Chapter 4 of Poems of Wood & Light consists of a series of twenty-one short sections, each illustrating some aspect or detail of Greene & Greene design. What follows is an excerpt from the introduction to that chapter.

“God is in the details.” These words are often attributed to modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe though it is unclear if he ever actually spoke them. This fact hardly matters, however. The brilliantly brief phrase conveys to the listener an instantly understood, if previously unrealized, meaning: we get to the beauty of something by delving beyond the surface. That this concept is ascribed to a modernist, to the man who said, “Less is more” is intriguing. Architecture of the Modernist Movement is typically austere, minimalist. One tends to think of such designs not in terms of details but rather form. Practitioners of modernism, however, are no different than designers before and since in this regard: details are critical.

It might seem that modernism has little to do with the work of Greene & Greene. The Arts & Crafts movement was decidedly anti-modern. It was, in part, a rejection of the industrial age whereas modernism was conceived as an architecture for the industrial age. Despite this apparent diametric opposition, there are sympathetic aspects to the movements. Recall that Arts & Crafts was also a repudiation of the overly ornate characteristics of the Victorian era, a move toward more honestly expressed construction with less adornment. A philosophy of less is more, if you will. One must be careful not to carry such analogy too far as clearly the reigning attitudes of the two schools were vastly dissimilar but it is an interesting line of inquiry.

Of course, the modernist notion of architecture as transcending regional identity is completely antithetical to the work of Greene & Greene, whose houses were heavily influenced by their locale. It is also the case that the Greenes were highly aware of the people who would inhabit their buildings. No one-size-fits-all solution could have held any appeal for them. Despite the appeal of Arts & Crafts for its emphasis on natural materials, honest construction and simple forms, modernism won, at least for a time. It made Arts & Crafts seem irrelevant and anachronistic, a throwback to the era of horses and buggies at a time when automobiles were screaming about the countryside.

Putting aside differences and similarities between these movements, the opening quote of this section applies as well, perhaps, to the Greenes’ designs as to any others. Details define Greene & Greene. As Morgan Yost noted, “The time spent by the brothers on each of their later jobs must have been enormous. Every detail was obviously supervised in execution after having been individually designed.” Thus, to understand the work of Charles and Henry Greene, one must gain an appreciation for the details that appear in their work and the extraordinary effort devoted to them.

To gain this appreciation, this understanding, a degree of deconstruction is required. However, deconstructing a masterpiece is likely to be less than completely satisfying. We can describe the component parts but any such narrative is sure to be incomplete -- a work of genius is always more than the sum of its parts. But because those parts are essential, even a partial understanding of them, of the design vocabulary, is valuable.