The Craftsman style emerged in the early 1900s as a response to Victorian-era ornamentation. It emphasized natural materials like wood, stone, and metal. The American Craftsman movement drew from British ideals of returning to handmade goods and craftsmanship amid industrialization. Influenced by rustic cottages, log cabins, and exotic cultures, Craftsman architecture translated into smaller, affordable bungalows. These one-story homes actually originated from 18th-century British efforts to design standardized housing based on indigenous structures in colonial India. The archetypal single-level bungalow with a veranda on spacious grounds was adapted globally wherever Britain ruled.
The style rejected chaotic Victorian décor. Instead, it celebrated the inherent beauty of raw materials worked by hand. Seeking to preserve craftsmanship threatened by industry, the Craftsman movement valued tradition and authentic production. Adopting vernacular elements like the practical bungalow made these ideals accessible through cozy, affordable houses. The Craftsman style thus spread rapidly as it reconnected people to simpler times and places through architecture.
The Arts & Crafts movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was considered an aesthetic complement to the progressive political views gaining popularity in the Northeast at the time. Women created half of the thousand craft objects displayed at the first American Arts & Crafts Exhibition in Boston in 1897.
Some utopian craft communities formed where artisans lived together and sold their handmade goods. In 1901, a Wisconsin furniture-maker named Gustav Stickley began publishing The Craftsman magazine, encouraging readers to build and furnish their own homes with local materials and providing free plans.
The unique stone resort Grove Park Inn (GPI), a superb example of Arts & Crafts design, was built from huge boulders excavated or blasted out of the side of Sunset Mountain. Like the pyramids, this structure was meant to last into eternity. That significance, combined with the spectacular overkill that the GPI has the largest collection of mission and Arts & Crafts furniture in the country, makes it a MUST. VISIT., when visiting or living in Asheville
Though “craftsman style” initially referred only to homes built using these plans, it expanded to include any house with Arts & Crafts architectural details. Ironically, companies like Sears later sold do-it-yourself craftsman-style home kits, representing mass production, which the movement rebelled against, yet also promoting the hands-on ethos it valued.
Bungalows and Arts & Craft homes are all over Asheville; every older neighborhood is full of them. These were well-built kit homes with exceptional millwork that included unique details like cozy breakfast nooks, phone niches, expertly crafted furnace air intakes, 12-inch high baseboards, door and window trim, and wavy windows. Kit home suppliers offered immense variety, and one could specify window and door designs, nooks, staircases, molding, and exterior embellishments. In this catalog, prices were substantially lower, and a $700. or $800. home from a century ago is selling in Asheville for 1000% more.
They’re being renovated all around town as the bones are so superior…many homes built of of virgin forest milled around Johnson City, Tn. Once cured, cut, and numbered for construction, the homes were shipped to Asheville on flatbed train carts, where local companies like Coleman Construction assembled the kits creating many developments around town. The Five Points, Montford, West Asheville, and Kenilworth, have many of these wonderful homes, most on substantial sized lots.
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