Such irony!  The Craftsman style of architecture – and the Arts and Crafts movement in general – came about as a rejection of the fussy and superficially decorative styles which dominated the last half of the 19th century.  Craftsman dwellings sought to achieve ornamentation honestly; components such as rafters, square posts and brackets with structural functions served as ornament rather than applied decoration favored in the previous decades such as fancy fretwork and lathe-turnings.  Below is a photo of a relatively common type of bungalow styled in the Craftsman manner:

 

A common type of Craftsman bungalow. The general form of this house is similar to the subject house below, and the front porch is probably very similar to what had been on the house below.

 

 

The house below was built in the Craftsman style sometime around 1915.  Its original porch was much different than the one it has currently.  The existing porch seeks to emulate the Queen Anne style; lathe-turned porch posts, octagonally shaped “towers” with peaked roofs, a sunburst-patterened gable and latticework below the porch all suggest the style.  Aspects of the design not typical of the Queen Anne aesthetic include the lack of an entablature (porch posts tie directly into the porch ceiling as opposed to having an intermediary entablature) and the use of scroll-sawn balusters (turned spindles would be more conventional).

 

The Neo-Victorian porch can not mask the actual stylistic origins of the house.

 

Original Craftsman detailing is more obvious from either side:

 

Note that the original gable centered in the roof has had its window covered over with vinyl siding, presumably to mute its existence.

 

The jaunty angularity of the projecting porch gable is more reminiscent of mid-20th century modernism than the late Victorian era – and antithetical to the original jerkinhead gable of the dormer directly behind it!

 

 

 

 

 

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