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Triangular and tee-pee shaped homes date back to the dawn of time, but architect Andrew Geller turned an old idea into a revolutionary concept in 1955 when he built an A-frame house on the beach in Long Island, New York known as the Reese House. Named for the distinctive shape of its roofline, Geller's design won international attention when it was featured in The New York Times on May 5, 1957. It didn't take long for the style to catch on: Before long, thousands of A-frame homes were being built around the world.
The style incorporated locally handcrafted wood, glass, and metal work that is both simple and elegant. A reaction to Victorian opulence and the increasingly common mass-produced housing elements, the style incorporated clean lines, sturdy structure, and natural materials. The name comes from a popular magazine published in the early 1900s by furniture maker Gustav Stickley called The Craftsman, which featured original house and furniture designs by Harvey Ellis, the Greene brothers, and others. The designs, while influenced by the ideals of the British movement, found inspiration in specifically American antecedents such as Shaker furniture and the Mission style. Emphasis on the orignality of the artist/craftsman led to the new design concepts of the Art Deco movement of the 1930s.
Bungalows are 1 or 1½ story houses, with sloping roofs and eaves with unenclosed rafters, and typically feature a gable (or an attic vent designed to look like one) over main portion of the house. Ideally, bungalows were horizontal in massing, and are integrated with the earth by use of local materials and transitional plantings. This helps create the signature look most people associate with the California Bungalow.Bungalows commonly have wood shingle, horizontal siding or stucco exteriors, as well as brick or stone exterior chimneys and a partial-width front porch. Larger bungalows might have asymmetrical "L" shaped porches. The porches were often enclosed at a later date, in response to increased street noise. A "California" bungalow (except in Australia, see below) is not made of brick, but in other bungalows, most notably in the Chicago area, this is commonplace.
Features that make them distinguishable from colonial period houses of the similar style of the early 1800s are elaborate front doors, often with decorative crown pediments and overhead fanlights and sidelights, but with machine-made woodwork that had less depth and relief than earlier handmade versions. Window openings, while symmetrically located on either side of the front entrance, were usually hung in adjacent pairs or in triple combinations rather than as single windows. Side porches or sunrooms were common additions to these homes, introducing modern comforts. Also distinctive in this style are multiple columned porches and doors with fanlights and sidelights. To go along with the Colonial Revival style of architecture, owners often seek to furnish the house with furnishings that are preferably antique but often are reproductions.
Spanish Colonial Revival architecture shares many elements with the very closely-related Mission Revival and Pueblo styles of the West and Southwest, and is strongly informed by the same Arts & Crafts Movement that was behind those architectural styles. Characterized by a combination of detail from several eras of Spanish and Mexican architecture, the style is marked by the prodigious use of smooth plaster (stucco) wall and chimney finishes, low-pitched clay tile, shed, or flat roofs, and terra cotta or cast concrete ornaments. Other characteristics typically include small porches or balconies, Roman or semi-circular arcades and fenestration, wood casement or tall, double–hung windows, canvas awnings, and decorative iron trim. Probably the most famous Spanish Colonial Revival Architect in California was George Washington Smith who practiced during the 1920s and 30s. Perhaps his most famous house is the Steadman House in Montecito, CA, now a musuem called the Casa del Herrero.
The emphasis was on the simple, rustic and the less impressive aspects of Tudor architecture, imitating in this way medieval cottages or country houses. Though the style follows these more modest characteristics, items such as steeply pitched roofs, half-timbering often infilled with herringbone brickwork, tall mullioned windows, high chimneys, jettied (overhanging) first floors above pillared porches, dormer windows supported by consoles, and even at times thatched roofs, gave Tudorbethan its more striking effects.
Victorian house
Style home
A Victorian house as built in the United States and Canada is a type of house popularized in the Victorian era. They are often three stories high with an octagonal or rounded tower, a wraparound porch and great attention paid to detail. The Victorian house shown in the picture has curved glass windows in the tower. A group of multi-colored Victorian houses in San Francisco are known as Painted ladies.
Villa
Style home
A villa was originally an upper-class country house, though since its origins in Roman times the idea and function of a villa has evolved considerably. After the fall of the Republic, a villa became a small, fortified farming compound, gradually re-evolving through the Middle Ages into luxurious, upper-class country homes. In modern parlance it can refer to a specific type of detached suburban dwelling. |
