The Crazed Ranch The first Raised Ranch was a single story
affair built by a man named Cliff May in San Diego in 1932. The
idea was to build a home that was as economic as possible and
fit the minimal needs of depression-era families. What made this
building a Ranch? Hard to say, but it has a layout that’s evenly
split between bedrooms on one side and living space on the other
side, with low pitched roofs and broad eaves. The incredibly
bland, bourgeois-friendly Ranch proliferated across the United
States in the 1950s, as the gist of its exterior aesthetics and
interior organization can be traced directly to Frank Lloyd
Wright’s Prairie houses. It was as if fine Szechwan cooking was
interpreted by La Choy. The greatest outrage for Frank was when
the one-story ranch soon became the “Raised Ranch” with story
and-a-half or two story walls, completely violating every
aesthetic tenant of the Prairie style horizontality. Ranch homes
today represent almost the worst of all worlds; a home that is
bisected like a cent