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The Ranch House in Madison, Wisconsin

2 min readThe post war housing boom changed the character of American residential life in ways that still influence our daily lives now. In Madison, you can see the different “types” of post war houses, spread across neighborhoods on the east (mostly cape cod) and west (mostly ranch) sides of town.

The first post war housing boom spread out toward the manufacturing districts on Madison’s east side, filling in housing between Milwaukee and Atwood Avenues and on the west, filling in beyond Midvale Boulevard as several farms were converted into housing developments.

ranch-house-in-madison_cape-cod

The “Ranch” house form lagged slightly behind the classic Levittown style “Cape Cod” in Madison’s development.  The first houses to be added in these areas – in the first boom area from 1945 on – were the steep roofed Cape Cod styles sitting compactly centered on their lots. Continue reading “The Ranch House in Madison, Wisconsin”

I bought a house!

2 min readThis blog will to tell the story of how I succumbed to that most basic of architects’ urges: to get a house of my own and fix it up for myself with no need to transfer my ideas through a client and contractor in order to make them real.

Don’t get me wrong, I love designing for other people.  And I love coming up for ideas for how to create or improve a space and then handing them off to an expert contractor to take care of.  But just this once, the design brief will be my own.  And it will be on me (and whatever help I can cajole out of my friends and family) to manifest my ideas on the world.

This project has been a long time coming, as I have moved from city to city, and apartment to apartment, during the beginning of my architectural career. Continue reading “I bought a house!”