Santa Cruz Real Estate Experts Team Sedenquist

Art Deco (1920-1940)

Identifying features:

• Smooth wall surfaces, usually made of stucco
• Zigzags, chevrons, and other stylized and geometric motifs occurring as decorative elements on facades
• Highly stylized doorways
• Towers and other vertical projections above the roof line

The Art Deco design revolution of the 1920s and 1930s symbolized the optimism and rapid change of the industrial age -- clean lines, dramatic shapes, and colorful and ornate surfaces. Art Deco changed the look of everything from ocean liners and passenger trains to toasters and wall clocks; but nowhere was this transformation more dramatic or more lasting than in architecture.

The Art Deco style derives its name from The Exposition des Arts Decoratifs (Paris, 1925). It strove for modernity, an artistic expression of the machine age, and the suggestion of motion. Forms were simplified and streamlined. The motifs were derived from geometric shapes, often stepped back or angular with floral designs, zigzags (chevrons) and fluted or reed-patterned ornamentation -- often inspired by those of ancient civilizations. African tribal art, Central American (Aztec and Mayan) architecture, pharaonic Egyptian art (Tutankhamen's Tomb was discovered in 1922) and the Orient (glazes and lacquerwork) were just some of the many exotic sources from which this style came.

From luxurious objects made from exotic materials to mass-produced, streamlined items available to a growing middle class, the world of Art Deco represents a "graciousness of form" from a simpler time. Today, "Art Deco" (often dubbed "Retro Moderne") is used to refer to a mix of styles from the 1920s and 1930s.

Beaux Arts (1885 - 1920)

Identifying features:

• Masonry walls (usually of light-colored stone)
• Decorative garlands, floral patterns, or shields
• Facade with classical pilasters or columns, usually paired and with Ionic or Corinthian capitals
• Facades usually have symmetrically balanced windows and centered door
• First story often rusticated

Broadly speaking, the term "Beaux Arts" refers to the American Renaissance period from about 1885 to the 1920s, and encompasses the Italian Renaissance and Neoclassical Revivals. Lavish surface ornamentation, entry porches with roofs supported by classical columns and cornice lines accented by elaborate moldings, dentils, and modillions were just some of the characteristics of this style.

Think of the Vanderbilts. Think of the Goelets. Think of the Belmonts, and the words "American Palaces" come to mind. The Beaux Arts houses of the late 1800s and early 1900s were grand displays of those pre-income tax days when fortunes could be amassed and proudly displayed in true ornate fashion. During the early Beaux Arts days, both New York City and Newport-playground to the nouveau riche-were the settings for these palatial digs. Years later, an economic recession and higher taxes forced the grandest examples of this style to be bulldozed, never to be admired again.

Besides the grand country estates of American Imperialists, the Beaux Arts style was interpreted in imposing row and freestanding town houses. While you probably won't find any Beaux Arts palaces ensconced your neighborhood, there are a few still lingering about. The most notable of these is Frederick William Vanderbilt's 54-room house in Hyde Park, New York. (Frederick's brother, George, built a 255-room Chateauesque mansion in Asheville, North Carolina.)

Cape Cod Cottage (1750-1850; 1940-1950)

Identifying features:

• Steeped roof
• Story-and-a-half house with single gabled ends
• Multipaned windows
• A ridge-centered chimney
• Absence of decorative exterior trim or ornamentation except for small window hoods and transom windows above the entry door

Within decades after arriving in America, English settlers throughout the colonies busied themselves constructing homes that were familiar to them. The half-timbered English house with its hall and parlor was their model, which they adapted to the climate and natural resources of New England. What emerged over ensuing generations was a distinct new development: what is now called the Cape Cod house.

Cape Cod style houses were built in New England from the late 17th century until about 1850. In the outlands of Cape Cod, materials and other resources were scarce, thus the houses were often more modest than elsewhere. Built on massive 10x10 oak sills so that the structures could be dragged on sand to other sites as the sand dunes shifted and changed the landscape, these diminutive houses were early America's version of the starter home.

Offering little more than an entry porch and single room, they were almost entirely devoid of adornment. Over time, people added on to the houses, either doubling the half Cape or adding a wing to the rear. As families' need for space grew, dormers were cut into roofs to add more space, light and ventilation. "Shed" dormers ran almost the entire length of the houses, while "dog house" dormers were just the width of a window. Many old houses had dormers added in the 1920s, when new ideas about privacy and health led people to create more bedrooms.

Architects rediscovered the Cape Cod house in the 1930s, when both the Colonial Revival and the Depression combined to create a desire for small, economical, yet old-fashioned houses. The Cape Cod house received national publicity through books like Houses for Homemakers by Boston architect Royal Barry Wills. Wills' Capes featured the traditional massive central chimney. Instead of halls and parlors, the modern Capes had living rooms, dining rooms, large bedrooms, bathrooms and attached garages.

The Cape Cod house came into its own in the 1940s and 1950s. GIs returning from World War II were encouraged to buy homes for their growing families. Plans for Cape Cod homes by Wills and other architects were circulated nationally through the "House of the Month" scheme, which distributed plans and models to banks and savings and loans all over America. Planned estates like Levittown, New York, featured Cape Cod houses. Today, the charming Cape Cod style remains as one of America's most archetypal cottage-style houses. It appeals both to our strong sense of cultural heritage and our need to create a contemporary, yet quintessential, cottage home.

Colonial Revival (1880 - 1940)

Identifying features:

• Front door accentuated with decorative crown and/or entry porch
• Façades with symmetrically balanced windows and centered door
• Windows with double-hung sashes, usually with multiplane glazing in one or both sashes
• Windows frequently in adjacent pairs or triples

In its early phase (1880-1915) the Colonial Revival tended to involve grandiose structures that incorporated designs characteristic of the original Colonial style: Palladian windows, gambrel roofs, pedimented porticos, columns, classical detailing such as swags and urns and crisp, white trim. While these larger homes showed more restraint than did the showier Chateauesque and Romanesque styles, they were rarely historically correct copies. It wasn't until later, between 1915 and 1935, that Colonial Revival fashion shifted toward a truer facsimile of the Colonial prototype.

In the 1940s and '50s, a further simplification was made (largely due to the depression and changing postwar fashions), and Colonial Revivals were built that only suggested, rather than replicated, their Colonial predecessors.

The Colonial Revival style began after the American Centennial in 1876. It was then that the public developed a new fascination with their Colonial roots. The anti-England sentiment that had spawned the Greek Revival had largely abated, and American expatriates found themselves suddenly hungering for their homeland. By the 1890s, architects could not build houses that fed that nostalgic fervor fast enough, and the Colonial Revival became a staple of American domestic design. It continues in all its various forms and deviations to this day.

Craftsman Bungalow (1905 - 1930)

Identifying features:

• Low-pitched, gabled roof (occasionally hipped), with wide, unenclosed eave overhang
• Roof rafters usually exposed
• Decorative beams or braces under gables
• Porch support bases extending to ground level (without break at level of porch floor)
• Porch supports usually squared and sometimes slanting inward

The bungalow was the dominant style for smaller houses built throughout the country during the period from about 1905 until the early 1920s. The Craftsman, the most popular style of bungalow, originated in Southern California and quickly spread-via pattern books and popular magazines-throughout the rest of the country. Anyone, anywhere, as long as they lived near a train depot, could pick a bungalow style out of a Sears Roebuck or Aladdin Redi-Cut catalog and have the whole house-plumbing and all-shipped to them.

The roots of the American bungalow are found in the Indian province of Bengal. Eighteenth-century one-story huts with thatched roofs were adapted by the British, who used them as houses for colonial administrators. In the 19th century, the "bangla" or bungalow's economy of space, simplicity of form, and closeness to nature inspired the English architects for the Arts and Crafts (Craftsman) movement.

Some people believe that the bungalow is indeed the true American house, giving a physical place for such bedrock family values as practicality, simplicity, and openness. "It was in Southern California that the bungalow…found its true home," said the authors of Architecture in Los Angeles. "Here a young family on the make, a sick family on the mend, or an old family on meager savings could build a woodsy place in the sun with palm trees and a rose garden. The California bungalow, whatever its size or quality of workmanship, was the closest thing to a democratic art that has ever been produced."

Folk Victorian (1870-1910)

Identifying features:

• Symmetrical façade (except gable-front-and-wing subtype)
• Porches with flat, jigsaw trim in a variety of patterns or spindlework
• Cornice-line brackets
• Many with spindles, gingerbread and details adapted from the Gothic Revival Style
• Cast-iron lace work that hides galvanized roofing
• Low-pitched, pyramid-shaped roof
• Front gable and side wings

The Folk Victorian was a humbler version of the more elaborate Victorian house styles, including the Italianate and the Romanesque. They were built by middle-class Americans, or "just folks", who wanted to emulate the style of the moneyed class, but couldn't afford an architect. It is a whimsical, yet simple style, whose chief characteristic is the presence of decorative detailing (primarily on the porch and cornice line) on simple folk-house forms.

The widespread availability of machine-made decorative trim work was made possible by a period of economic boom. The new railways distributed these materials throughout the states. This meant that local builders could trek down to their local lumberyard, pick up a crate of scrolled brackets or gingerbread decoration and graft them lovingly onto a traditional house, one that was familiar to the local carpenter. Thus the Folk Victorian Style was born.

Like the Italianate, the Folk Victorian has various plans, a central-hall I-house form, an L or T-shaped plan and a side-passage townhouse plan. It is covered by wooden clapboards and usually features metal hipped or gable roofs. The Queen Anne Victorian is often confused with the Folk Victorian. While the two styles do have similar spindlework detailing, unlike the Queen Anne style, the Folk Victorian is symmetrical and orderly. It does not have towers, elaborate moldings or textured and varied wall surfaces that are characteristic of the Queen Anne.

The Folk Victorian has its own delightful yet no-nonsense, style. Because of this, it has managed to endure longer than many of the other Victorian styles.

French Eclectic (1915 - 1940)

Identifying features:

• Tall, steeply pitched, hipped roof without dominant front-facing cross gable
• Eaves commonly flared outward at roof-wall junction
• Brick, stone, or stucco walls, sometimes with half-timbering

The French style displays great variety in form and detailing, but is united by the characteristic style of roof. Because they both share a common Medieval English tradition, both French Eclectic houses and Tudor Revivals use half-timbering with a variety of different wall materials, as well as roofs of flat tile, slate, stone or thatch. As a result, the two styles are often confused. To tell the difference, one only has to look for the telltale dominant front-facing cross gables; if it's missing, it's a French Eclectic.

At the end of World War I, American soldiers arrived back in the States and imparted to their homeland an appreciation for all things French. As a result, young artists, writers and architects soon began making pilgrimages to France. It wasn't long before both Normandy-style and French Provincial homes sprang up all over America.
Decades before then, French prototypes had served as models for several American architectural styles, notably Second Empire, Beaux Arts, and Chateauesque. All of these were based on grand French buildings, including Parisian palaces and the majestic chateaux of the Loire Valley.

As the French Revival styles caught on in the United States, it was the rural vernacular architecture of the French countryside that inspired much of American residential architecture. Some of these styles, which you see mainly in suburban neighborhoods built from the 1920s to the '40s, take the form of cozy and romantic cottages, while others look more like small castles.

Georgian (1698-1720)

Identifying features:

• Square, symmetrical shape
• Hipped roof
• Main entrances emphasized with columns, pilasters, and broken pediment
• Decorative crown over front door
• Decorative flattened columns (pilasters) on each side of door
• Paired chimneys
• Windows with double-hung sashes, typically with six to twelve small panes per sash
• Cornice emphasized by decorative moldings, most commonly with tooth-like dentils

"More so than ever in the colonial period, buildings were now not only frameworks in which to live and work, they were also provocative projections of what Americans wanted to be." -- David P. Handlin, American Architecture, 1985

When the Great Fire of London destroyed that city in 1666, architect Sir Christopher Wren was the man of the hour chosen to rebuild it. Soon the city of London was transformed from a city that was positively medieval to a prosperous urban center -- resplendent with Renaissance-style brick townhouses set in tidy continuous rows.

This new urban-style house was derived from the Italian architecture of the 1500s, especially that of Andrea Palladio (1508-80) who freely adapted Roman classical forms. With its rigid symmetry, balanced proportion, and classical detailing, the new Georgian mode of architecture (named after the several King Georges who ruled Britan throughout much of the 18th century) represented a final break from the thatched roof, peaked-gable style of medieval architecture.

Some 40 years later the Georgian Style finally migrated -- by way of architectural books and builder's guides -- to the Thirteen Colonies. Soon this classic style was embraced as the official "look at me" house of New England's rising prosperous mercantile class.

The Georgian house is a formal, dignified and spacious but simple, one-or two-story box. It's usually two rooms deep, with doors and windows in strict symmetry. While the Georgian style started out with lavish surface ornamentation (like its British cousins) it eventually developed a simpler façade.

The Revolutionary War brought a halt to construction projects and effectively ended the Georgian Style in America, although conservative builders continued to use it into the 1800s. The style was revived at the time of the 1876 Centennial, when architects were moved by patriotic fervor to look to the American past for models.

Gothic Revival (1830-1875)

Identifying features:

• Wall surface extending into gable without break
• Steeply pitched roof; usually with steep cross gables
• Windows extending into gables, often with gothic (pointed-top) shapes
• One-story entry or full-width porch, commonly with flattened gothic arches
• Gables with decorated verge boards

Beginning in the 1830's and 1840's many architects grew tired of the restrained and simple qualities of architecture based on Roman and Greek examples. Tastes called for more fanciful, mythical-style buildings. Thus, the Gothic Style, which fed America's fascination with the romance of the medieval past, was born.

Gothic Revival, the first of the Picturesque styles, was a style that borrowed decorative elements from churches and town halls that were built in Europe between 1100 and 1500. It's appealing not as much for its stylistic embellishments as for its more organic approach to design. Gothic builders were less concerned with formal stylistic dogma than they were with the celebration of craft and utility.

While large Gothic structures, notably churches and some homes, featured picturesque irregularities and "asymmetrical" massings, many of the American Gothic Revival houses were built more simply. Their principal medieval characteristic is a steep central gable pierced by a decorative window of Gothic pointed-arch shape. The reason for this scaled-down Gothic look was because most American houses of the era were built with heavy frames of interlocking timbers rather than with the stone masonry of the medieval houses that inspired them. While easily adaptable to rectangular, box-like structures, this kind of heavy timbering was very difficult to adapt to the angular projections, nooks and crannies of the stone originals.

A.J. Davis was the first American architect to spread the Gothic gospel. His friend and fellow architect Andrew Jackson Downing also promoted the Gothic Revival in his books on "cottage villas" published in the 1840s. The Hudson River Valley, where Downing resided, was the perfect setting for the kind of picturesque, rambling "irregular" designs he endorsed. It was chiefly Downing's book that led to the flowering throughout rural America of some very picturesque wooden Gothic architecture.

Greek Revival (1815 - 1860)

Identifying features:

• Narrow line of transom and sidelights around door
• Entry of full-width porch supported by columns
• Cornice line emphasized with wide band of trim
• Gabled or hipped roof of low pitch

Grander versions of this style feature façades that are dominated by massive, full-height columns that actually resemble Greek temples. More commonly, the classical columns support a smaller entry porch or are reduced to flattened pilasters applied to the façade for decorative effect. An important and enduring legacy of the Greek Revival to American domestic architecture is the front-gabled house. It became the predominant form for detached urban houses in cities of the Northeast and Midwest until well into the 20th century. Greek Revival is best exemplified by the stately Southern plantation mansions with their ranks of imposing columns, a style that is often confused with Southern Colonial.

When the Greek Revival took hold in America around the year 1815, the entire culture that welcomed it had been classically oriented for more than two centuries. Thomas Jefferson had proposed the Roman classic as a suitable architecture for his vision of America, but Americans disdained the earlier Roman influences that were too closely associated with England. Instead, they chose to embrace Greek architecture and its passion for geometry and practical spatial function. So popular did this new fashion become, that by the 1830s it was known as the national style of American architecture.

America's victory in the War of 1812 against England, as well as its sympathies with Greece's fight for independence against the Turks (1812-30), helped fuel this love of all things Greek. As a stylistic influence, the Greek Revival filtered down to even the most modest of rural farmhouses.

International Style (1930-1990)

Identifying features:

• Flat roof
• Windows usually metal framed. They are often sliding windows casements set flush with outer walls
• No decorative detailing at doors or windows
• Smooth, unornamented wall surface
• Asymmetrical façade
• Less defined rooms that flow from one to another without doors
• Visually weightless quality engendered by the use of cantilever construction
• Glass, steel and reinforced concrete construction

"A building is a machine for living" -- Le Corbusier

The International Style is modern architecture. Proponents of the International Style, which made its American debut at the Museum of Modern Art in 1932, believed that it would express the Machine Age in structure and appearance. Thus, it developed as a highly functional, stark, unadorned style that was quickly embraced as both a fashion and an urban necessity.

The identifying features of this new style were in direct contrast to the Beaux Arts style. Concrete, glass and steel were the primary materials. The International Style architect thought of his creation as a skeleton enclosed by a thin light skin. He thought in terms of volume -- spaces enclosed by surfaces -- and not in terms of mass and solidity. He designed his surfaces accordingly, eliminating moldings and making his doors and windows flush with the surface.

The International style attempted to define a formula by which any architect could design a good building. It went on to become the dominant style of the mid-20th century. Unfortunately, its ease and cheapness of construction led to a plague of hideous look-alike imitations in the 1960s and 1970s. In its ideal form, this style produces a house that reflects a cool, pristine and subtle elegance.

Italianate (1840-1885)

Identifying features:

• Asymmetrical forms, often L-shaped or cross-gabled
• Two or three stories, with brick or wooden construction
• Elaborate four-panel doors
• Classical mouldings around windows, doors and brackets under eaves
• Tall one- or two-pane narrow sash windows, typically three-across and commonly arched at the top
• Windows are often made of colored and etched glass
• Square cupolas or towers
• Mosaic tile or marble porch and hall floors
• The use of intricately cast iron columns and railings

The Italianate Style, inspired by the country villas of northern Italy, was a rebellion against the formal classical ideals in art and architecture that had been fashionable for about two hundred years. Part of the Romantic or Picturesque Movement, it is also known as Tuscan, Lombard, Bracketed, Italian Villa or High Victorian Italianate Style. There are two main subgroups of the Italianate style: the Country and the City Style.

The first Italianate houses in the United States were built in the early 1840s and were popularized by the pattern books of Andrew Jackson Downing. Because there are several subtypes of shape and detail, each with its own variations, Italianate is better thought of as a range of characteristics than as a single style which can be simply described. In general, the early forms tended to be less ornate, and the High Victorian forms, which were built after the Civil War, had much more elaborate decoration.

There are a few different ways to identify an Italianate home. The chief characteristic is the brackets at the eave, arched doorways and windows, bay windows and flat roofs. The houses are usually in a boxed or rectangular shape. Regardless of scale, all Italianates have very wide eaves usually supported by heavy brackets, tall windows, and scrollwork. Another distinctive "signature" of the style is a central single-bay porch or long porches. Many examples feature a cupola. A few of the styles (usually "Tuscan") feature a tower.

Since the Italianate was a house style that could be transported by railroad, piece by piece, this style dominated American houses constructed between 1850 and 1890. By the late 1860s the style had completely overshadowed its earlier companion, Gothic Revival. In the mid-1800s, the style was adapted to the urban row house, and is still seen today in the brownstone row houses of New York.

Prairie Style (1900-1920)

Identifying features:

• Low, horizontal silhouette
• Wide overhanging eaves extending from the main house to emphasize horizontal lines
• Broad, low-pitched roof
• Massive square porch supports
• Walls of light-colored brick or stucco and wood
• Rows of small casement windows; stained-glass accents in stylistic floral or geometric designs
• Walls at right angles; no curves
• Large, plain rectangular chimney

"Democracy needed something basically better than the box." -- Frank Lloyd Wright

Around 1900 a group of Chicago architects developed a distinctive midwestern residential style known as the Prairie Style. Rejecting the currently popular revivals of historic styles, they sought to create buildings that harmonized with the midwestern prairie.

Many architects consider examples of Prairie Style to be the first truly modern architectural design. The acknowledged leader of this style was Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). Wright believed that a design drew its beauty from within -- from its own structure -- rather than from applied decoration. Wright created the philosophy of "organic architecture." The central principle of this belief maintains that the building should develop out of its natural surroundings. From the outset, Wright exhibited bold originality in his designs for both private and public structures and rebelled against the ornate neoclassic and Victorian styles favored by conventional architects.

The Prairie house was deliberate and free-flowing, conceived as a practical, cohesive whole right down to the landscaping, built-in furniture, and fixtures, which were treated with as much importance as the architectural elements. The Prairie Style house had a strongly horizontal appearance, emphasized by porches, walls, and terraces extending from the main structure. Windows were arranged in horizontal ribbons and often featured stained glass in stylized floral or geometric patterns.

Historical interest in the Prairie Style has come and gone over the years. About the time of World War I, rising interest in technology and the machine age caused it to be all but forgotten. It experienced something of a revival in the 1950s when it became the basis for the split-level and ranch house. In the 1960s, it had an influence on California Bay architecture and the New Shingle Style in the East.

Pueblo Revival (1910 - present)

Identifying features:

• Flat-roofed with parapated wall above
• Wall and roof parapet with irregular, rounded edges, projecting wooden roof beams (vigas) extending through walls
• Stucco wall surface, usually earth-colored

The Pueblo Revival is a composite of Spanish and American Indian (Hopi and Pueblo tribes) traditions: a flat-roofed, thick-walled, courtyard-centered system as different from houses in most of America as timber framing is from adobe brick. It is most common in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico, where it persists today, in part because of the requirements of special design controls in historic districts. Adobe construction was an effective shelter against the desert climate. The thick walls acted to absorb solar heat during the day so that it could be released at night. Small windows, deeply set and shaded by an extended roof over the "portal" (a continuous porch) prevented the entry of direct sunlight and the searing desert breeze.

The most recognized element of the style is the projecting, round roof beam known as a "viga." The second- and third-story levels are usually stepped and terraced to resemble the Indian habitats. When not built of adobe, Pueblo Revival buildings try to look as though they are. Walls are plastered out of non-adobe materials and are usually given a heavy, rounded look. If you want truly authentic adobe, built it the way the Indians and early Spaniards did it, then count on replastering your exterior walls after a year or so of heavy rains. The style is also known as the Southwest Indian Revival, Hopi, and Pueblo Indian styles.

Queen Anne Victorian (1880-1910)

Identifying features:

• Steeply pitched roof of irregular shape, usually with dominant front-facing gable
• Textured shingles (and/or other devices) to avoid smooth-walled appearance
• Partial or full-width asymmetrical porch, usually one story high and extended along one or more or both sides of walls
• Asymmetrical facade

"The Queen Anne house is like a buxom gypsy, her ruffled skirts, billowing blouse and patterned kerchiefs infinitely artful, but always in disarray and never quite matching." -- Source Unknown

The Queen Anne Victorian house style utterly dominated Victorian residential architecture from 1880 to 1910. It was one of the more ornate and eclectic examples of the Victorian Style and the one that can legitimately be considered as more American than the Gothic, Italianate, or Second Empire styles. Though its name indicates a borrowing from England, the Queen Anne Victorian did not look to any historic European models for its inspiration. Rather, it is indicative of the ornamental excess made possible by power tools and mass-produced decorative trim work.

Americans love Queen Annes because they're romantic, exuberant and full of fanciful details. Eclecticism is the keynote of the Queen Anne Style. The style is varied and decoratively rich, with picturesque and asymmetrical silhouettes shaped by turrets, towers, gables, and bays. It was also the form that gave the front porch its social prominence.

In addition to all the other decorative elements, the Victorians also painted their Queen Annes in a rainbow of colors. Subsequent generations reverted to the all-white paint scheme that had characterized houses before the Civil War. However when the Colorist movement of the 1960s and 1970s set in, people once again began painting their Victorian houses in rich colors The movement spread, and today, at least in some locales, many Victorian houses sport three or four bright hues.

The Ranch House (1932-1980)

Identifying features:

• Asymmetrical one-story design
• Low-pitched roof, with the hipped version the most common
• Moderate or wide eave overhang
• Partially enclosed courtyards or patios
• Large picture windows
• Built of local materials (wood, stucco, brick, or stone)
• Shaped like an L or U and surrounds a patio
• Large expanses of glass
• Visible inclusion of cars, children's play areas, etc.

"The ability to move in and out of your house freely, without the hindrance of steps, is one of the things that makes living in it pleasant and informal." -- Sunset magazine's 1946 edition on Western Ranch Houses

The Ranch Style, also known as the California Ranch, Texas Ranch or Western Ranch Style, was the ultimate symbol of the postwar American dream: a safe, affordable home promising efficiency and casual living. The style is loosely based on early Spanish Colonial precedents of the American southwest, modified by influences borrowed from Craftsman and Prairie modernism of the early 20th century.

The Ranch Style became become the dominant style throughout the country during the decades of the '50s and '60s. In the 1950s almost any one-story, close-to-the-ground, rambling house was called a California ranch house. With its open kitchen/living area, the ranch was specifically geared to casual entertaining. Another key selling point was the desirable indoor/outdoor living promised by the one-story layout, which featured glass doors, picture windows, and terraces and patios secluded in a rear yard. Having the ability to move freely about the house, without steps, into large private porches and patios from almost every room was living the "good life".

Gone was the street-oriented Victorian front porch; that was replaced by a private rear one. The garage also became an integral part of this house design.
The popularity of "rambling" ranch houses was made possible by the country's increasing dependence on the automobile which in turn, created the suburb. Because land was cheap, homebuyers were able to buy larger lots. Larger lots meant bigger homes so the sprawling house, a.k.a. the Ranch Style, was born.

A variation of the Ranch style, the Split Level rose to popularity during the 1950s. This multi-story modification retained the horizontal lines and low-pitched roof of the Ranch house, but added another story in such a way as to create three floor levels of interior space. This addition served to create "quiet" and "noisy" areas that many families in the newly emerged TV area were seeking.

Spanish Eclectic (1915-1940)

Identifying features:

• Asymmetrical façade
• Stucco wall surfaces
• Low-pitched roof, usually with little or no eave overhang
• Arches above doors, and principal windows or beneath porch roofs
• Ornamental effects which include patches of molded decoration, stained or otherwise darkened wood, and wrought-iron grillwork

Sometimes called the Spanish Colonial Revival style, the Spanish Eclectic is a mixing of many styles derived from the Mediterranean world. Architects of this style were inspired by many sources: the adobe and Spanish Colonial buildings of Southern California, late Moorish architecture, medieval Spanish church architecture, the Baroque architecture of colonial Spain, and Portugal, and the Pueblo Mission styles. This broad base of sources made it relatively easy to create a believable harmony among the exterior image, interior space, decorative elements, and the building's function.

The American movie industry of the early 1900's helped to glamorize the Spanish Eclectic style. Stars weren't just seen at night; in true photo-op fashion, they were often captured lounging by their oversized pools in back of their Spanish Colonial mansions, dripping with water by day, and diamonds by night. It was also through the influence of the movies that the Spanish Colonial mansions came to be built in areas of the country like Minnesota, where the largely Nordic-rooted culture was far removed from Spanish heritage.

The most lasting legacy of the Spanish Colonial Revival as a national type was the one-story house that we know as the ranch house. Its characteristic U-shaped floor plan with a protected patio in the courtyard derives from the California ranchos of the late 1830s.

Victorian Stick Style (1860-1885)

Identifying features:

• Two to two-and-a-half stories
• Wood construction with boxy projections: bays, wings and towers
• Gabled roof, usually steeply pitched with cross gables
• A grid-work of raised boards called "stick work" overlaying the clapboarded wall surface
• Bright, contrasting paint colors
• Decorative trusses in gables
• Overhanging eaves, often with exposed rafter ends
• Square pillars

"To us, our house was not unsentient matter -- it has a heart & a soul & eyes to see us…& approvals & solicitudes & deep sympathies; it was of us, & we were in its confidence." -- Mark Twain, of his Stick-Style house near Hartford, Connecticut

When the famed Mark Twain fell on hard times and was forced to rent out his beloved Stick-Style house, it was said he suffered almost as much as if he had lost a dear friend. Like its owner, Twain's colorful edifice was anything but restrained. In keeping with most of the Stick-Style homes of that era, it had a commanding presence that carried to an extreme the architectural mandate of that day: "Avoid plain walls at all cost."

Richard Morris Hunt, the French-trained American architect, popularized the Stick Style. Hunt drew on his knowledge of the current European fashions of late-medieval rustic country houses, namely the gingerbread chalets of the Alps and the half-timbered cottages of Normandy, to design summer houses for his wealthy friends in Newport, Rhode Island. It wasn't until almost a hundred years later -- in the 1950s -- that these marvelous houses would be known as the Stick Style, so named by architectural historian Vincent Scully.

The linear geometric Stick Style was a direct expression of the reform movement that pushed for honesty in architectural design. It stressed the use of wood and was built in the half-timbered style, which left the structure of the building visible from the outside. Gone were the formality and symmetry of the high-style Victorian houses; instead, the Stick Style displayed interesting shapes, such as porches and towers, as well as bright, contrasting paint colors. Also characteristic of this style were ornamental brackets and bargeboards, lacy openwork balconies, overhanging eaves, colored shingles and the purely decorative crisscross timbers, or stickwork.

The Stick Style lived only a short time before it melded into the Queen Anne Style, eventually becoming known as the Shingle Style. It was considered one of the few purely American-style houses and remained popular in resorts, suburbs, and small towns well into the 1870s.

Streamline Moderne (1920-1949)

Identifying features:

• Surfaces of concrete, stucco, or metal
• Horizontal rectangular container
• Facades asymmetrically composed
• Accents in terra cotta, glass block
• Dramatic rounded corners, semicircular bays and other details suggesting motion
• Small round windows reminiscent of portholes on yachts and ocean liners
• Metal window frames and doors

"Simple lines are modern. They are restful to the eye and dignified and tend to cover up the complexity of the machine age…they allow us to feel ourselves master of the machine." Paul T. Frankel

Art Deco and its derivation, the strikingly designed Streamline Moderne, were two of the more dramatic examples of American architecture that broke with the tradition of reviving historical styles. While Art Deco captured the spirit of the moment, the modern age, Streamline Moderne offered a glimpse of the future. It was this vision of a near-Utopian, sci-fi world that helped to lift the American public out of the gloom of the Depression.

The Streamline Moderne's unique style boasted a fully automated world in which machines, controlled by man, were everywhere -- and yet, at the same time, virtually invisible. Even the building's mechanical system was invisible: pipes, ducts, electrical conduits, and air-conditioning units were all hidden behind a smooth exterior.

This ultra-modern style displayed an intense fascination with speed. Its visual vocabulary (the curve, the teardrop and the uninterrupted horizontal line) was derived largely from the form of high-speed modern transportation machines: the airplane, the automobile and even the ocean liner. A rapid sense of movement was imparted by narrow horizontal bands of windows that often wrapped around corners and by horizontal layering on the building's façade that used changes in colors or materials. For the limited number of Americans who could afford to build, a Streamline Moderne made them appear progressive, scientific, and avant-garde.

Swiss Cottage (1840-1860)

Identifying features:

• Large windows
• Rough-cut lumber as a primary building material
• Widely projecting roofs that encircle the building
• Rough-cut boards nailed to a wooden underlayment, making it resemble a Swiss post-and-beam structure that was exposed on the outside of the building
• A raised, stone foundation
• An abundance of heraldic shields (decorative coat of arms)

"There is something peculiarly rural and domestic in the character of the Swiss farm-houses. Their broad roofs, open galleries, and simple and bold construction are significant of strength and fitness... " A.J. Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses, 1850

Brisk, cheek-stinging winds; the ground blanketed in a perfect layer of powdered snow; skiers schussing their way down icy slopes, then making their way to the big lodge on the hill for a cup of steaming hot chocolate or hot buttered rum. These are the images we have of the perfect ski vacation, one that would hardly be complete without the consummate ski chalet, or Swiss Cottage.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the genuine Swiss chalet was perhaps the most appealing of wood-built houses. For the English, Switzerland was both Protestant and picturesque, making it the idyllic destination spot for proper English citizens seeking to escape a growing industrialized society. As a result, the Swiss chalet soon grew to be a popular cottage style that dotted the English countryside. All the right people had a Swiss Cottage. Charles Dickens had one in his garden and Queen Victoria imported one in 1853 as a playhouse at Osburne, her retreat on the Isle of Wight. Without its beloved Swiss Alps to serve as a natural backdrop, however, the newly adopted cottage seemed rather spiritless.

For Americans seeking to escape the urban effects of their Industrial Revolution, the rustic Swiss Cottage, nestled in the wild and romantic valley of a snow-covered mountain, or on the side of a heavily wooded hill, provided them with needed aesthetic relief. Unlike the Swiss prototype, the American version did not give up its first floor to cows, pigs or Heidi's pet goat. Nor did it pile huge stones on the roof. It was similar to the original Swiss chalet in that it featured large windows, the extensive use of galleries, second-floor balconies beneath a gabled overhang and railings that had flat board balustrades with decorative motifs. The house was constructed mainly of rough-cut lumber, giving it a sturdy look befitting its Nordic heritage. Roofs were shallow-pitched and projected widely around the building to create deep shadows.

The Swiss Cottage remains today. Take a drive into the mountains some winter's day and you'll see them -- looking like so many Swiss cuckoo clocks scattered across a snowy valley or mountaintop, proudly bearing the title of America's idyllic winter storybook house.

Timber-Frame House (1600’s-Present)

Identifying Features:

• Exposed timbers, giving an open, woody feeling
• Handcrafted, pinned joints
• Self-supporting structure that does not require interior load-bearing walls
• Assembled without nails or screws
• Widely spaced posts which allow for large windows

Sometimes you can hear it breathe. Sometimes it even crackles. And it gets better—not worse—with age. This is today’s timber-frame structure: a custom-made home that blends ancient craftsmanship with modern aesthetics and convenience.

Nearly everyone falls in love at first sight with a timber-framed house. The huge exposed timbers create a natural sense of charm, warmth and security. Even people inexperienced with house building immediately notice the handcrafted, pinned joints connecting the timbers. Timber framing is often compared to the arts of fine furniture making and boat building. The art lies in joining timbers with carefully made mortises and tenons—in laymen’s terms, cutting cavities and projections out of timbers, to interlock them. No nails are required. (Post-and-beam structures are similar, but the cuts are factory-made.)

Timber-frame building is thousands of years old. The technique came to North America with the first Europeans, and it remained the primary building method along the East Coast until the mid-19th century. This was because of the quality of and quantity of wood available from virgin forests and the communal nature of building projects. Often entire communities would participate in church, home and barn raisings.

America’s rapid expansion westward meant towns had to be built in a hurry, often in areas where there were no forests for suitable posts and beams. Large heavy timbers weren’t cheap or easy to transport; two-by-fours were. Other technological innovations allowed for more efficient milling of timber into smaller boards, which set the stage for the use of “stick frame” construction.

But in the early 1970s, a handful of builders began reviving timber-frame construction. Since then, the timber-frame industry in North America has grown to become a significant trend. “Timber framing is not a fad but an old artisan way of doing things,” says timber-framer John Libby of Freeport, Maine.

There are many practical reasons for choosing a timber-frame house. It lends itself to a variety of floor plans. With its emphasis on open spaces and light, bright and cheery homes it is particularly well suited for today’s architecture. Widely spaced posts allow for large windows, and with the frame providing support, there is less need for partitioning and more opportunity for open space. You can locate interior walls wherever you wish and easily change room layouts as your family grows. Also, you can expect utility bills to be about half those of a conventional stud-framed house.

In today’s disposable culture, a home “built to last” might make it through a couple of generations without needing repairs and renovations. However, a growing group of homeowners and builders is returning to the belief that real craftsmanship has a place on the American home-building scene. Using timber-frame construction, it is reviving the idea that homes can be built to last several hundred years, providing beautiful, and yet comfortable shelter for generations to come.

Tudor Revival (1890-1940)

Identifying features:

• Façade dominated by one or more prominent cross gables, sometimes with half-timbering
• Massive chimneys, commonly crowned by decorative chimney pots
• Tall, narrow windows, commonly in multiple groups and with multiplane glazing
• Steeply pitched roof, usually side-gabled
• Entry has rounded arch or flattened, pointed (Tudor) arch

Most Tudor houses have stucco, masonry, or masonry-veneered walls. In authentic Tudor construction, the actual timber framework of the building is left exposed, and the spaces between the timbers are filled or "nogged" with brickwork and often covered with white stucco. This creates a unique style sometimes known as a "black and white" house.

The popular name of "Tudor Revival" for this style is a misnomer, since relatively few examples resemble the transitional medieval-to-Renaissance designs of England's Tudor period (1500s). When the Tudor wave began in America, it was actually a Medieval Revival style derived from prototypes that ranged from humble thatched-roof folk cottages to grand manor houses. As it developed, it began to imitate the English historical style with greater accuracy and became known as the New English Tudor style.

From the 1890s to the 1930s, wealthy Americans favored the elaborate Tudor houses, reminiscent of the English aristocracy, for their country and suburban estates. Around 1920, technological advances made possible the one-story, masonry-veneered Tudor cottage. These considerably more modest versions closely resembled Craftsman-style wooden bungalows and were the preferred style in most suburban developments.

Victorian Shingle (1880-1990)

Identifying features:

• Unpainted wood shingles entirely covering the exterior
• Prominent roofs, either steeply pitched or with long slopes
• Rough-surfaced stone or field rubble used as contrasting materials
• Turrets and verandas integrated into the overall design
• Extensive porches
  

In the early 1880s, wealthy Americans sought comfortable, fashionable dwellings away from the cities for vacation retreats, primarily on the unspoiled Atlantic coast. As a result, the Victorian Shingle Style emerged.

Like many new emerging styles, the Shingle borrowed elements from other styles. It possessed the simplicity of the wood-built colonial houses, the strength of the Richardsonian Romanesque and the decorative woodwork of the Queen Anne. Less ornate and more horizontal than the Queen Anne house, the Shingle Style house is a rambling, free form, two- or three-story structure characterized by its unpainted wooden shingles. The shingles -- stretched smooth over rooflines and corners -- cover the entire surface of the home, giving it a unified look. Underneath the shingles are imposing, unique structures, including dormers, recessed balconies, and side towers with bell or conical roofs. Inside, large rooms, designed in an open, more free-flowing arrangement were precursors to the birth of modernism.

The Shingle Style was promoted by the international Arts and Crafts movement as a "back to nature" building idiom. It marked the beginning of a new era in architecture -- so powerful and exciting that it reduced the Queen Anne and the Richardsonian Romanesque to the status of mere groundwork for a mature and truly American style.

Few of the original Shingle Style houses survive. In the mid-1960s, the New Shingle Style emerged which, while significantly smaller than its 1880 Shingle predecessor, retained much of the same style and structure.

Source: Realtor.com