American Architectural Styles And Suggested Colour Scheme Pt 3

DUTCH REVIVAL/DUTCH COLONIAL

Modelled on the frame houses of the early Dutch settlers around New York, New Jersey and Delaware, the Dutch Revival house is a common suburban sight. The style usually features a sloping gambrel roof which jutt out over the facade, and a second-storey front that rises from the roof like an oversize dormer. These revived Dutch Colonials enjoyed their greatest popularity during the suburbia building boom of the 1920s to the 1940s, but variations on the type are still being built.

 

TUDOR REVIVAL

There's not much of the late Elizabethan about the American suburbs - except for the rambling Tudor Revival homes of the early twentieth century and their later more modest cousins. Thee slate roofed, half timbered houses were inspired by the English Renaissance houses of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, and featured steeply pitched rooflines and rows of casement windows. Soon the style was adapted to smaller, more middle class suburban homes, though it made use of the same elements- steep roofs, overlapping gables, decorative half-timbers, or stone masonry and stucco exteriors. Tudor Revival was tremendously popular in the 1920s and early 1930s.

SPANISH COLONIAL REVIVAL

In the 1910s and 1920s, when architects and homebuilders in the Northeast looked to the past for inspiration, they tapped into their English colonial heritage. But in areas such as Florida, California, and the Southwest, the heritage was Spanish, and the style it produced was powerfully Mediterranean in flavour. Thick, textured stucco walls, red tile roofs, arched windows and heavy wood doors are all hallmarks of the style, which continues to be popular today, lending design elements to everything from new housing to shopping plazas.

GARRISON COLONIAL REVIVAL

 

The Garrison Colonial was one of the most popular  of the later Colonial Revival styles, reaching its peak from around 1935 to 1955 (though adaptations of the style are still built today). The hallmark of the Garrison is a slight second-storey overhang with the first storey often clad in brick and the second in wood siding. Many have a gabled side addition that houses either a garage or a family room. 

SPLIT LEVEL

As American as a backyard barbecue, teh classic split level was born during the post war building boom of the 1950s and 1960s. With a single storey at one end (usually the living room and kitchen) and two at the other (sunken garage and family room below and bedrooms above), the split level was soon a familiar sight throughout the countries as cars opened up farmland to residential development.

 

 

 

This is the end of the series on early American architecture. I hope you'll find this write up useful for the building of your dollhouses.

American Architectural Styles And Suggested Colour Scheme Pt 2

COLONIAL REVIVAL

 Following the patriotic celebrations of the 1876 Centennial, a new interest in American history inspired a revival of American Colonial architecture. Designs for houses for such fashionable architectural forms as McKim, Mead and White incorporated distinctive Colonial-era features, including the Palladian window, columned porticos, doors and windows pediments, and classical swags and urns. In its early phase, beginning in the 1880s,  the Colonial Revival was limited to opulent, large houses in exclusive neighbourhoods and summer resorts. By the 1920s, it was the favoured style  for more modest and suburban houses and has been popular since. The traditional colours for the early Colonial Revival houses was white, cream or pale yellow, with trim and shutters highlighted in a dark shade, such as green, blue, red or black. Red, brown, grey, blue and green have also become popular body colours, use any of these with contrasting trims.

GEROGIAN REVIVAL VERNACULAR OR FOURSQUARE

These plainspoken houses were built around the simple principle of the Georgian square or rectangular block, usually with a front porch and a sensible floor plan of four rooms on each floor arranged one in each corner. Foursquares were usually covered in clapboard, but there are certainly examples of the style in stone,  brick and stucco. The style predominates in the small towns of the Northeast and Midwest, but at least one classic American foursquare can be found in most older residential estates.

EARLY SEARS PREFABRICATED

Between 1908  and 1940, Sears, Roebuck and Company sold more than 50,000 precut homes- kits that included everything from blueprints to lumber and nails. The kits were shipped by rails, so most Sears homes were built in the Northeast and Midwest, the areas best served by rail lines. Styles were wildly eclectic -buyers paging through a Sears' "Catalogue of Modern Homes" could choose anything from a simple bungalow or cape or English or Spanish Mission-style cottage. Many Sears homes still stand today, particularly in the Midwestern farming communities that were once so dependent on mail-order goods.

BUNGALOW

From its birth in the 1900s through its boom through the following two decades, Americans were crazy about the bungalow. These solid, snug, one or one-and-a-half storey homes fed the need for affordable, modern housing, and they became one of the most popular housing styles. The typical bungalow featured a deep porch, incorporated under a wide, overhanging roof; a long, low profile and a simple interior with lots of built-in cupboards and nooks. Cheap and easy to build, bungalow designs were published in magazines and sold through the mail. Their porches and shady interiors were intended for warm-weather Southern and Western climates, but the styles spread into far frosting regions before its popularity faded.

CRAFTSMAN

Inspired by the English Arts and Crafts Movement, the Craftsman style is closely associated with the furniture maker, and designer Gustav Stickley, who published numerous designs for modest houses and bungalows in his Craftsman magazine (1901-16). The style, which reached the peak of its popularity in the 920s, is also identified with the works of such California  masters as the architects Greene and Greene, who rejected mass-produced materials and emphasized fine craftsmanship in wood and stone. The braod overhanging roof, deep porch, often sheltered by pergolas or trellises, and the horizontal lines of the Craftsman bungalows are the distinguishing features.The typical palettes incorporated natural greys, browns and greens to blend with the natural settings. 

American Architectural Styles And Suggested Colour Scheme Pt 1

In this book is a chapter on the different styles of  historical American architecture with suggested colour schemes for the buildings.  I see American dollhouses and  thought dollhouse lovers may be interested in a list of the brief descriptions of the styles and recommended colour combinations. There are altogether 17 styles. I will cover them in 3 posts.  All the words and images are from the book.

CAPE COD

As the name suggests, the Cape Cod cottage originated in Massachusetts, with the first English settlers of Cape Cod. Typically one and a half stories high, the basic shape is low and broad to deflect  seaside winds, with a pitched roof that slopes almost to the window tops. Capes were widespread through the first half of the 18th century, then underwent a revival in the mid 1920s, and they remain one of the most prevalent house styles in America. A popular Colonial colour was Spanish brown, a reddish brown often used on trim; white pale grey and pale yellow with black and green shutters have become favoured choices. 

GEORGIAN

The term "Georgian " refers to the first period of formal architectural design to America, and is named for the succession of kings on the English throne before and during the Revolution. The classical-inspired style originated primarily in Britain, and was popular in the country from about 1700 to 1780.  The uniform facades often feature matching end chimneys and symmetrically placed windows and doors trimmed with elegant classical details. The Georgian style resurfaced as part of the Colonial Revival around 1900 and remains extremely popular today. Many early Georgian houses were white. Dark browns and greys were also popular colours. Later in the eighteenth century, the fashion appears to have shifted from the darker shades to the lighter colours: creams, pale yellows, and more of the favoured white. Dark green used primarily for shutters, came into style around 1800. 

GREEK REVIVAL

Inspired partly by archeological discoveries in ancient Greece, the Greek Revival was fashionable in America from about 1820 to the 1840s. Architect's pattern books spread the style to rural areas, where country builders and carpenters adapted it to the familiar "temple front" house. This form is often fronted by a classical portico, one of the style's distinguishing features. Early 19th century promoters of the Greek Revival style advocated the pale creams and whites they associated with classical architecture and these remain the favoured colours, shutters in a dark colour add a traditional accent. 

CARPENTER GOTHIC

Carpenter Gothic was part of the general Gothic Revival movement, which took off in the 1830s and lasted until around 1875, and feature steeply pitched gable roofs (often with elaborate decorated trim) arched Gothic windows and intricate "gingerbread" porch and cornice decorations cut with a jigsaw (hence the term "carpenter"). Although the European prototypes were stone, American builders were also happy to use the abundant supply of native wood. Andrew Jackson Downing, an early advocate of the style, recommended grey and fawn to harmonise with "any situation in the country". However, less conventional colours were not unheard of. One of the best known Carpenter Gothic-style houses in New England, the Bowen House in Woodstock, Connecticut, was painted bright pink. 

STICK

Stick is perhaps too stark a word for this picturesque style, named for the elaborate, decorative criss-cross stick work. The Stick style probably developed as resort architecture in the mid 1850s and some of its most famous examples are found in New Port, Rhode Island, and seaside communities in New Jersey. But the style spread across the country and remained popular well in the 1870s. These lighthearted often brightly coloured buildings can still be found in resorts, suburbs and small towns, mostly in the Northwest and Midwest. Typical body colours were pale pastels, pinks or light blues or sea greens, with the trim in a darker shade.

ITALIANATE

True to its name, this elegant, old-world style was meant to evoke the country village of Tuscany and Umbria. Italianate houses were popular from about the 1830s to the 1870s, and featured a square profile and very low roof with deep overhanging eaves and often a "belvedere" centered on top. Typically, the body colours were natural shades, inspired by their European prototypes, such as pale tan and greys, beiges and light browns with dark doors and windows sashes.

QUEEN ANNE

Queen Anne-style houses, popular between about 1870 and 1910, feature ornate asymmetrical facades distinguished by bay windows, towers, protruding gables and large verandahs. The eclectic style was rooted in the work of the British architect Richard Norman Shaw, whose highly original designs incorporated a free mix of many styles.Among the favoured colours for this style in America is muted browns, maroon, olive and terracotta. It was not uncommon to combine as many  as three different colours on the main body of the house, with still more colours used to pick out the elaborate ornamentation typical of the style. 

Miniature Museum of The World- Salzburg

This is not exactly a miniature museum but it is a museum nonetheless. This is Mozart's Geburtshaus or birthplace in Salzurg and the exhibits posted here are scaled stage models built for Mozart's opera.

La Clemenza di Tito

Don Giovanni

Magic Flute


Mitridate, Re di Ponto!

The Abduction From The Seraglio.


Can't keep my eyes open already , see you real soon.