Meghan: Tudor houses that we see today are typically Tudor revival style which was the time when architects tried to reinterpret and recreate the style of architecture from Tudor England. And today I am going to learn what makes a Tudor house a Tudor house here at the finest example of Tudor architecture in America. Stan Hywet Hall.
I am hitting the road, searching for answers in finding great design. It is a quest for beauty, function and of course inspiration.
Built for F.A. Seiberling, the founder of the Goodyear tire and rubber company, Stan Hywet Hall is an excellent example of Tudor architecture. From it arch doors and windows to it half timbering and stucco, there is no mistaking this home is Tudor revival. And as my guide for the day Mark Gilles the director of Historic Structures at Stan Hywet Hall thought me, the Tudor architecture we see here in America is based of the architecture of England during the 16th and 17th century.
The Tudor style was brought to America during the 1870’s and 1880’s and termed the Tudor revival. The style became hugely popular in the 1920’s and then fell out of favor in the 1940’s and 50’s. During its time it is a hot style, Tudor revival owed its popularity to its history.
Wealthy family such as the Seiberling wanted to separate themselves from the immigrants coming to America and one way of doing that was in their choice of architecture.
Mark: Tudor represented like the very earliest colonial homes so the like their homes that you had been built in Plymouth at the time where your half timber homes.
One of the things that made Tudor revival popular with this level of society, the Seiberling’s level of society was also to reflect back to an older lineage. So, that is why, why the brought the English Tudor. The more traditional English Tudor was brought over to have that appearance of ancestry. Here, we are older and we are established and we are not like the new immigrants coming in. So that was kind of the appearance that they wanted to create for themselves and they did it very well.
Meghan: Where they seen as very prestigious if you owned an English Tudor?
Mark: The English Tudor was also kind of a nickname during the 1920’s as the stock broker Tudor.
Meghan: Really?
Mark: Because it gave that illusion of that strata of society
Meghan: Of being very wealthy?
Mark: Right
Meghan: Did that just have to do with the style or was it partly in how much it cost to build.
Mark: It is a little bit of both, the Tudor revival is a richer type of architecture in that the materials that you are using, your brick, your stone, your slate roofs are copper, these were all the type of materials that kind of just stringed out for more a little bit better.
Meghan: But it is not just the materials that make Tudor houses stand up it is the way those materials are put together. And to the untrained eye, finding a Tudor is not at all too hard. The Tudor style posses many characteristics that are easy to identify. Typically, Tudor houses were made of stone, brick or stucco and had steeper pitched roofs, barge boards, half timbering and the classic Tudor arches.
Those Tudor arches are seen on both the doors and windows. The windows are made of leaded glass with numerous little window panes and are grouped in a particular fashion.
Now was there any particular meaning to the type of windows, like were they always in groupings, were they singular, how do you—
Mark: As far as a Tudor, again that is another one that the classic things that you are going to find in Tudor revival, is you would have vertical windows that were grouped in two’s and three’s. Another thing that you will see throughout the house here in most of the architecture of Tudor revival are multiple spheres or mires of chimney work.
Everyone of the chimney’s are unique design in itself because they wanted to give that illusion of a house that had evolved over generations. So one of the ways they did that was to have a unique chimney designs and also there is another reason why in a Tudor revival versus colonial revival, Tudor revi
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