Ultimate House Styles – ‘O’ to ‘Z’

This is the third and final article in this series on house styles. In this section we cover ornate British and French styles; the uniqueness and dynamics of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie and Usonian Houses; the simpler Salt Box, Shotgun, Rustic, and Ranch Style Houses; the strong Romanesque Style; and the regional Shingle and Spanish styles.

Photo credits for the images below are at the end of the article

Prairie

Frank Lloyd Wright was a visionary architect who changed the concept of the house. Rather than basing design on historic aesthetics and closed-off rooms, these houses established a new style based on an aesthetic of the American prairies, enclosing open flowing spaces instead of closed-off rooms.

His Prairie Style was developed in the early decades of the 20th Century during the same era of the popular ornate Victorian-era styles. This style was a rejection of those European-inspired looks and lifestyle.

The Prairie Style is one of low but dynamic horizontal forms and lines with broad overhanging eaves to act as shelter from the summer sun. As he refined the concept the roofs became low-pitched to further imply the horizontal nature of the Prairie.

The houses are typically of brick with stone trim, often augmented by large planters. When decorative detailing is incorporated it’s inspired by American nature rather than classical or European details.

This style is also defined by its long bands of windows looking out onto terraces and yards, often with decorative patterns of leaded glass.

This is the first truly American house style.

Queen Anne

The Queen Anne style is what most people are referring to when they call something Victorian, which is a broader term for various decorative styles of the late 1800’s. This style was popular in the last two decades of the 1800’s through the first decade of the 1900’s. It is distinguished by ornate fanciful detailing, asymmetrical designs, steep-pitched gable roofs, towers, turrets, and wrap-around porches. There is a wide variety in this style, from simple to very ornate.

Possibly the largest collection of houses in this style is in San Francisco. The narrow-lot bay-and-gable houses built during the city’s initial rapid growth were commonly decorated in this style, and have become synonymous with the city itself.

Ranch

The Ranch House became the defining style of Post-World War II suburban growth in the United States. Loosely taking influences from the single-level house of the Spanish Ranchos of southern California and the Prairie and Usonian houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, the low linear form and low-pitched roof was primarily created as a means of building larger cost-effective houses on wider lots.

This style is typically straightforward and simple. In the early post-World War II years these houses were variations on the Cape Cod style mostly clad in wood siding. As the nation grew wealthier the ranch became a single-story long and low form, usually clad in brick but occasionally with other materials.

Simple windows are placed where needed with larger windows for the living spaces and smaller widows for the bedrooms. The picture window, a group of three windows with a large center fixed-glass unit sandwiched between two narrow double-hung units, became a common element.

This was also one of the earliest styles to integrate the garage as part of the house rather than being separate at the back of the lot. Today’s large garage doors facing the street became another defining element of the design.

Though some houses were built with some eclectic design elements, most were free of decoration or historical reference.

A common organization of spaces became the large two-car garage at one end of the house, the formal and family spaces next to the garage, and the bedrooms at the opposite end of the house.

Another trend was the creation of a master suite independent of the other bedrooms. This suite was often located behind the garage, tying into the rest of the house via the kitchen / breakfast nook or the family room.

A variant of the ranch is the split-level. This style adapts the ranch concept to a sloping site. It typically has the living spaces on the main level, with a two-story section housing the bedrooms over a garage. The garage is half a level down from the main level, and the bedrooms half a level up.

In the early years the smaller ranch houses maintained the typical front focus, with the living room located at the front door and the kitchen at the back. However, as the style developed the move to a back yard focus became prominent.

The back yard focus moved the family spaces – the family room, Kitchen, and a dining nook or combined family / dining space – to the back of the house looking onto the back yard. The front of the house would have the formal living and dining rooms at the front, often combined as a single space.

I recent decades our casual lifestyle led to the formal living and dining spaces disappearing altogether. The front of the house would have a formal entry that led to the back. There might be a den / office off the entry, and a front bedroom being common.

Romanesque

The Romanesque style uses thick brick or stone walls to denote strength. This is a stylistic revival influenced by architecture of 11th and 12th century southern Europe. It is often called Richardsonian Romanesque, named for the architect Henry Hobson Richardson, who first developed this style in the late 1800’s.

It is defined by a mass of brick or stone punctuated by windows, prominent decorative stonework at the entry, and often at windows. It is less fanciful than the Victorian styles of the era, with more restrained detailing.

Corner turrets and curved corners are other elements that can be found.

Most commonly used for prominent public and collegiate buildings, it was used occasionally for large houses and for urban townhomes.

Rustic

The rustic style applies to houses built in the country using simple materials and methods, typically of wood but sometimes of stone, with a “hand-built” and weathered look. Though there is no standard as to specific design elements, it is commonly used for houses that look older and “quaint”. Various influences are found and the term can be applied to other styles including barn-style houses, saltbox houses, log houses, and cottages.

Saltbox

The saltbox style is easily identifiable. It is essentially a two-story colonial style house where the back of the house has a single story extension. The main roof reaches downward toward to the back of the extension creating a long sloping roof at the back of the house.

Second Empire

The Second Empire is the predecessor of the French Revival style, popularized in the late 1800’s and influenced by the architecture of re-built Paris during the reign of Napolean II.

The style is denoted by a mansard roof with decorative dormers and tall windows that are often arched. The house is typically square-ish in plan. The style can be formal and symmetrical or less formal and asymmetrical. Wrap-around porches and tower elements can also be found.

Shingle

Though influenced by British houses that had wood-shingle-covered walls, The American shingle style came into its own as a style starting in the 1880’s in New England. Initially created for summertime homes for the wealthy, the style was developed as a counterpoint to the ornate detailing of the Victorian era houses such as the Queen Anne style.

The style is influenced by the simpler colonial style houses of the region that used wood shingles over their walls, but has grown to be a varied and dynamic style.

The shingle style house typically has a main rectangular form with a gable roof, though sometimes a hipped or gambrel roof, off of which are cross gables, round or octagonal towers, half-circle bays, and bay windows. Tall ornate brick chimneys rising from the roof are a common element.

Grand wrap-around porches are also popular, often having projecting half-circle pavilion elements. These porches can be supported by timber posts or the classical but simple Tuscan style Roman columns.

Windows are placed individually, paired, or in groups. Horizontality is maintained via the roof eaves, trimwork, and changes in material such as from a rugged stone base to the shingled walls above.

Other style varieties can be integrated such as tudor-style trimwork at gables, palladian style windows, and upper story walls that curve out to meet a cornice placed at the top of the first floor.

The shingle style has also been applied to other house types such as Bay-and-Gable, Cape Cod, Craftsman, and Victorian house styles.

Shotgun

The Shotgun Style is found mostly in the southern states. Its primary characteristics are being single story, one room in width, long in depth, a simple gable roof, and a full-width front porch. They can be simple and basic in style to decorative.

The shotgun name comes from the room layouts. Since the house is the width of a single room, and all rooms align front to back, you could ‘shoot’ through the house from the front door to back.

New Orleans is the location of a large number of shotgun houses of varying styles.

Spanish

The Spanish Style derives from the architecture of the Spanish colonists in the American southwest, especially Southern California.

This style is similar to the Mediterranean Style but typically has a simpler look and less decorative detailing.

The defining characteristics include stucco walls, red clay-tile roofs, and wide deep porches. Windows are typically smaller, though larger windows occur in the living spaces. Arches are common at porches and inside the house.

A more ornate Spanish style integrates Moorish detailing found in European Spanish buildings, but is not as common in the U.S.

Storybook

The Storybook style is a manifestation of the houses you might picture when reading fairy tales. This fanciful style can encompass a wide array of looks, materials, detailing, and forms. It’s main characteristic is whimsy.

Tudor

The Tudor Style in Europe preceded the Elizabethan Style. Its main characteristic stems from the use of rough timber to frame the house. The exterior walls of the house were infilled between the timber elements, leaving the structural timber exposed.

In the U.S. the Tudor style is an applied detailing rather than an expression of the house’s structure. Strips of lumber are placed on a stucco wall in a variety of patterns. Gable roofs are typical as it allows for further application of the patterning. Patterned leaded glass windows are common, as are tall brick chimneys.

In most Tudor style houses today the detailing occurs as accents to a brick home typically of the Elizabethan style. This can be as a second floor Tudor over a first floor Elizabethan, or an Elizabethan with the pediments accented in the Tudor style.

Usonian

Frank Lloyd Wright never stopped developing new ideas. He followed the success of his Prairie Style designs with another new type of design, the Usonian Style house.

Wright designed the Usonian house as a stylish but simpler and smaller home for the middle class. Starting in the late 1930’s, Wright designed these houses into the 1950’s.

The characteristics of the house are similar to those of the Prairie Style: Low and horizontal in nature with lots of windows looking out onto patios and yards.

Usonian houses tend to be long but shallow, designed such that all rooms face toward the back of the house. Corridors ran along the front of the house, creating a look of privacy from the front of the house by the use of tall blank walls often topped by a band of narrow windows under the roof eaves at the top.

These houses tend to be clad in cost-effective wood siding, but not in the traditional method of the Cape Cod houses. These walls would have counterpoints with large brick chimneys and interim brick support walls.

The concept of the Usonian house greatly influenced the development of the common Ranch Style houses that followed.

Victorian

The Victorian Style is a broad term for the various eclectic and decorative styles of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. This term covers the Italianate, Queen Anne, Gothic Revival, Second Empire, and even the later French Revival styles. Please refer to these styles to get a better sense of this eclectic era.

The common elements that distinguish the Victorian Style is the use of house forms and decoration based upon British, Italian, and French styles of the era.

Other Styles and Iterations

There are other styles out there that aren’t covered in these articles. Those styles tend to be regional in nature such as the Tidewater style of the southeast coastal areas, and the historic townhouses and row houses of our eastern cities. There are unique historic styles such as the Dogtrot houses of the South, as well as newer designs that address energy use and the environment. These aren’t as common in terms of their overall influence on American house design styles, but can be interesting subjects on their own.

As stated in the first article, most houses built in the 70 decades since World War II don’t match any specific styles from the post-war period. However, design elements from those styles have been integrated into newer houses for the past several decades. Also, the ranch has transformed from its 20th century low-profile heydays to become ever larger, bulkier, and more detailed houses you see in suburbs and urban neighborhoods today – think ‘McMansions’.

All this being said, understanding these influential styles will allow you to have a sense about how we got where we are. This will help in choosing or creating a clear design in a new or existing house rather than a muddled mess we often see in house designs today.

Photo Credits

Prairie

• Top Left: Teemu08, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
• Top Right: National Park Service
• Bottom Right: J. Miers – User: (WT-shared) Jtesla16 at wts wikivoyage, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
• Bottom Left: National Park Service

Queen Anne

• Top Left: Pixabay
• Top Right: 1joymuse1, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
• Bottom Right: Belle Co
• Bottom Left: H. Ambrose Kiehl, Photograph Collection University of Washington

Ranch

• Top Left: ParentingPatch, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
• Top Right: Mcheath
• Bottom Right: McHeath
• Bottom Left: Stilfehler, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

Romanesque

• Top Left: AgnosticPreachersKid, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
• Top Right: Author’s own
• Bottom Right: AgnosticPreachersKid, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
• Bottom Left: Mary Leonard, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

Rustic

• Top Left: ArtHouse Studio
• Top Right: Karen Hoffman, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
• Bottom Right: National Park Service
• Bottom Left: Roy Kotz MD, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

Saltbox

• Top Left: Tomticker5, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
• Top Right: CaptJayRuffins, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
• Bottom Right: National Park Service
• Bottom Left: National Park Service

Second Empire

• Top Left: Jerry Dougherty, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/deed.en
• Top Right: Nyttend
• Bottom Right: Serge Oin, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
• Bottom Middle: Twice25 & Rinina25, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
• Bottom Left: Famartin, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

Shingle

• Top Left: Jerrye and Roy Klotz MD, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
• Top Right: Author’s own
• Bottom Right: Author’s own
• Bottom Left: Burnhamandroot, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

Shotgun

• Top Left: Infrogmation, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/deed.en
• Top Right: Infrogmation, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/deed.en
• Bottom Right: Infrogmation, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
• Bottom Left: Jim Evans, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

Spanish

• Top Left: Amin Eshaker, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
• Top Right: National Park Service
• Bottom Right: Nick Carson
• Bottom Left: Author’s own

Storybook

• Top: Author’s own
• Bottom Right: Binksternet
• Bottom Left: National Park Service

Tudor

• Top Left: Author’s own
• Top Right: Author’s own
• Bottom Right: Author’s own
• Bottom Left: Jonathan FeBland, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

Victorian

• Top Left: Jessica Bryant
• Top Center: Ekrulila
• Top Right: Tradewinds, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
• Bottom Right: Library of Congress
• Bottom Left: James Shelton32, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

Top Image: Photo by Cayl Hollis.