Betting the Ranch that this ain't no tear-down

Source: Wall Street Journal

ATLANTA—Richard Cloues has spent much of his career saving antebellum plantations, Victorian mansions and other rare buildings. Now the historic preservationist is leading a campaign to protect a building style many don't see as worth saving: the modest ranch house.

Once a symbol of economic expansion, the long, low, single-story home was the dwelling of choice in America's burgeoning suburbs from the 1940s to the 1970s. Practical and cheap, ranches housed millions of returning soldiers and their families after World War II.

"It's just kind of a plain house—well, that was the point," says Mr. Cloues.

Today, many see the ranch house as outdated as the eight-track tape. "The real-estate term is functional obsolescence," says Cindi Sokol, an Atlanta real-estate agent who loves the ranch house she lives in, but finds it difficult to get potential buyers to look at them. "People just don't want them."

But with a growing number of the homes turning 50 years old—the age at which the National Park Service says most buildings may be considered for the National Register of Historic Places—Mr. Cloues is leading one of the first state efforts to protect them.

His office, Georgia's Historic Preservation Division, has produced a coffee-table-book-style manual to help state agencies and homeowners assess the historic value of ranch homes. He and his colleagues helped a 1950 ranch house in Macon, Ga., as well as ranch-house subdivisions in Savannah and Atlanta, win listings on the National Register.

Mr. Cloues grew up in a two-story Georgian Revival-style home in New Hampshire. But he keeps a third-grade report he wrote exalting the ranch, which he admired as the epitome of modern living. "It was my ideal of a house," he says.

Joe League was surprised when state officials asked him a few years ago to submit an application for his Macon, Ga. home to the National Register. The former World War II pilot and budding insurance agent was thinking only about a place he could afford and that would work for a young family when he had the 1,800-square-foot edifice built in 1950 for about $15,000. The house featured floor-to-ceiling windows, 13 doors to the outside and low roofs.

"It was a functional house that satisfied our needs and was relatively inexpensive," says Mr. League, now 90 years old.

The house, enlarged to about 2,200 square feet in the 1960s, was accepted on the register in 2009. Mr. League and his wife Mary Jane proudly posted their plaque at the front door.

State officials thought the home was a perfect ranch house to submit for the National Register because it was designed individually by an architect (Mr. League's Harvard-educated sister) and kept in pristine condition by original owners.

Still, historic status has its downside. "You can't repave the driveway without their say-so," Mr. League says of the National Register staff. He says he doesn't have any changes in mind.

Applications from ranch house owners seeking historic status for their homes have risen sharply in recent years, according to the National Register. "It's just now starting to become appreciated again," says Daniel Paul, an architectural historian in southern California who has worked on applications for ranch house developments and homes.

The guidelines produced by Mr. Cloues and colleagues, which detail ranch house styles, have been downloaded by governments, businesses and homeowners across the country. Styles listed range from "Contemporary" to "Rustic" to "Plain (No Style)." They have generated such interest that a National Academy of Sciences panel was formed—with Mr. Cloues as a member—to announce nationwide guidelines next year.

State and local governments are taking up the cause to protect ranch houses from modification or the wrecking ball as more people appreciate the simplicity of the homes, says Dianna Litvak, a senior historian with the Colorado Department of Transportation. Her office just completed a study of ranch homes in metro Denver to identify ones that might be considered historic. Los Angeles officials have a similar survey under way.

Derived from Mexican ranches, ranch houses were first built in the 1930s in southern California. They took off in the 1950s and 1960s as developers found them affordable to mass produce. With their sleek, low, modern design, large windows and open rooms, they also "signified the future," says Barbara Lamprecht, an architectural historian in southern California.

By the mid-1970s, though, they became passé, as Americans started craving more space, a second floor and flashier exteriors. Now, the housing crisis has made ranches even less appealing, since larger, more modern houses can be had for competitive prices.

Living in history didn't intrigue Matthew Shugart when he recently visited a refurbished ranch house in Atlanta—and immediately walked out. The 34-year-old salesman and his wife felt the house was too small inside with low ceilings. "We don't want to live on top of each other," he says.

Kirk Boggs, an Atlanta-area developer, started his business building ranch houses in the early 1970s but then switched to larger, two-story homes, which put more square footage on less land, maximizing profit per unit built. Most home buyers today dismiss ranches as "something their grandparents lived in," he says.

"A lot of people are still like, 'Are you telling me this little crappy two-bedroom in Las Vegas is historic?'" says Michelle Gringeri-Brown, a co-founder of "Atomic Ranch," a quarterly magazine dedicated to the ranch house.

Still, some are finding charms in the houses. "Atomic Ranch," started in 2004, now sells about 100,000 copies every issue.

Bill Adams, a 62-year-old Atlanta real-estate agent, cites one reason ranch houses have appeal for the aging baby boomers to whom he shows homes: no stairs. "Their knees and hips are starting to bother them a bit," he says.

Mr. Adams agonized 15 years ago about moving from a large, ornate but drafty Victorian house to "an ugly ranch house" in a safer suburban neighborhood. But he says he's grown to appreciate how easy the house is to maintain and the lower energy bills.

"Its ugliness has grown on me," he says. "It took me about six years."

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