Embracing the ranch house vernacular

“This is just a ranch house,” I had whined. Now I am embracing the ranch house vernacular. Why? In December 2007, my husband purchased Ranch House by Alan Hess for me while we were in Sarasota.

In January, we had a play date in NYC with design-savvy David and Barry. As I told them my tale of dream house woes, these modern-house-dwelling, important-furniture-owning friends said nice things about ranch houses. I thought they were simply being supportive until David said, “I had to stop subscribing to Atomic Ranch because I was getting ranch house envy.”

“Huh²,” I thought? Yes, huh squared because I was not only surprised to learn that there was a publication dedicated to all things ranch, I was amazed to hear the words “ranch house” and “envy” so close together in a sentence.

Until I knew more about this mid-century marvel, I saw the ranch as a ubiquitous suburban standard. In the book Atomic Ranch, Michelle Gringeri-Brown gives voice to my previous opinion, calling the style “architecture’s underdog” and “America’s architectural stepchild” (page 6). Per Hess, “There are few other examples in twentieth-century history where modern technology has been applied so directly in order to provide decent mass housing, and so the ranch house represents a victory for modernism” (page 79).

After perusing David’s collection of magazines and reading my books, I began to replace images from the so-called “Manifesto” with a vision of my own house—tweaked, but intact. By Hess’ definition, a ranch is informal, has an open-plan interior and a general horizontal emphasis (page 17)—check, check and check. It occurred to me it might not have been The Fates but my own home that had been exerting its will all along. “Let me be me,” it demanded!

So the time has come for me to embrace the ranch house vernacular not just intellectually, but emotionally. And if you’re among the people who say you like our home the way it is now, you’re in luck—and just wait until we start fixing this baby up!