Classic Box (1890 to 1910)

It's not a very appealing name, Classic Box, but it certainly is descriptive. A two-story structure, resembling a Kinney shoebox in shape and a roman temple in detail, this style is typical to West Coast cities which experienced a burst of population growth at the turn of the century--Seattle, Portland and Oakland. Don't think of the "box" as an uni-maginative geometric shape. Consider it, instead, a creative response to site constraints and fashionable trends. The Classic Box pulled in its wings in contrast to the spread eagle posture of the Queen Anne. The parts of the house were retracted into an orderly package, with flush planes, flattened or-namentation, and few protruding parts. Even bay windows, when they exist on the side or front, are compressed, a broad angle minimizing the distance of the projection.

At the same time, the rectangular layout recalled the floor plan of the colonists' homes they had set out to imitate. The earliest settlers in the 17th century had designed the first American dwellings no more than one room deep under the main roof. The more sophisticated Colonial style which soon followed, and persisted as the most common style in the 18th century, was just as wide, but twice as deep. Called "double-pile," this floor plan consisted of two rows of rooms, broadside facing front. Reinterpreted a hundred years later in Oakland, the long narrow lots demanded that the double-pile plan be reoriented, with the short end addressing the street instead.

Typically, the front door is on one side, leading to a foyer devoted to a "U" or "L" shaped staircase sporting two knobbed railing balusters per step. The stairway landing, bathed in pastel light from the stained glass overhead, boasts a built-in bench whose hinged top reveals a hidden storage bin. Behind the foyer there's a closet, then a bathroom, and at the back, the kitchen. On the flip side of the double-pile plan, the living room, dining room and wash porch are lined up.

Colonial Revival details include hefty ceiling beams, waist-high wainscoting, and classic columns in the archways--all in a dark finish. This was the period when hardwood floors came into their own, and the regularity of the floor plan was emphasized by the parquet border inlaid around the perimeter of square rooms. A plan book published by the Pacific States Savings, Loan and Building Company around 1900 offered an elegant but economical ten-room house that we would call a Classic Box. Its construction cost? Only $10,000.

The Classic Box is capped by a broad peak. A dor-mer window sticks its head out from the middle--a hipped roof within a hipped roof. At the cornice, the eaves are usually enclosed, either a shallow re-lief of plaster patera or swag garlands on the frieze. Patera are abstracted petals in concentric circles. Swag garlands are carved compositions of fruit and flowers, draped like a piece of cloth over two supports, and "tied" with plaster ribbons. Also known as festoons, the garlands sometimes appear in a band between the first and second story. While this decoration recalls Victorian ornament, other var-iants of the Classic Box anticipate the Craftsman era. On these later versions, the eaves are no longer enclosed, and the exposed rafters constitute decoration derived directly from structure.

There is great variety among window shapes on a single Classic Box. The dormer window is short and broad, like a winking eye. The double-hung win-dows on the facade have a squarish appearance, and on some, the upper portion is partitioned into eight smaller panes, akin to its colonial ancestors. The window arrangement is fairly symmetrical in front, but on the side, windows of assorted size are scattered chaotically across a large page lined by slender, clapboard siding. Some of these windows are as small as twelve inches by eighteen inches; some are stained glass; some have diamond-shaped leaded partitions and do not even pretend to open. Despite the discrepancies, every window in a Neoclassic Box is invariably framed by a wide strip of flat, wood trim.

A common variation on the Classic Box is the Palladian-style Classic Box.

Excerpt from "Rehab Right - How to Rehabilitate Your Oakland House
Without Sacrificing Architectural Assets"