Storybook Architecture

Storybook architecture, also called fairytale architecture, is a residential building style emphasizing playfulness and whimsy, gaining popularity during the 1920s in England and the United States, with particular prominence in and around Los Angeles, California, through the 1920s and 1930s. Its houses feature intentionally uneven roofs, steep rooflines evoking straw thatch, multiple gables and turrets, decorative dovecotes, and cobblestone walls with doors and windows that may look mismatched or odd shaped. Its primary architects included Harry Oliver, Ben Sherwood, William R. Yelland, Walter W. Dixon, Hugh W. Comstock and Carr Jones, with notable buildings including Oliver's 1921 Spadena House in Beverly Hills, his 1922 Tam O'Shanter Inn, Sherwood's 1931 Snow White Cottages, Oakland's 1927 Montclair firehouse, and the Valley of the Moon complex begun in Tucson, Arizona, in 1923. The photographer Douglas Keister and writer Arrol Gellner coined the term storybook style in a 2001 book on the subject, later revised in 2017.