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Show United States Department of the Interior National Park Service I National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMS No. 1024-0018 Christensen, Herbert & Lillian, House Name of Property Washington County, Utah County and State The house at 375 E. Tabernacle Street sits on a sandstone block foundation and has random projecting stones in the stucco of the front chimneystack. This house features a Gothic arch front entry with a rubble stone surround similar to the Christensen House; however, the stonework is limited to the entry and the chimneystack. While these examples are distinctive in their respective neighborhoods, none exhibit the peculiar mix of styles found in the Christensen House. The Christensen House features the steeply pitched gables and faux half-timbering of the English Tudor style, but its architectural and artistic significance is in its mix of styles. National Park Rustic, Craftsman & Provincial Revivalism Growing up in Springdale in the 1920s, Herbert Christensen would have had ample opportunities to experience the National Park Rustic philosophy of natural materials on display in the architecture of Zion National Park. The tooling of the rusticated ashlar blocks of the sandstone foundation of the Christensen House is similar to the foundations, guardrails and other structures built by masons in Zion between 1917 and 1936. The cobblestone corners of the house was influenced by the prominence of natural materials in the Arts & Crafts movement, particularly the tapered (or battered) cobblestone corners, commonly found as piers in Californian Craftsman homes of the 191 Os and 1920s. Contextually, the architecture of the Christensen House can only be fully understood as a product of Provincial Revivalism in the first half of the twentieth century. Provincial Revivalism as a domestic architectural style has many synonyms: Storybook, Fairy Tale, Fantasy, and Hansel & Gretel. The storybook style was a minor phenomenon in California in the 1920s and 1930s. The most extreme examples have "intentionally uneven roofs, lots of cobblestone, doors and windows which may look mismatched."5 One of the best-known examples is Harry Oliver's Spadena House, commonly known as the Witch's House (built in 1921 in Culver City and later moved to Beverly Hills). Harry Oliver worked as an art director and set decorator in Hollywood between 1919and 1938. The "Snow White" cottages, built by Ben Sherwood in 1931, are located near in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angles, near Walt Disney's original studio. The eight cottages are believed to have house animators in the 1930s and been the inspiration for the dwarves' cottage in Snow White, which was released in 1937, one year after the completion of the Christensen House. All of the stucco cottages have curving strips of faux-half timbering, but what is more remarkable are the tapered or battered quoins and piers made of stone seen in several of the cottages. The "Snow White" quoins are flagstone rather than cobblestone , but there is a definite similarity of design. Storybook architecture was not just confined to urban settings. Portions of the Wyntoon retreat in a northern Californian forest feature a number of fanciful buildings (Bear House, Fairy House, Cinderella House) designed by Julia Morgan for William Randolph Hearst in the 1930s. In context, the Christensen House was more practical than whimsical, more "Snow White" cottage than Witch's House; but many of the elements of the architecture (e.g. cascading cobblestone, steep gables, belcast eaves, curving strips, and stone window/door surrounds, etc.) were influenced by storybook architecture. The Christensen House lacks the irregular windows and distressed exterior materials of pure examples of Provincial Revivalism, but the playfulness of the storybook style is on display and makes a house an unforgettable landmark in Springdale. 5 "Storybook Architecture" Wikipedia entry, retrieved July 15, 2019. Section 8 page 11 |
