MAY 2006 »  book review

Private Exteriors

Courtyards: Intimate Outdoor Spaces
by Douglas Keister
Gibbs Smith Publisher, Salt Lake City, UT; 2005
160 pp.; hardcover; 150 color photos; $39.95
ISBN 1-58685-540-9

Reviewed by Nicole V. Gagné

Photographer and writer Douglas Keister has specialized in documenting historic architecture throughout the last 20 years, producing more than two dozen distinguished volumes. Alongside his books on cottages and the bungalow, Keister has also cherished a special enthusiasm for more unusual and under-appreciated structures, such as Storybook buildings or the "Painted Ladies" of San Francisco, CA. His new book, Courtyards: Intimate Outdoor Spaces, offers a long overdue evaluation of this ubiquitous architectural feature.

Courtyards have been built on grand public scales as well as in tiny property lots, in a spectrum of designs that testify to the popularity of their unique ambience. "The basic elements of a courtyard," Keister explains, "have always been water, walls, and sky combined to convey qualities of intimacy, security, and quiet." Keister’s Courtyards combines his strengths as both historian and photographer, and provides an essential study of this most durable of design elements, in which thoughtful evaluations are combined with breathtaking color photographs. The result is a book that is certain to enhance the vision of both architects and homeowners, and stimulate new creativity in the construction and appreciation of courtyards.

People have been designing courtyards, Keister says, "almost as soon as humans began constructing permanent buildings," with examples arising in the earliest civilizations of China, the Middle East and North Africa. Keister’s thoughtful Introduction, "History of the Courtyard," is a fascinating survey of the development of this architectural perennial from its ancient beginnings, and includes handsome photos of courtyard prototypes from Pompeii, Scotland, China, Germany and France. This section also traces the rise of courtyard design in the United States, in colonial adaptations of English garden landscape architecture as well as in the forts and missions of the 18th and 19th centuries. As a residential feature, courtyards also played an important role in the 19th-century French-influenced architecture of New Orleans, LA’s French Quarter, or Vieux Carré. But the real jumpstart for American courtyards came with the Californian enthusiasm for Andalusian architecture in the early-20th century, which rapidly branched out into the more open-design bungalow courts. The American courtyard is the primary focus of Keister’s book, which he subdivides into three main categories: community courtyards, the courtyard in historic residential architecture and new-construction courtyards.

The chapter on community courtyards examines the primarily urban phenomenon of group-housing complexes known as courts, from their beginnings in small clusters of cottages arranged around a central courtyard, to the adjoined residences of apartment courts. This section is especially noteworthy for its fascinating look at the dazzling courtyards that grace the California apartment courts of Arthur and Nina Zwebell. The couple built a half-dozen such complexes throughout the 1920s, taking their inspirations from Spanish, Italian, Middle Eastern and North African designs, and antiquing their courtyards in the Hollywood-derived tradition that has come to be known as Storybook-style architecture. Fortunately, the Zwebells’ innate good taste and feeling for intimacy eschewed the strains of kitsch and fantasy that usually creep into Storybook houses. Instead, their tasteful and imaginative efforts resulted in exquisite oases of flora and water, nestled within the boom town that was 1920s Hollywood.

English, French and Spanish influences all contributed to the plethora of courtyards in American historic residential architecture, and the book follows these inspirations across the country, from Colonial Williamsburg to New Orleans to California. To his credit, Keister is just as appreciative of such elaborate examples as the Spanish Colonial Revival courtyard of La Casa Nueva – in which colonnades frame an impressive garden and central fountain – as he is of the small courtyard of the B&W Courtyards Bed & Breakfast in the French Quarter of New Orleans, with its potted plants and humble wood-frame fountain. What matters for Keister is what really counts: the integrity and tastefulness of a courtyard’s design, regardless of its scale or influences. And what an array of influences this section embraces! Along with the familiar European stylings, Keister also documents such gems as the two-story interior courtyard of the Duncan-Irwin House in Pasadena, CA, designed by the master Arts and Crafts architects Charles and Henry Greene, in which a raised lily pond is accented by art-glass water lilies; the Colonial Revival-style M.L. Calvin House in Florida, highlighted by a large fish pond and tropical plants; and a Japanese-inspired courtyard in San Diego, CA, characterized by bamboo plantings and a tiny Japanesque bridge.

The construction of new courtyards throughout the last 60 years may be the most wide-ranging of all Keister’s overviews of courtyard design. Ca’Toga, the Calistoga, CA, home of renowned trompe-l’oeil artist Carlo Marchiori, spectacularly blends Venetian Gothic influences and ancient Roman designs, with a lower courtyard drawn from the Emperor Adrian’s bath complex at the Villa Adriana, highlighted by four fountains that tap into Calistoga’s hot springs. Yet in this chapter too, Keister is equally enthralled by simplicity, typified by the ingenuity and beauty of a modest 7x30-ft. courtyard in San Diego, CA. Built in 1998 to take advantage of the narrow space between a 1920s Spanish-style bungalow and its garage, this attractive arrangement of seating, potted plants and a Mission-style concrete fountain is praised by Keister not just for its loveliness but also for its persuasive demonstration that "one need not spend a lot of money to achieve an excellent effect."

The homeowner’s ability to achieve such excellence will be greatly enhanced by the insightful text and gorgeous photographs of Keister’s book. Supplementary chapters that survey options in water elements and courtyard-lighting effects serve to broaden further the design possibilities. Courtyards: Intimate Outdoor Spaces is one of those rare architectural surveys that will actually excite its readers to transform their property – grand or modest – so that they and their visitors may enjoy for themselves what Keister calls "a private space away from the noise, congestion, and stress of modern urban life."  

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