Olive Arms & Laruabelle Arms Robinson

PART 1  PART 2

Editor’s Note: This is the second installment of a two part series exploring the connections between sisters Olive Freeman Arms Arms and Laurabelle Arms Robinson, and the Arts & Crafts-style houses they built.

Laurabelle and Olive Arms were just over two years apart in age and remained close throughout their lives. Early photographs show a strong family resemblance between the sisters and yet each is easily identified. In the same way, while their homes were similar in size, materials, and number and function of rooms, they are distinctly different houses, just as the sisters lived very different lives.

 Laurabelle Arms was born on November 5, 1862 and was called “Lolly” within the family. She was graduated from the Rayen School in 1882 and married Henry Mauris Robinson on Valentine’s Day, 1894.

Henry Robinson was born in Ravenna, Ohio, attended Western Reserve Academy, and studied mechanical engineering for a year at Cornell University. He then read law under the supervision of David Tod Ford in Youngstown and was admitted to the bar in 1890. He lived with the Ford family, and through them was introduced to Carrie Arms Ford’s cousin, Laurabelle. Robinson tried several unsuccessful ventures in Youngstown, including a run for political office and a stint as a newspaper entrepreneur. His ability to organize mergers of companies in the steel, coal, shipping, and banking industries then emerged. After setting up the Pittsburgh Coal Company and the Standard Textile Products Company with his brother-in-law Wilford Arms, Robinson moved his law practice to New York City. There he was involved in the U. S. Steel Corporation merger of 1901. His brilliant success allowed him to retire from his law practice in 1906 at the age of 38.

After the death of Charles Dayton Arms in 1896, management of the estate resulted in the Robinsons often traveling to the West to supervise mining investments in South Dakota, Arizona, and Colorado. Although he and Laurabelle lived in New York City, Robinson was also developing financial interests on the west coast: he had recently been appointed legal counsel for the Pacific Lumber Company. The Robinsons decided to build a home closer to Henry’s primary business interests. David Tod Ford, Henry’s mentor and Laurabelle’s cousin by marriage, who had retired to Pasadena, California, arranged for them to buy six acres of property next to his, at the edge of the Arroyo Seco, a deep and beautiful valley on the west side of the growing city. Ford also recommended the architects Henry and Charles Greene, who had designed alterations to his own house.

Past the north wing of the Laurabelle Robinson house,  the view is of the vast spaces of the Arroyo Seco.

Because of her inheritance, Laurabelle provided financial stability in the marriage while the income from Henry’s mining and lumber speculations fluctuated. Laurabelle’s money also provided the couple with a permanent home. Like Olive and Wilford Arms, the Robinsons had no children. They wanted “a simple but spacious two story, three-bedroom home with two maids’ rooms and a large, finished storage attic.” The house that Greene & Greene built for the Robinsons was the first of their big house commissions, the first of what came to be called the “ultimate bungalows.”  Plans were completed in August 1905 and the house was ready for the Robinsons to occupy in the summer of 1906, although furniture designed for the house continued to be made over the next year.

Front view of the Laurabelle Robinson house.

Given the freedom to create the house, interior spaces, furnishings, and landscaping, the Greene brothers displayed their burgeoning talents for complete designs. The art glass, metalwork, woodwork, furniture, and brickwork in the Robinson house were all original Greene & Greene creations. The driveway approach from South Grand Avenue was flanked by stucco planter bases. Thirty yards further the drive ran between tapered stucco columns holding broad-brimmed lanterns, and on through an orange grove to the very edge of the steep bluffs of the canyon. Here, the living rooms and terraces of the Robinson house overlooked the spectacular views of the Arroyo Seco.

This commission was a departure for the Greene brothers from earlier work that featured shake siding, long roof slopes, and a more rustic and organic feeling. Several new influences can be seen in the Robinson house: English or Japanese half-timbering; Native American and Spanish Colonial flat roofs, stucco covered sloping corner buttresses, and the massive tapered chimney; Japanese exposed structural posts and beams, and the interior balcony railing design. The furniture designed for the Robinson house was also quite different from the earlier work of Greene and Greene. Pieces made for previous commissions were massive, rectilinear, and very similar to the work of Gustav Stickley and other Arts and Crafts woodworkers. The lighter and more refined Robinson furnishings—dining room table, chairs, and sideboard, several bookcases, desks, the inglenook settee, and several lighting fixtures—reflected the interest of the Greenes in Japanese architecture and design, and Charles Greene’s growing desire for total design control.

 When the Laurabelle Robinson house is compared with Greystone, the house that Olive F. A. Arms built, the contrasts in owner involvement are obvious. Greene & Greene designed, built, and, in part, furnished the Robinson house, creating a visibly impressive estate for a financier and his wife, and a reference for prospective Greene & Greene clients. Laurabelle and Henry Robinson traveled while the house was under construction, stopping by perhaps only once to approve design changes. In contrast, Olive Arms insisted that her architects build Greystone to her specifications, with her choices right down to window height and the hanging of doors. She designed fireplaces, furniture, lighting fixtures, then filled the house with her own carefully chosen accents in order to reflect her creativity, philosophy, and spirit. In her essay about Greystone, Olive Arms wrote, “[W]hen building, there should be nothing to divert the mind from the task; it is the work of a lifetime crowded into a year…A house must be conceived by those who are to live in it, modeled according to their taste, their refinement, and their conception of the useful and beautiful.”

     Two sisters, close and affectionate but with very different lives, created two houses built in variations of a style reflective of the times and of their geography: one looking east to European influences and the other west toward Asia. How fortunate we are to have both physical expressions of the design preferences of these two unique women.
 

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