Housing Styles in the United States

Cape Cod: A Charming Classic
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.

Ranch: Suburban Style
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

Art Deco
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.

Queen Ann: Romantic, Exuberant Style
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.

The Bungalow
The Craftsman Bungalow style was the first step toward the modern Ranch home. The small, overall simplistic house layout emphasizes a low, compact design

Gothic: Mythical Style
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

The Tudor: Black and White Style
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.

Italianate Style: ca. 1845-1885
The Italianate style, borrowed from the Tuscan villas of northern Italy, was first introduced to the United States in 1840's. Features may include elaborate four panel doors, the use of ornate brackets, colorful etched glass windows often slender with decorative crowns, square cupolas or towers, and the use of intricate cast iron columns and railings.

Colonial Revival CA. 1880-1915
During the last quarter of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century, the Colonial Revival was the dominant staple of domestic American design.

The Craftsman Bungalow CA. 1905-1930
The craftsman bungalow, originating in Southern California at the turn of the 20th Century, was the first step toward the modern ranch.

Greek Revival Ca. 1815-1860
One of the most easily recognized home styles because of their resemblance to the Greek temples of the gods, the Greek Revival form of architecture took hold in America around the year 1815.

Beaux Arts Ca. 1885-1920
The Beaux Arts are America's version of castles and palaces. Before the days of income tax, and just about at the start of the Industrial Revolution, the rich in America were getting richer-and, just to prove it, they built palaces.

The Prairie Style
Frank Lloyd Wright, arguably one of America's most renowned architects, together with a group of Chicago architects introduced what some consider to be the first truly modern American design: The Prairie Style. "Democracy needed something better than a box," Lloyd Wright was quoted as saying, and to look at the prairie style home one sees just that-something better than a box.

The Folk Victorian
Around 1870, middle-class Americans, or "just folks," wanted their homes to emulate the elaborate style of the Victorian house. Thus gave birth to the Folk Victorian, a whimsical yet simple style, whose chief characteristic is the presence of decorative detailing on simple folk-house forms.

Tudor Style ca. 1890-1940
Tudor Revival is also called Elizabethian and Half-Timbered. Whatever these houses are called they are another example of the Revival styles which were popular in the early 20th century. Half-timbering was characteristic of Medieval buildings when the beams held the buildings up and the spaces between them were filled with plaster.

Spanish Eclectic: ca. 1915-1940
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.

French Eclectic
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.

Stick Victorian
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.

The Georgian
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.

Streamline Moderne
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.

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.

International Style
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.

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

Timber-Frame Home
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 Federal
Federal houses are elaborately decorated dwellings with pilasters at the side of panelled doors, two or three stories, frequently with dormers. They were often made of brick though frame houses were typically painted a colonial red with black shutters and white trim.

French Second Empire
A popular Victorian style with a distinctive double sloped roof with many dormers. Usually the roof is of slate or shingled. The Mansard house is straight and tall with typical Victorian arches, spindles, and porches with decorated posts or columns.

The Shingle Style
Classic American Shingle Style originated in New England coastal towns and flourished from the 1880's into the beginning of the 20th century. The Shingle-Style tones down the fabulous gingerbread of the Gothic and Queen Anne styles. Gone are the corner boards and fanciwork.

Greek Revival: ca. 1820-1860
Main characteristics include heavy, low front gables and columns that are reminiscent of Greek temples. The Greek Revival marks a merging of other styles and the beginning of the Victorian era.

Gothic Revival: ca. 1835-1880
The Gothic Revival is very romantic style with sharply pointed gables, arched windows, roof finials, and vergeboards and bargeboards pierced with designs. The houses have a very stylistic "fairy tale" or "whimsical" quality with Medieval influences.

Art Deco
Art Deco style was the first widely popular style to break with the early 20th century styles of Revival and Beaux Arts styles. It consciously strove for modernity, simplicity, and streamlinedness -- typical of the newly emerging Machine Age.

Counter Culture (ca. 1965-1975)
Two types of contemporary folk house styles were popular during the 1960s and 1970s when the Counter Culture Movement reached its peak in the United States; A-frames and Geodesic Domes.

Cubic (ca. 1900-1920s)
This is a smaller and simpler variation of the New England Four-over-Four, or Colonial Revival. The distinctive feature of this style is its squarish floor plan.

Mobile Trailer (ca. 1920s-1980s)
The mobile home has its origin in the camping trailers which were first used during the 1920s when the automobile became common. Over the years, especially after World War II, trailers were built as inexpensive housing.

Two Pen
The Two-Pen is a one-story, two-unit (or room), end-gable structure. This very plain house style usually lacks front porches, which are otherwise very very common in 19th century houses.

Art Deco
Art Deco style was the first widely popular style to break with the early 20th century styles of Revival and Beaux Arts styles. It consciously strove for modernity, simplicity, and streamlinedness -- typical of the newly emerging Machine Age.

French Second Empire (ca. 1855-1885)
As the name implies, this style was imported from France in the mid 19th century; it was the style used in the great rebuilding of Paris under Napoleon III.

Tudor (ca. 1890-1940)
Directly inspired by English Elizabethan half-timber houses of the 16th century, the Tudor, or Tudor Revival, was most popular in the 1920s and 1930s. It is easily identified by stuccoed or brick walls, framed with dark wood boarding forming horizontals, verticals and diagonals, suggesting the timber frame of the house.

Victorian (ca. 1830-1910)
Also called Late Victorian, or High Victorian, the Victorian refers to a time period that began with the reign of Queen Victoria in 1837. The architecture represents a wide range of styles from the stately, asymmetrical Italianate, the straight-lined, angular Stick, to the voluptuous, ornate Queen Anne.

Stick Style (ca. 1860-1890)
Also called Eastern Stick Style. Unlike Italianate which tried to make wood look like stone or marble, wood itself became a very decorative element to emphasize the construction framework underneath.

California Ranch (ca. 1950s-1960s)
These long rectangular-shaped, single-story or split-level houses predominate in the suburbs of the late 1950s and 1960s. They have very low pitched or hipped roofs, which cover one- or two-car attached garages.