Illustration Caption: 66 Adelaide A. Tichenor house, Long Beach, 1904-05 (altered). Overhead view taken from the north after addition of the garage in 1916.

Illustration Caption: 67 Adelaide A. Tichenor house. Early view of front (south) facade prior to enclosure of the second-floor balcony.

Illustration Caption: 68 Adelaide A. Tichenor house. Garden.

[...] First among these are views of the Japanese pavilions in the Imperial Garden compound. Mrs. Tichenor's travels with Jennie Reeve had recently exposed her to Asian architecture, and the St. Louis fair had the most extensive and authentic representation of Japanese architecture ever seen in America, more than at Philadelphia in 1876, or even Chicago in 1893. Charles's own interest in Japanese architecture had recently been engaged in a very real way through the Edward Morse book. He exercised his specific knowledge in the plain board walls, exterior post treatments, and covered galleries of the Bandini and Hollister houses, and the artistic stone walkways and hanging exterior lanterns of the Jennie Reeve house. Accordingly, the stage was set for a more thorough integration of Japanese design elements into a house for Mrs. Tichenor.
The Tichenor house consists of a two-story block with two single-story wings attached to form a U-shaped structure sheltering a courtyard garden. The general massing of the house, the sheltered, upper-level gallery, and the garden bridge evoke authentic Japanese forms. There is nonetheless something essentially familiar about the house relative to the firm's previous work. Its clinker-brick-filled half-timbering on the lower level recalls their fascination with historic English architecture, and the U-shaped plan echoes the nineteenth-century California casa de rancho. The formal entry is on the south end of the house, near the edge of the bluffs facing the ocean, as far as possible from the main street.
Visitors could approach only by way of First Place, a quiet cul-de-sac paralleling the east side of the house. As Randell Makinson has noted, Charles Greene may have designed this two-story portion of the house with reference to the main pavilion at the Japanese Imperial Garden in St. Louis.

Illustration Caption: 69 Adelaide A. Tichenor house. Early view of courtyard garden taken from the original teahouse structure (demolished).

Illustration Caption: 70 Adelaide A. Tichenor house. View from living room toward the inglenook and doors to the garden.

Its modified irimoya tile |roof has also been noted by historian-architect Clay Lancaster, and overt Japanese inspiration was cited as early as 1909 by Aymar Embury in his One Hundred Country Houses.
As focal point at the back of the garden a small tile-roofed teahouse another Japanese-inspired element was placed with the back of its rear wall to Ocean Avenue. Inside, the great-room concept, also borrowed from the Bandini house, was employed in the contiguous reception, living, and dining areas. The dining room actually occupies a raised platform, two steps higher than the level of the great room, creating a somewhat more compressed, intimate space for dining. The furnishings reflect an Asian influence as well. A crude interpretation of the Chinese lift appears repeatedly in the Tichenor drawer pulls, a precursor to the highly refined use of the same device in the Greenes' later work.
Whether despite or because of Charles Greene's earnest attempts to combine his interpretation of Mrs. Tichenor's initial wishes with her later demands, the house cannot be considered an unqualified success. The strong-willed Adelaide Tichenor did not allow her architect to do as he pleased during the design process. One alteration in particularher insistence on enclosing a portion of the open balcony on the upper level compromised the compositional balance of the ocean elevation.
The heavy, box-like mass of the two wings, with their relatively scarce window area, also does not convincingly resonate with the carefully composed two-story portion of the house. Relatively speaking, Charles Greene had only recently begun to explore combining oriental and occidental design elements. He appreciated the implications of California's shared position on the rim of the Pacific Ocean and he increasingly looked to Japan for inspiration in developing a new, regionally appropriate idiom. It would be another two years, however, before this interest matured to the point of broadly defining the identity of the firm's work.

In the Tichenor house, a pergola stretches nearly the entire length of one wing and a gazebo, a favorite Victorian structure, creates a backdrop for the extensive planting around the house.
The frame of the entire ground floor of the Tichenor house is filled with clinker bricks; the framing itself comes closest to the feeling of the medieval half-frame with the wooden members joined by pegs.
In the Tichenor interior, the Greenes began to interweave their influences, with the Oriental becoming pleasurable decoration. Furniture drawings express arts and crafts concepts, with chairs reminiscent of Morrisonian straightforwardness and even a �Morris chair� design per se included. A desk was designed with batten doors, and tables conform to the standard arts and crafts placement of legs. Joinery and pegging, prominent aspects of design, suggest the crafted look and no inlay is found. In material, a handsome screen with leather panels seems molded in the English tradition, yet, at the same time, the Greenes' ingenious adaptation of Ming-inspired design elements appears in all the furniture. Chinese-style bracketing underscores the chair seats, and the lift pattern, a typical motif in Chinese domestic furniture, begins to make its notable contribution to Greene & Greene pieces. Leaded-glass windows in the dining room meld both influences, depicting the theme of birds in flight. Finally, a doorplate of metal, designed by the Greenes, depicts an owl, symbol, in the mind of man, of intelligence and the otherworldly.

Continuing the direction and excitement expressed in the earlier work of 1904, the Adelaide Tichenor house wove together the "U" plan, the inglenook-solarium geometry of the Vancouver house, the total interior concepts of the Reeve house, the expressed timber structural system and, for the first time, provided an opportunity to design nearly all of the household furniture.
Mrs. Tichenor was an intelligent and determined woman who did not hesitate to voice her opinions. She played an active role in the design and development of the house and the challenge she presented was a constant stimulus to the architects. However, Charles was beginning to exhibit a creative stubbornness which on occasion prompted his client to dramatic outbursts in their correspondence.
Despite their disagreements, however, and the delays in construction which were increasingly typical of the Greenes' work, the end product in 1905 was a house of superb design. The association with Mrs. Tichenor also opened the doors to a wealthy clientele who were to indulge the Greenes with large budgets and, consequently, to a degree, permitted a disregard of financial restraint.

Illustration Caption: Adelaide M. Tichenor house, 852 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, 1904. The Tichenor variation on the court plan concept further narrowed the interior space to that of a protected terrace, and a visual garden developed in accord with the interests in the Orient of both client and architects.

The �U� shaped plan was developed with a second story across the base, and the legs were brought closer together to form a more intimate terrace. Because of the chilly winds on the ocean front, the space beyond the terrace was essentially treated as a visual garden and the eaves were clipped back closer to the house. The mutual interest in the Orient of both client and architects led to the selection of green tiles for the roof, an arched bridge over the pond in the garden, and a ceremonial roofed gateway from the main street into the rear garden.
In spite of the delicacy of the other portions of the design, the ground floor was carried out in a bold half-timber fashion with rugged clinker brick filling in the exterior walls. Roofs of the one-story portions were kept at a very low pitch and low railings were provided to allow their use as sun decks. The flatness of these roofs and the extremely brief overhangs of the two rear wings make these portions of the structure resemble two giant railroad pullmans backed up to the two-story frontal portion of the house.

Illustration Caption: Adelaide M. Tichenor house.
Photographs courtesy of Documents Collection, College of Environmental Design, UCB. The early photograph of the rear of the house under construction reveals the �Japanese� bridge and the Oriental character of the structure. That character was not hidden with time and plant growth, but was rather enhanced as shown in the later photograph of the torii gate.

Illustration Caption: Watercolor drawing by Charles Greene. Courtesy of Greene and Greene Library. Although perspective sketches were seldom developed for the Greenes' clients, this watercolor masterfully characterizes the rich detail of the Tichenor house.

On the interior, the plan was by far the most sophisticated of the new Greene and Greene style. The refined �U� plan was far removed from the inexpensive ranch house. By virtue of the flexible modular structural system the living room, inglenook, solarium, sun room, entry and dining room each had a separate identity and yet were all part of the vast open sunlit interior. By use of slight changes of level and configuration the Greenes gave variety and definition to the spaces without altering the interpenetration of open space. The fireside inglenook and the contrasting windowed solarium achieved a more relaxed and informal living pattern than was found in the axial balance of the R. Henry C. Green living room in Vancouver.

The interior, almost exclusively carried out in wood, was a fortunate blending of client-architect interests. Mrs. Tichenor, who was attending the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, wrote to Charles: We arrived here only yesterday, but the more I see of it, the more I feel that I do not want to go on with my home until you see this � I think you will never regret it if you arrange your affairs to come at once � you will be able to get so many ideas of woods and other things for finishing what you now have on. Please consider this; as I said before, I am anxious to have you use the knowledge you may gain here on my own house. It will be impossible for me to describe to you the effect of the woods. There are things I would like to buy too, but I dare not until I know what you are going to do.
Subsequent correspondence reveals that Charles did make the trip to the Exposition. Records show that terra cotta work and Grueby pottery were ordered for the Tichenor house, a significant tie with the eastern Arts and Crafts Movement. The Greenes' furniture and lighting fixture designs were now going beyond the influence of Gustav Stickley. Their softened lines began to show not only a maturity but also a relaxation which occasionally led to a little frivolity as, for instance, in the owl motif in the special door handle escutcheons for Mrs. Tichenor.

Illustration Caption: Adelaide M. Tichenor house, first floor bedroom. Courtesy of Greene and Greene Library. Interior detail of living room and raised dining room. Architectural Record, October, 1906.

Illustration Caption:
Facing Page: Living room opening to central court with inglenook to left. Courtesy of Documents Collection, College of Environmental Design, UCB.

Seagulls at sunset were cut from sheet lead and fastened to the stained leaded glass windows in sunset colors of blue and orange Tiffany glass. Greene and Greene had here the opportunity to fully explore their abilities with furniture, stained glass lighting fixtures and windows, hardware design and the selection of many art objects and pottery for the interiors. Charles Greene designed an owl pattern at Mrs. Tichenor's request for the door handle escutcheons and certain metalwork in the bedroom furniture.

As the Greenes' practice grew their insistence upon paying personal attention to each detail created delays at both design and construction stages. As a result, waiting clients often expressed anxieties. This was particularly true with the Tichenor house. The work was still unfinished in September of 1905 which prompted another revealing letter from Mrs. Tichenor: I must insist that every design be given to the proper party for art glass lighting fixtures, etc. before Friday. Whether you have time or not I want you to take it. I am not willing to wait until your brother returns. He may not come Monday, and if he does it will take time for him to adjust himself, etc. again. That is only another excuse for postponing � Can you leave your Pasadena customers long enough so that I may hope to have my house during my life time? Do you wish me to make a will telling who is to have the house if it is finished? From August 1st to December 7th is a long time�and the glass not in, hardware not in doors, etc. � I have told you often enough, it seems to me, for you to know by this time that the sun room is to be a reception room and as such must be shut off. I have told you that all sorts of persons who are strangers to me, come and ask for me by name. The maid must not allow them to enter my living rooms. I have told you I had had things stolen in that way. I told you that was one reason I wanted a partly enclosed porch but you enclosed it, contrary to my wish and I was obliged to put a porch on the second floor. Now the only way seems to be to have a screen large enough to be a screen, not a mere ornament. I have explained this to you so many times; showed you how I must have the step made an entrance door etc. � P.S. These little book shelves you have made will hold about 1/5 of my books. Do you wish me to put the others in the fire? I suppose I am to burn all of my pictures too? I see no place to hang any except in the bedroom and I do not believe that bedrooms should have them.

Her last comment regarding the lack of space or opportunity for hanging paintings was most appropriate. The total extent to which Greene and Greene designed their interiors often left little opportunity for the owner to insert his or her own personality or belongings. However, in the Tichenor design, there were adjustments made by both parties and the end result possessed a rare unity and spirit. It was as though here the Greenes put together in one package the entire ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Illustration Caption: Josephine van Rossem house No. 2, 210 N. Grand Avenue, Pasadena, 1904. Courtesy of Pasadena Historical Society. Mrs. van Rossem engaged in real estate and built this house for specific clients in the East.

While the Tichenor house dominated the later months of 1904 as well as 1905 there were other clients to be considered. Design and construction included another speculative house for Josephine van Rossem, a tidy bungalow for Mrs. Kate A. White, and a curious design for the home of the Reverend Alexander Merwin.

Adelaide Tichenor House, 1904

Illustration Caption: Charles Greene original watercolor rendering of the Adelaide Tichenor house, Long Beach, 1904.

Unlike the limited site and restricted funding for the Jennie Reeve house, her friend Adelaide Tichenor's substantial budget afforded the Greenes opportunities for even further advancement in the structure of her house, and the design of superb gardens, outdoor living areas, interiors, furniture, and accessories.

Adelaide Tichenor was born in Ravenna, Ohio, was educated at Oberlin College, studied art in Boston, and taught there and later in Redlands, California. In 1885 she married Lester Schuyler Tichenor and was active in the civic life of San Bernardino until her husband's death in 1892. She then moved to Long Beach, where she was a founder of the Ebell Club, participated in the establishment of the public library, and was appointed to the commission to develop the vast shipyards and port facilities. Her long involvement in social, business, and cultural affairs gained her the reputation as the �Mother of Long Beach.� In 1902 she and her friend Jennie Reeve embarked on a two-year world tour, during which she became fascinated by the arts of China and Japan.

By the time of the Reeve house, the Greene and Greene practice had grown steadily. The Long Beach houses were a substantial distance from the Greenes' main office in downtown Los Angeles and were just two of the more than two dozen jobs in various stages of production at the time. Client demands were becoming more than they could handle together, making it necessary for them to divide the work.

delaide Tichenor's house fell to Charles Greene. Their mutual interests in the arts of China and Japan immediately drew Adelaide and Charles together, and her genuine respect for his talents further enabled Charles to continue exploring his ideas with an unprecedented freedom. As the initial concepts of her house were developing, Adelaide traveled to Saint Louis to attend the Louisiana Purchase International Exposition. In a letter dated June 10, 1904, and addressed to Mr. C. S. Greene, she wrote:

We arrived here only yesterday, but the more I see of it, the more I feel that I do not want to go on with my home until you see this. � I really think you will never regret it if you arrange your affairs to come at once. � Please consider this: as I have said before, I am anxious to have you use the knowledge you may gain here on my own house. � There are things I would like to buy too, but I dare not until I know what you are going to do.

It was virtually a command, and considering the fact that the firm had on exhibition three of their projects at the fair, it is easy to understand Charles's immediate decision to make the trip.

Just how far the Tichenor design had progressed before this trip is unclear. The half-timber construction, the faint Tudor cast of the ground floor with its infill of clinker bricks, seem to be a carryover from Charles's 1901 visit to England. A study of the final drawings, however, shows that his visit to the Imperial Japanese Garden at the fair had a significant impact on the design. As Clay Lancaster observed in his book on the American bungalow: That the Greene brothers got details for their work from authentic Japanese sources is evident from the forms themselves. � The most distinct Japanese motif [in the Tichenor house] was not the rear courtyard, even with its arched bridge, but the main mass of the house. Its bank fenestration, horizontal balconies, corner accents and tile irimoyai roof, were it not for the chimney, present a convincing Japanese impression.

In an earlier writing, Lancaster summed up the importance of the work of the Greene brothers with this statement: Nowhere in Western building have the architects identified themselves with their work so completely as have Greene and Greene, in the selection of every tile and brick and pane of glass, and in the shaping of every timber that went into their houses. Although never in Japan themselves, their high standards for quality were the nearest to those of the Far East of all the American builders whose work I have examined, style similarities resulting as a natural consequence.

Indeed, a comparison of features in the Imperial Japanese Garden with the final design of the Tichenor house shows many similarities. The principal roof form was remarkably like that of the Main Pavilion. The second-floor galleries, which wrap around the front and west elevations, and the character of the reflecting pond evoke imagery from the Kinkaku, or Golden Pavilion. In addition Charles and Adelaide spent considerable time selecting various items to furnish the house, including several large Grueby pottery urns for the living room.

Charles's design responded to the 60-by-260-foot corner lot that stretched between Ocean Boulevard and the bluffs overlooking the sandy beach. A short cul-de-sac street ran along one side of the property. The front of the house faced the bluff. The rear garden turned its back on the boulevard. The primary living space stretched laterally on both levels, across the narrow portion of the site facing the bluffs. The graceful roof line, highly influenced by the Japanese Pavilion at the fair, became the single most significant element of the overall design.

With the Tichenor house being located far from the relatively arid climate of Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley, the garden courtyard was adapted to the cool temperatures and breezes of the beach environment. The narrow court was defined by two single-story wings of the house, and while accessible for outdoor use, it served more as a visual transition from interior spaces to the reflecting pond. Beyond and on the visual axis of the living-room view was a teahouse constructed of clinker-brick columns, with its back wall to the noisy street and sheltered by a timber-and-tile roof similar to that on the house. This small structure provided the garden with a strong visual and physical conclusion.

Illustration Caption: The ocean-facing facade of the Tichenor house, nearing completion, was dramatically disfigured by the client's demand that the upper balcony be enclosed, an act that destroyed the integrity of the roof design as well as Charles Greene's creative spirit.

Illustration Caption: The four-part folding screen for Mrs.Tichenor, constructed of ash, drew its character from the leather hinge detail and responded to the client's fascination with the owl. This detail was carried out on several of the furniture designs.

Because of the large number of commissions in the Greene office, the relatively long distance to the Tichenor site, several major design changes during construction, and Adelaide's strong need for more personal attention, there continued a succession of letters, first to Charles and then to Henry and Charles, delineating her displeasure with delays, costs and various facets of the design. In one she wrote:

Can you leave your Pasadena customers long enough so that I may hope to have my house during my lifetime? If you wish me to make a will who is to have the house if it is ever finished. � These little book shelves you have made will hold about 1/5 of my books. Do you wish me to put the others in the fire? I suppose I am to burn all my pictures too. I see no place to hang any except in the bedroom, and I do not believe that bedrooms should have them.

Illustration Caption: With the encouragement of Mrs. Tichenor, Charles stretched his repertoire in lighting design, advancing the Greene and Greene decorative arts seemingly overnight.

In the most damaging disagreement, Adelaide insisted on the enclosure of the second-floor roof terrace overlooking the ocean, an argument that would have broken Charles's spirit completely had it not been for their mutual fascination with the designs for the furniture, lighting, and accessories. As it was, the enclosure of the roof terrace so destroyed the integrity of the roof form, which Charles had adapted so lovingly from the Japanese Main Pavilion, that he lost all passion for the project upon its final completion. On the contrary and in spite of all her frustrations during the construction of the house, Mrs. Tichenor was completely enchanted with her home throughout her life, hardly changing the arrangement of the furnishings.

The one area where architect and client were in complete agreement was in the development of the furnishings. Adelaide provided Charles with the broadest opportunity he had had to stretch his skills in the areas of interior design, furniture, lighting, and accessories. Where his prior furniture had drawn inspiration from the linear designs of Gustav Stickley, the Tichenor creations introduced soft sculptural nuances drawn from the client and architect's interests in the arts of the Orient.

Illustration Caption: Charles's design for the upright secretary for Mrs. Tichenor represents the pivotal turning point in the Greenes' furniture designs. Thereafter, the Greenes departed further and further from the linearity of their earlier works and followed a path of refinement of materials, artfully crafted in soft subtle sculptural forms.

Illustration Caption: A straight-back chair designed for Mrs. Tichenor was not made to their design detail, substantially weakening the structure of the back of the chair. This alerted the Greenes to the need to seek more-skilled craftsmen for future work.

The single most significant piece of furniture demonstrating a stylistic transition from the severe linearity of Stickley's influence to the soft sculptural character of their own furniture style was the upright writing desk for the bedroom, which makes careful use of the �lift� in the side panels, the drawer handles, and in the cleats of the door details. In the dining table and other pieces, similar forms are combined with joinery of mortise-and-tenon construction that employ expressed pegging. Incised slits in the backs of the dining chairs hinted at elements of the Greenes' work that would become highly refined during the following two years. Charles's drawing for the desk chair shows a clear understanding of the construction needed for back and leg support. But in the workshop where the Tichenor furniture was made, the seat rails were incorrectly cut into the back leg, weakening the back of the chair and causing fractures that required later owners to make clumsy repairs using common metal angles. What now became perfectly clear was that, although Charles Greene had found his mid-career furniture design vocabulary, the firm had yet to find the craftsmen who could express the designs to meet the increasing demands of the brothers. However, this dilemma would soon be resolved back in Pasadena by the association of the Greenes with wood and glass artisans during work on the Henry M. Robinson house.

Illustration Caption: The client's and architects' mutual interest in the arts of the Orient prompted the marriage of a diamond-shaped Korean vase reglazed by Charles with his original design for the shade that depicted his fascination with sailing ships and the sea.

The original design for the Tichenor house was vitally important to the development of the Greenes' work. The concept of unifying site, gardens, structure, interiors, lighting, and furnishings was here accomplished on a scale they had never before had the liberty to explore. Though there were delays, conflicts, and frustrations in both design and construction, the final product is nonetheless one of the most important residential designs of the Greenes' career and of the international Arts and Crafts movement.

Illustration Caption: The client's and architects' mutual interest in the arts of the Orient prompted the marriage of a diamond-shaped Korean vase reglazed by Charles with his original design for the shade that depicted his fascination with sailing ships and the sea.

Because of the rapid development of Long Beach properties near the ocean, the Reeve house was moved twice, making more difficult the tasks of those documenting its history. Both moves were made by Dr. V. Ray Townsend, son of one of the original Indiana Colony founders of Pasadena, who had been living in Long Beach since 1907. In 1916 he purchased the Reeve house, which was then up on blocks ready to be moved. He relocated it seven blocks inland and rented it out between 1919 and 1927, during which time he and his family occupied the Darling house in Claremont. In 1927 he again moved the house, this time for his own use, and sought out Henry Greene to design the additions he desired as well as the landscaping, fencing, and furniture to coordinate with the original pieces.

Illustration Caption: Tichenor House, Long Beach, 1904, west view

�THE TICHENOR HOUSE � seems like the utmost limits to which Japanese architecture could be stretched, and still meet American requirements � so eloquent that one is tempted to believe that Greene and Greene must have studied the [Japanese] architecture on its native soil. � The various materials used in this house are quite along Japanese lines, although each by itself is a well-known one. The half timber work with brick filling is not uncommon, and yet because of the extreme roughness with which the bricks are used, it gives the effect of a new material � nor is tile unusual on the roof � the brackets and the balustrade are very simply handled in a way thoroughly Japanese, but with a cleverness that is clearly due to the architects and not to the source.� The Tichenor Oriental garden was complete with pool, pergola, rocks and specimen plants.
[Aymar Embury 11, ONE HUNDRED COUNTRY HOUSES, 1909.]

Illustration Caption: copper chimney top

Illustration Caption: front gate