A Field Guide to American Houses - Softcover

McAlester, Virginia Savage; McAlester, Lee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0394510321 ISBN 13: 9780394510323

Publisher: Knopf, 1984

For the house lover and the curious tourist, for the house buyer and the weekend stroller, for neighborhood preservation groups and for all who want to know more about their community -- here, at last, is a book that makes it both easy and pleasurable to identify the various styles and periods of American domestic architecture.

Concentrating not on rare landmarks but on typical dwellings in ordinary neighborhoods all across the United States -- houses built over the past three hundred years and lived in by Americans of every social and economic background -- the book provides you with the facts (and frame of reference) that will enable you to look in a fresh way at the houses you constantly see around you. It tells you -- and shows you in more than 1,200 illustrations -- what you need to know in order to be able to recognize the several distinct architectural styles and to understand their historical significance. What does that cornice mean? Or that porch? That door? When was this house built? What does its style say about the people who built it? You'll find the answers to such questions here.

This is how the book works: Each of thirty-nine chapters focuses on a particular style (and its variants). Each begins with a large schematic drawing that highlights the style's most important identifying features. Additional drawings and photographs depict the most common shapes and the principal subtypes, allowing you to see at a glance a wide range of examples of each style. Still more drawings offer close-up views of typical small details -- windows, doors, cornices, etc. -- that might be difficult to see in full-house pictures. The accompanying text is rich in information about each style -- describing in detail its identifying features, telling you where (and in what quantity) you're likely to find examples of it, discussing all of its notable variants, and revealing its origin and tracing its history.

In the book's introductory chapters you'll find invaluable general discussions of house-building materials and techniques ("Structure"), house shapes ("Form"), and the many traditions of architectural fashion ("Style") that have influenced American house design through the past three centuries. A pictorial key and glossary help lead you from simple, easily recognized architectural features -- the presence of a tile roof, for example -- to the styles in which that feature is likely to be found.

From the Back Cover:

How to Use This Book

Preface

Looking at American Houses

Style: The Fashions of American Houses

Form: The Shapes of American Houses

Structure: The Anatomy of American Houses

Pictorial Key and Glossary

Folk Houses

Native American

Pre-Railroad

National

Colonial Houses (1600-1820)

Postmedieval English

Dutch Colonial

French Colonial

Spanish Colonial

Georgian

Adam

Early Classical Revival

Romantic Houses (1820-1880)

Greek Revival

Gothic Revival

Italianate

Exotic Revivals

Octagon

Victorian Houses (1860-1900)

Second Empire

Stick

Queen Anne

Shingle

Richardsonian Romanesque

Folk Victorian

Eclectic Houses (1880-1940)

Anglo-American, English, and French Period Houses

Colonial Revival

Neoclassical

Tudor

Chateauesque

Beaux Arts

French Eclectic

Mediterranean Period Houses

Italian Renaissance

Mission

Spanish Eclectic

Monterey

Pueblo Revival

Modern Houses

Prairie

Craftsman

Modernistic

International

American Houses Since 1940

Modern

Neoeclectic

Contemporary Folk

For Further Reference

Index

About the Author:

Virginia and Lee McAlester have both avocational and professional interests in architecture. Virginia, a Radcliffe graduate, attended the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She is a founding member and past president of the Historic Preservation League, Inc. (Dallas), and for nine years was Texas Advisor and a member of the Administrative Committee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. She is co-author of The Making of a Historic District: Swiss Avenue. Lee, a geologist, is a professor at Southern Methodist University and was formerly Dean of the School of Humanities. From 1960 to 1973 he was Professor of Geology at Yale University. He has an active hobby interest in architectural history and has been involved in historic preservation in New England, Georgia, and the Southwest. The McAlesters live in Dallas, Texas.

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 0394510321
• ISBN 13: 9780394510323
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544