|
|
         |
 |
|
 |
Pasadena, California
1906
In terms of size of budget, a typical Greene & Greene client
in 1906 was John Bakewell Phillips, who had $10,000 to spend
on his house. Though generous by the standards of the day, from
the Greene & Greene firm this sum would produce only a spirited
variation on the Greenes' generic “California House”
design of c. 1904-05. This was possibly because of the careful
hand finishing that was usually required by Peter Hall, who
acted as contractor. The casement windows in the Phillips house
were the first to include a form of the Chinese "lift,"
an abstraction of clouds, in the horizontal mountains. This
was an expensive detail that had previously been expressed only
as a straight cross bar, though a suggestion of the lift had
appeared in the Tichenor and Robinson doors. The stairways and
halls of the three-level Phillips house form a centralized interior
circulation core, thereby making the most of exterior-wall surface
to let light into the upper-level chambers. In a detail characteristic
of traditional chalet construction, the upper two levels of
the Phillips house are cantilevered slightly over the lower
level on the front elevation, similar to the Garfield house
and Josephine van Rossem's second speculative house.
|
 |
|
|
