Architectual Styles from the 1700
Georgian Style The Georgian style, with its long history in America, is among our country’s most
consistently popular styles. Admired for its symmetrical design, classic proportions, and decorative elements. In northern states, it was common to use wood with clapboard or shingle cladding.
Federal Style The Federal, or Adam, style dominated the American architectural landscape from roughly 1780 to 1840, having evolved from Georgian, the principal design language of the colonial period. Many historians today think of the Federal style as merely a refinement of the Georgian style.
Greek Revival Style Greek Revival is an excellent example of a style that gained popularity by exploring parallels between an earlier culture and the present day. Homes in the Greek Revival style were usually painted white to resemble the white marble of impressive and costly public buildings. Low pitched gable and hip roofs were typical.
Italianate Style The typical Italianate was a two-story building, but examples survive in many variations, from three-story detached homes with towers and cupolas to urban town houses. Italianate town houses are identifiable by their wide projecting cornices with heavy brackets and their richly ornamented windows, porches, and doorways.
Victorian Style The Victorian styles evolved largely from the imposing, elaborate Gothic style, which appealed to the romantic Victorian idea that fashion, architecture and furnishings should be beautiful rather than practical. Architects took the ideas of Gothic architecture and added French, Italian, Tudor and even Egyptian details.
Colonial Revival Style Gable roofs are the typical roof form found in Colonial revival homes followed by gambrel and hip roofs. Windows are designed simply, although never reproducing the original Colonial Style primarily because, by then glass manufacturers had learned how to produce larger windowpanes that were too convenient and functional to ignore. It frequently presents a notable decorative entrance.
Prairie Style Influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, Wright was seeking an architectural alternative to the excesses of the Victorian era and the machine-based lifestyle of the Industrial Age. Everything was horizontally orieanted.
Craftsman Style A low-pitched, gabled roof. The low-slung rooflines reflect the influence of Oriental architecture on the style. These roofs typically have a wide, unenclosed eave overhang with decorative supports. Multipane instead of single-pane windows.
Ranch Style The typical ranch style home is a single, often rambling, story with either a hipped or gabled roof. The Ranch, with its horizontal orientation relative to the street, is typically two rooms deep and four rooms wide, unlike many earlier styles that were just two rooms wide and presented a much smaller facade.
Shed Style The exteriors of this building style are typically built with wood and stone as well as touches of textured concrete. Doors are recessed and windows are usually small, allowing for expansive wooden surfaces. Roofs are typically built with wood shingles and slope in different directions with little effort toward symmetry.
A-Frame The distinctive roof with its steep slope make it well suited for snowy climates. However, the roof shape makes the interior fairly small, so the style isn’t well suited for year round lodging of a large family. The A-frame is usually made up of one and a half or two and a half stories. The roof generally extends all the way to the ground on both sides, although in some versions the roof ends a few feet above the ground.
Geodesic Style The triangle is a very stable shape; for example, a force applied to the corner of a rectangle can deform it into a parallelogram, but the same force will not deform a triangle