Historic House Blog

I snapped the above photo of The Hamilton-Turner Inn (ca. 1873) in December 2007.  It is one of my favorite photos from my trip to Savanah.  I am very much enamoured with this historic house– an infatuation that goes well beyond my usual admiration for Second Empire mansions.  I generally do not like excessive, over-the-top ornamentation on historic [...]

Some of the earliest Victorian-era houses were part of an architectural movement called “Gothic Revival.”  Gothic houses in the United States were built primarily from 1840 to 1860, and are also referred to as “Carpenter Gothic,” “Rural Gothic,” and even more informally, “Gingerbread houses” – due to frilly ornamentation that is common to the style.  Andrew [...]

The first couple of decades of the twentieth-century were exciting times for house builders and architects. Many of the house styles that came to dominate 20th-century architecture were first introduced in the 1900s, the teens, and the 1920s. Craftsman bungalows were the most popular houses of the 1910s, and continued in popularity through the 1930s. Frank Lloyd Wright launched his [...]

Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.
                           -Frank Lloyd Wright 
 
Frank Lloyd Wright has been recognized by the American Institute of Architects as the “greatest American architect of all time.” He was the founder of the Prairie School [...]

So . . . what do you call those structures on top of some historic houses & buildings?  Well, the answer is both simple and complex at the same time.  The fact is, most people simply call all of them “cupolas” (pronounced CUE-puh-lah).  However, most of these structures are probably not cupolas.  Instead, many of them are [...]

How many types, or styles, of roofs can you name?   (And how many times can you say “roofs” without thinking it is a really weird word?  Maybe it’s just me.).  Anyway, there are a lot of combinations of roof styles, shapes, & sizes, but there are not many basic roof shapes if you want to learn [...]

I stumbled upon an interesting website today — http://www.historicalbricks.com .  It is the website of Gavin Historical Bricks - “The Nation’s Largest Supplier of Antique Brick & Stone.”   This company supplies large amounts of bricks for both historic restoration projects and new constuction projects (where the builder is trying to achieve historic look & feel).   And [...]

The two houses above do not appear to have much in common upon first glance.  After all, one house is a stately brick mansion, while the other is a light yellow, vinyl-sided Colonial.   The Italianate house on the left was built during the late 1800s (or perhaps even the beginning of the 20th century if [...]

The earliest type of doors constructed in colonial America were almost always “batten” doors, which were quite basic. They were built with vertical wood planks, and were reinforced on the backside with a few horizontal boards that held everything together. These batten-style doors are sometimes also called “plank” doors, for obvious reason, or “frontier doors,” [...]

Last week, we posted a discussion on the differences between the different kinds of historic districts, and about some of the benefits of owning a property in a historic district. Having a property listed on the National Register lends a certain air of dignity and importance to a house that can be very useful in marketing. There [...]