Featured image credit: Martin Green
A home is a promise of sanctuary; a shelter from the outside world. But today’s LA Home Spotlight looks at a Pasadena palace that sought to tastefully blur the lines between that sanctuary and the outside world. The Gamble House, sometimes referred to as the David B. Gamble House, would create such an impression that it would go on to be regarded as the leading masterpiece of the American Arts and Crafts movement. And while the Gambles seemed to adore it, the home’s dense wood-on-wood aesthetic enchanted the world as a whole by holding a mirror up to nature itself.
At Home with the Gambles
Understandably frustrated with the frigid winters of Cincinnati, David B. Gamble (son of James Gamble, the founder of the colossal Procter & Gamble conglomerate) and his wife, Mary, were in the market for a winter home. Their search led them to the mellow foothills of Pasadena, where an architectural duo of brothers was making a splash with their rustic yet regal take on the American Craftsman home. In 1907, the Gambles hired the brothers’ architectural firm, Greene and Greene, to bring the ultimate Craftsman home into existence. By 1909, they had created what many architecture aficionados would consider the definitive example of the American Arts and Crafts movement. Sorry, Sam Maloof!
Throughout our Home Spotlight series, we’ve recounted plenty of projects that ended disastrously for the residents who quickly learned that living in a unique home wasn’t always comfortable. The story of the Gamble House is not one of those tales. It seemed the Gambles were more than satisfied with their purchase, choosing to spend their winters in the Pasadena Craftsman until their respective deaths. In 1929, Mary was the last of the couple to pass away.
Her sister, Julia, promptly moved in, residing in the Gamble House until her own death in 1943. Three years later, David and Mary’s son, Cecil, moved into the Gamble House along with his wife, Louise. Though they briefly entertained the idea of selling the family winter home, they balked at a potential buyer’s plans to paint the interior white. By 1966, the Gamble family reached a decision to donate the Gamble House to the city of Pasadena under an express agreement with the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture. But we’ll return to that later.
A Stirring Representative of the Arts and Crafts Movement
Several themes flow through the inspiring structure of the Gamble House, but none more prominent or complex than a celebration of the natural world, a central tenet of the American Arts and Crafts movement. For those unfamiliar with the trend, it basically pushed to return focus to fine craftsmanship over the mass industrial production of the Victorian era.
Though its influence reached across the globe, North America enjoyed a distinct enthusiasm for artists working within the movement, since it intrinsically promoted the growing popularity of progressive political philosophy in the nation. This was perhaps most strongly exemplified in the rise of the American Craftsman home, a focused architectural style that, along with hallmark features, emphasized quality handiwork, natural materials, and meticulous attention to detail.
The Gamble House as a Celebration of the Natural World
Greene and Greene’s Gamble House presented what many would go on to conclude was the defining example of America’s efforts in the Arts and Crafts arena. And a leading reason was the home’s seamless incorporation of the pastoral setting that surrounded it. The Gamble House stood proudly perched upon a verdant hill, seeming to stand dominion over the Arroyo Seco, a river that could be flowing with aqueous bounty or arid dust and stone depending on the season.
Inside and out, the Gamble House is a diverse assembly of rich woods, a beautifully flowing chimera of stained maple and oak, interwoven with cedar, teak, and mahogany. Each room invites you to compare and contrast the grainy veins of ancient trees, meandering across each surface in delightfully mesmerizing patterns. Greene and Greene sanded down every edge and sharp corner to add to the home’s inviting essence with gently curving contours.
But the adoration for nature is further emphasized in direct recreations of flora in stained glass windows, metal accents, and even the incorporation of semi-precious stones seemingly in an attempt to echo the opulent heights that the natural world can reach. Stucco and brick support stones pulled from the Arroyo Seco, or hide beneath viney layers of lush creeping fig. But, as if to say that a reverent homage to nature could never compete with the real thing, the dining area devotes three of its sides to a terrace with the home’s idyllic garden stretching beyond.
The Rule of Thirds
That triple-sided face to the garden brings us to the next theme of the home: a partiality for triptychs. Features tend to appear in threes throughout the Gamble House. You’re instantly greeted with this motif when you walk up to find three front doors standing side by side. Wandering throughout the structure, you’ll begin to notice that decorative flourishes and elements often appear together in threes. These are often slightly (and intentionally) uneven, reflecting the asymmetry so often found in the natural world. But the details aren’t always so minor. After all, the home itself is a three-story structure. And each story varies in height.
A New Japanese Influence
Even the themes come in threes, with arguably the final obvious pattern of the Gamble House being its decidedly Japanese inspiration. Throughout the structure, hints of traditional Japanese design can be found in everything from windows and doors to the custom-made furniture. Even the trinity of front doors is punctuated with a Japanese black pine design in its decorative glass.
The Greene brothers found inspiration years earlier at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where an authentic Japanese Ho-o-Den had been erected. For many American architects, this 1893 display was their introduction to Japanese design. It’s even rumored that Frank Lloyd Wright developed his renowned prairie style after seeing the same Ho-o-Den.
Even the Furniture…
Though we typically keep the focus on architecture and structural design in our Home Spotlight series, we’d be remiss if we neglected the custom-built furniture of the Gamble House. Somewhat similar to the Kellogg Doolittle House we featured last November, the furniture was intended to be an integral part of the home. The Greene brothers commissioned a team of reliable Pasadena artisans whom they had trusted through several previous projects. Employing the same woods, metals, and stone that had gone into the house itself, this team adhered to the Greenes’ exacting standards, crafting furniture with a very deliberate purpose and place within the floor plan.
A Socially-Focused Floorplan
The Greenes were allowed a certain liberty when it came to orchestrating the floor plan of the Gamble House, owing to a time in Pasadena when there was much more space to work with. Today, spatial constraints would prune the home into a much more demure Craftsman. Yet, there’s a relatively simple, straightforward layout overall; one in which rooms ring a common, communal area. The voluminous sitting room stands in stark contrast to the startlingly tiny bedrooms. Perhaps this was a purposeful method of guiding social interactions, reserving the bedrooms for only the most personal moments in the residents’ lives. The living room’s distinct lack of doors further supports this theory.
New Pinnacles of Curb Appeal
It should come as no surprise that the yard of the Gamble House was held in the same regard as the interior of the structure. After all, this was a structure that celebrated nature. Therefore, the Greenes took every opportunity to emphasize the beauty of the natural world, reaching new pinnacles of curb appeal.
Purple flowers pepper the garden in the springtime. Walkways laid from Arroyo Seco stone meander across the lush, open lawn. There’s even a pond perfect for daily reflection, punctuated by smooth stones and reeds waving gently in the Pasadena breeze. As if inviting the home’s denizens to take in these natural wonders as often as possible, the Greenes attached porches to three of the second-floor bedrooms.
Why the Gamble House Looks So Familiar to Pop Culture Buffs
All of this would be enough to cement the Gamble House in the annals of architectural fame. But the home’s renown grew dramatically in 1985 when it was chosen as the home of Emmett “Doc” Brown in the Back to the Future franchise. The Gamble House would be featured even more prominently in 1990’s Back to the Future III. Home improvement aficionados may also recognize it as a site of interest from its feature in a 1987 episode of This Old House with Bob Vila.
The Gamble House Becomes a “Living” Legend
As interest in Craftsman homes waned in the 1930s, the Gamble House was momentarily forgotten by all but its residents. However, the housing boom that followed World War II called attention back to the Greenes’ resounding architectural achievement. This was further fueled by publications like House Beautiful magazine that highlighted the numerous attractive features of the Gamble House and other California Craftsman homes.
The Gamble House officially became a California Historical Landmark in 1974, followed shortly by a National Historic Landmark designation in 1977. Each year, two students from USC’s School of Architecture are selected to temporarily reside in the house, serving as docents. They’re joined by volunteer docents from the LA Conservancy and the Huntington Library, offering ticketed tours of the iconic home to the general public. Most agree that the home is remarkably pristine for its age. It’s also an oddity in that every detail, down to its custom furniture, has been lovingly preserved since its 1909 construction.
As Timeless as Nature
This time capsule may provide us with an illumination into a specific time (and place) in LA’s rich architectural history. Yet, alongside its historic charm is a sense of the timelessness of nature. The wooden corridors and nooks of the Gamble House aren’t unlike a looming oak tree reliably reaching for Pasadena’s blue skies as generations rise and fall. But even nature isn’t permanent. And perhaps it’s that urgency that continues to send curious guests through its storied halls in droves year after year.
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