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Oaklawn: A Suburb de Luxe

by Michelle Gringeri-Brown

Robert Magilligan came down from the Bay Area for a birthday party and bought a house. A brown shingled two-story Craftsman on a luxuriously wide street of similarly impressive homes, he believes his house was designed by Greene and Greene.

“Although I wasn’t looking for a home at that time, when I saw a For Sale sign in front, I decided without hesitation that this was the only place I could live in Southern California,” he says. “Oaklawn was a magnificent turn-of-the-century neighborhood that had been mostly preserved, and it still retained its unique character. I bought the house with the interior sight unseen.” Never mind that that interior was 3,800 square feet and Magilligan, a soon-to-be-retired single accountant, already owned a condo in San Francisco, a second home in Marin and a converted schoolhouse in Napa. He sold them all, moved down to South Pasadena and became smitten with all things Greene and Greene.

It was an established fact that brothers Henry and Charles Greene had designed the South Pasadena subdivision’s layout, entry portals, border fence, and a few years later, a footbridge and waiting station. Neighborhood legend had it that four of the Arts and Crafts houses were unattributed Greene and Greenes. But Magilligan wanted to know more, and began researching the history of his neighbors’ homes. This led to a year of talking with professional and amateur historians, and digging through various archives in search of the Greene and Greene connection he grew to be certain was there. Ultimately, he compiled an illustrated 45-page document on his findings, which he hopes will prompt architectural scholars to delve even deeper

In 1904 Charles and Henry Greene began working with the South Pasadena Realty and Investment Company to develop an existing orange grove into a “Suburb de Luxe,” as a 1907 brochure trumpeted. The street was 75′ wide to accommodate an impressive old oak, and the architects designed two distinctive cobblestone portals to frame the tree from the development’s entrance. Cobblestone-and-clinker-brick seating surrounded the tree, which was intended as a neighborhood meeting place.

Magilligan found a 1905 Pasadena Tournament of Roses publication touting the charms of Oaklawn in an ad, with a Charles Greene article, “California Home Making,” just a few pages prior. Greene’s illustrations accompanied the feature text, and included a painting of an entrance portal just like the ones that lead into Oaklawn.

“Charles Greene wrote, ‘Under the foothills is a beautiful spot, overlooking the valley to the south, a quiet nook just above a grove of wide and spreading live oaks. North are the sloping vineyards and the mountains rising high above.’ This is a description of Oaklawn,” Magilligan says with conviction.

The Greenes were not commissioned to design the first four houses in the development, all of which were impressive, costly homes. But they were hired to build a bridge from the promontory of the neighborhood down to Fair Oaks Avenue, perhaps in an effort to make the location more appealing to middle-class buyers who would need to commute to work.

The bridge spanned two railroad tracks on the east side of the Oaklawn development, and connected the homes to Fair Oaks’ streetcar service and the adjacent Raymond Hotel and its golf course. The design that was selected was modern and built from a relatively new product: reinforced concrete. It included a cobblestone waiting station with a tile roof on the Fair Oaks end. Soon after it was finished in 1906, the bridge developed cracks and the railroads insisted that an additional pillar be installed, much to the architects’ chagrin.

“I first began researching the Greenes in 1954,” says Randall Makinson, director emeritus of the Gamble House, “and shortly thereafter met some of the Greene family, including Henry’s daughter, Isabelle. One of the first stories she and her husband told me was that the saddest thing in Henry’s life was the bridge. He took such great pride in it, and for the extra column to have to go in, that just crushed him, she said. Every time I saw her over the next 30 to 40 years, that story would get retold. Henry just talked about it all of his life.

“There is a photo from the family that shows sandbags on the bridge and the tests that were done proving that it was sound,” Makinson says. “The Greenes believed in it, yet the railroads controlled everything, and they had to yield to the railroads’ wishes. It was the third reinforced-concrete bridge in the U.S., the second in California and the first designed by an architect. They had every reason to be very proud.

“The Greenes showed the world that concrete could be a graceful construction material. The increasing spans — the first is small, the next larger, and so on — are a beautiful sculptural composition,” he says.

The bridge stood with its extra support for 90-plus years, then in 2002, the city of South Pasadena undertook a restoration of the structure. “When it came time to restore the bridge for a coming Metroline project, the city had the vision and the courage to have it checked by engineers and to form a committee to see to the accurate restoration,” Makinson, a member of the committee, comments.

“They replaced the missing back and seat in the waiting station — which someone had previously decided should become a gateway into the small park that adjoins it. I’ve noticed that people are sitting there now, waiting for the bus, which was its original intent and function. And interestingly, the contractors who removed the extra column found that there was an inch of separation between the added column and the bridge; it never was being held up by it.”

The Oaklawn bridge committee had to consider things like the grit of the sand in the original concrete, as well as the color and texture — all to make sure that the repaired sections matched perfectly. The ingredients for the paving on top of the bridge went through the same process. “Everybody, from the contractors on down, listened carefully to the committee’s suggestions,” Makinson says. “When missing segments of the railing had to be put in, they went to the extreme to get the planks that made up the concrete forms to be the same size and go in the same direction as when the bridge was built.”

Wrought-iron lighting fixtures for both ends of the bridge were designed by the Greenes but never installed. The drawings for the four lanterns that were intended for the obelisk on the Fair Oaks side were found recently by Edward Bosley, director of the Gamble House.

“I uncovered the drawing of the unexecuted light fixture from among the Oaklawn drawings at Columbia University’s Avery Library,” Bosley says. “It is not a Craftsman design to be sure, but is nonetheless simple, dignified and wholly appropriate to the base on which it was meant to be affixed. The obelisk base itself is more forward-looking and unabashedly modern than the Greenes’ typical work, but so is the bridge, as it should be, especially when we consider that it is one of the very first reinforced concrete bridges in the United States.”

With the removal of the offending support, the bridge looks much as it did in 1906. “The Greene family is delighted with the renovation,” Makinson reports. “They said, ‘Grandpa would finally be happy!’”

In 1907 a financial downturn caused various sections of Oaklawn to be sold to other developers, including G.W. Stimson, who had found that to “maximize profits, it was best to sell a lot with a home constructed on it,” according to Magilligan’s manuscript. “At this time, the construction process was difficult … and financing was not available to individuals constructing residences. However, a completed home and lot could be readily financed with a mortgage. Alternatively, a buyer wanting to construct his own home was more inclined to purchase a lot if plans were included.”

Magilligan believes that Stimson hired the Greene and Greene firm to design six homes on Oaklawn in an attempt to bolster sales and present the public with architect-designed houses that would justify the high-priced lots. It is established that the Greenes did take on the interior design of one of the earlier spec houses, and Magilligan sees numerous similarities between its interior and those of the unattributed homes.

The six houses were considered moderately priced, ranging between $5,000 and $12,000. Each was different from the others and designed for its specific location. Magilligan’s research concludes that Stimson was required to use Peter Hall as the contractor, the same builder who constructed the gateways and fences surrounding Oaklawn, and that the Greenes’ involvement was over once the plans for “Oaklawn Series I—VI” were drawn.

Bob Magilligan spent considerable time and effort taking his own home’s interior back to its period roots. His painter matched the original colors in the living and dining rooms, while he chose an appropriate but new-to-the-house green for the library. The Port Orford cedar wainscoting and trim in the dining room is painted with ivory enamel, an original finish specified in several of the homes

Magilligan’s house was built in 1909 for a cost of $9,500. It has art glass in its front door and in the swinging door to the kitchen, as well as leaded- and stained-glass light fixtures and sconces in the living room. The library’s fireplace has a carved inscription on the mantel: “Who Loves a Book Will Never Lack a Friend.”

His background as an accountant perhaps predisposes Magilligan to see the numerical patterns in various rooms: groups of three or four or five elements, repeated in molding details, window placement, art-glass designs and the like. Even if his amateur historical research isn’t borne out by the academics, Magilligan is sure his home is an architectural gem. “I always thought this house was going to be much simpler than the ornate Victorians I lived in before. But Craftsman houses are like a painting: when you start to examine them closely, you see that every brush stroke or detail is important and relates to the others.”

A zealous activist in his neighborhood, Magilligan preaches the Arts and Crafts doctrine and the talents of Charles and Henry Greene to all of his fellow homeowners, encouraging them to bring their homes back to period style. He is also working to fund the replanting of the street oak tree that either died or was removed after a traffic fatality — depending upon which neighborhood legend one believes. But whether they treasure their homes for their historical architecture, or simply find them comfortably livable houses, the residents of Oaklawn typically stay put 20, 30, 40 years or more.

“Everybody knows everybody here,” Magilligan says. “When I lived in Pacific Heights [San Francisco], it was 10 years before I met my neighbors. Here there are retirees and families, and the kids have the run of the street. We throw parties for each new owner whenever one of the homes sells. It’s still a wonderful place 100 years after the Greenes designed it.”

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By David Cathers

Collecting American Arts and Crafts furniture in the early 1970s was simple and straightforward. You searched and searched and searched, and when you were lucky enough to find, say, an actual piece of Gustav Stickley furniture, you’d buy it, almost no matter what. Unless you tallied up the expense of driving many thousands of miles year after year, it didn’t cost much money, because in those days almost nobody wanted that furniture. Established antiques dealers looked down their noses at such 20th-century “junk.” By about 1980, though, prices for Gustav Stickley furniture began their inexorable rise, and since the late 1980s they’ve occasionally reached stratospheric heights.

During the first years of the 1970s there was other Arts and Crafts furniture you searched for, too, mostly Roycroft, L. & J.G. Stickley, Stickley Brothers and Limbert. On the East Coast, we combed New York State for the work of Charles Rohlfs. Others hunted for the decorative designs of Frank Lloyd Wright and, on the West Coast, a handful of collectors sought Greene and Greene. Beyond those, a few large-scale makers were known then, for instance the Michigan furniture firms Lifetime and Luce, the Cincinnati-based Shop of the Crafters, New York’s Joseph P. McHugh and a smattering of others.

But beyond these re-emerging names lay a baffling terra incognita of unidentified furniture that collectors, dealers and auction houses came to label “generic mission.” While it’s unlikely that we’ll ever know exactly how much of that furniture was made, for 10 or 15 years it poured out of American factories in huge quantities: A 1908 industry survey, for instance, listed 148 manufacturers specializing in “mission furniture.” Though often it was pretty scrappy stuff, many pieces were well designed, solidly constructed and nicely finished. Clearly there had once been a number of manufacturing firms, their names long lost, that had produced this furniture with considerable care. For many modern-day Arts and Crafts enthusiasts, this vast landscape remained unknown territory until the pioneering husband-and-wife team of Michael Clark and Jill Thomas-Clark ventured into it about 1988.

Michael, a professor of speech and theater at Elmira College in Elmira, N.Y., and Jill, registrar of the Corning Museum of Glass in nearby Corning, began buying American Arts and Crafts when they married and moved to Elmira in 1984-deciding, reasonably, that they should collect something they both liked. Together they have built their collection of Arts and Crafts furniture, lighting and textiles over the last two decades, making most of their finds in small-town auctions scattered across New York State. They’ve also branched out, buying Onondaga Pottery dinnerware made in Syracuse in the early 1900s,

Belgian and American art pottery, Russel Wright dinnerware from the 1930s and ‘40s, Maxfield Parrish prints, and copper and aluminum artware hand wrought by the Avon Coppersmith. The two, with graduate degrees in the arts and art history, became eclectic and knowledgeable collectors, buying what they liked, what they wanted to research and what they could use in their 1905 Arts and Crafts-era home. They have never held on to pieces solely because they are rare or unique. As Jill says, “We have always kept the things we like to live with. We preserve and protect the furniture we collect, but we also use it.” They’e said they would rather have a roomful of Arts and Crafts furniture than “one piece of Gus.”

In their career they’ve mapped a whole territory of previously unknown or little-known New York State Arts and Crafts furniture makers-about 50 so far. These firms- whose work had been relegated to the dim reaches of the “generic mission” universe until the Clarks identified and wrote about them- have become familiar names to Arts and Crafts enthusiasts. Among them are Plail Brothers Chair Company, in Wayland; Majestic Chair Company, in Herkimer; Quaint Art Furniture Company, in Syracuse; H.C. Dexter Chair Company, in Black River; and the Stickley & Brandt Company, in Binghamton. The Clarks have profiled these and other makers in their much read “Best of the Rest” series in Style 1900 magazine. In 1999, at Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y., they curated “Imitation and Innovation: An Evaluation of Arts and Crafts Furniture in Central New York,” the first-ever museum exhibition of the furniture once known only as “generic mission.”

All that is not to say that they have ignored Stickley. In 2002 they published The Stickley Brothers, the sole book that charts the personal and professional interactions of Gustav, Leopold, Albert, Charles and John George. They are regulars at the Grove Park Inn conference, where they lead small-group discussions each year. In 2002, they revealed some of their trade secrets in a session on their adventures as “Arts and Crafts Sleuths,” and in 2005 they lectured on a topic close to the heart of everyone at the conference (and certainly many readers of this magazine): “From William Morris to Archie Bunker: The Evolution of the Morris Chair.”

Beyond “Generic Mission”

When they began collecting in earnest, they knew, as art historians and researchers, that they could not long be satisfied with such a vague designation as “generic mission” for the furniture turning up at country auctions. They needed to learn more about this little-explored landscape and its inhabitants.

Perhaps providentially, it was an unusually well designed and beautifully made slat-backed armchair they found at a local auction in 1988 that provided a case study, as it were, for their education.

The maker of the chair (which they snapped up for $35) was unknown. The only clue, and it was a tantalizing one, was a fragmentary oval black paper label on the underside printed with ornate gold script that was no longer legible. It wasn’t until the following year, at the 1989 Grove Park Inn Arts and Crafts Conference, that they found a dealer who had an identical chair with an intact label. It read “J.M. Young & Sons. Camden, New York.” As Michael recalls, “I remember walking into the room at the antique show and looking to my left, and our same chair was on a table. I walked/rushed to it and flipped it up and there was the J.M. Young & Sons oval label.”

J.M. Young furniture was attracting a few collectors by then because it offered a Stickley-like level of craftsmanship at less-than-Stickley prices. But little was known about it. Who was J.M. Young? When did this firm produce Arts and Crafts furniture, and how much had been made? And what had become of the company?

Though at this point they had many questions and few answers, that single, intact paper label was the catalyst for their journey of discovery into the world of “generic mission.”

Discovering J.M. Young

As the first step of their research into J.M. Young, Jill contacted the Historical Society of Camden, N.Y. She immediately experienced one of the incredible strokes of good luck that seem to come most often to dedicated and resourceful researchers: the woman she reached, one of the society’s volunteers, knew the firm well because her husband had been its last owner, and- astonishingly- she still had its surviving records in her possession. Just before the old Young factory was to be demolished in 1979, she and her husband had retrieved as many of the firm’s papers as they could find. They packed them into cardboard boxes and stored them away, hoping that someone, one day, would consider them important.

Offering to research and interpret this trove and ultimately donate it to Winterthur-the preeminent decorative arts museum and library in Winterthur, Delaware-the Clarks brought the boxes home. They had in their hands the firm’s sales journals, letters and furniture photos, as well as facts about construction techniques, woods, stains and finishes. They excitedly pulled from the boxes two small books, more precious to a researcher than gold: shop drawings containing, as they later wrote, “measurements and design changes handwritten by J.M. and [his son] George Young.”

They also retrieved other crucial details of the shop’s Arts and Crafts work, including records showing the dates when specific armchairs, rockers and tables were first made, how many of each model were sold and when they were dropped from production. (Among their discoveries was that the chair that had started it all was a #1916 armchair, made in 1927.) And, intent on gathering the kind of direct, firsthand insights that can’t be gleaned from business papers, they found and talked with the factory’s few surviving workers and befriended J.M.’s grandson, Gordon. Studying those dusty documents and arranging personal interviews gave the Clarks an intimate view of the firm’s day-to-day operations during the years-a surprisingly long span of them, as it turned out-when J.M. Young & Sons made Arts and Crafts furniture.

In 1994 they shared their discoveries with other collectors and scholars in their first book, J.M. Young Arts and Crafts Furniture, still the definitive source of information on the firm’s work. John McIntosh Young, they had learned, was a Scottish immigrant, a woodcarver who opened his furniture manufacturing business in 1872, in Camden, about 30 miles northeast of Syracuse, and began making elaborate Victorian chairs, tables and cabinets, along with more utilitarian, bread-and-butter furniture. His was a small, family-run enterprise, with J.M. and his sons busy each day in their factory alongside a workforce of some 12 to 14 men.

In 1902, the company abruptly changed direction and began producing Arts and Crafts furniture influenced by Gustav Stickley and L. & J.G. Stickley in addition to its original designs. Though it was organized like most other American furniture manufacturers of its day and had an efficient factory equipped with up-to-date machinery, it added an extra dimension of handicraft. As Jill and Michael have written, “In identifying the works … one will find the diversity of the artist craftsman at work. J.M. Young, his sons and collective of craftsmen, working in the spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement, often made design modifications on the spot to create an individualized piece.”

The Clarks’ research revealed surprising and significant facts about J.M. Young. They learned that when Leopold Stickley’s company stopped making Arts and Crafts furniture, about 1922, he at first filled orders from stock on hand, then turned to the Youngs to replicate several of his most popular models and recreate his fumed finishes. In other words, some ÒL. & J.G. Stickley furniture- was in fact made by J.M. Young. Young continued manufacturing these designs on a limited basis into the 1940s-startling evidence that in some instances “mission” furniture making continued much longer than is commonly believed.

Today, Jill and Michael are not just scholarly chroniclers of J.M. Young. They are ardent collectors who’ve filled their home with the firm’s best Arts and Crafts furniture, a unique collection their passion for research has helped to shape.

Who Made All Those Brown Oak Lamps?

The Clark home is also the showplace for another of their passions, a large collection of “mission” table lamps-about 50-that has grown out of their exploration of the mysteries of Arts and Crafts lighting. A common sight in American homes a hundred years ago and frequently seen in collections today, these lamps are mostly straight-lined, made of quartersawn oak stained brown, and have varicolored art glass shades, occasionally leaded but often not. Yet as familiar as these lamps are, their origins have long perplexed collectors. Though some were evidently shop-class projects produced by students and others the efforts of amateur woodworkers, most were clearly factory made.

But what factory? Probably there were several manufacturers, and their names are still obscure. When the Clarks came across a rare 1912 catalog, though, something clicked, and they presented their major discovery at the 2001 Grove Park Inn Conference in a lecture that asked, “Who Made All Those Brown Oak Lamps?” The answer turned out to be-yes-the W.B. Brown Company, of Bluffton, Ind., a manufacturer that touted its wares with the hearty, self-confident slogan, “A Firm with A Mission.”

As Jill and Michael discovered, the forgotten Mr. Brown created light fixtures that were “designed and constructed to blend harmoniously with the total Arts and Crafts environment.” In Style 1900 they wrote that he used “efficient design and production methods” that made his stylish lighting affordable and “easily shipped in great quantities.” Brown’s factory relied on machine power to mass-produce table lamps and ceiling lights, but the products were also marked by handcraftsmanship of its highly skilled staff: “the artistry of individual workers,” as the Clarks wrote, “remains evident in each fixture.” Like J.M. Young and the other Arts and Crafts furniture makers uncovered by their research, Brown helped popularize the movement and brought its “modern” idea of simple design to a large and appreciative middle-class market. A book on Arts and Crafts lighting, focusing on Brown and many other makers, will be the Clarks’ next project.

The Furniture in the Attic

These pioneering scholars and collectors hope in the years ahead to devote even more time to the Arts and Crafts subjects that matter to them most. “We write only what we want to write,” they told me. “It is a labor of love.” Though they live mainly with J.M. Young furniture and W.B. Brown lamps, they also have a “study collection” stored in their attic. I haven’t had a chance to explore that attic, and I’m curious: just what, exactly, is up there? And, whatever it is, who designed and made it? One day, I expect, the Clarks’ ongoing labor of love will produce more answers.

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