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Architextures

Mediterranean Revival

Mediterranean Revival Styles

Monterey Style

 Several homes in Lakewood’s Country Club Estates, including some built by Clyde Hutsell, can be properly classed as Monterey Style. Architects point to the Thomas Larkin house, built in Monterey, Californa in 1853, as the prototype of Monterey Style. Larkin was a Boston merchant. His home combined elements of New England Colonial style with elements of Spanish Colonial style, which was, of course, the indigenous style in California.

The original Larkin house had an adobe brick exterior but it was very symmetrical, it was two stories high (almost unheard-of in a California dwelling) and it had a prominent full-width balcony viewed from the street.

In the 1920s, architects working in the Spanish Revival tradition took the basic elements of Larkin’s house and spun out variations which they called Monterey style. These early versions of Monterey style tended to lean more toward the Spanish Colonial end of the style spectrum, often with a proliferation of Spanish Baroque ornamentation which was not present on the original Larkin house. As the decades passed, the so-called Monterey Homes of the 1940’s swung back in the other direction, with much more influence from the New England Colonial period, but still sweetened up with stylistic elements from Spanish Colonial style.

These are identifying features of Monterey Style:

• Two stories, with a very wide balcony on the second story with some sort of  porch or verandah below
• typically the balustrade on the balcony is a prominent, heavily scaled element in the overall composition of the façade, and the porch  below is not very prominent
• A low-pitched roof, most often a gabled roof rather than a hip roof
• The roof is often covered with clay tiles that, combined with the low pitch, emphasises the Spanish heritage (wood shingles are sometimes used instead of clay tile but the low pitch is essential to the style)
• Stucco walls or bricks with very light buff or beige color
• The first and second story are often faced with different materials with wood over brick being the common treatment.