Saltbox
The Dutch Colonial post, which closed the previous entry, ended by promising that the series would at last leave the …
Date
2026-05-24
Words
3814
Read
18 min
Power
B
Speed
D
Range
D
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
CHANNEL
LAST · 2026-05-24
ARCHITECTURE
— Specimens From The American Vernacular
A taxonomy of American houses — naming the styles, reading the ornament, and taking the country’s domestic architecture seriously enough to learn its vocabulary.
- Accent
- AMBER
- Posts
- 22
- Slug
- /architecture/
Dutch Colonial
The Federal post, several entries back, closed by promising one of two styles for later treatment: the Pueblo Revival of …
Date
2026-05-23
Words
3850
Read
19 min
Power
B
Speed
E
Range
D
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Pueblo Revival
The Spanish Colonial Revival post, six entries back, named four styles standing near it and gave the fourth of them a …
Date
2026-05-22
Words
3859
Read
19 min
Power
B
Speed
E
Range
D
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Federal
The Mid-century Modern of the previous post closed the series’ long descent through the twentieth century — from …
Date
2026-05-21
Words
3779
Read
18 min
Power
B
Speed
D
Range
D
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Mid-century Modern
The California Ranch of three posts ago described the post-war American suburb in its dominant Western residential form, …
Date
2026-05-20
Words
4157
Read
20 min
Power
B
Speed
E
Range
D
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Split-Level
The California Ranch of two posts ago described the Western post-war suburb in its dominant residential form, and the …
Date
2026-05-19
Words
3911
Read
19 min
Power
B
Speed
E
Range
D
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Cape Cod
The California Ranch of the previous post described the Western half of the post-war American suburb — the one-storey …
Date
2026-05-18
Words
3936
Read
19 min
Power
B
Speed
E
Range
D
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
California Ranch
The Spanish Colonial Revival of the previous post described the inter-war Western suburb at its upper-middle commission …
Date
2026-05-17
Words
3312
Read
16 min
Power
D
Speed
D
Range
D
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Spanish Colonial Revival
The Spanish Colonial Revival house of the inter-war American suburb — white stucco walls, a low-pitched roof of red clay …
Date
2026-05-16
Words
5171
Read
25 min
Power
A
Speed
E
Range
D
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Tudor Revival
The Tudor Revival house of the inter-war American suburb — black-and-white timbered upper storey above a brick or stone …
Date
2026-05-15
Words
5108
Read
24 min
Power
A
Speed
E
Range
D
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Foursquare - Reading the American House
The American Foursquare is unusual in this series in that it has, by any reasonable reckoning, no architect, no …
Date
2026-05-14
Words
5491
Read
26 min
Power
A
Speed
E
Range
C
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Prairie - Reading the American House
The Prairie is the only style in this series whose name was applied retrospectively, by historians, to architectural …
Date
2026-05-13
Words
5243
Read
25 min
Power
A
Speed
E
Range
C
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Craftsman - Reading the American House
The Craftsman is the only style in this series whose name was, at the moment it was being built, a registered trademark. …
Date
2026-05-12
Words
4453
Read
21 min
Power
A
Speed
E
Range
C
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Colonial Revival - Reading the American House
The Colonial Revival is the only style in this series that arrived as a revival of a revival. The American Colonial …
Date
2026-05-11
Words
4404
Read
21 min
Power
B
Speed
E
Range
C
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Romanesque Revival - Reading the American House
There is a particular kind of weight in the great American public libraries and county courthouses of the 1880s — a …
Date
2026-05-10
Words
4138
Read
20 min
Power
B
Speed
E
Range
C
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Shingle - Reading the American House
The Shingle style is, on inspection, the first American architectural style that did not claim to be a revival of …
Date
2026-05-09
Words
3709
Read
18 min
Power
C
Speed
D
Range
C
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Stick - Reading the American House
There is, in the sequence of nineteenth-century American architectural styles, exactly one whose name was given to it …
Date
2026-05-08
Words
3667
Read
18 min
Power
C
Speed
D
Range
C
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Second Empire - Reading the American House
There is a small irony at the heart of the most imperial roof in nineteenth-century American architecture: it began its …
Date
2026-05-07
Words
3678
Read
18 min
Power
C
Speed
D
Range
C
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Italianate - Reading the American House
The square wooden cupolas one sees on certain American houses of the 1860s and 1870s have a feature that is easy to miss …
Date
2026-05-06
Words
3472
Read
17 min
Power
D
Speed
D
Range
C
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Gothic Revival - Reading the American House
There is a small wooden cottage one finds, in older parts of the Hudson valley and the upper South and the New England …
Date
2026-05-05
Words
3035
Read
15 min
Power
E
Speed
D
Range
C
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Greek Revival - Reading the American House
For the better part of forty years I had been calling them old farmhouses. They sit back from the country roads of …
Date
2026-05-04
Words
3245
Read
16 min
Power
D
Speed
D
Range
C
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D
Queen Anne - Reading the American House
A few weeks ago I found myself walking a residential block in a town I was passing through — one of those New England …
Date
2026-04-20
Words
2199
Read
11 min
Power
E
Speed
C
Range
C
Durability
E
Precision
E
Potential
D