ABSTRACT
The primitive adaptations of the Hispanic tradition in the Southwest and California hold forth, Arthur B. Benton argued two distinct possibilities: to let traditional forms develop naturally or to use them as a basis for a new modern architecture. The theme of the rustic, of rural life, of the vernacular farmhouse has been a recurring one within our Mediterranean/Western European tradition. During the first century, Roman writer M. Terentius Varro made this a central thesis in his De re Rustica. Americans, in the late decades of the nineteenth century, were keenly aware of and involved with the allure of the rural life and rural image. The emergence of America's Colonial Revival architecture in the late 1870s provided a potent readable artifact to symbolize America's commitment to the rural, the vernacular, and the rustic. American Southwest became the most vivid exemplar of America's own ancient folk tradition.
