"John Hudson Thomas and the Progressive Spirit in Architecture" Now Online

John Hudson Thomas and the Progressive Spirit in Architecture 1910-1920

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work berkeley Oakland

The Best Writing on JHT - Coming to the Web Soon!

To date, the person who has written the most about JHT is Thomas Gordon Smith, who wrote his master's thesis, while a student at U. C. Berkeley in the early 70s, on Thomas.

Thomas Gordon Smith later became the dean of the school of architecture at the University of Notre Dame and a noted architect specializing in the classical style.

I called him this week to see if he might allow his 1975 thesis to be published on the web, so it will be more available to researchers and fans - and he's agreed.

This is a great gift and we are all grateful for his contribution and granting access to this work.

Loring House

The fabulous Loring house, done in the Prairie School style, is on the National Historic Landmarks building list. Anyone have more info about the Loring House? Or know someone who does? Anyone know the owners?

Pratt Thomas House, 800 Shattuck, Berkeley (1911)

This entire hillside was bare and unpopulated when developer Pratt commissioned JHT to design three houses, that cascade down the hill, on Indian Rock Avenue, beginning with the top house across the street from Indian Rock Park. A more commanding site could not be imagined. With thrilling views down the street to the Marin Circle and vast views across the Bay in all directions, JHT, who'd had the pick of the litter when it comes to lots, had the choicest location at 800 Shattuck.

I've a sneaking suspicion he liked to look at his own work, and designed the two houses below 800 Shattuck - the Pratt-Verber House next door and the Pratt House adjacent to it - at 959-961 Indian Rock so that he could view them from his living room window.

I had a lovely visit with Dorcas Kowalski, owner of the Pratt-Thomas house. She gave me a tour of the property. It was thrilling to sit in what was once Thomas' house and look across the living room to see his other houses, just below.

It's sometimes called his honeymoon house for he moved here in 1911 with his new wife and lived here for two years. The master bedroom has matching his and her walk in closets, each with a window. In the middle, in the master bedroom, is a fireplace.

The Pratt Thomas house has a fireplace centered in a spacious inglenook with a wide arch framing the opening. Mr. Kowalski papered the inglenook ceiling with art works.

The Kowalskis have owned it since 1960.

The Pratt Houses: Three In a Row

Here are the photos of the Pratt Thomas House series I took the other day.

You don't usually get to see them as a triplet, which is the way they were designed - i.e. to all go together. They function beautifully that way. All three are in his interpretation of the Viennese Secessionist style and are filled with incredible charm. The outside is a veritable symphony of mass, shapes and adornment. One can see motifs and structures he later uses in his grandest work Wintermute, built 2 years later in 1913.

Robinswold: JHT's Residence and Workspace

A week ago, I had the pleasure of visiting Dick and Irene Riemann, who purchased 31 Norwood (Kensington) from JHT's family in 1972. This is the house JHT designed and lived in from 1928 through 1945. It also contains his office and workshop. The Riemann's have taken extremely good care of the house and, except for adding a carport and remodeling the kitchen, have kept it original for the most part. They made the necessary improvement of adding copper gutters and downspouts and they added a beautiful landscape pond at the rear of the house.

Not only is this where JHT lived and worked, but some of his personal affects are still there. His desk, books and many drawings are there. His self-portrait hangs in the entry. Even a treadle-driven scroll saw is there, near the desk in his office. Throughout the house are examples of what are presumably the output from this machine, such as the floral cutouts in the stairway railing, carved brackets, and small appliqués in the shape of griffins. You almost get the feeling JHT still lives there--like he'll be returning soon from a walk in the hills.

The house is an example of the English plaster cottage style. It has all the standard features: lots of gables, heavy timber beams, columns and brackets, dormer windows, exposed beam ceilings, half-timbered plaster walls, wood siding, and a very steep shingled roof. The walls around three sides of the living room and the south wall of the kitchen are made of what appear to be very large bricks. I contacted Dan Mosier, of California Bricks, and he explained that these are actually hollow clay tile. At 6x6x12, they are much larger than standard bricks. The walls are only one brick wide, with no interior or exterior finish. This is unreinforced masonry but it has held up very well considering there have been a number of earthquakes over the last 80 years.

Timber corner posts are visible at the exterior of the living room wing. At first I thought these were just trim but if the brick is non-bearing infill these would need to be structural to support the heavy timber beam that runs along the top of the wall and supports the rafters. I need to go back and take a closer look.

Something else that's different about this building is the use of steel factory sash that has been elegantly let-into the heavy timber at the head and jambs. It is a modern detail that takes nothing away from the old world feeling of the overall design. See photos at the JHT Gallery or on flickr. I could go on and on about this house but it has been covered very well by David Weinstein in Signature Architects and Thomas Gordon Smith in Toward A Simpler Way of Life. Both books are recommended.

Did You Know You Can Get Your House Plans?

Just a brief note to let people know that they can order a copy of their house plans, if they are on file, from the U.C. Santa Barbara Collection of Art and Design. I mentioned this to a JHT home owner I met today who didn't know about this, so I thought it was worth sharing with a wider audience.

I've published a listing of all the collection holdings of JHT plans. I will be adding links like these to a forthcoming Wikipedia article about JHT (in process now - about half written) so if you don't take note of these links now, you should still be able to find them later on wikipedia, for sure.

• List of Plans by Date

• List of Plans by Client Name

These lists are only of projects with plans. Many dates are missing on this list, but often their dates are available on the JHT Gallery site.

Note: in some cases, some of the houses on the Gallery site are not listed in the UCSB collection because, apparently, they do not have a copy of the plans.