INTRODUCTION: The web pages here include images and descriptions of the dominant architectural styles found throughout the United States and Canada. Some pages have more photos than others, simply due to the availability of photos in my collection and my opportunities to travel. My original intent was to develop these pages for a course I teach, PL 303 (Design and Preservation) at Northern Arizona University. Then I discovered that people around North America were using them as references, leading me to occasionally update them for the past few years. Because those involved with historic preservation, geography, and landscape studies are concerned with virtually all types and styles of buildings, I have included a wide variety of photos representing numerous building types and settings. These include high style, vernacular, and folk architecture, and a combination of residential, commercial, and institutional structures.
Listed below are the dominant sources for the architectural and historic information presented within these Web pages. I highly recommend any of these sources for further study and enlightenment. Most if not all are available at regional book stores and/or on line. The book I tend to recommend most is A Field Guide To American Houses (Source # 12 below). Two other, more recent books are equally impressive in detail and scope, however, and are highly recommended: American Houses: A Field Guide to the Architecture of the Home, and The Elements of Style (sources 4 and 1 below, respectively). These three books alone will arguably serve the equivalent of college courses on the subject!
ABOUT AMERICAN ARCHITECTURAL STYLES: Exterior styles and related building forms and floor plans are in part a product of cultural tastes and values that reflect a particular place, time, and population. Styles are somewhat analogous to clothing fads, which come and go over time, and sometimes return. Back when the spread of cultural ideas and fashions across the country was slower, certain architectural styles remained in vogue for multiple decades or longer, and often revealed a distinctly regional identity. By the Victorian Era of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, multiple styles became simultaneously popular and readily available throughout the United States, ushering in what historians refer to as the "Eclectic Era" of architecture, when Americans had their choice of numerous modern or revival styles. This co-existing fascination with so-called "period styles" and early modernism continued unabated until the Great Depression. Relatively little building construction took place between 1929 and 1945.
Not until after World War II did America see another national building boom, by which time automobile suburbs, modern-era housing and office towers were the rule. America's modern era of functionalism and a general aversion to historic references dominated the built environment from the 1940s through the 1980s. The familiar "glass box" office tower and ubiquitous suburban ranch house are still powerful symbols of this anti-stylistic era when "form followed function". Changes were brewing by the 1970s, however, leading America to react against modern architecture and planning practices. Historic styles became gradually popular once again, coinciding with the now-booming historic preservation movement. Colonial Revival elements adorned otherwise modern ranch houses, and by the 1990s a vague "postmodern era" was in full swing.
Postmodern architecture is generally characterized by an unrelated and exaggerated use of historical styles, or imitatated reproductions of older buildings. The current rise of postmodern historicism has coincided with a revived interest in traditional town planning practices known as "neotraditional" development, or more generally, the New Urbanism. A return to city centers in high-rise, mixed-used lofts and condos is now occuring, and hundreds of neotraditional neighborhoods are under construction or are already completed, with designs that variously emphasize walking, mass transit, mixed uses, community livability, public space, and -- hopefully -- affordability. What will be America's next major cultural interest, and how will the built environment reflect that interest?
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