerial photographs, and other primary source documents. EDS also received a copy of the Property’s title report provided by the Property owners. The purpose of the research was to understand the Property history and the history of the surrounding area to assist in developing a historical context to evaluate the historical significance of the built environment within the Property. EDS Principal Architectural Historian Stacey De Shazo, M.A. also completed a historic architectural survey to identify the age, any known architectural style or form, character-defining features, materials, and alterations to the built environment resources, at least 45 years in age, within the Property. Updated DPR 523 forms were also completed (Appendix A), as well as a local assessment.

CULTURAL RESOURCE INVENTORIES
As part of the record search, the following inventories were reviewed:
• National Register of Historic Places (NRHP)
• California Register of Historical Resources (CRHR)
• California Historical Landmarks (CHL)

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 8 • California Points of Historical Interest (CPHI)
• California Inventory of Historic Resources
• California OHP BERD for Santa Clara County, California (2020) • City of Los Altos HRI (2012) and Historic Landmarks

ONLINE RESEARCH
Online research was conducted utilizing the following sources:
• www.newspapers.com
• www.ancestry.com
• www.calisphere.org (University of California)
• http://www.library.ca.gov/ (California State Library) • https://cdnc.ucr.edu/ (California Digital Newspaper Collection) • http://pcad.lib.washington.edu (Pacific Coast Architecture Database [PCAD]) • https://aiahistoricaldirectory.atlassian.net (American Architects Directory)

REPOSITORIES
• NWIC Record Search
o On January 9, 2024, EDS requested a database search from the NWIC (File #24-0987) for the Property. The record search found that the 2011DRP 523 forms (CIRCA) for the Property NWIC.
• Santa Clara County Assessor and Recorder Offices:
o On January 3, 2025, EDS conducted research at the Santa Clara County Assessor and Recorder Office to gather information regarding the ownership history of the Property. • City of Los Altos
o On December 26, 2024, EDS obtained the DPR 523 forms prepared by CIRCA in 2011, and the permit history for the Property from the City of Los Altos.

The research and literature review results are included in the Historical Setting section below.

PREVIOUS DOCUMENTATION
In 2011-2012, the 1929 house within the Property was part of a city-wide historic inventory update (S-34502). 4 As a result, the 1929 house was listed on the local City of Los Altos HRI in 2012. Due to its current listing, the 1929 house is considered a Historical Resource as defined in §15064.5 of the CEQA Guidelines. However, the documentation of the 1929 house by CIRCA only considered CRHR Criterion 3 (Architecture) and did not 4 Study number assigned by the NWIC to the 2012 city-wide HRI.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 9 include an evaluation under criteria 1, 2 or 4; and did not include the ca. 1933 detached garage or landscape.

HISTORICAL SETTING
The following section provides a brief history of the City of Los Altos and a specific history of the Property.

The purpose of this section is to provide an understanding of the development of the area and the specific context within which the built environment resources within the Property were evaluated for historical significance.

MEXICAN PERIOD (1822 – 1846)
In 1821, Mexico declared its independence from Spain and took possession of “Alta California,” 5 marking the
end of the Spanish period (1769 – 1821) and the beginning of the Mexican period, also referred to as the “rancho” period, in Alta California. In 1833, the Mexican government secularized the Spanish missions in California, and mission-owned land was dissolved. During this time, extraordinary changes occurred throughout Alta California, as the Mexican government lacked the strong oversight and military rule previously imposed by the Spanish, and as such, there were new trade opportunities when foreign ships that had previously been held off by Spanish guarded military ports could dock and provide a variety of provisions to local settlers throughout California. These new provisions, including tea, coffee, sugars, spices, spirits, and various manufactured goods, soon made their way into the region, and the taxes on these imported goods became the main source of revenue for the Mexican government in Alta California. Likewise, products produced in Alta California were exported, which bolstered the hide and tallow trade that became the primary business activity in Alta California during this time. During this time, the Mexican colonial authorities encouraged the settlement of Alta California by providing large land grants called ranchos to politically prominent persons loyal to the Mexican government and permitting foreigners to settle the land. As a result, the 20 ranchos in Alta California, during the Spanish period increased to roughly 800 ranchos that varied from 10,000 to 20,000 acres during the Mexican era.

In 1846, the Property was within unclaimed lands of the Mexican government.

EARLY AMERICAN PERIOD (1848 - 1851)
The beginning of the American Period in California is marked by the end of the Mexican American War (1846- 1848), when the United States (U.S.) took possession of Mexican territories, including California, New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona, in the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided resident Mexicans their American citizenship and guaranteed title to ranchos obtained during the Mexican period. However, less than two weeks before the treaty's signing, on January 24, 1848, James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill, which marked the start of California’s Gold Rush (1848 to 1855). Soon, the excitement of the Gold Rush and the promise of fertile and abundant land brought between 150,000 and 200,000 new settlers to California from all over the U.S. and Scotland, Ireland, England, 5 Alta California was a polity of New Spain founded in 1769 and became a territory of Mexico after the Mexican War of Independence in 1821.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 10 Germany, and France.6 Many new settlers squatted on land during this time, including Mexican rancho and unclaimed land. To quickly resolve Mexican rancho land disputes, the U.S. Congress passed the California Land Act of 1851, establishing a three-member Public Land Commission (Commission) to determine the validity of prior Spanish and Mexican land grants.7 The act required landowners who claimed title under the former Mexican government to file a claim with the Commission within two years. Although the Commission eventually confirmed most of the original Mexican land grants, the burden was on landowners to prove their title. The cost of litigation forced many rancho owners to sell off their land to newly arriving settlers, including some who had illegally squatted on their land, as well as land speculators and the lawyers hired to defend their land claims in court.8
In 1850, the Property was within the Fremont township of Santa Clara County within 640 acres of public land surveyed under the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) in the 1850s and made available to new settlers.

HISTORY OF LOS ALTOS (1850 – 1960S)
In 1850, the present-day City of Los Altos comprised approximately 100 residents, mostly living on large parcels of land for wheat farming and cattle ranching. During this time, the Property was located within 640 acres of public land covered in dense chamisal,
9 and it was surrounded by several Mexican era ranchos, including La Purísima Concepción to the west, San Antonio to the south, Rincon de San Francisquito to the north, and Pastoria de las Boregas to the north/northeast. At this time, the largest landowner within presentday Los Altos was Juana Briones de Miranda’s (Figure 2), who purchased the 4,439-acre Rancho La Purísima Concepción in 1844 from José Gorgonio and his son José Ramon, Ohlone Indians who were granted the Rancho by then Mexican Governor Juan Alvarado in 1840.

Juana Briones de Miranda, a single mother with eight children, was a medical practitioner and a well-known San Francisco merchant. Juana moved to Rancho La Purísima Concepción in 1847 and built an adobe house within the northern portion of the land. Following the California Land Act of 1851, Juana filed a claim to the Commission for the rancho land, and with the help of her attorney, Henry Wager Halleck, she fought to retain her land.
10 However, by the early 1860s, Juana had to sell portions of her land to support her family. In 1857, she sold approximately 2,000 acres to Martin Murphy, who had arrived in California in 1844 in the StephensTownsend-Murphy Party, the first wagon train to cross the Sierra Nevada into California. 11 Martin paid Juana
6 Karen Clay, Property Rights and Institutions: Congress and the California Land Act 1851, The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, 59(01):122-142, March 1999. 7 The Spanish government-controlled California land from approximately 1770 to 1821 and the Mexican governmentcontrolled California land from 1821 to 1846. 8 Nancy Olmsted. Vanished Waters: A History of San Francisco's Mission Bay, Mission Creek Conservancy, San Francisco, 1986.
9 Chamisal is a Mexican word that means overgrowth of chamiso, an evergreen shrub. 10 CIRCA Preservation Consulting, “City of Los Altos Historic Resources Inventory”, Prepared for the City of Los Altos, 2012.
11 Gordon Richards, ”Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party”, Truckee Donner Historical Society, https://www.truckeehistory.org/the-first-pioneer-wagons-crossed-the-sierra-over-160-years-ago.html, (accessed 7/22/2024).

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 11 $7,000 for the land, adding to his approximately 4,800-acre land holdings in the present-day City of Sunnyvale, known then as Bay View Ranch.
12 In the early 1860s, Juana sold 2,000 acres to Joseph P. Hale, who established the largest cattle ranch and wheat farm in Los Altos. Along with four other families (names unknown), Hale lived within the ranch, known as Hale Ranch, located west of the Property. In 1862, John Snyder arrived in the Los Altos area, where he purchased land and planted grain within what became known as the Snyder Ranch, which comprised 700 acres, of which some acreage was purchased from Juana. When Juana’s land claim was finally patented on August 15, 1871,
13 most of the Rancho La Purísima Concepción had been sold to EuroAmerican settlers or granted to Juana’s children.

In the 1850s and 1860s, Santa Clara Valley’s primary crops were wheat and grain. During this time, farmers living in Los Altos loaded their crops onto wagons, hauling them to the Mountain View Station stage stop, located along the San Francisco-San Jose Stage Road, known today as El Camino Real. In 1864, the Southern Pacific (SP) Railroad established a rail line within present-day Mountain View, approximately one mile north of the Mountain View Station stage stop. In 1865, the City of Mountain View was officially laid out. Due to its proximity to the developing City of Mountain View and the new railroad stop, the small community of Los Altos began to grow. In the 1870s, Los Altos consisted of small and large farms planted with grain and fruit crops. By the 1880s, fruit crops began to replace wheat and grain as the dominant agricultural crop in Santa Clara Valley, and by 1890, many of the larger farms and cattle ranches were subdivided and sold as small farms. During this time, the small farms produced “much as 200 dollars per acre from prunes, apricots, peaches, cherries, pears, and other fruits.”14
In the early 1900s, land development and transportation companies began buying land in Los Altos for future development. During this time, present-day Los Altos saw large tracts of undeveloped land, including where the Property is located (
12 Los Altos Hills, “Lost Altos Hills History Anthology (1956-2016)”, 2016. 13 Sacramento State Office, “Report of the Surveyor-General of the State of California from August 1, 1898 – August 1, 1898.” 1886.
14 Jose Salameda, Memories of Los Altos, publisher Joe Salameda (January 1, 1982).

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 12 Figure 3), subdivided as part of planned development. In Los Altos, the SP railroad President Paul Shoup and his brother, Guy Shoup, an attorney for the SP, purchased a right-of-way from Palo Alto to Los Altos to run a connecting rail line through Los Gates and points south. This coincided with Paul Shoup’sfounding of the Altos Land Company in 1906. Paul, who is known as the “father of Los Altos,” proposed to link the cities of Palo Alto and Los Gatos with a new rail line through present-day Los Altos; however, the route where the rail line was proposed to be located was within two adjoining parcels owned by rifle heiress Sarah Winchester, who did not want the rail line to split the two adjacent parcels. On October 19, 1907, the Altos Land Company was incorporated with Paul Shoup as its director. Soon after its incorporation, the SP railroad acquired the company as the newly formed subsidiary, Peninsular Railway. Although the Altos Land Company failed to

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 13 purchase the right-of-way through Sarah Winchester’s property, they offered to buy both lots from her instead. She accepted the offer, which allowed the Altos Land Company to move ahead with its plan to develop the small community. The Altos Land Company kicked off its development plans by sponsoring outdoor land sale events, which coincided with the construction of the new SP route from Palo Alto to Los Altos to provide train service through Los Altos. On April 19, 1908, the SP train service opened in Los Altos, with five trains per day along the route of the present-day Foothill Expressway.

During the early 1900s, the Altos Land Company continued its marketing campaign to sell lots for development to support its new rail line by promoting Los Altos as “the loveliest place on the peninsula” (Figure 4 and Figure 5). As part of their marketing efforts, residents of San Francisco were offered free railroad excursions in the country for a day, with complimentary picnics alongside the tracks where lots were being sold. By 1911, fifty new houses had been constructed within Los Altos, and several office buildings and stores had been built along Main Street (Figure 6). The 10-acre lots were priced from $400 to $650, and homes could be built from $2,000 to $4,000. The 10-acre lots were also laid out to support small family-owned fruit farmers, including those along Hawthorne Avenue. Shoup then laid out the town of Los Altos, and the first business to open in downtown Los Altos was Eschenbruecher’s Hardware Store at 316 Main Street, which also housed the post office. The Los Altos Water Company, Los Altos Building and Loan, University Land Company, and the railroad company also occupied offices in downtown Los Altos. In 1909, the two-story Shoup Building was constructed at Main and Second streets, which housed a grocery store downstairs, managed by Paul Shoup’s brother-in-law, Al Robinson, while the second floor was used as a school, where one teacher taught first through eighth grade. In 1914, the SP constructed a new train depot in Los Altos (Figure 7). During this time, the railroad, particularly the electric streetcar, was vital in opening the suburbs to lower and middle-income residents. Between 1910 and 1930, Los Altos prospered as a small town supported by small family-owned orchards and working-class residents who commuted to areas such as San Jose and San Francisco. During this time, small subdivisions developed, and new roads were constructed; however, housing construction within the new subdivisions was slow.

During the early 1900s, Los Altos residents were mainly of European descent. According to the 1910 U.S.

Federal Census, no African Americans lived in Los Altos, and there was only one Japanese family and three single Japanese men working as servants, gardeners, or cooks. 15 By the 1920s, the number of Japanese
residing in Los Altos had increased, making up approximately 22% of Los Altos’ population; however, there were very few Chinese and only three African Americans residing in Los Altos. During the 1920s, many Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants found work on the numerous fruit orchard farms throughout Santa Clara Valley, including Los Altos. Most Japanese leased land due to the restrictive and discriminatory land legislation under the California Alien Land Law of 1913, making it difficult for Japanese to own property.

However, some Japanese Americans, such as George Furuichi and his family, found a way to purchase property. They moved to Los Altos in 1918 and bought five acres of land on Hawthorne Avenue, 0.2 miles southeast of the Property, where they planted fruit trees. During this time, the Furuichi family appeared to have been the only Japanese family that owned property within Los Altos. By the late 1920s, Los Altos had 15 CIRCA Preservation Consulting, “City of Los Altos Historic Resources Inventory”, Prepared for the City of Los Altos, 2012.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 14 remained a small town with 10-acre lots slowly being developed with housing.

In 1929, the U.S. entered into the Great Depression (1929 – 1933), which had created a surge of bank closures, resulting in decreased available capital that impacted agriculture and reduced market prices. In 1933, five days after taking the oath of office, Roosevelt called a conference with the Agriculture, Interior, War secretaries, and several others to discuss his ideas for recruiting 500,000 men to work in the nation’s forests and eroded farmlands. Roosevelt’s vision was to provide work opportunities, primarily for young men, to repair the land from decades of poor management and over-use, which became known as the “New Deal.” As part of the New Deal, on March 31, 1933, the Emergency Conservation Work (ECW) Act was established under Executive Order No. 6101, which created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The CCC and the WPA were established to create work opportunities that would not interfere with regular employment. As such, they were explicitly directed toward the conservation of natural resources. The Public Works Administration (PWA) was established six years later, in 1939, and was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA). The PWA projects included extensive improvements, and infrastructure, such as roads, allowing for the growth and recovery of the Santa Clara Valley and Los Altos.

The 1940s brought significant change to the U.S. when, on December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the U.S. declared war on Japan, marking the entrance of the U.S. into World War II (WWII).

Suspecting potential spies within the Japanese American population, the U.S. government quickly enacted a series of measures to restrict the travel of Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants to the U.S. and Hawaii. On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 1066, which authorized the internment of 120,000 people of Japanese descent, including Nisei, who were Japanese Americans born to Japanese parents, and Issei, who were the first generation of Japanese to immigrate to the U.S., in 11 camps located across seven states. In March 1942, Japanese American communities throughout Santa Clara County, including Los Altos, were ordered to report to temporary Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA) camps (aka assembly centers), including the Tanforan Racetrack in San Bruno. Upon arrival, many lived in former horse stalls before being transferred to "relocation centers," such as Topaz in Central Utah. In 1942, wellknown Los Altos Japanese American George Furuichi and his family were sent to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in northwest Wyoming. In 1943, George was recruited by the U.S. Army during his internment, and he served as part of the famed U.S. Japanese “Go for Broke” 442 Regimental Combat Team.

After WWII ended in 1945, towns and cities grew as they saw the return of U.S. soldiers and returning Japanese residents released from internment camps. The War Relocation Authority (WRA) gave each Japanese resident $25 in cash and a train or bus ticket back to their hometowns. Some Japanese residents returning home found their belongings stored by churches or trusted neighbors. In contrast, others discovered their homes and businesses in disarray, and their things were often stolen or broken.16 Unlike many Japanese Americans who lost everything during their internment, George Furuichi and his family were able to retain their land, which was maintained and protected by close friends during their internment. In 1947, George, his sister Helen, and his cousin Tom, who were also interned during WWII, opened the Los Altos Nursery on Hawthorne Avenue, which the Furuichi family owned until 2018. 16 James C Williams, and Kent Seavey. “Gilroy Yamato Hot Springs National Register of Historic Places Nomination”, (NR#95000996), Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1995.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 15 During the late 1940s, Los Altos and Santa Clara County experienced tremendous job growth related to new industries, including the electronic and defense industries, resulting in a manufacturing boom (Figure 9).

During this time, the town of Los Altos, like many other cities throughout the U.S., saw a housing boom with the return of soldiers after WWII. Between 1946 and 1952, Los Altos school enrollment increased nearly 400% during the influx of new residents. As the town grew, Los Altos residents worried that either Palo Alto or Mountain View would annex the growing town. In 1952, the citizens of Los Altos voted to incorporate the City of Los Altos, becoming the eleventh City in Santa Clara County.

By the 1960s, the economy was booming, and new residential housing construction continued. In 1960, the population of Los Altos reached 19,696. By this time, the automobile had replaced the train as the primary mode of transportation, and in 1964, the SP railroad ceased operations in Los Altos. During the 1970s, the technology industry was beginning to grow, and downtown Los Altos consisted of commercial buildings, restaurants, and a movie theater (Figure 10). In 1976, Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the first 50 “Apple I” computers in Jobs’ parents’ garage in Los Altos.

Figure 2. Undated photograph of Juana Briones de Miranda (courtesy of the NPS).

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 16 Figure 3. The 1910 Santa Clara County map shows the location of the Property (outlined in red) within M.O. Wight’s 20-acre property in the L.S. Clark Subdivision, later subdivided as part of the Adams Subdivision (courtesy of the Stanford University Library).

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 17 Figure 4. ca. 1907 bird’s eye view drawing of the developing community of Los Altos; showing the approximate location of the Property – red arrow (courtesy of the Los Altos History House Museum Archives).

Figure 5. A marketing brochure from the Altos Land Company advertising Los Altos as the loveliest place on the peninsula (courtesy of the Los Altos History House Museum Archives).

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 18 Figure 6. Advertisement from the Altos Land Company, advertising Los Altos as the loveliest place on the peninsula (courtesy of the Los Altos History House Museum Archives).

Figure 7. ca. 1920 photograph of the 1913 Southern Pacific Railroad depot in Los Altos (courtesy of the Los Altos History House Museum Archives).

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 19 Figure 8. ca. 1930 photograph of George Furuichi (third from the right) and other Japanese workers. The location may have been within his property on Hawthorne Avenue (courtesy of the Los Altos History House Museum Archives).

Figure 9. 1944 aerial photograph of downtown Los Altos (courtesy of Don McDonald).

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 20 Figure 10. 1970s photograph of downtown Los Altos (courtesy of the Los Altos History Museum).

PROPERTY HISTORY
In the late 1840s, the Property was part of unclaimed public land acquired by the U.S. government in 1848.

By 1865, the Property was surveyed under the PLSS and became part of a 640-acre property covered with chamisal, a term for the overgrowth of chamiso, an evergreen shrub. By 1895, the Property was within Lot 20 of the L.S. Clarke subdivision (Figure 11) and by the 1920s, was part of the Adams Subdivision (Figure 12).

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 21 Figure 11. 1895 Hermann Bros., Official Map of Santa Clara County.

Figure 12. By 1920, the Property was part of the Adams subdivision (1926 Miller, Regional Map of the City of Palo Alto, California; courtesy of the Los Altos History House Museum Archives).

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 22 Table 1. Owners and Occupants History
1929 House, ca. 1933 Detached Garage, and Landscape
Year(s) Owners/Occupants Details
1928-1945 Owners: Harry
Putnam Van Epps
and Grace (née
Lane) Van Epps
• The property's first owners were Harry P. and Grace Van Epps. • Harry Putnam was born May 22, 1884, in Turner, South Dakota to George and Elizabeth Van Epps.17 Grace Elizabeth was born April 27, 1891, in Independence, Iowa to George and Nettie Lane.18 They married on June 23, 1914, in Roundup, Montana.19 They had two daughters, Gwendolyn Irma and Alice Virginia.
20 • Per the 1920 Federal Census, the family lived in Hardin, Montana, where Harry was a farmer.21 George and Elizabeth Van Epps (Figure 13) moved to California in 1902.22 In 1928, they purchased the Property where they constructed the 1929 house, beginning construction in July, and moving into the house in December (Figure 14 and Figure 15).23 Per the 1930 Federal Census, Harry worked as a carpenter, building houses, while Grace tutored students from their home.24 In ca. 1933, the detached garage was constructed (Figure 16), likely by Harry. During this time, it appears the rear shed addition was added to the northeast corner of the house.
• In 1945, Harry and Grace sold the Property and moved to 214 Lylle Street in Los Altos.
• Grace died on December 22, 1958.25 Harry died April 24, 1968, in Paradise, California. 26
1945-1947 Owners: Boyd G.

Oliver and Anne
Marie (née Cook)
Oliver
• The subsequent owners of the Property were Boyd G. and Anne Marie Oliver.
• Boyd Golden was born February 20, 1911, in Denver, Colorado to Neno G and Myrtle Oliver.27 Boyd married Daunus Nolan on December 6, 17 Ancestry.com, “Harry Putnam Vanepps,” South Dakota, U.S., Birth Index, 1856-1918. 18 Ancestry.com, “Grace Elizabeth Lane,” Iowa, U.S., Births and Christenings Index, 1800-1999. 19 Ancestry.com, “Harry Putman Van Effs,” Montana, U.S., County Marriages, 1865-1987: Musselshell, Marriage Records, Vol 1-2 1911-1921.
20 Ancestry.com, “Harry P Van Epps,” 1930 United States Federal Census: California, Santa Clara County, Fremont, District 0121.
21 Ancestry.com, “Grace E Van Epps,” 1920 United States Federal Census: Montana, Big Horn County, Hardin, District 0004.
22 Newspapers.com, “George Van Epps Claimed by Death,” The Peninsula Times Tribune, August 26, 1931. 23 Newspapers.com, “To Occupy New Home,” The Peninsula Times Tribune, December 5, 1929. 24 Ancestry.com, “Harry P Van Epps,” 1930 United States Federal Census: California, Santa Clara County, Fremont, District 0121.
25 Ancestry.com, “Grace Elizabeth Van Epps,” U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current. 26 Ancestry.com, “Harry Putnam Van Epps,” U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current. 27 Ancestry.com, “Boyd Golden Oliver,” U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 23 1929 House, ca. 1933 Detached Garage, and Landscape
Year(s) Owners/Occupants Details
1932, in Walsenburg, Colorado.28 They divorced on February 26, 1936.29 • Anne Marie Cook was born May 1, 1911, in Los Angeles.30 • In October 1936, the newspaper announced the future marriage of Boyd Oliver and Anne Marie Cook.31 At the time of the 1930 Federal Census, Boyd and Anne lived in Monrovia, California, where Boyd worked as a machine operator.
32 They had two sons, Verlin and
Kenneth.33 By 1950, Boyd was a proprietor of a saddle shop, known as Oliver Saddle Shop.34 By 1977, the business was renamed Oliver’s Leather Goods and Saddles.35
• Boyd died January 26, 1994.36 Anne died December 20, 1996, in San Benito.37
1947 Owners: Rudolf
Hennes and
Stephanie Hennes
• The subsequent owners of the Property were Rudolf Hennes and Stephanie Hennes.
• Rudolf Fredrich Hennes was born October 3, 1896, in Auerbach, Germany.38 Per the 1920 Federal Census, he immigrated to the U.S. in 1914, and worked at a creamery.39 Rudolf was naturalized on July 20, 1928.40
• Stephanie Hennes was born September 15, 1906, in Vienna, Austria.41 • Rudolf and Stephanie were married September 19, 1931.42 The couple 28 Ancestry.com, “Boyd G Oliver,” Colorado, U.S., County Marriage Records and State Index, 1862-2006: Statewide Marriage Index, O-Os, All.
29 Ancestry.com, “Boyd G Oliver,” Colorado, Divorce Index, 1851-1985. 30 Ancestry.com, “Cook,” California Birth Index, 1905-1995. 31 Newspapers.com, “Intend to Wed,” Progress-Bulletin, October 9, 1936. 32 Ancestry.com, “Boyd Aliver,” 1940 United States Federal Census: California, Los Angeles County, Monrovia, 19-372. 33 Ancestry.com, “Boyd G Oliver,” 1950 United States Federal Census, California, Santa Clara County, San Jose, 73-123. 34 Ancestry.com, “Boyd G Oliver,” U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995: California, San Jose, 1963, San Jose, California, City Directory, 1963.
35 Ancestry.com, “Boyd G Anne M Oliver,” U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995: California, San Jose, 1977, San Jose, California, City Directory, 1977.
36 Ancestry.com, “Boyd G. Oliver,” U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014. 37 Ancestry.com, “Anne Marie Oliver,” California, U.S., Death Index, 1940-1997. 38 Ancestry.com, “Rudolf Fredrich Hennes,” U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942: California, All, Burgess, Charles Dana - Masetti, Vincenzo.
39 Ancestry.com, “Rudolph Hennes,” 1920 United States Federal Census: California, Stanislaus County, Newman, District 0176.
40 Ancestry.com, “Rudolf,” California, U.S., Federal Naturalization Records, 1888-1991: District Court, Northern District, California: San Francisco, Petition 29320 Andreas Peter Sofianopoulos 1933: Petition 29590 John McCarthy 1934. 41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 24 1929 House, ca. 1933 Detached Garage, and Landscape
Year(s) Owners/Occupants Details
had four children, Doris, Joan, Leila and Louise.43
• Rudolf then worked as a painting contractor, which remained his career until he died in June 1961.44 45 Stephanie died June 22, 1986.46 1951-1959 Owners: Edwin J.

Gates and Queen
J.S. Gates
• The subsequent owners of the Property were Edwin J and Queen D.

Gates.
• Edwin James Gates was born March 18, 1881 in Illinois.47 Edwin married Jessie H. Shoger in 1902 in Kendall, Illinois.48 In 1910, Edwin and Jessie in Oswego, Illinois, where Edwin worked as a farmer.49 By 1920, the couple moved to Litchfield, Minnesota, where Edwin worked as a Vulcanizer – strengthening the flexibility and durability of rubber.50 By 1930, the they lived in Palo Alto, where Edwin worked as a salesman for a farm.51 In 1940, Edwin worked as a mechanic. Jessie is not shown as having an occupation.52 Jessie died September 19, 1943.53 • Edwin then married Queen (Queenie) Antoinette Doris in the 1940s.54 Queen was born in Chicago, Illinois on April 26, 1890 to Alfred and Augusta Dahlberg.55 Per the 1920 Federal Census, Queen lived in Kansas City, Missouri, was a widow, and had a live-in maid.56 Queen was married to a man with the surname Nye, and together, they had a son, William, who was born ca. 1913. During this time, Queen worked as a 43 Newspapers.com, “Deaths: Hennes,” The Peninsula Times Tribune, June 24, 1986. 44 Ancestry.com, “Rudolph Hennes,” 1940 United States Federal Census: California, San Francisco County, San Francisco, 38-266.
45 Newspapers.com, “Death Claims Rudolf Hennes of Mt. View,” The Peninsula Times Tribune, June 12, 1961. 46 Newspapers.com, “Deaths: Hennes,” The Peninsula Times Tribune, June 24, 1986. 47 Ancestry.com, “Edwin James Gates,” U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942: California, All, Bacchi, Ray - Jones, Abner.
48 Ancestry.com, “Edwin J. Gates,” Illinois, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1800-1940. 49 Ancestry.com, “Edward J Gates,” 1910 United States Federal Census: Illinois, Kendall County, Oswego, District 0071. 50 Ancestry.com, “Edwin J Gates,” 1920 United States Federal Census: Minnesota, Meeker County, Litchfield, District 0128.
51 Ancestry.com, “Edwin J Gates,” 1930 United States Federal Census: California, Santa Clara County, Palo Alto, District 0019.
52 Ancestry.com, “Edwin J Gates,” 1940 United States Federal Census: California, San Mateo County, Other Places, 41-

65. 53 Newspapers.com, “Deaths: Gates,” The Peninsula Times Tribune, September 20, 1943. 54 Ancestry.com, “Queen Gates,” 1950 United States Federal Census: California, San Mateo County, Other Places, 41-254. 55 Ancestry.com, “Queen Antoinette Doris Gates,” U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current. 56 Ancestry.com, “Queenie Nye,” 1920 United States Federal Census: Missouri, Jackson County, Kansas City Ward 13, District 0202.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 25 1929 House, ca. 1933 Detached Garage, and Landscape
Year(s) Owners/Occupants Details
cashier.57 Queen married Osborne Swan in ca. 1935.58 Per the 1940 Federal Census, Queen and Osborne lived in Los Angeles, and Queen worked as a book clerk.59 Osborne died in 1940.60
• Edwin died October 14, 1961.61 Queen died on November 21, 1966, in Mountain View.62
1959-1961 Owners: Frank M.L.

Frankfurt and Grace
M. Frankfurt
• The subsequent owners of the Property were Frank and Grace Frankfurt.
• Frank and Grace owned and operated the Frankfurt Realty and Investment Co.63 The company operated from 1955 to 1963.64 • Frank and Grace were married in June 1945.65
• No further information regarding either Frank or Grace was found. 1961-1962 Owners: Troy R.

Mansker and Doris
Mansker
• The subsequent owners of the Property were Troy R. and Doris Mansker.
• Troy Roy was born May 8, 1923, in Pope County, Arkansas.66 Doris E.

Waudby was born September 7, 1925.67 Troy was enlisted in the Army, serving as a Private in the Infantry from December 9, 1942 to December 22, 1945.68 Troy and Grace were married on June 8, 1944, in Nashua, Iowa.69 Together, they had three daughters, Janice, Patricia and JoAnn and a son, Phillip.70
• After Troy was discharged from the Army, the family lived in Iowa, where Troy worked as a life insurance salesman.71 By 1951, the family 57 Ancestry.com, “Queenie Nye,” 1930 United States Federal Census: Missouri, Jackson County, Kansas City, District 0200. 58 Ancestry.com, “Osborne Swan,” U.S., Newspapers.com™ Marriage Index, 1800s-current. 59 Ancestry.com, “Osborn Swan,” 1940 United States Federal Census: California, Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, 60-936. 60 Findagrave.com, “Osborne Shefield Swan,” accessed February 27, 2025, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/228617776/osborne_shefield-swan 61 Ancestry.com, “Edwin James Gates,” U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current. 62 Newspapers.com, “Deaths: Gates,” The Peninsula Times Tribune, November 23, 1966 63 Newspapers.com, “2 Gunmen Clout Woman, Take $16,000 in gems: Victim Lured to Holdup,” The Peninsula Times Tribune, December 9, 1960.
64 Newspapers.com, Search: “Frankfurt Realty and Investment, Santa Clara County, California.” 65 Newspapers.com, “2 Gunmen Clout Woman, Take $16,000 in gems: Victim Lured to Holdup.” 66 Ancestry.com, “Troy Roy Mansker,” U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current. 67 Ancestry.com, “Doris Eveyn Mansker,” U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current. 68 Ancestry.com, “Troy Roy Mansker,” U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010. 69 Ancestry.com, “Troy R Mansker,” Iowa, U.S., Marriage Records, 1880-1948: 1944, 1 (Adair County-Dubuque County). 70 Newspapers.com, “Funeral Notices: Mansker,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, May 28, 1965. 71 Ancestry.com, “Troy Mansker,” 1950 United States Federal Census: Iowa, Bremer County, Waverly, 9-25.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 26 1929 House, ca. 1933 Detached Garage, and Landscape
Year(s) Owners/Occupants Details
had relocated to Santa Clara County.72
• Grace died on May 27, 1965.73 Troy died April 28, 2006.74 1962-1964 Owners: Edwin H.

Feinberg and Emily
W. Feinberg
• The subsequent owners of the Property were Edwin H. and Emily W.

Feinberg.
• Edwin was born on December 20, 1927, in Boston, Massachusetts.75 • Edwin enlisted in the Army on annuary 11, 1946; however, he was never called to serve.76 In 1962, Edwin graduated from Cornell University after completing his doctoral thesis, “The Evolutionary Adjustment of Two Dipteran Species, Phaenicia (-Lucilia) Sericata, (Calliphoridae) and Musca Domestica, (Muscidae), Competing for the Same Niche in a Laboratory Population Cage.”77 After graduation, Edwin registered in the American Institute of Biological Sciences, with a Ph.D., Ed.D, Sc.D in Biosciences.78 He worked for the Literature Resources Department of BioSciences Information Services of Biological Abstracts.79
• Edwin died on April 6, 2008, in Philadelphia.80
• No information regarding Emily was found.
1964-1969 Owner: Roberta
Ridley
• The subsequent owner of the Property was Roberta Ridley. • Roberta Jane Viborg was born February 10, 1916.81
• Roberta attended Salinas Junior College and finished at San Jose School of Business.82 Roberta married Paul Martin Ridley in February 1936.83 Per the 1940 census, the couple lived in Redwood Township, where 72 Newspapers.com, “In Sequoia Hospital Redwood City, July 10, 1951,” The Peninsula Times Tribune, July 11, 1951. 73 Ancestry.com, “Doris Eveyn Mansker,” U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current. 74 Ancestry.com, “Troy Roy Mansker,” U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current 75 Ancestry.com, “Edward,” Massachusetts, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1798-1950: District Court, Massachusetts, Petition No. 290011, Maria Grazia Cintrella-Petition No. 290629, Catherine Macmillan. 76 Ancestry.com, “Edwin H Feinberg,” U.S., World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946. 77 Edwin Harold Feinberg, “The Evolutionary Adjustment of Two Dipteran Species, Phaenicia (-Lucilia) Sericata, (Calliphoridae) and Musca Domestica, (Muscidae), Competing for the Same Niche in a Laboratory Population Cage,” (Cornell University, 1962).
78 Ancestry.com, “Edwin H Feinberg,” U.S., National Register of Scientific and Technical Personnel, 1921-1970. 79 Edwin H. Feinberg, “Foreign Journals,” BioScience, Volume 23, Issue 2, (February 1973, Page 74):
https://doi.org/10.2307/1296565.
80 Legacy.com, “Edwin Feinberg Obituary,” accessed February 27, 2025, https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/inquirer/name/edwin-feinberg-obituary?id=10594912 81 Ancestry.com, “Roberta J Viborg,” California Birth Index, 1905-1995. 82 Newspapers.com, “Miss Roberta Jane Viborg and Paul Martin Ridley Wed in Methodist Church,” The Californian, February 6, 1939.
83 Ibid.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 27 1929 House, ca. 1933 Detached Garage, and Landscape
Year(s) Owners/Occupants Details
Roberta worked as a stenographer.84 After the couple had children, Albert and Mary, Roberta temporarily retired to remain at home.85 • Roberta died on August 3, 1992.86
1969-1973 Owners: Joseph A.

Palma and Patricia
Palma
• The subsequent Property owners were Joseph A. and Patricia Palma. • Joseph Andrew Palma was born February 12, 1939.87 Patricia Jayne Wallace was born June 10, 1944.88
• The couple were married November 16, 1963.89 Joseph played baseball in the minor league between 1960 to 1965.90
• No further information regarding the couple was found. 1973-1975 Owners: Charles F.

Jerabek and Sydney
Jerabek
• The subsequent owners of the Property were Charles and Sydney Jerabek.
• Charles was born on July 18, 1945, in Queens, New York.91 • Charles and Sydney were married September 10, 1966, in New York City.92 Together, they had two children, Rodney and Molly.93 • Charles died May 19, 2014.94
• No further information regarding Charles and Sydney was found. 1975-1993 Owners: Kenneth
Jones and Doris
Jones
• The subsequent owners of the Property were Kenneth and Doris Jones. • No information could be confirmed regarding either Kenneth or Doris. 84 Ancestry.com, “Roberts J Rudley,” 1940 United States Federal Census: California, Santa Clara County, Redwood, 43-47 85 Ancestry.com, “Roberta J Ridley,” 1950 United States Federal Census: California, Santa Clara County, Redwood, 43- 115A.
86 Ancestry.com, “Roberta Jane Ridley,” California, U.S., Death Index, 1940-1997. 87 Ancestry.com, “Joseph Andrew Palma,” California Birth Index, 1905-1995. 88 Ancestry.com, “Patricia Jane Wallace,” California, U.S., Newspapers.com™ Stories and Events Index. 89 Newspapers.com, “Engagement is Told: Wallace-Palma,” The Peninsula Times Tribune, October 14, 1963. 90 Baseball Reference, “Joseph Palma,” accessed February 27, 2025, https://www.baseballreference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=palma-001jos 91 Newspapers.com, “Charles F. Jerabek,” The Naples Daily News, May 23, 2014. 92 Ancestry.com, “Sydney R Parvin,” New York State, Marriage Index, 1881-1967. 93 Newspapers.com, “Charles F. Jerabek,” The Naples Daily News, May 23, 2014. 94 Ibid.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 28 Figure 13. 1959 photograph of Harry P. Van Epps, with his mother, daughter, granddaughter and greatgranddaughter (courtesy of Newspapers.com).

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 29 Figure 14. Announcement of the completion of the 1929 house (courtesy of newspapers.com, The Peninsula Times Tribune, July 15, 1929).

Figure 15. 1930 aerial, showing the 1929 house within the Property (courtesy of University of Santa Barbara Library).

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 30 Figure 16. 1939 aerial, showing the 1929 house and ca. 1933 detached garage within the Property (courtesy of University of Santa Barbara Library).

PERMIT HISTORY (1994 – 2024)
The following section details the Property's available permit history from 1994 to 2024.

Permits Approved
Date Permit # Item (as shown on the permit) Approved
1994 44466 Re-roof Yes
1999 635356 “W/H” (water heater) Yes
Application Submitted
Date Permit # Item (as shown on the permit) Approved
9/17/2024 No permit
issued
“Legalization of existing detached cottage to an
ADU”
No

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 31

ARCHITECTURAL CONTEXT
The following section briefly describes the Colonial Revival architectural style associated with the 1929 house within the Property.

COLONIAL REVIVAL (1880 – CA. 1955)
The term "Colonial Revival" refers to a rebirth of interest in the early English and Dutch colonial houses of the Atlantic Seaboard. The style was reintroduced in America at the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876, which marked the centennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Many of the buildings designed for the Exposition were based on historically significant colonial designs. At about the same time, several national organizations publicized a series of articles on eighteenth century American architecture, which appeared in the American Architect and Harper's magazines. The renewed interest in colonial architecture fueled by the centennial and the exposure of the Colonial Revival style received in national publications helped to make it popular throughout the country. According to McAlester, Colonial Revival buildings (aka American Colonial Revival) were extremely popular from the 1910s to the 1930s and unlike other period revival styles, and continued through the early 1960s, although it was utilized less frequently and less elaborately after WWII.95 The Colonial Revival style typically includes the following:96 • Symmetry in façade – although 10% of Colonial Revival were asymmetrical. • Hipped or gabled roofs with boxed eaves
• Fanlights and/or sidelights around main door.
• Double-hung sash windows, often set in pairs.
• Clapboard and brick exterior cladding
• Classical detailing (sometimes exaggerated), including pediments, columns or pilasters leading to elaborate entries
• Subtypes include Asymmetrical, Hipped Roof with Full-Width Porch, Hipped Roof without Full-Width Porch, Side Gable Roof, Centered Gable, Gambrel Roof, Second-Story Overhang, One-Story, ThreeStory and Built-In Garage.

HISTORIC ARCHITECTURAL SURVEY
On January 13, 2025, EDS Principal Architectural Historian Stacey De Shazo, M.A., completed a historic architecturalsurvey of the Property, including the 1929 house, ca. 1933 detached garage, and landscape. The results of the survey are documented in the following section. 1929 HOUSE
The 1929 house is associated with Colonial Revival architecture (Figure 17). The building is a side-gabled one95 Virginia, McAlester and Lee McAlester, A Field Guild to American Houses. New York, Alfred A. Knopf. Munro-Fraser, J.P. 2014.
96 Ibid.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 32 and-one-half-story form that rests on a board-formed concrete and post-and-pier foundation. The house consists of a steep-pitched roof clad in asphalt shingles. A chimney is located along the roof ridge, and it is clad in stucco. The building is clad in wood clapboard on three elevations, with the rear elevation (north elevation) consisting of no cladding due to a permit in process.

Figure 17. South elevation, facing north.

South Elevation (Primary Facade)
The south elevation is the primary façade is symmetrical (Figure 18). At the first story, there is a centered, wooden front door flanked by side lights, each with four lights with simple mutins and a lower wood panel.

The door is a replacement wood-paneled door with two window lights. The front door is accessed via a paved driveway, with the entrance threshold resting at the ground level. Although the primary façade is on a raised foundation, it is not visible as the clapboard has been extended to the ground. There is a modern, arched arbor in front of the door, which serves as a “covered porch,” which is not original to the house. The front door is flanked by two pairs of six-over-one, divided light, wood windows with lugs (Figure 19). There are decorative wood shutters that flank the windows. The roof consists of three original, front-gable dormers with six-over-six, divided light, wood windows with lugs. The windows are trimmed in wood casing, with a slightly projecting windowsill. The dormers are clad in wood clapboard and the dormer roofs are clad in asphalt shingles (Figure 20). Below the eave of the roof there is a simple dentil that runs the length of the primary façade.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 33 Figure 18. Primary façade, facing north.

Figure 19. Photograph showing a pair of windows along the primary façade.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 34 Figure 20. Photograph showing the three roof dormers.

West Elevation
The west elevation consists of five windows (Figure 21). There are two, six-over-one, divided light, wood windows with lugs, and one smaller three-over-one, divided light, wood window located on the first story.

Within the one-half-story gable there is one six-over-six light, wood window with lugs and a small, fixed wood window that appears to have been recently added. The windows are trimmed in wood casing, with a slightly projecting windowsill. There is also a gable vent that appears to be constructed of wood (Figure 22). The board-formed concrete foundation is only slightly exposed along this elevation.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 35 Figure 21. West elevation, facing north.

Figure 22. West elevation gable.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 36 North Elevation
The current north elevation shows what remains of the rear shed addition (likely added to the house in ca. 1933), removed in 2024 (Figure 23 and Figure 24), was likely a sun porch or utility room. The shed addition consisted of a pair of windows on the north elevation, and a door. What remains is the section of an east facing wall (detailed within the east elevation section below). The original north elevation wall from the construction of the 1929 house consisted of a pair of windows, a single window, and two doors, one leading to the basement and another leading into the house; removed in 2024.97 Figure 23. North elevation, facing east.
97 Based on information provided by the City of Los Altos, this works was unpermitted.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 37 Figure 24. North elevation, facing south.

East Elevation
The east elevation consists of the section of a wall, which was part of a small shed addition, no longer extant, except for the wall that is visible in Figure 24 and Figure 25, as well as the original side gable form. The shed addition appears to have been clad in a combination of wood and aluminum clapboard and measured approximately 15 feet long by 6 feet wide. The walls that remain consisted of a pair of four-over and one single-hung, wood-clad vinyl windows. The original one-and-one-half-story portion of the east elevation consists of a pair of six-over-one, divided light, wood windows with lugs, and a smaller six-over-six, divided light, wood window (Figure 26). There is also a twelve-divided-light wood window near the southeast corner of the house, which appears to have been added later. The board-formed concrete foundation is exposed along this elevation (Figure 27).

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 38 Figure 25. Photograph showing a portion of an addition, no longer extant.

Figure 26. The east façade, facing south.

A Historic Resource Evaluation of the Property at 81 Pepper Drive, Los Altos, Santa Clara County, California. 39 Figure 27. Photograph showing the board-formed concrete foundation is exposed along this elevation.

CA. 1933 DETACHED GARAGE
The ca. 1933 detached garage is not associated with any architectural style. The ca. 1933 detached garage is a simple side gable form with moderate pitched roof with “faux” gable returns on each gable end. The building is clad in wide wood boards and the roof is clad in asphalt shingles. There are what appear to be original wood and glazed hinged doors along the southern elevation (Figure 28); however, the doors are decorative, as the opening has been filled in – allowing for the use as a cottage. In 1994, the building was converted to a “cottage”; however, it may have been used for housing prior to 1994. Fenestrations include one six-light, wood, fixed window, a pair of six-light, wood, hopper windows, two single, six-light, hopper windows, one double-hung, wood window with lugs, one four-over-four-light, single-hung, wood-clad vinyl window, and a modern single entrance door (Figure 29). The building appears to rest on a concrete slab foundation. A modern deck extends the length of the north elevation.