Arts and crafts

In an age of cookie-cutter suburban houses and million-dollar tear-downs, you would think an architectural gem in a historic district in tony Winchester with a view of Mystic Lake would sell in a heartbeat.

Yet the five-bedroom home on Everett Avenue is such a near-perfect example of the Arts and Crafts style, with wide overhanging eaves, decorative tiles, and custom interior woodwork, that prospective buyers appear somewhat intimidated by the idea of updating its rooms.

''The interior has kept a lot of people from wanting to come in and gut it," said owner Dee Dee Cunningham, who has had the house for sale on and off over the past three years and has even cut the price several times to draw buyers.

''A larger kitchen would mean losing the dining room, and I just couldn't do it. Some people see the woodwork and details and, like me, they just don't have the heart to tear it out," said Cunningham.

The Arts and Crafts movement has a strong presence in New England, with Boston serving as the port of entry for a style that was begun in England by William Morris and his followers in the mid-19th century. The style promoted architecture and decorative items that emphasized the manual over the machine-made, and was a reaction against what its founders perceived to be the dehumanizing effects of the Industrial Revolution.

It took hold in New England beginning in 1897, when H. Langford Warren, founder of the architecture program at Harvard University, and a coterie of Brahmin architects founded the Society of Arts and Crafts and urged collaboration between building designers and craftsman.

''It was not one style but rather an approach to building," said Maureen Meister, a Winchester resident and author of ''Architecture and the Arts and Crafts Movement in Boston," published in 2003.

Boston's Arts and Crafts movement was decidedly rural instead of urban, and unapologetically Anglophile, even nostalgic, reaching for a mythical England of the past. Hence the Cunningham home and its view of Mystic Lake out back through hand-blown leaded-glass windows that seems like a dreamy, pastoral scene out of an E. M. Forrester novel.

''It was a time when so many people were trying to figure out what their cultural heritage was and how to express it architecturally," Meister said. ''Warren believed American culture was English culture."

Other Americans influential in the movement -- including Gustav Stickley, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Greene brothers -- generally eschewed historical reference, Meister said. But in Boston, Arts and Crafts ideals were embraced and incorporated into an eclectic array of revival styles including Tudor, Georgian, and Gothic.

The Cunninghams' home, with its Tudor-like asymmetrical main facade, exudes a baronial self-confidence. Just a few doors down the street, at 40 Everett Ave., is another five-bedroom Arts and Crafts house, built in 1903, that is more understated with neoclassical features. The house is sheathed in stucco and features a low-pitched roof, typical of Arts and Crafts, and an unusual offset Palladian window.

Like the Cunninghams', this house is also for sale, currently listed at $2.75 million. Yet the owners were able to renovate 40 Everett in a way that incorporated modern conveniences without sacrificing design integrity and Arts and Crafts details.

''They took everything down to the wall studs. They put in new climate control and sound systems while keeping a lot of the original woodwork, built-in cabinetry, and tile fireplaces," said Darryl Brian DiRe of Carlson GMAC Real Estate, the listing agent.

The Cunninghams, meanwhile, have cut their asking price to $2.399 million from $3.85 million. Brokers say the house, built around 1900, needs the kind of kitchen and multicar attached garage usually found in this price range. It has a modern kitchen, but it lacks the size and brushed-chrome-and-black granite dazzle that are typical for the market. It is listed with broker Maria Freda of Century 21 Fortin in Winchester.

Cunningham and her husband are hoping to find buyers who can appreciate the house's character and features, and its thoughtful design.

''It has windows that bring light into virtually every part," she said. ''It has air chambers in the walls that distribute heat and keep winter bills low. It has fascinating nooks and crannies."

But not all houses influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement are in the million-dollar-plus range. Indeed there are many bungalows in sylvan settings costing much less scattered across Massachusetts.

Andrew Price is a longtime collector of Arts and Crafts furniture who dreams of owning a bungalow that would be a link to his familial roots. His grandfather, Roland Cook, was an architect who built bungalows in North Beverly in the early 1920s, said Price, a public schoolteacher who lives in Newburyport.

''I started my collection about 15 years ago when my mother gave me some of my grandfather's pieces. She thought they were awful," Price said.

A small bungalow on Salem Street in Haverhill has caught his eye, but Price is balking at the $300,000 asking price for the modest two-bedroom located on a quarter-acre lot. Yet the house has telltale Arts and Crafts elements: squat columns flanking a front porch; eave brackets; oak interior paneling; and built-in cabinetry. And, in keeping with the pastoral roots of the movement, the house has a remarkable view of a pristine 140-acre farm that is preserved under a state agricultural restriction.

''From here to the Merrimack River, you can never build on it," said the house's current owner, Marc Segan, as he surveyed the rolling hills that lead down to the river.

Indeed, Price has no trouble warming to the house itself, and can already envision it hosting his collection.

''For me, it's a subliminal thing," Price said. ''Arts and Crafts architecture and furniture tell me: This is comfort. This is home."