STRUCTURES : Touring Homes Allows Visitors to Savor Feeling for Times Past : The four-house event showed the changing tides of architectural taste: Victorian aesthetics versus Craftsman style.

Last Saturday, Jeanne Brown met her public, in her home on Cedar Street in Ventura.

A gracious hostess, Brown led packs of the curious strangers through her detailed Victorian house, a landmark known as the Cooper House for Charles Cooper, the original owner. Brown bought the place in 1978 and began, with her son David, a long process of remodeling and redecorating, from top to bottom, from foundation to roof.

A folksy painter whose works hang throughout the house, Brown pointed to a painting of a barn in a bedroom. “That barn used to be at the end of the street,” she said. “I wish I would have known they were going to tear it down. I would have grabbed all that nice redwood and put it on my floors, instead of this pine.”

Spoken like a true, avid hero of restoration.

Touches of whimsy pop up inside and out. The color scheme of mustard yellow with red trim is continued on the shed and also the doghouse. Visitors left with a souvenir of a rusty hand-forged nail, a suitable memento, for love of antiquity.

The occasion for this happy marriage of public/private life was a home tour sponsored by the San Buenaventura Heritage. Proceeds from the tour, and from the upcoming tour of Ventura churches, are targeted for a fitting cause--the continuing restoration of the Dudley House, a large 1892 Queen Anne structure being turned into a museum at the corner of Loma Vista Road and Ashland Street.

All four homes on this tour, dating from between 1885 and 1924, share the distinction of being architecturally significant and/or engaging. They also share the quality of providing a window on Ventura’s past.

Although the homes are now tucked into the modern-day suburban fabric of more faceless tract homes, they serve as important reminders of Venturan life before the post-war sprawl.

Touring homes involves a process of imagination, picturing settings of an earlier time. The Cooper House, whose original address was on Wall Street, was built before Cedar Street even existed. In their original states, all the houses enjoyed relatively untrammeled views of spacious acreage and the ocean beyond.

Over on Poli Street, there sits the small but formally complex and stately Baker House, built by architect Franklin Peirce Ward in 1889. Then, its inhabitants enjoyed a quiet life in the boonies, before the town grew up around it. Declared a landmark in 1975, the Victorian cottage is compact but has a spacious feel inside.

As home tours go, this four-home event was a balanced one that told a story about changing tides of architectural taste. The two homes to the west exemplified the Victorian aesthetic, while the Craftsman models provided a response to Victorian ideals.

As Heritage docent Mitch Stone said on his tour of the 1909 Erburu house, a deceptively simple Craftsman structure, the Craftsman movement “was a revolt against the ornateness of the Victorian style.”

From the exterior, the house does, in fact, forcefully dispense with ornateness, making a bold statement with simple, massive forms. The house is almost startlingly simple, a huge volume with a large dormer window jutting out of an embracing gable roof.

Inside, the abundance of dark wood detailing--and the minimalistic Mission-style furniture collected by owners Robert and Pauline Chianese--bespeaks elegant solidity.

On this tour, all roads led naturally up the hill to one of Ventura’s prize pieces of architecture, the Gould House, a hidden treasure nestled among newer models off of Foothill Road. Designed by the acknowledged masters of the Craftsman movement, the Pasadena-based Greene and Greene, the 1924 home has long been regarded a prize.

Owner Virginia Gould--daughter-in-law of the original owner, Thomas Gould--often shows her home for private benefits but rarely in such a public forum. Before a sizable tour ogling her living room, she said, “The Greenes are my constant companions. There are so many details in this house, I keep finding out new things about it.”

In the ranks of local architecture, Pratt House in Ojai by Greene and Greene is better-known. But the Gould House stands out proudly in the architectural neighborhood. By the time this house was built, the Greene brothers had separated, but they were later to reunite.

Throughout the two-story structure, once a house on a sizable farm property, the legendary, quasi-Oriental linearity of the Greene style is evident. To visit is to bask in a lost spirit of noble simplicity.

Details

‘Tis the season to visit buildings--for worthy causes. Four separate tours are being offered in the next few weeks:

* “Homes for the Holidays,” sponsored by the Meadowlark Service League, features five homes in the Los Posas Estates area of Camarillo, Dec. 5 from 1 to 5 p.m. Tickets are $15. Information: 482-8771.

* “Holiday Tour of Homes,” sponsored by the Wellness Community, Valley-Ventura, Dec. 5 from noon to 5 p.m. Tickets $10. Information: 379-4777.

* “Holiday Home Tour,” sponsored by Moorpark Women’s Fortnightly Club, offers seven homes in Moorpark, Dec. 12 from 4 to 8 p.m. Tickets are $6, and may be bought by mail: P.O. Box 674, Moorpark, CA 93021. Information: 529-5093.

* “Historic Church Christmas Tour” in downtown Ventura, Dec. 18 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tickets are $7.50 in advance, $10 on the day of the tour. Information: 650- 4849.