American Houses is a historical guide to the architecture of the American home. While other architectural field guides show only façades, this book includes floor plans, showing how the form of a house arises from its function. Photographs and drawings of exteriors illustrate the significant field marks of each style and help pinpoint the key elements that can identify a house even when it has been remodeled beyond recognition. Beautifully illustrated, clearly written, and impeccably researched, American Houses is an essential reference for anyone interested in the history of American residential architecture.

America has an abundance of fascinating and varied house styles, as fascinating and diverse as its people. This unique book will allow readers to recognize the architectural features and style of virtually any house they encounter.

Leading urbanist Carole Rifkind takes readers on an illuminating tour through half a century of design in this comprehensive and lavishly illustrated book. From private homes and public housing to museums, religious and educational edifices, shopping centers, malls, and office buildings, the accessible text demonstrates the interplay between form and function, and how the uses of space, mass, materials, and ornament have evolved to produce the structures that surround us today. Rifkind also discusses the development of style and analyzes the contributions of more than two hundred architects, as well as the political and economic forces that influenced their work. Filled with over four hundred photographs and line drawings, A Field Guide to Contemporary American Architecture is an essential reference for both casual observers and serious scholars. Its in-depth exploration of the postwar intellectual, social, and artistic environment offers a unique perspective on our recent past and the forces that shape our modern landscape.

Visual presentation of the many types of houses built in America from the earliest Indian dwellings to designs for futuristic homes.

Have you ever been intrigued by a beautiful building and wondered when it was built? Identifying American Architecture provides the answer to such questions in a concise handbook perfect for preservationists, architects, students, and tourists alike. With 214 photographs, it allows readers to associate real buildings with architectural styles, elements, and orders. Identifying American Architecture was designed to be used--carried about and kept handy for frequent reference. Every photograph is keyed to an explanatory legend pointing out characteristic features of each building's style. Trade bookstores order from W.W. Norton, NY

This beautifully illustrated tour of America's houses begins in 1640 with the early roots of American style -- a combination of European skill and attitude combined with American know-how. This architectural journey continues on through the 18th and 19th centuries, through the Greek Revival, the Americanization of the Gothic Revival, and the early Colonial Revival. The houses of the 20th century are the main attraction as House Styles in America delves into the major movements in the Romantic Revivals of the 1920s and 1930s: English, French, and Spanish. Replete with 200 color photographs, this architectural journey is an essential and beautiful guide for realtors, tourists, and students of architecture.

American Homes is the classic work of American house architecture. From the Dutch colonial, to the New England Salt Box, to the 1950s prefab, this unrivaled reference and useful guide to 103 building styles pays homage to our country's housing heritage. American Homes opens the window onto the rich landscape of all the places we call home. Award-winning architect Lester Walker examines hundreds of styles of homes—more than any other survey of American domestic architecture—and helps us understand the history of each style, why it developed as it did, and the practical and historical reasons behind its shape, size, material, ornament, and plan. Hundreds of sequenced drawings illustrate the evolution of our most beloved housing styles, like the colonial English Cottage, which grows before our eyes from a simple square of posts and beams to a fully constructed home with hand-split cedar clapboards and an intricately thatched roof. There's also the Italianate, whose roof displays its intricate carved brackets and is topped with a cupola that serves to filter light to the interior of the home. Annotated floor plans offer insight into the structure of these homes, and with it, a good measure of inspiration. No wrought-iron railing, white stucco wall, or gingerbread gable goes neglected. Every idiosyncratic detail and decoration of each of these uniquely American designs is delicately drawn. American Homes is the perfect reference for enthusiasts of architecture, history, and American studies. It is also the ideal inspiration for anyone who lives in or dreams of living in a classic American home.

A tour of the approximately twenty styles of domestic architecture common to the United States identifies and defines each style--including Colonial, Craftsman, Modern, and Deco--providing historical summaries, sample photographs, and regional information. 20,000 first printing.

Even as oversized McMansions continue to elbow their way into tiny lots nationwide, a much different trend has taken shape. This return to traditional architectural principles venerates qualities that once were taken for granted in home design: structural common sense, aesthetics of form, appropriateness to a neighborhood, and even sustainability. Marianne Cusato, creator of the award-winning Katrina Cottages, has authored and illustrated this definitive guide to what makes houses look and feel right--to the eye and to the soul. She teaches us the language and grammar of classical architecture, revealing how balance, harmony, and detail all contribute to creating a home that will be loved rather than tolerated. And she takes us through the do’s and don’ts of every element of home design, from dormers to doorways to columns. Integral to the book are its hundreds of elegant line drawings--clearly rendering the varieties of lintels and cornices, arches and eaves, and displaying "avoid” and "use” versions of the same elements side by side.

Through hundreds of inspiring photos and engaging text, the author describes what gives traditional homes their enduring appeal, and illustrates the creative work of builders who are forging the movement toward building new homes that capture old-home sensibility.