Living the Legacy : For These Inhabitants of Pasadena’s Greene and Greene Houses, Life Is Only Slightly Compromised by Art

When Nina Kirby went into labor for the birth of her daughter, Katherine--now 7--there were workmen plastering her Pasadena house with such feverishness that her husband, John, shuttled between the workers and her bed, overseeing both simultaneously.

“They were very concerned,” Dr. John Kirby, a plastic surgeon, recalled of the plasterers. “They’d been here so long, we felt they were such a part of our childbirth.” Eventually, with Nina about to deliver, the Kirbys departed for the hospital, leaving the plasterers behind.

Months later, when Katherine reached the rug rat stage, Nina Kirby found the baby everywhere, in everything, as the renovations continued.

“It was hard,” Nina Kirby recalled as she sat in her now-renovated living room a few days ago, “having a baby crawling around, getting splinters in her clothes and having holes in the wall big enough for her to put her fist through.”

Of itself, this may sound like just another account of the jarring challenge posed by a major home-remodeling job. But the Kirbys don’t live in just any old house.

Their home--itself the product of repeated expansions and modifications to accommodate a young and growing family--was built between 1901 and 1912 by Charles Sumner Greene, who, with his brother, Henry Mather Greene, accounted for the most influential body of architectural work in the Arts and Crafts Movement of the early 20th Century.

Gamble House in Pasadena

Though the Greenes built houses throughout Southern and Central California, it was in Pasadena where they were most active. In all, they designed about 200 structures--most of them homes ranging from simple bungalows to mansions like the Gamble House, which has been preserved largely as it was built and is now open to the public just a few blocks from the Kirbys’.

The majority of their work has not survived. Pasadena city officials say about 50 Greene & Greene homes still exist. Charles Greene’s home was one of the lucky ones. By the time the Kirbys purchased it eight years ago, it was not at the point of collapse, just merely run down. It had leaks in the roof, plaster that was caving in, wood that had been crudely painted over and pervasive signs of neglect from use at one time as a boardinghouse. There was even peeling, green linoleum on some of the floors.

And so the Kirbys embarked on a process not widely publicized. It is part of a movement that has taken form in the last 10 to 15 years, as preservationists have seen to it that what is left of the Greenes’ work is not just kept from demolition but celebrated for what it is--some of the most significant American architecture of all time.

What has largely escaped notice is that nearly all of the surviving Greene and Greene homes are today exactly what they were designed to be at the turn of the century: places where people live. Spaghetti sauce is spilled on the kitchen floor, clothes are sometimes left strewn in the bedroom and children get in trouble-- big trouble in a Greene and Greene--if they write on the walls.

Teen-agers argue with their parents, run upstairs and slam the doors to their rooms. There are accidents and things get broken. The plumbing leaks and the wiring wears out.

As they get to know their homes, Greene and Greene homeowners learn to separate myth from fact. A key myth: The Greenes never used nails; electing, instead, to construct their homes with dowels, pegs, carefully crafted wood joints and fabulously handsome custom-made hardware. In fact, said Tom Gardner, a Pasadena wood craftsman who specializes in Greene and Greene homes, the Greenes used largely conventional building techniques that would be recognizable at any construction site today.

Nails, they used in abundance, to be sure. Many joints that appear to be exquisitely contrived of hardwood dowels and square wood pegs are actually held together with screws. The visible wood peg is simply a magnificent decoration.

Demanded Exceptional Work

The major difference, though, Gardner said, was that the Greenes demanded exceptional competency from craftsmen they employed.

Today, Gardner said, a homeowner or craftsman working in a Greene and Greene is morally precluded from taking creative liberties. “I think you have to keep your ego out of it and do what’s appropriate,” Gardner said. “You have to try to keep it as it would have been.”

But there is a balance to that too, John and Nina Kirby said--and striking it is often the most difficult challenge of owning a Greene and Greene and trying to make it not just a house, but a home. “Charles Greene is dead,” Nina Kirby said of the man who built her house. “You can’t think the way he thought. It’s a dilemma for people now.

“Yet it’s not 100% our house . It’s still Charles Greene’s house. “

So Greene and Greene homeowners fret when a spring breaks in the front door lock and agonize over where to get replacement glass shades for ornate Craftsman lighting fixtures. John Poole, who, with his wife, Dorrie Braun Poole, and their four young boys occupy the Blacker House--the largest of a small group of Greene and Greenes known as ultimate bungalows-- says he may even go to Canada to search for Cuban mahogany.

Yet Poole is surely at home at the Blacker House, where he is spending an extended “career transition” leave from work as an attorney to oversee renovations. A couple of weeks ago, even though Dorrie Poole thought it unsightly, Poole put his classic Jaguar coupe up on blocks beneath the majestic, timber and brick pergola in front so he could make carburetor adjustments.

“I feel very much as if you are a caretaker, a custodian, almost,” said Cathy Martin, who--with her husband, Bob, and two teen-age children--lives in the Bolton House, one of Greene and Greene’s most famous designs. “It’s like having a child that needs constant care,” she said, “almost like having another baby.”

But like most Greene and Greene homeowners, the Martins don’t act as if they live in a shrine. One day recently, as Cathy Martin conducted a visitor on a brief tour, her daughter, Elysia, 16, was entertaining her boyfriend and two girlfriends from school, talking animatedly while ostensibly collaborating on a homework assignment.

“You see,” Cathy Martin said as she closed the door to the room where the students had gathered, “teen-agers go very well in a Greene and Greene.” Nearby, Rob Martin, 14, worked at a computer screen in his poster-festooned room.

The Pooles gave all four of their boys--even the 6-month-old baby--tool kits for Christmas last year, a gesture John Poole sees as part of their Greene and Greene education. “I want to teach them what wood is about, because most of the story of this house is wood,” he said.

Blend of Reverence

The Greenes, contemporary experts in their architecture agree, would have welcomed this blend of reverence for the form and the vibrancy of living in a house built to be a home. A Greene and Greene, said architect James Pulliam, who resides with his wife, Kathleen and two young boys in the Henry A. Ware house, built in 1913, “is not a museum.

“Particularly if you have small children, you have to meet their needs. A house is a living thing.”

The Ware house is certainly illustrative. In the living room--revolutionary in its time because it makes use of an early type of indirect lighting--the Pulliams’ two boys had set up their electric trains on the floor so the construction ran in an oval that made pedestrian navigation difficult.

“I guess we have just taught them (the boys) to have a sense of pride in their house,” said Kathleen Pulliam as she led a visitor through the living room maze. “They understand that it is a special house. We worry about (breaking) the (large, original) windows and spilling water upstairs, but other than that, it’s just a house.”

“I don’t have any problem balancing (the moral obligation to preserve the house and the practical necessities of modern life) because the fundamental thing is not so much what’s done, but how it’s done,” said Randell Makinson, director of the Gamble House and an architect himself. “The Greenes would agree. They changed their own homes as much as seven times.

Upgrading Acceptable

“If Greene and Greene were alive today, they would certainly say to upgrade your house with modern technology. They would be doing it.”

But at the same time, said Makinson, “The Greenes always felt that architecture was one of the fine arts. We may take a (work of art built around a) diamond and put it under glass and have a guard standing next to it. But architecture is of such size that you can’t do that. These homes are the masterworks, like the multimillion-dollar painting. We would never even think of altering that painting.”

While Makinson’s observations pertained mostly to Greene and Greene homes, he emphasized that owners of Craftsman bungalows designed by other--less prominent--architects of the period are similarly to be cherished. “A (garden variety period) builder’s bungalow can be just as important to restore,” Makinson said.

“(There was a) fundamental philosophy that went into the evolution of the bungalow. Greene and Greene just showed everyone what the possibilities could be. They showed everyone that the everyday house could have charm and dignity.”

For most Greene and Greene owners, this delicate balance between moral obligation and practical need translates into a sort of unwritten understanding. It is acceptable to make major modifications in kitchens and bathrooms, for instance, Makinson said, “especially since that’s generally where a house shows its age.”

Yet Makinson also worries that, since Greene and Greene homes have been widely recognized as treasures only in the last 15 to 20 years, the strength of the preservationist movement remains dangerously undefined. “The person who buys a Frank Lloyd Wright house buys it because of the design and has such regard for it that, while there may be slight modifications, that can always be done without altering the original integrity of the house.

“(Some) Greene and Greene owners are much more prone to want to make it something it wasn’t or to be sure and insert their own personalities. Sometimes they want to make it something it never was.”

Avoiding this trap requires constant vigilance, owners say.

The Pooles, for instance, are renovating the kitchen and master bathroom. Dorrie Poole, in fact, insisted on delaying the couple’s moving date last fall because the Blacker House did not have a functioning shower.

But the master bathroom had been extensively renovated decades ago and its original character was lost. Today, the Pooles are returning the room to something approximating the Greenes’ original intent. But, in deference to Dorrie Poole, the design includes a tub with built-in Jacuzzi and a tiled stall shower.

Partly because a previous owner of the Blacker House gutted it of many of its original fixtures for resale, the city of Pasadena now strictly controls renovation in the homes. Consequently, the Pooles had to get city approval for their bathroom plans.

Dorrie Poole laughed as she recalled one inspection. “They walked through,” she said of preservation commission members who came to look, “and one of them kept saying, ‘Shall we let Dorrie have her shower?’ ” In the end, the bathroom--Jacuzzi, shower and all--was fully and officially sanctioned.

Their kitchen has a dishwasher, a large restaurant-style refrigerator and a feature common in the carefully modernized kitchens of Greene and Greenes--a Wolf institutional range. The Pooles have not resolved how they will restore the countertops in the kitchen--marble when the house was completed in 1907--but the design, they said, will most certainly be an updated variant, not original equipment.

Mainstream conservation organizations generally support this delicate balance. Claire Bogaard, executive director of Pasadena Heritage, which watches over the well-being of the city’s Greene and Greenes, was philosophical about the Poole’s bathroom, for instance. “If you’re raising a family, such as the Pooles (are), and you need to adapt a house to accommodate 1988 or 1989 living,” she said, “you should be able to do it,

For Kathleen Pulliam, owning a Greene and Greene has involved a similar mix of historic sensitivity and pragmatism. When she first moved into the Wade house, Pulliam wanted to cut down an orange tree in the back yard to improve the view. That was before she found out the tree has been on the site since before the Greenes built the house. Quickly, she decided to live with the impaired vista. And a rose garden that was part of the original landscaping of the house prompted change in a plan to alter the shrubbery.

But when the October, 1987, Whittier earthquake shook Pasadena, the force of the temblor shifted one of the Pulliams’ chimneys, threatening to collapse it into the interior of the house. Actually, it was fortuitous, since deteriorated plumbing serving two of the house’s bathrooms was built into the chimney walls.

So, since the house was short of closet space, anyway, the Pulliams removed the chimney entirely. Now, the bathrooms are ready for renovation and closets have sprouted on the second floor.

Though the little sheet metal cap on the vent pipe that now serves the hot water heater clashes with a strict sense of Greene and Greene aesthetics, Pulliam says she has no regrets. “We could have torn apart all the walls and lost the tile in the bathroom,” by replacing the plumbing in other ways, she said, “but why? To save a chimney that we don’t use?”

Virtually every Greene and Greene owner has some horror story about a construction or repair project gone horribly wrong or hopelessly delayed. Cathy Martin had several additional craftsmen signed up to finish a renovation project after the replastering of her living room, only to have the plasterer walk off the job after 30 minutes because he was intimidated by the exacting requirements of plastering not just any wall, but that of a Greene and Greene.

Pasadena Heritage’s Bogaard concedes that preservationists’ assumptions about the responsibility of owning a Greene and Greene may clash with traditional perceptions about American property rights. If you own a Greene and Greene, should you not be allowed to do anything you want with it? “This is an issue that, in this country, we debate regularly,” she said. “There are many people who believe that it’s my castle and I can do what I want. In Europe, the philosophy about this is quite different.

“It is part of a long culture. We live in these places only for a short period of time. This isn’t my house forever . It’s a house I have the privilege of living in for 20, 30, 40 years. To me, it’s my privilege, but I owe something to the people who come after me.”

To at least some Greene and Greene owners, the houses themselves seem almost to understand all this. Both the Pooles and the Martins, for instance, describe phenomena that require leaps of imagination most people are not ready to make.

For the Pooles, it takes the form of newly installed equipment mysteriously failing to work or breaking for no apparent reason. They talk about a change in the atmosphere of the Blacker House when change is threatened.

But to Cathy Martin, this sensation is even more real. “We have a joke in the family that there’s a ghost in the house,” she said, “because strange things do happen here. When there is something that is going to hurt the house, there is an air that comes down. A heaviness.”

A few months ago, the Martins had central air conditioning installed in the Bolton House. The work necessitated cutting holes in the original wood floors to install duct work and vent openings.

“A pall settled on the house,” she recalled. “It’s as if the house knows that it’s being injured. I know it sounds somewhat bizarre, but this house talks to me. So when they were going to cut the holes, I talked to the house and I explained why this was being done.

“I said (to the house), ‘Please don’t be upset and please don’t scare the workmen and don’t get in the way. I won’t leave them alone here. You are not to be concerned.’ ”