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Kevin Murphy Interviewed About Tudor Revival Houses for LA Times Article

Posted by on Tuesday, January 30, 2018 in HART, News, VRC.

tudorhomekevinmurphyKevin Murphy, chair and professor of history of art, was recently interviewed about Tudor Revival houses for a Los Angeles Times article spotlighting the architectural style that he addressed in a beautifully illustrated book, The Tudor Home (Rizzoli International Publications, 2015).

The Tudor-style homes were supposed to recall a pre-modern, pre-industrial, pre-urban and pre-class- and ethnic-conflict period, said Murphy, “which was pretty much an escapist fantasy but nevertheless a pretty powerful one.”

When Wall Street money in the early 1900s gave rise to upscale New York City suburbs, the newly wealthy built homes or “stockbroker Tudors” as they were later dubbed. “They wanted to give the impression of being more established, not be so much nouveau riche as old riche,” said Murphy. For some it was also important to establish Anglo-Saxon bona fides and distinguish themselves from the influx of Southern European and Asian immigrants at the time.

The Tudor Home showcases the wide variety of Tudor homes and the many manifestations the form has taken across the nation. With its distinctive hallmarks—steeply pitched gables and roofs covered in slate or imitation thatch, bays of casement windows with diamond-paned leaded glass, clustered chimney stacks, interiors of wood paneling and plasterwork, and half-timbered and stuccoed facades—the Tudor-style house has been a favorite among homeowners since its birth in sixteenth-century England.

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