Ranch style houses - the easy-living emblem of the post World War II lifestyle - have now become historic. The ranch house plans Levit style which dominated the suburban neighborhood ethos of the 1950's and 1960's have attained the cutoff age for listing in the National Register of Historic places; and historians of architecture accordingly have been scrutinizing ranch houses with an eye to placing them in their proper historical context. Ranch-style houses were first built on southern California ranches in the middle of the 19th century; and the ranch style was reborn there a century later. In the original model, based upon Spanish colonial architectural style, a single-story, linear arrangement of rooms was arranged along a long porch called a corredor. The corredor gave access to all of the rooms without wasting space (as interior hallways do). At the same time it opened each room to the cooling breeze and light from outdoors. When new rooms were needed, they were simply added on to the corredor; so typically ranch houses grew asymmetrically into L's or U's, and the corredor's expanded into patios with gardens.
The first modern-style ranch house was built in San Diego in 1932 by architect Cliff May, whose association with Sunset magazine resulted a wave of publicity for the western ranch house. Other popular magazines, such as American Home and Ladies Home Journal, contributed to the craze by sponsoring design competitions and offering house plans to their readers. A mass of returning WWII veterans with G.I. Bill mortgage money provided an avid market for this inexpensive, functional type of building. Builders and developers throughout the United States quickly discovered that these designs were fast and cheap to build - especially en masse - and they were popular with consumers. Ranch style houses today are typically asymmetrical and informal, one-story boxes or else L-shaped, in which function is more important than style. They feature low-pitched hip or gable roofs with overhanging eaves; an attached garage which juts out of the main house; a long and narrow front porch; picture windows in the living room and sliding glass doors which open onto a patio in the rear; and some house plans ranch w2f basement too.
Ranch-style homes are inexpensive to build and easy to expand. Although post WWII ranch houses were usually small, the combined dining and living spaces, and the large glass windows and sliding doors, gave these homes an open, spacious look. Family and recreational activities - children's games, barbecues, cocktail parties - centered on the outdoor patio area. Since ranch houses are suited to an indoor / outdoor lifestyle, they are better adapted to regions with mild climates rather than to areas where keeping the house warm in winter is an important economic factor. As the basic design moved east and north, the profile of the typical ranch house tightened into a "massed ranch" look; the stucco or clapboard siding was often replaced with brick; and house plans ranch walkout basement were often included as well.
