FEATURING: 640 images of vernacular and high-style American architecture, as of July, 2007 (gradually updating during spring, 2008).

INTRODUCTION:  The web pages here include images and descriptions of the dominant architectural styles found throughout the United States and Canada. Some pages have more photos than others, simply due to the availability of photos in my collection and my opportunities to travel. My original intent was to develop these pages for a course I teach, PL 303 (Design and Preservation) at Northern Arizona University. Then I discovered that people around North America were using them as references, leading me to occasionally update them for the past few years. Because those involved with historic preservation, geography, and landscape studies are concerned with virtually all types and styles of buildings, I have included a wide variety of photos representing numerous building types and settings.  These include high style, vernacular, and folk architecture, and a combination of residential, commercial, and institutional structures.
       
Listed below are the dominant sources for the architectural and historic information presented within these Web pages.  I highly recommend any of these sources for further study and enlightenment. Most if not all are available at regional book stores and/or on line. The book I tend to recommend most is A Field Guide To American Houses (Source # 12 below). Two other, more recent books are equally impressive in detail and scope, however, and are highly recommended: American Houses: A Field Guide to the Architecture of the Home, and The Elements of Style (sources 4 and 1 below, respectively). These three books alone will arguably serve the equivalent of college courses on the subject! 

ABOUT AMERICAN ARCHITECTURAL STYLES: Exterior styles and related building forms and floor plans are in part a product of cultural tastes and values that reflect a particular place, time, and population. Styles are somewhat analogous to clothing fads, which come and go over time, and sometimes return. Back when the spread of cultural ideas and fashions across the country was slower, certain architectural styles remained in vogue for multiple decades or longer, and often revealed a distinctly regional identity. By the Victorian Era of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, multiple styles became simultaneously popular and readily available throughout the United States, ushering in what historians refer to as the "Eclectic Era" of architecture, when Americans had their choice of numerous modern or revival styles. This co-existing fascination with so-called "period styles" and early modernism continued unabated until the Great Depression. Relatively little building construction took place between 1929 and 1945.

Not until after World War II did America see another national building boom, by which time automobile suburbs, modern-era housing and office towers were the rule. America's modern era of functionalism and a general aversion to historic references dominated the built environment from the 1940s through the 1980s. The familiar "glass box" office tower and ubiquitous suburban ranch house are still powerful symbols of this anti-stylistic era when "form followed function". Changes were brewing by the 1970s, however, leading America to react against modern architecture and planning practices. Historic styles became gradually popular once again, coinciding with the now-booming historic preservation movement. Colonial Revival elements adorned otherwise modern ranch houses, and by the 1990s a vague "postmodern era" was in full swing.

Postmodern architecture is generally characterized by an unrelated and exaggerated use of historical styles, or imitatated reproductions of older buildings. The current rise of postmodern historicism has coincided with a revived interest in traditional town planning practices known as "neotraditional" development, or the New Urbanism. A return to city centers in high-rise, mixed-used lofts and condos is now occuring, and hundreds of neotraditional neighborhoods are under construction or already completed, with designs that variously emphasize walking, mass transit, mixed uses, community livability, public space, and -- hopefully -- affordability. What will be America's next major cultural interest, and how will the built environment reflect that interest?

How these web sites are organized:
My classification of styles and dominant dates are, by necessity, simplifications based on my own amalgum of existing publications (see below) and accumulated knowledge. It is wise to be aware that the interpretation of architectural styles is not an exact science, though with practice you will learn to recognize dominant themes for various periods of American history. The menu of stylistic categories to the left represents a rather standard approach to identifying historical and contemporary architectural periods and styles, one which I have found useful for teaching my students. Simplified categories and cut-off dates, however, can mask the finer complexities of stylistic trends and the gradual transitions of one "era" moving into another. For instance, some still argue with good reason that our current "postmodern era" is really just a fine-tuning of a continuing "modern" period. Popular styles and periods typically overlapped with one another by years or decades, though occasionally there were rather abrupt beginnings and endings to the popularity of certain styles (such as Art Deco's emergence in the 1920s, or the demise of Queen Anne by 1905-ish).

Further, many buildings reveal two or more styles mixed together, which is why it can be challenging to pinpoint a structure as one specific style. I have included numerous examples of such mixtures, as they are very common. Craftsman bungalows, for instance, can often exhibit Tudor or Italian Renaissance features, and our recent postmodern buildings can mix and match just about any style without making much historical sense. To further complicate things, buildings are adapted over time to reflect changing economic uses and cultural trends. Thus, updating a Georgian house with Victorian ornament or with a Mansard roof can really throw off a clear identification unless a closer examination of the building's history and construction materials is conducted. Still, the pages here show distinct trends in stylistic treatments over time, and learning these styles can provide a lifetime of enjoyment and education when interpreting our built environment. This is history that all of us can see, and I find it makes American (and European) history much more fascinating than what we find in typical history textbooks.

The identifying features on each page include a wide variety of stylistic elements that may or may not be found on particular buildings. No one should expect to find all (or even most) stylistic features on specific buildings, as many structures are often identified with only one or two primary stylistic elements or forms. Only the most elaborate, high-style buildings (designed by architects) will typically exhibit a variety of stylistic features, whereas the bulk of American residential and commercial buildings are often simplified versions that attempt to mimic the basic ideas of their high-style prototypes. Because most of us live and work in these more typical vernacular (common) buildings, a good proportion of the examples illustrated here are of the vernacular, or folk, variety.

1) Calloway, Stephen (ed). 2005. The Elements of Style: An Encyclopedia of Domestic Architectural Detail. Buffalo: Firefly Books, Inc.

2) Carley, Rachel. 1994. The Visual Dictionary of American Domestic Architecture. New York: Henry Holt and Co.

3) Fischer, David. 1989. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford University Press.

4) Foster, Gerald. 2004. American Houses: A Field Guide to the Architecture of the Home. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.

5) Francaviglia, Richard.  1996.  Main Street Revisited.  University of Iowa Press.

6) Freeman, Ron. 1997. Savannah: People, Places & Events. Published by Ron Freeman.

7) Jakle, John, et. al.  1989.  Common Houses in America's Small Towns.  University of Georgia Press.

8) Lancaster, C. 1985. The American Bungalow, 1880-1930. New York: Abbeville Press.

9) Liebs, Chester.  1995.  Main Street to Miracle Mile.  The John Hopkins University Press.

10) Lewis, Peirce.  1990.  The Northeast and the making of American geographical habits.  In The Making of the American Landscape, edited by Michael Conzen.  pp. 80-103.

11) Longstreth, Richard. 2000. The Buildings of Main Street: A Guide to American Commercial Architecture. AltaMira Press.

12) McAlester, V. and Lee McAlester.  1984. A Field Guide to American Houses.  Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

13) Poppeliers, John C., et. al. What Style Is It?  National Trust for Historic Preservation: The Preservation Press.

14)  Roth, Leland.  1979.  A Concise History of American Architecture.  Harper and Row, Publishers.

15) Schulze, F., and Harrington, K. (eds.) 1993. (Fourth Edition) Chicago's Famous Buildings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press..

16) Tyler, Norman. 2000. Historic Preservation. W.W.Norton & Co., Inc.

17) Wilson, Chris. 1997. The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a Modern, Regional Tradition. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.