It’s just a simple ranch house. But Coral Gables could declare it a historic landmark.
Behold the humble ranch house. It’s the quintessential suburban American home of the 20th Century. Horizontal, ubiquitous, generally unremarkable .... and historic?
That’s the novel and intriguing question that will face members of Coral Gables’ historic preservation board on Wednesday.
More accustomed to debating the appropriateness of renovations or an addition to a picturesque Old Spanish villa or Moorish bungalow, the board’s preservation-minded volunteers are being asked to tackle something completely different:
Whether to confer the City Beautiful’s notoriously exacting protections for historic properties on a 1937 ranch home. Whose new owner, it’s assumed, bought it as a tear-down. (She could not be reached for comment.)
The potential designation was triggered by a Coral Gables rule requiring that the city preservation office review any building older than 50 years whose owner wants to demolish. The goal is to ensure nothing historic or architecturally notable would be lost.
In this case, the office determined that the ranch house clears the bar for historic and architectural significance by a mile.
The house at 1208 Asturia Avenue, wrote since-retired city preservation chief Dona Spain in an in-depth report, is “an excellent example” of a custom-designed ranch, has been little altered and “significantly contributes to the historic fabric of the city.” The report recommends that the board approve the historic designation.
It’s not just any ranch house, of course.
The four-bedroom, three-bath rambler near the city golf course was designed by Russell Pancoast, a key Miami architect of the day. As one of the earliest ranch homes in a sometimes snooty city founded as a Mediterranean fantasy, the house helped lead the way to a modern style of architecture that’s actually far more common in the Gables than generally recognized.
The prolific Pancoast helped Miami Beach break away from the throwback Mediterranean architecture of its early days and embrace Art Deco in 1930 with his lavish design for the library that now houses the Bass museum. He did not stint his skills on the Gables ranch, giving it some restrained Deco touches, including the inset windows and a geometric arrangement of masonry “shelves” on the front of the house, a rounded-off squat chimney and a pleasingly varied facade carved into four distinct bays.
But it is, without question, a ranch house.
It’s long and low-slung, with a flat-tile roof, a covered entry and two square windows in the middle, a two-car garage at one end and a bedroom wing at the other — the prototypical plan of millions of ramblers to come in the following decades, including hundreds built in the Gables after World War II. (Ranch homes were also known as “ramblers” because their open and informal layout, a departure from traditional floor plans, encouraged occupants to ramble through.)
The home, which is vacant, was purchased in 2018 for $875,000 by Lourdes Valls, a member of the family that founded and runs the Cuban restaurant empire that includes Versailles and La Carreta. Valls did not return messages requesting an interview, and her position on the proposed designation is unknown. She has not made her views known to the city preservation office, said Gables assistant director of historic resources Kara Kautz.
The office has received 22 letters or emails in support of the designation, including messages from Dade Heritage Trust and the Historic Preservation Association of Coral Gables, Kautz said. Local zoning rules in the Gables and many other cities allow designation of properties as historic without owner consent if they meet established federal criteria, though potential economic hardship is taken into account.
Valls did request that Kautz’s office review the property for historic significance in September, a move that purchasers familiar with the Gables’ strict rules and who intend to tear down a building often make before applying for demolition permits. Once the office determines a building has historic or architectural value, it goes to the preservation board for a final vote, which can be appealed to the city commission.
The designation proposal was first scheduled to go to the city board in November, but the measure was deferred for a month at Valls’ request, Kautz said.
Though best known for its defining Mediterranean-inspired architecture, a style chosen by romantic city founder George Merrick, the Gables has in fact designated some signature modern buildings and houses as historic once they turn 50 years old, the threshold at which old structures generally become eligible for protection. But preservationists believe the Pancoast house would be the first ranch to be individually designated in the city.
Construction in Coral Gables virtually halted after the great Wall Street crash of 1929, when Merrick lost control of his creation. By the time it resumed in the 1930s, the Mediterranean style was considered passe. Art Deco and modern houses began appearing in the Gables, including some early ramblers patterned after the first ranch homes in California designed by architect Cliff May.
After World War II, when housing development exploded, the easy-to-build ranch was firmly ensconced as the house style of choice across America. Long-vacant lots in Coral Gables began filling up with ramblers, most far more basic than Pancoast’s relatively elaborate example.
Many of those Gables ranchers are being lost amid a wave of residential redevelopment, said Karelia Carbonell, president of the Gables preservation association.
As more and more of its modern homes and buildings reach the age of 50, she said, the city should be looking to preserve prime examples such as the Pancoast ranch house, so as not to erase its legacy. Though later ranch homes tended to be architecturally bland, this one is decidedly not, she argued.
“It’s a property that definitely needs to be preserved. I think there is a misconception about Coral Gables and its architectural style. Coral Gables is not just Mediterranean,” Carbonell said.
“Through Pancoast and his vision, it really brought forth this new style of architecture. The ranch houses weren’t mansions. They were humble, one story, but very well crafted. I think it served as an exemplar of others to come. It’s very authentic, with very minimal alterations. This home, and many within that time, there was an art to them. You really are preserving a time in history.”
The Gables would be far from the first to declare a ranch house historic. As popular interest in mid-20th Century architecture increases, once derided styles like the rambler or Brutalist concrete buildings are winning landmark designation across the country. May houses, for instance, are treasured. One unassuming California prefab ranch home that May co-designed outside Salt Lake City, the Fish-Baughman house, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
In some ways, though, the ranch — inspired by Spanish colonial architecture in the West — was not that radical a departure from the Gables’ embrace of Spanish and Mediterranean features.
Pancoast himself realized the need for something more modern after living in a Mediterranean Revival house he designed as his own Miami Beach home in the 1920s, said his grandson, Thorn Grafton, a preservation specialist at Zyscovich Architects in Miami. The thick walls and small windows were not well suited for South Florida’s humidity, and Pancoast began experimenting with modern designs with larger windows to let in breezes. He was inspired by eaves and overhangs of houses in Bermuda and the Bahamas that offered protection from sun, heat and rain, Grafton said.
Oddly, Pancoast designed many houses but few ranches, said Grafton, who has monographs extensively documenting his grandfather’s work. But he noted that the Gables ranch has subtle Bermuda touches, including protective overhangs the full length of the facade. The original windows, the only feature that’s been changed, were steel casements that swung open easily.
“I’m not sure it’s a prime example of his work, but it was in this progression away from Mediterranean,” Grafton said. “Something went off in his head, and he tried different things.”
If he were on the Gables preservation board, Grafton said, he would be inclined to approve the designation, noting that it doesn’t preclude the owners from making a sensitive addition to the rear that preserves and restores the ranch in full.
“It’s a real dilemma for the purchasers,” Grafton said, but he added: “As a preservation architect, I know you can come up with a wonderful result.”
This story was originally published December 18, 2019 at 4:30 AM.