Stratton, William B. and Mary Chase, House

The William Buck and Mary Chase Stratton Residence represents the fullest and most personal statement of two nationally known individuals: architect William Buck Stratton (1867-1938) and ceramic artist Mary Chase Perry (1867-1961), his wife. The dwelling is noted for refined composition and harmony. Built in an age when houses were monumental or stylized, the Stratton House with its handworked materials and textures with clear cut structural forms to define space, indicates, with a fresh interpretation, the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement tempered by modern and Mediterranean design. Intimately related to the garden and landscaping, the house affords a continuing succession of visual experiences and an interior of simple elegance, charm, warmth and utility. The house is a development of a house Stratton designed for Perry in 1912. Many ideas were repeated with improvement and much of the material of the original was incorporated in the present structure. Stratton designed cupboard furniture for specific use. One of his pieces, a cabinet used as a room divider, remains in the house. The Strattons invited other artists to share the sequestered apartments and generous workspaces of the house. Sculptors Gwen Lux and Alexis Lapteff were residents. In consultation with landscape architect Raymond Wilcox, the garden was designed in three parts: orchard, formal terrace and playground. The last was arranged so that spectators on upper and lower porches could view games, dancing or out-of-door performances.

The residence of William Buck and Mary Chase Perry Stratton is an unconventional early modern dwelling employing natural and handworked materials, texture, and color, in a masterly composition of original style. Influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movements, this house is a manifestation of the collaboration of architect William Buck Stratton and ceramicist Mary Chase Perry Stratton. The irregularly massed two-story house is constructed of brown to beige varicolored and rough finished brick laid in Flemish bond on a hollow-tile-with-steel-beams-and-joists structural system and is topped with a low pitched, unglazed Pewabic tile roof. Located in a upper middle class northern Detroit suburb, the house is carefully united with its well landscaped lot. Occupying an area roughly 65 feet square, including offsets and courts, the house faces west and is set back 50 feet from the 100-foot right of way. The lot is 108 feet wide and 250 feet deep and slopes a few feet to the drive at the south edge. The brick walls of the house contain corbelling at the eaves which continues across adjacent wall areas to define the seemingly sparse fenestration and uncluttered wall areas. The roofs, pitched 26°, are covered with brown unglazed Pewabic tile with rake tile accenting the gables. Seemingly complex, the dwelling is composed of five carefully related sections, the two-level central section, the two-level garage and bedroom section on the southeast, the one-level kitchen wing on the northeast, the one-level library section on the southwest, and the two-level section on the northwest.