52. D.H. Melvin House. 5231 Mary Street. 1926. Frame Vernacular. This house has details of the Craftsman style.

David Holmes Melvin was the son of Joseph and Mary Melvin. D.H. was born on December 21st, 1875. In 1904, he marreid Laura Mack Johnson  and they would have seven sons. Throughout his lifetime, D.H. held several jobs and positions that would benefit the growing city of Milton. He also was a key house builder during the early 1900s. He worked as a book keeper for the COhen Brother and would later become the tax assessor for Santa Rosa County. 

The American Craftsman style (along with a wide variety of related but conceptually distinct European design movements) was developed out of the British Arts and Crafts movement, which began as early as the 1860s.

While the American movement reacted against the eclectic Victorian "over-decorated" aesthetic, the Arts and Crafts style's American arrival coincided with the decline of the Victorian era. The American Arts and Crafts movement shared the British movement's reform philosophy, encouraging originality, simplicity of form, local natural materials, and the visibility of handicraft, but distinguished itself, particularly in the Craftsman Bungalow style, with a goal of ennobling modest homes for a rapidly expanding American middle class.

Credits and Sources:

National Register of Historic Places: Milton, Florida.  November 8, 1987.  National Register Identification Number 87001944

Brian D. Rucker, “Blackwater and Yellow Pine: The Development of Santa Rosa County, 1821-1865. (Ph.D diss., Florida State University, 1990).

Virginia Savage McAlester.  A Field Guide to American Houses. (New York:  Alfred A. Knopf. 2013).

Gerald Foster. American Houses. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 2004).

Maurie Van Buren. House Styles at a Glance. (Marietta, Georgia: Longstreet Press. 1991).