Discovering the Beauty of a Ranch

Seven years ago, my husband and I bought a modest home in the Edgemont neighborhood of Provo.  When we purchased the home, it was clear to us that we paid for the neighborhood, not the house.  For the same amount of money that bought us our 1900 square foot multi-level ranch built in 1964, we could have acquired a brand new, custom interior, spacious 3000 square foot house in Spanish Fork or Pleasant Grove.  But we were both employed at Brigham Young University and had no desire to get on I-15 to commute to work.  Nor after fifteen years of apartment living—with a new apartment pretty much every year—did we have the desire to follow the current wisdom of the time and buy a “starter home,” earn equity, and then sell a few years later in order to upgrade to larger home.  No, we wanted to put down roots.  So we selected our neighborhood and found the best all-around home within our price range.  A ten-minute drive to work with a grocery store on the way, within walking distance of the elementary school and church,  and an easy 30 minute bike ride to Bridal Veil Falls in Provo Canyon, the location was worth every penny we paid.

But what about the house?  I have often described our house as vernacular, which for a long time my husband  took as a slur.  I defended my terminology by asserting that it was the absolute essence of vernacular, an architectural style that permeated and defined the American suburb of the mid-twentieth century.  Indeed, there are at least 50,000 other houses along the Wasatch Front with the exact facade and floor plan.  We live in a ranch-style tract home that was mass-produced on a grand scale in Utah in the 1960s and 70s.

One of the problems with these homes is that most people dislike the underlying design and try to turn them into something else—the latest trend being a conversion to an Arts & Craft bungalow.  Ranch-style homes, such as ours, were an experiment with modernist ideas of space and efficiency.  But since the mass-market never fully embraced high modernism, homes like ours reflect a strange hybridization of mid-century minimalism gussied up a bit with cottage or colonial to make it more palatable.

But I have grown to love the house and the elements of its mid-century design.  I enjoy its open, geometric spaces, flooded by natural light that urge simplicity and spare furnishing.  I recognize the underlying structure that has been misunderstood for most of its life and has been obscured by strange carpeting and overly ornate cabinetry and fixtures.  In an upcoming renovation, I look forward to peeling back the layers and discovering what lies beneath; to living the experiment of modernism and its objectives for suburban life. While some people aspire to build a house of their own design, I have always aspired to renovate a historic home.  It’s true that I usually pictured a center hall colonial or a Victorian townhome or an Arts & Craft bungalow, but to my great surprise and delight, I am renovating a mid-century ranch. 

Diana Turnbow is the Curator of Photography at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art.  She has two children, a mini-van, and a lawn to mow.  Historic homes and furniture have been her passion since the third grade when she read a description of a horsehair couch in Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

“Awh, man, I really liked that tree!” That was my daughter’s lament as we took our evening walk around our neighborhood recently. The tree, a large willow, provided a bit of shade for us as well as a pleasant canopy to walk under. However, since the house has been abandoned for weeks, it looks like the water has been shut off and the willow is dying, along with the palm trees. The grass had already died --- grass is always the first to go.

Our piece of suburbia lies about 10 miles down the road from Stockton, California, the national epicenter of the housing meltdown a few years ago. We moved to Manteca about six years ago, when the market was at its peak, fortunate to have built enough equity in our starter home in Stockton to move to a larger house in a smaller town with a lower crime rate. It’s still a nice neighborhood, stucco and tile roofs; a few homes have swimming pools; the subdivision’s carefully planned park is within walking distance. My kids can walk to their neighborhood school. In a town filled with Bay Area commuters, my husband and I enjoy drives less than 10 minutes to the schools where we teach.

But every day we see evidence of the housing and economic crash --- empty homes with dead lawns, turned bright yellow in the summer heat; a changing parade of realtor signs in front yards; a sign on our the fence of our former next door neighbor warning that the water collecting in their drained swimming pool has been treated with mosquito-eating fish so not to add chemicals to it. Those neighbors, quiet people who we enjoyed a good relationship with, put their house up for a short sale with hopes for the best and left the state when he was next in line for layoffs and got an offer elsewhere. That was several months ago. The realtor sends an occasional yard worker by to mow the grass and cut back the biggest weeds from the front lawn. The formerly immaculate back yard is being rapidly overtaken by a variety of vegetation.

Some people’s misfortunes are opportunities for others, however. Across the street, a foreclosed home was purchased by a woman who got such a good deal on the home she was able to do extensive remodeling, repaint the outside, improve the landscaping and make it look like it probably did when it was brand new. A few doors down a young family moved in to a much larger home (another foreclosure) than they would have ever anticipated getting for their first home and immediately did the cosmetic improvements that their neighbors had long wished for.

You can walk down certain streets and everything looks like it did when we moved here and probably when the subdivision was originally built, about 10 years ago. Turn down another street and the abandoned/foreclosed/up for short sale homes punctuate the landscape. It’s a mix of those of us fortunate enough to be able to ride out the downturn so far and those who were swept away in the tidal wave of plummeting home values, predatory lending, and a recession. I like my neighborhood and all its comforts, but I am reminded daily of what many others have lost.

Ann B. Niendorf lives in Manteca, California, and is in her second career as a second grade teacher. Her first career was in journalism, writing for and editing for newspapers in Utah and California.

 White South African Suburbia in the '60s

My wife Sandy and I were born in Johannesburg South Africa. I was raised in the city and completed my high schooling there. Sandy completed her high school and college education in England. In 1982, several years after our marriage we were baptized members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when our first two children, Susan and Philip, were 8 and 6 years old. Louise and Stephen arrived shortly thereafter! We came to BYU in 1993 and have lived in Provo for the past 16 years.

The "Suburbia" exhibition at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art, in Provo, prompted me to find my parental home in Johannesburg, SA on Google Earth. It was an uncanny experience to see my old neighborhood. Nothing seems to have changed from this satelite view - although the demographics have probably changed a lot since the Apartheid era. We lived in a "white" middle class suburb called Kensington to the East of Johannesburg, about ten miles from Soweto, the Black "township" located on the west of the city. As "White Europeans" we never set foot in Soweto in the 21 years I lived in Johannesburg. The city was laid out so that we lived in a separate world of quiet, comfortable, 1st World, domesticity. Whites were not allowed to enter Soweto unless on "official" business, and one could be arrested travelling on the single road that led in and out of this area.


Black people were employed all over the "White" suburbs and could travel in and out of the city as long as they had valid ID "passes". There was never a time that my parents did not employ at least one servant. Usually a Black woman as a housemaid who lived in the "servants' quarters" of our property, and a "garden boy" who tended the garden a few times a week. The housemaid would return to her family in Soweto on weekends. On the left is Sophie, our long-time housemaid while I was in high school.

Our home, on the corner of Juno Street and Roberts Avenue, was situated across the road from a well appointed block of "flats" (appartments) called "Kensington Mansions" mostly occupied by retired elderly people and widdows. Sometimes they would come out onto their balconies to see why I was making such a noise with my "Thimbledrome" model aircraft and racers in our back yard. Most of the houses in SA were built with bricks and mortar, with roofs of corrugated iron or red Marseilles tiles. I really enjoyed my teenage years. We lived a stone's throw from "The Kensington Bowling and Tennis Club". Outdoor bowls was played on weekends on immaculte greens by mostly elderly people dressed in whites, but my teenage buddies an I made full use of the tennis courts - playing as much as we could, sometimes all summer long and then before and after school on weekdays during term time.

View of the "Kensington Bowling and Tennis Club" in the middle distance, from our front garden.

Family celebrations were frequent and would bring out the fancy goblets! Here a great aunt, my aunts, my uncle, and my father, drink a toast to each other's health. Days of wine and roses...

 I attended Jeppe High School for Boys. The school was modelled on the British grammar school, architecturally and philosophically - most of the teachers were from the UK. We had about 750 boys (pupils) from 8th grade through matriculation. The school was well known for its Rugby, Cricket and Rowing prowess. I was thrilled to find some pictures of my old school on the Internet. It was situated about a mile up Roberts Avenue from our home and I would walk to and from school on school days. I'm still proud of my high school, my teachers, and the friends I made there.

"Jeppe High School for Boys is Johannesburg’s oldest public school having been established in 1890. Recognised as one of South Africa’s top boys schools, the defining characteristics of the men it produces often centre on the principles of loyalty, honour and friendship. Whilst many Jeppe pupils have gone on to become captains of industry, famous politicians and international sportsmen, it is the ability of the school to shape the characters of boys into men which is its greatest success. While taking great pride in our ethos, tradition and achievements, the School strives to develop well-educated, well-rounded, well-mannered and tolerant young men ready to face the challenges of life."

 My aunt on the left and my mother on the right are excited about my sister-in-law's pregnancy. The sixties were the days of the bouffant hair!

I also found some earlier black and white "snapshots" of my late brother, Philip, and I, as todlers in our dressing gowns, sitting with the neighbor ladies, Mrs. Adlam on the left, and Mrs. Sawyer on the right, on the occassion of their visit to my mother one evening, (Visiting Teaching?) Note the use of "antimacassars" on the back of the sofa. Antimacassars were cloths placed over the backs or arms of chairs, or the head or cushions of a sofa, to prevent soiling of the permanent fabric by the greasy hair oils and creams used by men during this period (Macassar oil, Brylcream, etc). Also note the heavy curtains, and the wrought iron burgular guards just visible through the lace curtains.

Herman du Toit is Head of Museum Research at Brigham Young University Museum of Art in Provo, Utah. He has enjoyed an extensive career as an art educator, curator, administrator, critic, and author, both locally and abroad. He is a former head of the Durban Art School and founding director of the Cecil Renaud Art Gallery at the former Durban Technical Institute in South Africa. He holds post graduate degrees in Art History and Sociology of Education from the former University of Natal. At Brigham Young University he was awarded a J.Paul Getty Fellowship for his Ph.D. study investigating interpretive practices at some of America's leading art museums.

I recently moved to the suburbs.  Not just any suburbs.  The Connecticut suburbs.  Connecticut as in a satellite of New York City.  I'm offending half the state right there.  But let's be honest.  Not much of the Tri-State area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut would exist without Manhattan.  Those of us who have been Manhattan-ites, wear it as a badge of insane pride.  It's all ego and identity.  Even out here in suburbia, our lives, or at least our collective livelihoods, revolve around the city we all love and hate and love. 

I've traded subway and bus horror stories, shepherding three children under six, a diaper bag and a stroller up and down "The Island at the Center of the World" *.  I've won prizes for the most creative usage of 800 sq ft for a family of five in one bedroom.  I can hold my own with the best of them.   I used to have dreams about my own washing machine and dryer.  At age 40, I did not ever imagine I would be car-less, still using a laundromat (at least it was in my own building) or sharing a bedroom with anyone other than my husband.  Nor did I imagine I'd live on the same street as Tiffany & Co., or ten blocks from the United Nations.

I was there on 9/11.  I birthed three babies in Manhattan and have labored in Central Park, the back of taxis and the Waldorf Astoria.  My husband and I arrived with four suitcases, a few hundred dollars and the offer to share a friend's place for a few weeks.  We left nine years later with 3.5 children and two truckloads of possessions.  I'm a New Yorker.  Except that now I am not.  

I've traded it all for a cute little house in a beautiful old suburb with wonderful schools, a small backyard, an enclosed front porch and a mini-van.  The fourth child was born in a hospital room larger than my apartment.  I have the all-American address and the all-American life.  I love my neighbors.  We trick or treat together, admire each other's Christmas lights, watch out for each other's kids.  Last Saturday we flew our new kite at the beach seven  minutes from our house and watched the sunset.  My husband is navigating the draining commute as best he can to pay the price for this idyllic paradise.  There are still too many drugs in the schools and too much sexual content in the literature and in the halls.  But it's less obvious and you have to work harder to find it.  For our still oblivious young children, I am grateful for the delay.  

It's been several months now, and I still don't know how to answer when people ask me where I live.  I never get tired of that skyline when I drive into the city.  I absorb its teeming energy, angst, aggression, its warped beauty.  It feels so right to be there, to be part of its vibe.  I belong.  But I've got a confession to make.  I love pulling in to my driveway, breathing in the fragrance of the season, feeling relaxed and relieved that I am home. 

Chrysula Winegar has lived and worked in the inner cities of Sydney, London and New York.  Connecticut is her first full-time suburban experience since she was 19.  She is a wife, mother, private art dealer and blogger on work life balance issues at  www.wlbconsultants.com

* Island at the Center of the World is the title of a history of Manhattan through the lens of the Dutch when it was still New Amsterdam.