Defining Your Traditional Home Style
At just a glance, the aesthetic choices you make for your home will portray a sense of character to your guests and neighbors. Each of the many American architectural styles communicate its own level of formality, adventure, charm and grandeur. The massing, building materials, detailing and influences of any given style has been sourced over time from Ancient Classical, Renaissance Classical, Medieval, and Folk Traditions. In the 19th and 20th centuries, designers and their clients often combined elements of distinct styles into eclectic variations to arrive at just the right aesthetic. Here are a few of the famous American Architectural Styles as well as some implications toward character and identity.
*American Georgian
The Georgian style, dominant in the English colonies as early as 1700, was developed for an increasingly prosperous clientele seeking a domestic architecture more stylish than conventional folk houses. The Georgian house features double-hung windows aligned in strict symmetry across two stories in a five-part facade. The paneled-door entrance is centered and adorned with pilasters and a pediment or crown. The style has evolved to include elaborate and classically detailed front porches. Built by inquisitive colonial minds with newly available style manuals and pattern books, the Georgian style is a departure from utilitarian buildings, a nod to ceremony and decorum, and an homage to the Classical influence on American Culture.
*Colonial Revival/Adam/Federal
The two- or three-story main boxes of the Colonial Revival house bear much of the Georgian symmetry and detailing but include more complex room arrangements and a greater variation of projecting wings and detached accessory structures. Exterior doors have ornamental fanlights above and are protected by stunning Classical entry porches. Double-hung windows are accented with decorative friezes and cornices. Palladian windows and round or oval windows emphasize gable-end facades. Often clad in painted wood siding, the Colonial revival home has a little less presence than its Georgian cousin and a little more refinement. There is room for improvisation and whimsy at the rear and side facades.
*Queen Anne
One of several styles made popular in the Victorian Era, Queen Anne is the home style most people think of as “Victorian.” An American take on the English Arts &Crafts movement, these homes feature intersecting gables, steeply pitched roofs, and patterned siding or gingerbread trim. Facades are balanced but asymmetrical and playfully pose towers and bays about long porches. A fanciful language easily adapted to dense downtown properties or stretched along country acres and waterfronts, the Queen Anne style reflects Victorian advances in craftsmanship and technology. This distinctly American house style, with folk and Medieval influences, trades formality for loose arrangement of rooms and established Classical motifs for highly decorative craft detailing.
*Shingle Style
As popular today as it was throughout the Victorian Era, Shingle style borrows large porches from Queen Anne style, Classical columns from Colonial Revival and oversized arches from Richardsonian Romanesque. A skin of natural cedar covers roofs and walls alike to unify sculpted asymmetrical compositions. Exterior ornamentation is sparse and multiple window types, shapes, and groupings are common. The extent of interior paneling and decorative millwork can vary room-by-room according to preference. Intrigue, informality and emphasis on fenestration make Shingle Style homes well-suited to seaside locations.
*Tudor Revival
Loosely based on a variety of English building traditions, rural folk houses, and Late Medieval palaces, Tudor homes have distinct asymmetrical plans and elevations, steeply pitched gable roofs, and massive elaborately detailed chimneys. Often, brick- or stone-clad first stories support more decorative second and third stories consisting of half-timbering with brick or stucco infill. Overlapping gables with varying eave heights, overhanging second stories, and groupings of narrow casement windows complete the sublime aesthetic. The Tudor Revival style is meant to evoke the naturalistic charter of a landscape, rising and falling with the grade as its mass is hidden and revealed between large trees and plantings.
*French Chateau/Normandy
The French revival styles are based on the Renaissance architecture of the monumental country houses built in the Loire Valley from the late 15th to the early 17th century. French Chateau homes feature steeply pitched roofs with cast iron cresting, intricate dormers, spires, corner turrets, and tall ornamental chimneys. Stately masonry exteriors are accentuated by recessed and protruding architectural elements. The French Normandy style is distinguished by a round or square entry tower, hipped roofs and flared eaves. In each, Renaissance-inspired curved dormers quietly advertise elegance and sophistication. Unique design elements suggest a grand scale without looking pretentious.
*American Georgian
The Georgian style, dominant in the English colonies as early as 1700, was developed for an increasingly prosperous clientele seeking a domestic architecture more stylish than conventional folk houses. The Georgian house features double-hung windows aligned in strict symmetry across two stories in a five-part facade. The paneled-door entrance is centered and adorned with pilasters and a pediment or crown. The style has evolved to include elaborate and classically detailed front porches. Built by inquisitive colonial minds with newly available style manuals and pattern books, the Georgian style is a departure from utilitarian buildings, a nod to ceremony and decorum, and an homage to the Classical influence on American Culture.
*Colonial Revival/Adam/Federal
The two- or three-story main boxes of the Colonial Revival house bear much of the Georgian symmetry and detailing but include more complex room arrangements and a greater variation of projecting wings and detached accessory structures. Exterior doors have ornamental fanlights above and are protected by stunning Classical entry porches. Double-hung windows are accented with decorative friezes and cornices. Palladian windows and round or oval windows emphasize gable-end facades. Often clad in painted wood siding, the Colonial revival home has a little less presence than its Georgian cousin and a little more refinement. There is room for improvisation and whimsy at the rear and side facades.
*Queen Anne
One of several styles made popular in the Victorian Era, Queen Anne is the home style most people think of as “Victorian.” An American take on the English Arts &Crafts movement, these homes feature intersecting gables, steeply pitched roofs, and patterned siding or gingerbread trim. Facades are balanced but asymmetrical and playfully pose towers and bays about long porches. A fanciful language easily adapted to dense downtown properties or stretched along country acres and waterfronts, the Queen Anne style reflects Victorian advances in craftsmanship and technology. This distinctly American house style, with folk and Medieval influences, trades formality for loose arrangement of rooms and established Classical motifs for highly decorative craft detailing.
*Shingle Style
As popular today as it was throughout the Victorian Era, Shingle style borrows large porches from Queen Anne style, Classical columns from Colonial Revival and oversized arches from Richardsonian Romanesque. A skin of natural cedar covers roofs and walls alike to unify sculpted asymmetrical compositions. Exterior ornamentation is sparse and multiple window types, shapes, and groupings are common. The extent of interior paneling and decorative millwork can vary room-by-room according to preference. Intrigue, informality and emphasis on fenestration make Shingle Style homes well-suited to seaside locations.
*Tudor Revival
Loosely based on a variety of English building traditions, rural folk houses, and Late Medieval palaces, Tudor homes have distinct asymmetrical plans and elevations, steeply pitched gable roofs, and massive elaborately detailed chimneys. Often, brick- or stone-clad first stories support more decorative second and third stories consisting of half-timbering with brick or stucco infill. Overlapping gables with varying eave heights, overhanging second stories, and groupings of narrow casement windows complete the sublime aesthetic. The Tudor Revival style is meant to evoke the naturalistic charter of a landscape, rising and falling with the grade as its mass is hidden and revealed between large trees and plantings.
*French Chateau/Normandy
The French revival styles are based on the Renaissance architecture of the monumental country houses built in the Loire Valley from the late 15th to the early 17th century. French Chateau homes feature steeply pitched roofs with cast iron cresting, intricate dormers, spires, corner turrets, and tall ornamental chimneys. Stately masonry exteriors are accentuated by recessed and protruding architectural elements. The French Normandy style is distinguished by a round or square entry tower, hipped roofs and flared eaves. In each, Renaissance-inspired curved dormers quietly advertise elegance and sophistication. Unique design elements suggest a grand scale without looking pretentious.
Classic Brick Georgian: Grandiose in stature with 5-part symmetry and prominent entrance. Subordinate loggia connects to accessory building. Often wings are symmetrical on either side of the main mouse.
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