Oblique Front Elevation
Edwin W. Stadtmuller House in San Francisco, California
William Knowles* designed this
cozy Shingle Style house around 1908 for a department manager of a
wholesale grocer. The client desired a living room with a high
ceiling and an overlooking balcony. Knowles' solution ties the
living room at the right with a library at the upper left with a steeply
pitched cathedral ceiling. The Gothic, church-like appearance,
specially evident in the modified Palladian window of the library,
probably reflects the influence of Maybeck and Coxhead.
The house stands across the street from two of Knowles' other
works, and is next door to Maybeck's Goslinsky
house. Like its neighbors, the shingled portion of the house
displays minimal trim, with the shingles wrapping around corners and
occasionally swirling around the openings. Unlike its neighbors
across the street, the first floor of this
house rests on a distinct platform above grade level. In this
case, the platform may merely have been the result of a later garage
addition. But the concept was a common theme in the Shingle
Style. Foundations composed of boulders or roughly stacked
clinker brick were the materials of choice, since they created strong
illusions 0f anchorage, pre-industrial craftsmanship, and a kind of
communion with Nature. The concept of uninterrupted flow between
interior and exterior spaces was one that did not really take hold for
most architects and builders until the rise of modernism. Photo
taken in 2001 by Howard J. Partridge.
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