The Arts and Crafts Movement regarded the Victorian era as excessively spacious and ornamented, advocating for smaller, more natural housing. According to Robert Edwards, “the arts and crafts movement attempted to eliminate the lacuna between the lifestyle of the rich and the lifestyle of the poor by elevating esteem for ‘a life of simplicity,’” revealing the ways that architectural decisions and social ideals were distinctly aligned. Unlike the more popular grand houses that communicated wealth in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, Arden houses were smaller, more simplistic, and far less reliant on newer industrial technologies. Rather, Arden houses helped residents return to an earlier, “back to basics” relationship with nature and each other.
The Owl’s Nest after 1908
The early phases of Arden’s architectural developments certainly embodied this embrace of simplicity. As noted previously, the town’s small bungalows are frequently simple, one-room houses made of local stone, wood, and clay. The Craft Shop, for instance, was built with local lumber from Arden woods.
Price’s grand Traymore Hotel, in Atlantic City, NJ. Attribution: Ian Sutton.
Even the larger buildings in Arden did not compare with Price’s designs for other customers, especially his hotels.
RELATED SOURCES:
Arden Community Planning Committee. The Arden Book. 4th ed. Arden, DE: Village of Arden, 1999.
Cherry, John. Introduction. In William Morris: Art and Kelmscott, ed. Linda Parry, vii. Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1996.
Edwards, Eliza Harvey. “Arden: The Architecture and Planning of a Delaware Utopia.” Master’s Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1993.
Edwards, Robert. “William Lightfoot Price: His Furniture and Its Context.” In American Furniture, ed. Luke Beckerdite, 116–153. Lebanon, NH: The Chipstone Foundation, 2012.
Harvey, Charles and Jon Press. “The Business Career of William Morris.” In William Morris: Art and Kelmscott, ed. Linda Parry, 3–22. Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1996.
Massey, James C. and Shirley Maxwell. “Artful Living.” Old-House Journal (October–November 2011): 58–61.
Maynard, W. Barksdale. Buildings of Delaware. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2008.
Pevsner, Nikolaus. Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius. 4th ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
Taylor, Mark. Arden. Images of America. Portsmouth, NH: Arcadia Publishing, 2010.
Taylor, Mark. “Utopia by Taxation: Frank Stephens and the Single Tax Community of Arden, Delaware.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 126, no. 2 (2002): 305–325.
Thomas, George E. William L. Price: Arts and Crafts to Modern Design. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000.
