Save The Split-Level !!

In the world of historic preservation 50 years is the first milestone. Historical significance begins at fifty, anything younger is considered too recent to have historical significance. Fifty years prior to today, the year 2000, is 1950. If we look back at that era's prevailing residential architecture, then remind ourselves that it is now eligible for historic landmark status we may start to panic. We most surely will panic when we peruse the inventory of houses built in the sixties and seventies. Are organizations actually going to preserve these post war houses? If so why? I dread the day when the raised ranches and the split-level colonials begin sporting the blue and silver badges of a national historic landmark.

What is the basis of such fear? Are the buildings really all that terrible? Is there something inherently wrong with mid-century residential architecture? If we look at these structures from a purely academic point of view we may find it hard to pinpoint any specific flaws. They are generally safer than older buildings, more functional, and they adhere to general architectural principals. So what is wrong with preserving the split level colonial on a ¼ acre lot?

I think my trepidation stems not from what these houses are, but from what they are not. The post war euphoria in the United States sent millions of people out of the cities into the suburbs. The problem was that the suburbs didn't really exist yet. Houses were constructed in huge numbers, so many that we might say they were mass produced. Mass production, although great for reducing price through economies of scale, is the death knell for workmanship, for detail, for flourishes of individuality. A house that might have taken six or nine months to build just ten or twenty years earlier was now being constructed in half the time and at a lower cost. In the interest of time many details were lost. Porches no longer sported milled balustrades or gingerbread flourishes and windows began to all look the same, six over six double hung. Stairways, chimneys, rooflines and siding, they all lost their detail.

There was another phenomena emerging in the post war building boom that led to the raised ranch and split level colonial, real estate developers. For the first time in history real estate developers were buying huge tracts of land, subdividing them and building houses on speculation. Real estate development itself was not new, but it exploded after the war. Theses developers were far more interested in selling the homes than in building them, and since they were built on speculation these developers did all they could to keep the costs down. This meant cutting corners, leaving out everything but what was absolutely necessary. And because housing demand was so high, people had little choice but to buy what was available. Unfortunately, because so many developers built non-descript houses, and because so many people bought them, there followed the flawed logic that these must be popular, people must actually want these houses.

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