"A California House"
Location not specified
c. 1904

"A California House" was designed as a hypothetical, speculative two-story house, with three bedrooms, a sewing room, and one bath upstairs. Downstairs, a generous living room, twenty-six feet long by thirteen feet wide, opens onto a porch through French doors. The twenty-by-fifteen-foot dining room was placed at right angles to the living room and was designed to include a built-in sideboard and two banks of casement windows. Two of the upstairs bedrooms show built-in window seats the entire length of the casement windows. The typed contractor's specifications are similar to those for other Greene & Greene jobs of the period, but the design and proposed construction details indicate no expensive options or materials, and could be honestly described as "plain." Sadly, “A California House" was never built exactly as it was designed, though several Greene & Greene houses of the period were clearly influenced by it. The existence of the drawings, however, indicates that Greene & Greene recognized the need for basic, dignified, and cost-effective housing during a busy period for the firm.