Claremont, California -- What makes the house at 807 North College Avenue so interesting is the tension between its roof and its front wall. The roof is symmetrical and heavy-looking, with broad eaves sheltering the gables and long inclines that become slightly steeper part way down, as if sagging under their own weight. The wall is asymmetrical and delicate, with white casement windows that pop forward out of the shingle and seem to pull thin peels of it off into small overhangs for the window bays. Lightly framed, the overhangs suggest the thinness of the wall and point up the contrast between it and the roof -- the one heavy enough to sag, the other thin enough to peel.
It's a house that reads almost as easily as a good poem. The roof protects and embraces; the windowed wall admits breezes and sunlight. The only obvious flaw is that the house, built in 1903, faces what has become the lesser of the streets that make up its corner. From North College, now heavily traveled, what you see is a small, unreadable end; you barely glimpse the wide front gable, hidden by trees. Eighth Street offers the better view, but few people use it.
So Catharine and David Alexander can be forgiven for failing to notice the house much during their first 18 years in Claremont. Mr. Alexander was president of Pomona College, and the Alexanders lived in the president's house just a few blocks away. Like many people here, they knew that 807 North College was the only house in Claremont by the architects Greene and Greene, whose arts-and-crafts houses over in Pasadena are revered by architectural historians and cherished by owners. The Claremont house hadn't attracted nearly as much attention. When the Alexanders started looking for a home of their own, knowing they wouldn't be in the president's house forever, they dismissed 807 North College almost immediately. It was on the market, yes, but weather-blackened shingles made it seem as if it would be dark inside. It had no back yard to speak of. And it seemed down-at-heel.
It was the Alexanders' daughter Julia who insisted on setting up a tour. The Alexanders walked through the broad front door and into a small front hall with a cozy, built-in bench opposite. To their right was the paneled library, with an angled fireplace and a raised nook with exposed pegs and tenons -- perfect for a desk. To their left was the long living room, with a big, rustic mantelpiece and a window seat in the front bay. To the rear was the dining room, with three matching windows. The proportions were handsome, the details exquisite -- even though the house, at 2,500 square feet, was not especially large.
Beneath the Alexanders' feet were the Greene brothers' signature floors -- oak boards laid on the diagonal to disguise handmade carpets' uneven edges. Upstairs were four plain bedrooms and an enclosed loggia that used to be a sleeping porch. Everywhere low ceilings and dark woodwork combined with golden floors and small-paned windows to create a warm atmosphere.
Mr. Alexander remembers what happened next: "Catharine said, `O.K., we'll buy the house, but we won't let it become an obsession."' Then they replaced the 37-inch-long shingles, many of which had rotted. They replaced the wood-shake roof. They replaced the wiring. To protect the house in earthquakes, they had a new foundation installed behind the Greene brothers' carefully chosen fieldstones. They had a new furnace hung from joists beneath the first floor, there being no basement. They began collecting furnishings that complemented rooms -- a rug here, a Biedermeier table there. They moved the porch light inside, to the library, because authentic Greene and Greene fixtures had become too valuable to leave outdoors.
The Alexanders began to seem obsessed. So much so that when Mr. Alexander retired from Pomona in 1991 the college's trustees gave him a desk for the library nook -- a desk built to Greene and Greene plans. So much so that he takes visitors out to show them how much the garage looks like a craftsman-era original, although it was a carport until the Alexanders had it enclosed. So much so that they are having a "debate" about curtains for the bedrooms.
So much so, indeed, that they're still resolving the house's mysteries, however slowly. As she spreads copies of the plans out on the dining-room table, Mrs. Alexander explains that a window seat in the library, shown in the plans, either wasn't built or was later removed. Suddenly she points to the drawing of the side porch and says, "Look, that is there!"
"It's a closet," Mr. Alexander says of a storage space they had suspected was a later addition. "I didn't notice that the last time we looked at these."
"Now these," he adds, pointing to the rear elevation, "are the kitchen windows that are gone. When we redo the kitchen, we'd like to put back something like the original."
Charles Sumner Greene (1868-1957) and Henry Mather Greene (1870-1954) learned about the arts-and-crafts movement at Washington University in St. Louis, where they read John Ruskin and William Morris. They studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and began practicing in Pasadena in 1893. It took nearly a decade for their own style to emerge from Southern California's melting pot of Spanish Mission, Colonial, and Queen Anne.
"This house is, I think, the oldest surviving example of what I call their self-conscious style," says Mr. Alexander. "They were really feeling their oats. It was the first house of theirs to be published."
"There were four years between this and the Gamble House," adds Mrs. Alexander, referring to the Greenes' 1907 masterpiece in Pasadena. "That's a house full of polished wood. This is so rustic and lodge-like. In the morning it's like waking up at camp."
"In 1903 this was the only house in the area," Mr. Alexander says. "It was surrounded by orange groves. It was designed for Mrs. Mary Darling, who lived in Pasadena. She had two boys attending the college's prep school, and she wanted to be nearby. We think originally this house may have had the entire block. The lot behind was sold in the 40's. During World War II it was an eating house and a dormitory."
Like most houses, 807 North College has been altered over the years. The kitchen and maid's bedroom have been reconfigured. A second upstairs bathroom was created by taking space from a bedroom. The loggia was enclosed, to the detriment of front gable, and is now Mrs. Alexander's office. "We'd hate to give up that room," she says.
"The obligation of stewardship is paramount," Mr. Alexander says, "but it has to be balanced with what you can do with it."
When the Alexanders bought the house and began to realize how much work it needed, Mrs. Alexander says, she "worried we were in over our heads." Now, however, she and Mr. Alexander are pretty sure they're hooked. "I look out," Mrs. Alexander says, "and I see people driving by real slow."
"This is an important house," Mr. Alexander adds. "Whoever lives here ought to respect it."
