ranch home

For this Sunday’s Inspiration, this excellent article on the modest middle class ranch home and the growing interest in preserving it. Hey, I think the sentiment also goes for the capes, colonials and split levels of the era, which also shared the unpretentious, egalitarian ethic of the ranch. A long read, but well worth it, in terms of better understanding the “back story” of our mutual obsession with the postwar period!

By Scott Timberg Times Staff Writer October 20, 2005

ITS low-slung frame sprawled across plains and valleys of a more open landscape. The single-story footprint didn’t boast, or point skyward like the self-assured colonial or Victorian. It offered a comfortable relationship with the climate and surrounding flora, and a democratic, open floor plan; it didn’t section off areas into servants quarters or announce visitors in grand foyers. It was modern without being Space Age, modest without being plain, evoking history without being mere nostalgia. If a style of residential architecture can symbolize an era, the ranch house became the iconic American home in the period from roughly 1945 to 1970: By some estimates, 70% of American homes built in the 25 years after World War II were ranch houses. Read the rest here.

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