PRESTON & EUGENIA McNALL HOUSE

The Preston McNall house is a good deal smaller than
the nearby Paul E. Stark house (site 7), which was built four years earlier. Even so, the two houses have much in common. Both homes are fine examples of the Colonial Revival style, both are clad in stucco, both have handsome, classically derived main entrances, and both have attached garages, that of the McNall house being located in the basement story under the first story sunporch.

What these two houses demonstrate is that good designers could take the same basic elements and use them to produce comfortable, even graceful houses that, while very different in scale, are instantly recognizable as belonging to the Colonial Revival style. Partly this is a tribute to the style itself, whose design elements lend themselves to use on different scales. Mostly, however, it is a tribute to the study of proportions that was a major part of the training of architects prior to World War II. The difference this makes can be readily seen when visiting any of the new Colonial Revival suburbs being built today.

Preston McNall was a professor at the UW when his house was built.