Ranch House Style

America’s rapidly growing post-WWII population bloated cities beyond borders into vast tracts of suburban houses mile after mile as far as the eye could see. Nine out of ten houses built between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s were Ranch Houses. These ranch houses recalled the Western settler and pioneer houses of our ancestors, the open range, self-reliance, cowboys and freedom and adventure. Alike the 19^th Century pioneer ranch, the 20^th Century suburban ranch might be brick or board & batten, or some variety of local materials. Whatever the material, then and now the ranch house was efficiently, inexpensively constructed.

1950s Rambler.

From the 1950s until today the ranch house assumes both local characteristics and modish fashions. A ranch house might partake of the vogue for efficient, machined design, as in the Mid-Century Modern ranch, a ranch often of metal, often with characteristics of mass production. A ranch house might assume qualities of traditionally columned, pedimented temple houses like the Classical houses of our Founding Founders. Many recent ranch houses have the paper cutout quality of artsy designs sprung from CAD computer screens.

It is worth mentioning that the once regionally unique ranch house, by uniform building codes, pattern books that conform to code, and big-box products that adapt to both, caused conventionality of house and community until Raleigh came to look like Detroit, Boston like Dallas, as you will notice when pioneering coast to coast.

Modern Rancher Lifestyle

The Minimal Traditional ranch house is likely the most common form of the national Ranch House style. Unique interpretations of the ranch by F.L. Wright, E.H. Fickett and many another fashionable architect have followers, even collectors, and each has some charm, though few have the broad appeal of the Minimal Traditional and the Western Rambler. Here I must caution that many house style bloggers, eager for clicks, easy with accuracy, misidentify any old moderny looking house with the America’s Ranch House style, a style with a unique pedigree through many families.

Official and casual surveys of American house styles suggest that some 70% of American houses are ranches. Among Ranch House variations, the Mid-Century Modern, the Minimal Traditional, and the Western Rambler as already mentioned, and too the Colonial Ranch, the Storybook Ranch, the Spanish Ranch, the Craftsman Ranch, the Split-Level Ranch, something called the Modern Ranch (contemporary, a hodgepodge of designy inarticulate features). In fact, most all period house styles (including the Brutalist, International, and Glass) have been metamorphosed into a ranch house. You might test your knowledge of period house styles be identifying the period style that gives each Ranch its unique character.

The Spanish Ranch and Hacienda

The American Spanish style originated in Renaissance Spain and grew with the Spanish Empire to incorporate a world of influences. El imperio donde nunca se pone el sol, “The empire on which the sun never sets” began with the Christian reconquest of Spain from the Mohammedan, and by naval expedition continued until “Spain” contained almost 10 percent of the world’s land mass. Each world culture can be found in America’s Spanish style. Foremost of these, the Greco-Roman through its many stylistic adaptations, the Moorish, and the domestic architecture of the Hopi and Aztec.

Cliff May Hacienda, 1932. Spanish Ranch House Style

Little remains of early Spanish ranches, composed as they were of straw and mud, standing isolated on the open plains and abandoned in the shifting of peoples and alliances. Examples of Spanish ranches survive in cities where they were preserved by municipal boosters. Notable among these the Larkin House, Monterey, California, a structure of typical New England wood frame covered in adobe (mudbrick) and finished with whitewash. The Kit Carson House, Taos, New Mexico, model for many wood frame adobe houses. Also in Taos, the artsy Mabel Dodge Luhan House, a Pueblo Revival house that mirrors the nearby, ancient Taos Pueblo, and from these the hippie, off-the-grid ranches of architect Michael Renyolds and other sustainable-living radicals.

American Spanish Revival ranch houses derive from Beaux Arts architects employed by Henry Flagler when developing Florida’s East Coast (1885-1915), from California’s world expositions, the Panama–California Exposition, San Diego, 1915 – 1917, the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915, and from many talented architects who in the early 20^th Century adapted the grand Spanish style to typical American domestic taste. Richly quaint and homey in bright stucco, red-tiled roofs, wood beams, arched doors and ironwork, the Spanish Ranch was adapted by latecomers Cliff May and other Mid-Century Mods who in time reduced the style to the generic and spare. American Spanish Ranches continued to adapt, returning to first sources and best examples and lately are larger and more classical, often lacking Hopi and Moorish touches, often overemphasizing the Mediterranean.

Panama Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 1915. Ranch House Style

Larger than typical Spanish Revival ranches, Hacienda ranches remember the agricultural estate, the grandee and the noble traditions of Andalusian culture and Arabian taste. Moorish tiles, thick decorative doors, ironwork, rustic beams, stone fireplaces and open floor plans achieve an almost Baroque grandeur and theatricality. You might find that a Hacienda will feature a Juliette balcony, a great hall, a loggia or a courtyard reminiscent of the Greek peristyle (here, worth mentioning that classical Athenian houses were, like haciendas, composed of wood and mudbrick — now both are most often block and stucco) with spare, artful arrangements of nature and craft. American, Mexican, Spanish, Arabian, Greek and other influences distinguish the hacienda.

Spanish Ranch House Style Characteristics
Courtyards, gates, and fountains.
Clay tile roofs, stucco, and projecting logs.
Grated windows, the occasional arch, thick floral carved doors.
Whitewashed or in variations of warm Western beige stucco, often heavily textured.

The Rambler

The Ramler, often titled Western Rambler, California Rambler, or Rancho, “rambler” describes a rambling across the land, physically and conceptually East to West, specifically like a man over the plain or a house over the landscape. In the first instance, Eastern American houses were built on streets in blocks at right angles; Western American houses were built on hills and plains with an approaching drive or an open vista which allowed a spreading out, a rambling over the landscape. Most often, the rambler was a working ranch of livestock and crop, and its layout served its individual, self-reliant need rather than the neighborly, communal block. This singularity did not make the streetless rambler more individual than the house on block; both styles found variation within their conditions and opportunities.

1960s California Rambler ranch house style.

An early, very fine example of a Rambler is Ronald Reagan‘s “Western White House”, Rancho del Cielo near Santa Barbara California, an 1880s adobe ranch with 1970s material upgrades that rambled over the land facing this way and that adapting to times and conditions. Later modernistic Ramblers mimic the ground-hugging low pitch façade with extended eves of Rancho del Cielo and others of the type. Designed in “I”, “L”, and “U” shaped plans, the style gradually developed from the 1920s into 1930s when we find volume-opening vaulted ceilings, sliding glass doors (then recently rediscovered in ancient Rome and classical Japan) which maximized the open landscape, and attached garages (adapted from stables, allowed by code when livestock was removed), each ubiquitous in the style until the present day.

Simply designed, easily built, affordable and unpretentious, the custom and mass-produced California Ranches of Cliff May, Edward Fickett, and many others found a national audience in the post-War boom. Prominently featured articles in House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, and Sunset equated “California” ranch with “Modern”, though as May once said, “A house doesn’t have to look Modern to be modern.” In fact, May’s best designs are traditional, whether continuing the Spanish and Hacienda styles (his first ranch, 1932), the Monterey style of the Larkin House, or the Rancho tradition of President’s Reagan’s ranch.

Ranchero Ranch House Style

Politically conscious and progressively Modern, many ranch house designers (like the capable Fickett) advised the federal government and helped form codes that favored Modern architecture. This government-insider influence had an effect similar to the CIA and State Department favoring Modern Art post-War; Modern regulations and Modernists triumphed, winning personal commissions and influence over local and national policy. Housing advisor to President Eisenhower, Fickett helped “modernize” the building codes and then went on to oversee the building of some 60,000 houses including some seventy-plus communities his office designed; 20 percent of these communities won AIA awards. Fickett was noted for his “Design Excellence”, a designation now ubiquitous at the GSA, the “General Services Administration”, a federal agency which (at this writing) has yet to be reviewed by DOGE.

Rambler Ranch House Style Characteristics
Porch or entrance with Western segmented arch on columns, often spindled.
Horizontal brick wainscot with stucco or board and batten above.
Horizontal detailing on garage door.
Bits of stone or sand. The common window box or the not uncommon long horizontal planter.
Here and in most all ranches, the picture window in front, the sliding glass door in back..

Minimal Traditional

Economical and mass-producible, the Minimal Traditional ranch house can seem to lack style. In fact, Minimal Traditional houses are like temples stripped of ornamentation leaving only the basic forms, triangle and box, the encasing ceiling, floor, walls, and the utilitarian elements, windows and doors. This simplicity allows, even encourages sound design, a balance of parts which though satisfying can be boring. To excite the style, tract house builders tended to add tension in juxtaposing materials or in asymmetries that attract the eye, though in both instances there was a danger of banality that might cause buyers to turn away, even in the early days of what has become an Age of nearly universal Poor Taste.

At their best during WWII and the decades immediately following, Minimal Traditional houses were aesthetically pleasing and their simplicity allowed both additions to the pattern (in plan & elevation) and application of ornament. In the 1960s, 70s, and early 80s, a few companies in each major city grew wealthy by offering adaptations and ornamentation to the thousands of square miles of minimal traditional houses. These successful adaptations ended with government forced busing, decrease in population, and municipal financial collapse. What is left of Minimal Traditional houses is mostly a picture of decay and abandonment repelling to youth and attractive to parasites.

Minimal Traditional Ranch House Style

When at their best, neighborhoods of handsome Minimal Traditional ranch houses allowed the affordability which encourages thrift, and because of the small footprint, full families were clustered into large though close-knit communities unburdened by crushing debt and the maniacal busyness caused by the necessity of two-earner families. For many decades, Progressive Modernists mocked the unity of Minimal Traditional neighborhoods until the myth of government-managed Affordable Communities collapsed. In some places, Modernist housing complexes were lit ablaze by residents and Minimal Traditional neighborhoods when forsaken were plowed into the ground. In their place, tall faux industrial apartment boxes have risen, and these like cells to hold the soulless and family-less.

The right and proper solution to the family, community, and housing problem is to abandon government-directed multi-family projects and to encourage by zoning the building of modest, moderately priced Minimal Traditional houses.

Minimal Traditional Ranch House Style Characteristics
Long and low horizontal emphasis.
Materials frankly stated
Structural ornament, rare; applied ornament, common.

Colonial and Other Stylistic Appliqué

The Colonial is perhaps the most common style applied to a ranch house facade. Other façade variations include French, Storybook, Arts & Crafts, Prairie, the board and batten Farmhouse, and the many variations of Mid-Century Modern. Because merely façade, ranches with stylistic appliqué are not included in a primary category, as a katydid might look like a leaf but is not a leaf. A Colonial ranch house is not a Colonial house, it is a ranch house with Colonial detailing, a ranch house disguised. Chameleon-like, each disguised ranch house exaggerates or highlights the colors, qualities, and characteristics of its adaptive style.

Colonial Ranch

1960s Colonial Ranch House Style

Characteristics
Symmetrical doors and windows; the windows usually double-hung casement divided 6 over 6.
Columns, pilasters, pediments, Classical molding.
Shutters, dormers, cupolas.
Clapboard or brick, most often painted Colonial White, though sometimes pastel.
.

French Ranch

1960s French Ranch House Style

Characteristics
Quoins and segmented arches.
Tall, divided windows or French doors, and these symmetrically arranged, predictably spaced.
French Mansard roof.
Courtyards and urns and Fleur-de-lis.

Farmhouse Ranch

1960s Farm Ranch House Style

Characteristics
Timbers and other details, kitchen bell, rakes, and hanging things.
Porches and sometimes the porch swing.
Board and batten over stone bases.
White walls, barn-red walls, dark gray, green, or red roof as in the Greek Revival farmhouse.

Prairie Ranch

Prairie Ranch House Style

Characteristics
Long-slung roof with broad projecting eves.
Horizontal windows, often turning corners, and these with self-conscious F.L. Wright patterns.
Brick wainscot and other horizontal-emphasizing elements.
Earth and nature colors, usually deep and dark.

Storybook Ranch

Storybook Ranch House, 1953 West Coast Woods advertisement. Ranch House Style

Characteristics
Window boxes, dovecotes and other Cinderella detailing.
Heavy textured roof shingles split by elves or dwarfs.
Crosses and diamonds and leaded glass.
Wainscot flower boxes and scalloped barge boards.

Mid-Century Modern Ranch

Modern Ranch House Style

Characteristics
Asymmetrical though with a gabled roof; butterfly, peaked, flat, sloped, and shed roofs turn the ranch into a Mid-Century Mod house.
Glass in abundance, flat planes, and attenuated lines.
Grills, crystallographic patterns, geometrics structurally integrated or in appliqué.
Colorful doors accenting plain facades.

Split Level and Raised Ranch

The Split-Level is a common mid-20^th Century ranch house variation. As in single-level ranches, you will find split-level ranches in Colonial, Storybook and all the typical applied styles. The split-level increased in popularity during the Baby Boom because the floorplan allows for a division of living, private, formal, family. Typically, the private bedrooms are on the top split, the formal living and kitchen on the entry split, and the family recreation and laundry on the lower split. The sliding glass door is most often on the entry level split but can be found on the lower split if the lot slopes. The attached garage can be found at the lower or entry split. As in most ranches, the living areas are open and expansive, the roofs are low-pitched, there is minimal ornamentation and there is an abundance of sliding windows. You are likely to know the most famous of Split-Levels, the Brady Bunch House.

Split-Level Ranch House Style

The Raised-Ranch is a ranch doubled in concept, a structure looking like a ranch house layer cake, each layer identical, though the uppermost is capped with a roof. The Raised-Ranch has an open floorplan, horizontal windows, low-pitched roof, and all other conceptual and material details of the typical ranch. From the late 20^th Century through the first quarter of the 21^st Century, a modern variation on the ranch developed, the McRanch, a style without style designed by builders and modern architects.

Raised Ranch House Style

Ranch House Style Characteristics

Space and Floor Plan
A ranch house is commonly one story, occasionally a story-and-a-half in split-levels with long-low ranch characteristics.
Ranch houses will often have an attached garage or contiguous carport (an innovation). Before the 1940s, automobiles were rare and a garage was known as a “stable” suitable to livestock, incompatible with houses.
Among split-levels, the side-splits and raised ranches are most common.
You will often find over-sized second story additions added to ranches to accommodate growing families or homeowner ambition.
Roof Features
Low-pitched shingle roofs are most common, though occasionally roofs are tin or tile if some period style is wedded to the ranch.
Eves are tight to corners or overhanging; the tight, traditional, the overhanging, modern.
Chimneys tend to be broader and lower than use requires.
Fenestration
Picture windows are a feature, almost an innovation of the ranch house, as are horizontal windows which on modish houses might wrap around corners defying structure – here, fad before form before function, and after, leaks.
Structure and Materials
Wall-cladding of brick, stone, or wood, or two or all in combination. Sometimes the clads are balanced as in a Mondrian picture; sometimes like a psychopathic Picasso when the artsy architect is eager for attention. Best cladding examples are modest, honest as would be found in a slowly growing ranch whose additions were added by need, whose materials came from the surrounding landscape. Late last century, entire neighborhoods clad their ranches in aluminum or vinyl siding, post construction, because people grew lazy and materials grew cheap, and too, people believed in the progress of plastic.
Proportions
As in the original prairie ranch, “I”, “U”, and “L” shapes are typical, and these shapes are universally long, low, and stretching.
Technically, a ranch house is modern because strictly horizontal. A classical house balances the horizontal with the vertical. A classic ranch recalls the prairie’s low stretched plain. The Classical ranch recalls 3,000 years of Classive temples.
Ornamentation
Untutored facades are sincere, stripped of period decorations. If contractor designed, there is a tendency to pretentious hodgepodge. In best examples, period style ornament is tastefully adapted to the ranch form. In unfortunate examples, period styles are pinned-on as if by someone blindfolded.
Surroundings
Bushes enhance the well-designed ranch house, and bushes often disguise imperfectly conceived transitions part to part, house to ground. The trimmed lawn green and straight and weed-free is most typical and most appropriate. In hot climates, shell or stone for drive and borders is suitable. Everywhere around the ranch you will find concrete, especially in backyards surrounding the pool. Pools and shrub boarders tend like kidneys to undulate; some notion equating wavy lines with freedom and originality – in this “originality”, each ranch house backyard is just like all ranch house backyards.