Arts & Crafts  / American Foursquare (Artistic)

Interiors

Inside the Foursquare

Built-ins such as bookcases and window seats were popular enhancements; those building planbook or kit houses could order room-dividing colonnades and kitchen cabinets. The style of furnishings was eclectic, in keeping with the fast-changing times and the affordability of catalog and mass-production furniture. Interior style changed from decade to decade. Look for hardwood wainscot, woodwork, and trim; stenciled or papered friezes, and machine-printed wallpaper; upholstered and leather furniture; a strong focus on the hearth and mantel. Craftsman (“bungalow”) interiors—Mission oak furniture, mica lamps, square-spindled staircases—would have been common with the first wave. But Colonial Revival styles were ascendant after 1915, and lush Jazz Age rooms came along in the Twenties.