Welcome to Quarter 4!
Navigational Links: (Quarter 3)

Day 136

1. For most of this year, we have studied buildings designed to impress. We’ve looked at cathedrals that took 100 years to build, skyscrapers meant to dominate city skylines, and government halls designed to project power. These are what historians call “Monumental Architecture.” They make it into history books because they are rare, expensive, and public. But now we are shifting our focus to the other 99% of the built environment: Residential Architecture.

When an architect designs a skyscraper or a museum, their primary goal is often symbolic. They are designing for a “faceless public”—thousands of people who will walk through the doors but never sleep there. Residential architecture is different because it is personal. A home is a machine for living. It has to handle the messy, practical reality of daily life. The priorities shift completely.

Scale” Monumental architecture is designed to be seen from miles away. Residential architecture is designed to be seen from the sidewalk. The details get smaller and more intimate.

Function: In a museum, the most important space might be the grand lobby. In a home, the most important space might be the “kitchen work triangle” or the mudroom. The success of a home isn’t measured by how it looks in a photo, but by how it works. Can you get the groceries from the car to the fridge without tracking mud through the living room?

Vernacular vs. High Style: Most famous public buildings are “High Style”—designed by a famous architect to look unique. Most houses, however, are “Vernacular.” This means they were built using local materials, local traditions, and practical patterns that have been copied and improved over generations.

2. Why Study Houses? A house is a time capsule that tells you everything about the people who built it.

The Climate: A house in Arizona looks different than a house in the Midwest. Flat roofs work in the desert; they collapse under heavy snow here.

The Technology: Before air conditioning, houses had high ceilings and big windows to catch the breeze. After AC became common in the 1950s, ceilings dropped to 8 feet to keep the cool air trapped. You can often tell when a house was built just by looking at the ceiling height.

The Culture: In the Victorian era (1800s), houses were chopped into many tiny, separate rooms because formal privacy was valued. Today, we build “Open Concept” floor plans because we value connection and casual living.

3. Watch “American House Styles Explained in 15 Minutes.”

Day 137

1. Walk around your house and take a look at it. Can you identify the architectural styles that influenced it?

Day 138

1. Watch the video “What is Colonial?”
2. Read about the early American Colonial style. One key feature you will often notice is that the center of the house is a straightforward, plain rectangle. Even if later ornamentation or wings were added onto the sides or back, the center “starter” rectangle is often visible.
3. Learn how to spot them and take the quiz!

Day 139

1. Watch “Colonial American Architecture: A Design Resource for Contemporary Traditional Architecture: Part I.”

Day 140

1. Watch “Colonial American Architecture: A Design Resource for Contemporary Traditional Architecture: Part II.”

Day 141
1. Watch the video “Colonial Homes of America.”
2. Read more about the Colonial style and peruse the gallery.

Day 142

1. Read about the difference between Georgian and Federal style colonial homes.
2. Read about the difference between a hipped roof and a gabled roof.
3. Watch the video about Georgian Colonial homes.
4. Then watch the video about Federal Colonial homes.

Day 143

1. Read more about Georgian architecture in America.
2. Watch “Building with History – Georgian Style.”
3. Take a tour of Drayton Hall.

Day 144

1. Watch “How Federal and Georgian Styles are Different.”
2. Watch the video about traditional stair details.

Day 145

1. Read more about Federal architecture.
2. Watch “Museums 101: Federal Period Art and Architecture.”

Day 146

1. Read “What is a Cape Cod style House?”
2. Learn how to identify Cape Cods!
3. Watch the video about Cape Cod houses.

Day 147

1. Today, take a walk on your street or in a nearby neighborhood. Are you able to identify the style of any homes you see?

Day 148

1. Take a look at these house plans that are listed as “Cape Cod” style. Feel free to click on plans and look around. As you can see, there’s a lot of variation in what’s considered one these days!
2. Be sure to scroll down and read the FAQs.
3. Read “About the American Cape Cod Style House.”

Day 149

1. Read about Greek revival architecture in America.
2. Watch the video explaining what makes a house Greek revival.
3. Digging deeper into some details, watch the video about the difference between moldings in Georgian, Federal, and Greek revival buildings.

Day 150

1. Read the Wikipedia page for “Greek Revival Architecture in North America.” Be sure to click on images to get a better look at the architecture!
2. Watch the lecture “An Introduction to the American Greek Revival.”

Day 151

1. The Greek Revival was the dominant architectural style in America during the mid-19th century. It replaced the British-influenced Federal style with a more rigid, heavy aesthetic based on the proportions of ancient Greek temples. To transform a standard rectangular house into a “temple,” builders made specific technical adjustments:

• 90-Degree Rotation: Designers turned the house so the short end (the gable) faced the street. This turned the roofline into a pediment.
• The Entablature: A thick band of trim was added just below the roofline. This consists of the architrave, frieze, and cornice. In many American homes, this was simplified into a wide, heavy board that made the house look more “poured” from stone rather than built from wood.
• Column Orders: Homes utilized the three classical orders. Doric (plain) was most common for its perceived “sturdiness,” followed by Ionic (scrolls) and Corinthian (leaves) for wealthier estates.

2. While the Parthenon was stone, American domestic architecture (houses people live in) was primarily timber-framed. Builders adapted the style through several specific “Americanized” features:

• The Entryway: Since columns often blocked the center of the house, the front door was usually offset to one side. It featured a rectangular transom window above and narrow sidelights to pull natural light into the hallway.
• Pilasters: To save money, many homeowners used “flat” columns (pilasters) attached to the corners of the building rather than free-standing round columns.
• The “Upright and Wing”: This was the most common layout for middle-class homes. It featured a two-story “temple” section (the upright) with a one-story side addition (the wing), allowing for more living space while maintaining the formal street appearance. (Visit the Wikipedia page to see pictures!)
• Heavy Cornice Returns: Even on simple farmhouses without columns, the roof trim would “return” or wrap around the corner of the house for a few inches to suggest the base of a pediment.

3. Take another look at the Wikipedia page to see if you can identify these features.
4. Then read about how even cheap, simple houses were adapted into the Greek revival style.

Day 152

1. Today read “Why the Greek Revival Style Became a Hit in 19th Century America.” (Notice the author. It’s our friend Brent Hull!)
2. Take a look at some Greek Revival house plans. What characteristics do you recognize? Be sure to scroll to the bottom and read the FAQ.

Day 153

1. For decades in the early 1800s, American architecture was dominated by the Greek Revival style. However, by the 1840s, tastes began to change. People started looking for a style that felt less like a formal monument, and this shift brought about the Gothic Revival. The transition from Greek to Gothic was driven by three major practical and cultural shifts:

The Romantic Movement
Culturally, society was moving away from the logic of the “Age of Enlightenment” and entering the “Romantic Era.” Instead of valuing order and geometry, people began to value emotion, nature, and the picturesque. Greek Revival homes stood out sharply against the landscape. Gothic Revival homes, with their earth tones and varied shapes, were designed to blend into the surrounding trees and hills.
Pattern Books Reach the Countryside
Before the 1840s, you needed a trained architect to design a complex house. But a man named Andrew Jackson Downing changed everything. He published widely popular “pattern books” filled with floor plans and sketches of Gothic cottages. These books could be mailed anywhere, meaning a local carpenter in a rural town could suddenly build a trendy, modern home just by following the pictures in Downing’s book.
New Technology: The Scroll Saw
True Gothic cathedrals in Europe were carved from stone, which was far too expensive for an average American house. But the invention of the steam-powered scroll saw changed the game. Builders could take cheap, abundant wood and easily cut it into intricate, lace-like patterns. This allowed builders to mimic the look of carved stone using mass-produced wooden trim.
2. When you look at a house built between 1840 and 1880, you can tell the builder has moved on from the Greek Revival if you spot these key elements:

• Vertical Emphasis: Greek temples look heavy and horizontal. Gothic homes point up.
• Steeply Pitched Roofs: The most obvious sign of a Gothic home is a roof so steep it looks like an upside-down ‘V’ pointing sharply at the sky.
• Asymmetry: Instead of a front door perfectly centered with an equal number of windows on each side, Gothic homes often feature off-center doors, varied rooflines, and unpredictable layouts that followed the function of the rooms inside rather than strict outside rules.
• Pointed Arches: While Greek Revival windows are perfectly rectangular, Gothic Revival windows often come to a sharp point at the top, resembling a church window.
• “Gingerbread” Trim: Look at the eaves (the edges of the roof). You will often see decorative, cut-out wooden boards hanging down. This is called vergeboard or bargeboard, made possible by that steam-powered scroll saw.

3. Watch the video “What Makes a House Gothic?”

Day 154

1. Watch the video about why the ‘Romantic Era’ is so dynamic.
2. Watch the Gothic Revival overview.

Day 155

1. Read “An Introduction to Gothic Revival Architecture.”

Day 156

1. Take a look at some more Gothic Revival buildings. Be sure to click on the images to view them larger. What chacteristics make them stand out as Neogothic?
2. Here are Gothic Revival buildings from New England.
3. Read the article about Gothic Revival in Louisiana.

Day 157

1. While Gothic Revival was popular, those steep roofs and irregular shapes were sometimes impractical and expensive to build. The Italianate style solved this. It offered the romantic, picturesque feel of an Italian countryside villa, but it was usually built on a simple, boxy floor plan that maximized interior space. Italianate elements include:

• Stately, tall, and heavily decorated at the roofline.
• Low-pitched roofs: Unlike the steep Gothic point, these roofs are almost flat.
• Wide, overhanging eaves with heavy brackets: This is the absolute dead giveaway. The roof sticks out far past the walls, supported by ornate, scrolled wooden brackets.
• Tall, narrow windows: Often featuring curved or arched tops, sometimes with heavy “hoods” over them.
• Square Cupolas: A small, boxy tower sitting on the very top of the roof.

2. This style was massively popular in the Midwest. If you see an old, square, brick farmhouse from the 1870s standing in a field in Iowa or Illinois, it is almost always an Italianate. Take a look at the examples on this page.
3. Watch the video about Italianate homes.

Day 158

1. Read more about Italianate architecture and look at the examples.
2. Read about Italianate style in St. Louis after the Civil War.
3. You may have noticed that one of these sources calls the structure on top of the Italianate buildings a belvedere, not a cupola. It’s a bit of a frog and toad situation, although not all belvederes are cupolas and a cupola may not be a belvedere. Here is one definition of a cupola vs. a definition of a belvedere. You can see that the Italianate style favored square structures with flat roofs, tall enough to stand in. I think that belvedere is the more proper term for this type of roof structure. (However, you should note that not all belvederes were historically constructed on the rooftop: that is just one place you can create a good view.)

Day 159

1. Read more about Italianate buildings and look at the pictures. Pay special attention to how the style is applied to commercial buildings.
2. Read even more about Italianate buildings!

Day 160

1. By the 1860s, the Italianate style was the “standard” for American middle-class homes, especially in the growing towns of the Midwest. However, as the United States became wealthier following the Civil War, homeowners wanted something more modern, more formal, and more “international.” They found that inspiration in France. During the mid-1800s, Emperor Napoleon III was completely rebuilding Paris with grand, boxy buildings featuring a very specific roof type. In America, this became known as the Second Empire style.
2. Watch the video about Italianate and Second Empire style homes.
3. The most important thing to understand about Second Empire architecture is that it is essentially an Italianate house wearing a “fancy hat.”

• The Mansard Roof: This is the defining feature. Unlike the low-pitched roof of the Italianate, a Mansard roof has a nearly vertical lower slope and a flat top.
• Why it was popular: In many cities, houses were taxed by the number of “stories” they had. Because the Mansard roof was technically a “roof,” the space inside was often considered an attic—meaning homeowners could have a full third floor of living space without paying the taxes for a three-story house.

It was considered the height of “modern” sophistication in the 1870s. Today, we often associate it with “haunted houses” because many of these grand homes fell into disrepair in the mid-20th century.
4. Second Empire houses are often lumped in with “Victorian” style houses. Read about Victorian houses for a preview of some of the different styles.

Day 161

1. Watch the video about Second Empire homes.
2. Watch the video about Queen Anne houses.

Day 162

1. “Stick Style” homes are a transitional style between Second Empire and Queen Anne. Read about them and look at the examples!
2. Read more about Queen Anne style.
3. Watch the video “Why Victorian Houses Look the Way They Do.“