A field guide to American houses The definitive guide to identifying and understanding America's domestic architecture

*Starred Review* This outstanding volume covers more than 50 styles of American residential architecture, from early settlement homes of the seventeenth century to the modern Millennium Mansions of the present day. Expanded and completely revised from the 1984 edition, this edition includes American house design from the last three decades and adds more than 600 new photographs and illustrations.The introductory section, Looking at American Homes, is broken down into distinct narratives. Style: The Fashions of American Houses distills the majority of houses into one of four principal architectural traditions; Form: The Shapes of American Houses features copious line drawings that show ground plans and proportions; Structure: The Anatomy of American Houses details the walls, roofs, and structural elements of a house; and Neighborhoods: The Groupings of American Houses highlights the different types of neighborhoods, including a discussion of plans, density, streets and sidewalks, and development influences.Each section that follows covers a specific style (e.g., Dutch Colonial, Italianate, Queen Anne, Tudor, Mission, Prairie, Ranch), with notes on identifying features, principal subtypes, variants and details, and geographic occurrence. Numerous black-and-white photographs illustrate the wide variety of houses found within each style, and line drawings express both fine and broad details. The appendix Approaches to Construction in the 20th and 21st Centuries discusses prefabricated structures and green construction. Copious notes and a bibliography for further reference round out the work. Both scholars and average readers will find much to enjoy in this volume. Highly recommended for most public and academic libraries and the price point may allow for a circulating copies.--Vnuk, Rebecca Copyright 2014 Booklist

Thirty years ago this reviewer evaluated the first edition of this book for the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, calling it "the best field guide to American residential architecture that has ever been published and likely to remain so." This second edition enlarges the first by more than 60 percent (300 pages). This edition covers American residential architecture after 1940, which accounts for 80 percent of U.S. homes. This housing is mostly "modern" in a convicted sense, and it slowly falls into preserved historic neighborhood status designation nationwide. A whole new important 50-page chapter covers the planning and layout of neighborhoods, a valuable addition for historians, planners, and historic preservationists. Finally, this edition doubles the first edition's bibliography and adds 18 pages of useful footnotes, which didn't appear in the first edition. Much remains to be done for the public. Apps, already available for rocks, trees, birds, plants, and constellations, would be extremely useful for smartphone users. Topographic treatment would also be enormously beneficial, harnessing big data to good use. One erection objection: too many oversize, postmodern mansions are featured. Verdict Those interested and involved in historic preservation/architectural history, as well as public and academic libraries, should buy this one.-Peter S. Kaufman, Boston Architectural Ctr. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.