Born January 15, 1865, Olive Freeman Arms was the youngest of six daughters of Charles Dayton and Hannah Wick Arms. Olive attended
Olive Arms, Ca. 1880 | |
the Wood Street School and in 1883 was graduated from the Rayen School. She first studied art locally, and later attended the Thompson/Peebles School and Bradford School in New York City. While studying there, Olive took advantage of the opportunity to visit Europe with her uncle Henry Kirtland Wick, and his new wife, Clara Bradford, proprietor of the Bradford School. In 1899, Olive Arms married her distant cousin Wilford Paddock Arms. In 1904, Olive and Wilford Arms hired the Cleveland firm of Meade and Garfield as the architects for her house.
Much of what we know of Olive’s vision of her house comes from an
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Rear view of Greystone |
essay written sometime after the house was built and presented to her Friday Afternoon Club. “The Story of My House” discussed what she hoped her home would represent to friends and family who visited there, and what she felt a house should be. Olive Arms provided insight into her views on the importance of fresh air, elevation, “pleasant views, the most suitable exposure, freedom from noise, and the natural protection from wind afforded by trees.” The way a house fit its situation was crucial; “a house should seem to belong where it stands.”
The house that was built would not be an Abram Garfield design, but an Olive Arms original. She wrote in her essay: “If you leave the house to the architect he is inclined to build merely for himself—he builds his house not yours.” Olive chose to build an English-inspired Arts & Crafts style home. Built on a hill, Olive’s house created a sharp contrast to the Victorian mansions lining Wick Avenue. In sympathy with the ideals of English Arts and Crafts theorist and designer William Morris, Olive chose to build a house like an elaborate English cottage. “The great beauty of the English house is its effect of spacious and friendly comfort,” she wrote, “characteristically irregular in outline,” it “looks well on an irregular site or rolling ground.”
Olive, like Morris, believed in the simplicity of natural finishes, choosing rough-hewn stone and dark stained oak for building materials instead of smooth finishes and artificial colorings. Olive considered the relationship of the house to its natural surroundings and the “honest use of materials…whenever possible its choice is for stone, and its color is supplied by natural unpainted materials, which time beautifies…open terraces are most inviting, with trees for protection.” She was aware of the “outward surroundings and external nature” of a house, “the woods that provide its joist and rafters, the earth that supplies its mortar, brick, and stone; the coal whence it derives its heat; the lake that provides its water; the trees that ward off the wind in Winter and shield it from the sun in Summer; and the garden that provides its flowers. All these contribute their part to the completion of the ideal home.”
Olive recommended planning “completely ere the foundation is laid,” to be sure rooms were spacious, the size and placement of doors and windows appropriate—“a poor architect will hang the doors so that they will come together, or open on the side you do not want them to open on.” She was aware of the danger of clutter, suggesting that a few chosen ornaments of sentimental value lent a personal atmosphere to a house. The dependencies of the entry were especially important: without appropriate storage spaces, “some halls must be littered with that contrivance called a hat rack.” Reminiscent of the Middle Ages, Olive’s reception room represents an era before craftsmen and artisans were overshadowed by Industrial technology. The barrel vaulted ceiling, arched
Reception room at Greystone. |
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doorway, and iron-hooded fireplace greet visitors when they enter the house. Like many Arts and Crafts thinkers, Olive chose furniture and wall treatments that beautified over time, requiring minimal care and simplifying life. She, like writer John Ruskin, believed in the value of pre-industrial craftsmanship as seen in the flowing, natural shapes of hammered iron throughout the first floor. Flowers blossom, vines twine, animals appear caught in a moment of natural activity. Iron is used for hinges, latches, light fixtures, and architectural supports, all elaborated with shapes borrowed from field and forest.Of the three fireplaces constructed from Olive Arms’ design sketches, two remain intact with their intricate structure and attention to detail: even without fires burning, they center each room with a sense of comfort and solidity. Olive placed her inglenook close to the reception room fireplace, creating an intimate space for people to visit. Like Gustav Stickley, Olive believed in the value of the hearth. Concerned with the loss of spiritual vitality brought on by the popularity of central heating, Stickley believed the fireplace was “…a necessity, for the hearthstone is always the center of true home life, and the very spirit of home seems to be lacking when a register or radiator tries ineffectually to take the place of a glowing grate or a crackling leaping fire of logs.” Though Olive recognized the need for warmth, radiators throughout the house are hidden under window seats and in wall recesses.
The diningroom of Olive's house. |
In the furnishings of her house, Olive Arms showed her confidence in her own sense of style. “If I had my choice of furniture,” she wrote, “I would avoid duplications, as it makes a much more interesting room…just as china of different style for each course, is more interesting than a complete set of china used for all the courses.” Though her approach to the Arts and Crafts movement was individualized, like Morris, she expressed a distinctive attitude and style that fused art with practicality.
Olive saw her role within the house as the maker of the home who created order, beauty, peace, serenity, and contentment. She quoted a Turkish proverb that says “a house without a woman is a house without a soul.” She ended her essay with the words, “If our house is large enough for our domestic requirements, for our personal comfort and for the entertainment of our chosen friends, it should be the ideal house to us.” She wanted most of all to have a home where friends would want to visit: “the house we love to go into…is the house whose mistress has vision enough to have the surroundings pleasing in color and friendly in arrangement and which has the quality of comfort that compels you to make yourself at home in it.”
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