01. The rancho moves to the suburbs
San Diego, the early 1930s. Cliff May is in his early twenties. He has studied business without taking a degree and builds furniture in the Monterey style. The furniture leads to a house, built with the help of his father-in-law. In five years it becomes thirty-five.
May does not invent the ranch house. But no one does more to spread it. His idea fits in one sentence: the romance of the rancho, married to modern, informal living. An open plan. A patio. House and garden that belong together.
In 1936 he moves to Los Angeles and designs Riviera Ranch, a whole subdivision of ranch houses in the city. By 1943 he is known across the country. In 1946 comes the book Sunset Western Ranch Houses.
Then the war ends – and so do the homes. After depression and rationing there is a desperate shortage. The answer is building on a scale never seen. In 1955 work starts on about 1.65 million homes in a single year. And nine out of ten new houses in the 1950s are ranch houses.
They are not large. In 1950 the average is around 1,100 square feet. By 1959 it is about 1,350. Three bedrooms. Living room and dining area in one. Picture windows and sliding glass doors that tie indoors and outdoors together.
May keeps up. In the 1940s he leaves adobe, brick and stucco for modest houses in wood and glass. With the architect Chris Choate he develops Cliff May Homes, low-cost prefabricated houses built across the country. He designs about a thousand buildings himself. His plans become nearly 18,000 more.
The style adapts to the region. In Georgia the ranch house is preferably built in red brick, with a screened porch. In Atlanta, Collier Heights grows up – the country's foremost mid-century African-American suburb.
For a long time nobody sees these houses. They are too ordinary. But now they are turning fifty, and in 2010 the state of Georgia publishes guidelines for how to assess a ranch house as heritage – among the first in the country. It is urgent. They are disappearing almost as fast as they were built.
02. How to spot it
- 1.A single storey, long and low
- 2.Overhanging eaves
- 3.Large picture windows
- 4.Sliding glass doors that open the house to garden and patio
- 5.An open plan – living room and dining area in the same space
- 6.Often L-shaped, or built around a courtyard
03. The giveaway
Look for the glass. A large picture window – and a full-height sliding glass door with a patio beyond it. The ranch house blurs the line between indoors and outdoors. That is the whole idea.
04. Architects and builders
- Cliff May
- Chris Choate
05. Where to see it
- Riviera Ranch, Brentwood in Los AngelesCliff May, from 1936
- Lakewood Rancho, Long Beach in Californiaa tract with houses by Cliff May
- Collier Heights, Atlantaa mid-20th-century suburb of ranch houses
06. Often confused with
Craftsman. Also low and wide, also from California. But Craftsman is older and is recognised by its porch: large, at the front, with thick columns and exposed rafter tails. The ranch house bets on glass instead.
Sources
- National Park Service: Laura Kviklys, "Identifying the 1950s Ranch House Interior as a Cultural Resource" (2015)
- UC Santa Barbara, Art, Design & Architecture Museum, Architecture and Design Collection: finding aid for the Cliff May papers (Online Archive of California)
- UC Santa Barbara, The Current: "Carefree California: Cliff May and the Romance of the Ranch House" (2012)
- Georgia Historic Preservation Division: Richard Cloues, "The Georgia Ranch House Initiative" (May 2010)