American House Styles: A Concise Guide

by John Milnes Baker

How and where did different architectural styles develop? 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.

Genres: Architecture, Nonfiction, Design, Reference

194 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[ALLEN · Rating 3 out of 5]

A shortish and cerebral guide to American housing styles. AMERICAN HOUSE STYLES tends to credit technological change more than evolution in style for changing American housing styles. That's a strong argument, and the accurate drawings commend this book to me. However, it's no match to a virtual catalog like Virginia McAlester's A Field Guide to American Houses: The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

In it's best moments, this book points out the specific elements representative of the styles of American architecture. This is especially true of older movements, and as a guy living in the heart of a downtown historic district, I have been going around noticing things and having names for things that I'd never really noticed or had names for before. The book serves as a great introduction for someone seeking familiarity with the practices and terminology of architecture. The one downside of the book is the author's opinionatedness, which comes off not as instruction but as diatribe, and in its intensity somewhat negates the instructional side of the book, casting architecture as elitist and angry and only ever possibly the purview of the trained architect. His rants seem at odds with the stated mission of the book, which is to be a welcoming guide to the physical history of American houses. Still, despite this embittered shortcoming, the book still succeeds, and offers the layman a revealing look at the subject.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great guide to American house styles and a bit of design history. Now I know why British houses never have porches. My favorite style is the Queen Anne but we don't have many of those where I live.

[Natasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting introduction to American house styles. The format and the way the information is presented is visually clear and to the point. The author is rather opinionated but that does not make the book less enjoyable in the least.

[Paris Harper-Hardy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to be able to walk through the neighborhood and make casual remarks such as, "Nice variation on the saltbox design!" or, "Can you believe this faux-Elizabethan over here?" Mission accomplished!

[Emily Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

There aren’t nearly enough pictures, and I would have liked to have seen some color. However, Baker’s sassiness when describing architecture of the 1960s-1990s was SENDING me.

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

He seems to have wanted to write a book about how to design your house in a particular architectural style. I much prefer Virginia McAlester.

[Treladon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I especially enjoyed the rant chapter. The illustrations were wonderful.

[Ian]

"Though nominally a monarchy, Holland was the first nation to be ruled only by burghers in the form of the Estate General. Holland was essentially a mercantile country and trade was the source of wealth rather than the English notion of landed estates. They were a tolerant people and Holland became a refuge for Huguenots from France, Pilgrims from England, and Jews from Spain. The Dutch were never comfortable with the strict dictums of Renaissance architecture, which to them was associated with an authoritarian form of government and an aristocratic social order. Comfort, privacy, and a sense of domesticity were ideas developed by the Dutch in this era" (Baker, pg. #29).

"What was so special about Palladio and why was he different from other Renaissance architects? The inventor of a new kind of country house — one that became the prototype for the eighteenth–century English estates and the plantation houses of the American South — he codified a personal adaptation of the ancient classical orders and developed a system of harmonic proportions for his spaces. His sophisticated farmhouses for an educated agrarian class were rural structures that incorporated the functional components of a working farm into ordered and controlled compositions. Even the attic space of many of his houses were used to store hay! The now–familiar five–part composition — central block with symmetrical dependencies connected by hyphens — was Palladio's innovation and was one attribute of his work that was widely imitated by his followers" (Baker, pg. #37).

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very cool short guide to American house styles from the beginning of European settlement to the present day. A wonderfully fun feature of this book is the author's use of a more-or-less standard floorplan throughout, with the clever superimposition of the various eras' styles over that, almost a pattern book approach. Should make it easier for production builders to take the "drab" out of modern dwellings and put the "fab" back into our vernacular built environment!

I carry this short book with me wherever I go and never tire of reading its very fine short discussions of architectural style and also never tire of dreaming about this hosue or that house in certain places in the landscapes I travel. Its a great pocket guide and companion.

[Nettie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was used more frequently as a reference guide at the largest residential architecture firm that I worked at, than any other. A great resource for anyone interested in design.