Built 1909 Opened 1909 Architectural style American Craftsman Added to NRHP 14 June 2002 | NRHP Reference # 00001227 Area 2 ha Architecture firm Greene and Greene Nearest city Ojai | |
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Similar Cordelia A Culbertson House, Robert R Blacker House, Casa Barranca Organic, Thorsen House, Gamble House | ||
The Charles M. Pratt House near Ojai, California is a historic Arts and Crafts-style house that was built in 1909 as a winter home for the family of industrialist Charles Millard Pratt. Also known as Casa Barranca, it is one of five "ultimate bungalow" works of architects Charles and Henry Greene, known most commonly as Greene and Greene.
It is a unique house, built for a client with "unlimited resources" in a rural location that allowed the architects to place the house "in a truly natural setting"; this "was the fulfillment of a lifelong interest of the architects." With the building site chosen within the original 14 acre parcel, an adjacent 38-acre parcel was purchased to preserve "the all important viewshed to which the house is directed." The combination of factors allowed the work to be created very consistently with intended principles of the Arts and Crafts movement as expressed by John Ruskin: "The structure and cladding of the building are almost completely honest and devoid of mannered veneers and false beams contained in the other 'ultimate bungalows'". It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. As of the listing, the house and viewshed are perfectly preserved.
The Pratts partially owned the nearby Foothills Hotel, which they could use for entertaining, so "they only needed the house to serve as “sleeping quarters” and family relaxation."