Browse the gallery below to see examples of eleven classic architectural styles. These examples are either Historic New England museum properties or historic photographs from our collection. Then read additional details and characteristics about each style, listed in chronological order.
Boardman House in Saugus, Massachusetts, is an example of this seventeenth-century style, also known as First Period.
Boardman House in Saugus, Massachusetts, is an example of this seventeenth-century style, also known as First Period.
The Codman Estate in Lincoln, Massachusetts, typifies the orderly symmetry of Georgian architecture.
Refining Georgian-style symmetry with elliptical and round spaces, Federal mansions such as Otis House in Boston signified urban prosperity.
Greek columns help identify Greek Revival houses like the Sarah Orne Jewett Visitor Center in South Berwick, Maine.
Roseland Cottage in Woodstock, Connecticut, displays the asymmetry of Gothic Revival architecture, an idealized version of Europe's medieval past.
This unidentified Italianate villa, designed by Gervase Wheeler, has the low-pitched hipped roof characteristic of the style.
Meeting House Hill Firehouse in the Dorchester section of Boston has a mansard roof characteristic of Second Empire architecture.
Stick Style buildings, such as Fletcher's Neck Life-Saving Station in Biddeford, Maine, are the link between Gothic Revival and Queen Anne.
Queen Anne houses, such as the Eustis Estate in Milton, Massachusetts, borrow from a number of architectural traditions.
Complex shapes and forms within a smooth wood-shingle surface characterize Shingle Style structures such as this house in Waltham, Massachusetts.
The Philadelphia Centennial of 1876 led to renewed interest in colonial architecture, such as this 1935 design for a house in Stoneham, Massachusetts.
Built during the first generation of settlement by English colonists, Post-Medieval English (or First Period) architecture owes much of its appearance to building traditions from Europe. It could be argued that houses from this period are without style; they were not designed by architects. Yet several common elements mark these structures and two distinct traditions developed (northern and southern) with corresponding similarities of form and appearance. Each of these traditions took advantage of materials at hand as well as architectural features suited to their respective climates.
In New England, colonists departed from traditional European wattle and daub (woven lattice of wooden strips covered with a material made with some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung, and straw), constructing wood-frame homes covered with weatherboard, clapboard, or shingles. This was a direct result of the prevalence of local timber. In addition, New England seventeenth-century homes were typically two stories tall with steeply pitched roofs, essential for shedding heavy snow loads. Central chimneys were also standard, being the most efficient way to heat these buildings during cold New England winters. Today, surviving examples have almost all been restored to their early appearance and thus retain very little original material.
Geographic Range:Post-Medieval English architecture is limited to those areas of the country settled before 1700. Connecticut and coastal regions of Massachusetts contain the highest number of these structures, although other examples can be found moving inland along major waterways such as the Hudson River.
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The dominant style for domestic construction in the United States from 1700 to 1780, Georgian architecture grew out of the Italian Renaissance in Europe. Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), an Italian architect, devised a set of design principles based on the Classical proportions of Roman ruins. His famous work, The Four Books of Architecture (1570), which emphasized classicism, order, and symmetry regardless of function, influenced English architects such as Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren. In turn, these principles were brought to the colonies, gaining popularity beginning around 1700 principally through architectural pattern books.
Georgian architecture gets its name from the succession of English kings named George (beginning in 1715). In the United States the style included innumerable variations on a simple English theme: a symmetrical, two-story house with center-entry façade, combined with the two-room-deep center-passage floor plan. By the end of the seventeenth century, the upper classes in the colonies began to embrace the European concept of gentility, displaying their elevated taste and station by maintaining codes of dress, speech, and behavior. This status was also aptly displayed by the orderly symmetry of Georgian architecture, a legacy that survives today.
Geographic Range: Georgian houses are most commonly found along the eastern seaboard, where English influence was concentrated. Today most examples survive in seacoast communities that did not continue to grow rapidly during the nineteenth century such as Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Newport, Rhode Island.
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Like the preceding Georgian period, domestic architecture in the Federal style typically came in the form of a simple box, two rooms deep, with doors and windows arranged in strict symmetry. However, creative floor plans with elliptical and round spaces were introduced during this period and the simple exterior box was often modified by projecting wings (particularly in high-style examples). In addition, there is a lightness and restrained delicacy to Federal architectural components in comparison to their heavier, more ponderous Georgian counterparts.
The Federal style is often described as a refinement of Georgian style drawing on contemporary European trends, in particular the work of Robert Adam (1728-1792), who traveled to the Mediterranean to study classical Roman and Greek monuments. His architecture was based on firsthand observation rather than interpreted through buildings of the Italian Renaissance. During this period, the first true architects appeared on the American scene. Among them was Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844) who is credited with bringing the Federal style to United States after his own European tour. Asher Benjamin’s (1773-1845) famous pattern books brought Bulfinch’s interpretations of the Adam style to thousands of American carpenters and house wrights. Other notable architects of the period include Benjamin H. Latrobe (Philadelphia and Virginia), Samuel McIntire (Salem, Massachusetts), and Alexander Parris (Maine).
Geographic Range: Federal architecture was a sign of urban prosperity, reflecting the growing wealth of the new nation. Examples stretch from Maine to Georgia with the zenith in prosperous port cities on the eastern seaboard, particularly Boston, Salem, Newburyport, and Marblehead, Massachusetts; Newport, Providence, Warren, and Bristol, Rhode Island; Portland and Wiscasset, Maine; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; and Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. Vernacular examples survive throughout settled areas of the nineteenth century and are least common on the westward edges of expansion and inland rural areas of northern New England that were still sparsely settled.
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Increasing interest in classical buildings in both western Europe and the United States at the end of the eighteenth century first focused on Roman models. The Roman legacy can be seen in Early Classical Revival homes in the southern regions of the east coast, particularly Virginia. Increasingly, however, archaeological investigations of the early nineteenth century focused on Greece (as the mother of Rome) and shifted interest to Grecian architectural models. At the same time, the War of 1812 increased American resentments of British influence. These factors led to a flowering of what is now known as Greek Revival architecture.
Irresistible to the first generation of American-born architects (among them, Benjamin Latrobe, Robert Mills, William Strickland, Thomas U. Walter, Ithiel Town, etc.), “Grecian Style” swept through the country with western expansion. In addition, guides for carpenter builders by Asher Benjamin and Minard Lafever made the style widely available for imitation. Taking many shapes, it was the classic form of the Parthenon which inspired design of Bank of the United States in Philadelphia (1818), and served as a catalyst, identifying Grecian architecture with economic security. The National style, as it came to be known, became the universal fashion for public buildings, churches, banks, and town halls. In New England and the northern United States, the side-passage, gable-front house was introduced. Vernacular examples abound, incorporating Grecian doorway moldings, window frames, and columns supporting porch roofs and suggesting the broad appeal of a style that represented a distant and idealized culture.
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Greek Revival was the dominant style of domestic architecture between 1830 and 1850. In New England large groups of Greek Revival houses can be found in cities that industrialized during this period such as New Haven and Hartford, Connecticut, and Cambridge and New Bedford, Massachusetts. Vernacular examples in rural areas of New England are also common.
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Historic New England Example: Sarah Orne Jewett Visitor Center
Originally, Gothic architecture was primarily used in religious construction and was popular between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, giving rise to the monumental cathedrals of England and northern France. Its revival in Europe began during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as part of the Picturesque movement. A design philosophy, this movement sought to break free from the rigid geometric nature of classicism and to create naturalistic and relaxed designed landscapes and homes. Gothic Revival architecture was admired for its asymmetrical variety and symbolized an idealized version of Europe’s medieval past, one that was virtuous and chaste in contrast with the materialism of the Industrial Age.
As in previous centuries, Americans of the early nineteenth century were influenced by the cultural movements of Europe, including the Picturesque. In 1832 the first example of Gothic Revival architecture in the United States was designed by architect Alexander Jackson Davis (1803-1892). He was the first to champion the style for use in domestic construction and his 1837 book Rural Residences was the first house plan book published in the United States to include three-dimensional views and floor plans. Davis’s friend, landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852), expanded on this work with Cottage Residences (1842) and The Architecture of Country Houses (1850), which truly popularized the style. Americans put their own twist on the Gothic style, using details such as pointed arches on light wood-framed construction in a variation that is known as Carpenter Gothic.
By 1865 the Gothic Revival style was declining in popularity. It enjoyed a brief resurgence in the 1870s, stimulated by the writings of English art historian critic John Ruskin. This High Victorian Gothic phase was principally applied to public buildings such as churches and libraries with a few landmark houses with the definitive polychrome cladding (distinctive linear patterns in masonry distinguished by horizontal bands of contrasting colors or textures of brick or stonework).
Geographic Range: Never as popular as the contemporary Greek Revival or Italianate styles for domestic architecture, most surviving examples exist in northeastern states where architects first popularized the style. Few urban examples exist largely because Davis and Downing emphasized rural style, compatible with nature, and later High Victorian Gothic examples are rarely domestic buildings.
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Historic New England Example: Roseland Cottage
As with Gothic Revival, the Italianate style began in Europe as part of the Picturesque movement, a reaction against the formal classical ideals in art and architecture that had dominated the previous two centuries. It was inspired by the rambling, informal Italian villas of northern Italy with their characteristic square towers and asymmetrical, open floor plans. The first Italianate houses in the United States were constructed in the late 1830s, popularized by the pattern books of Andrew Jackson Downing similar to the Gothic Revival discussed above. By the 1860s however, the Italianate style surpassed the slightly earlier Gothic Revival in popularity. In the United States two separate approaches can be seen in domestic examples. One was more directly inspired by the traditional Italian villa with its masonry construction, square towers, and irregular massing and floor plans.
This is distinguished from a more formal, symmetrical, and familiar townhouse or detached Greek Revival box to which Italianate ornamentation such as eave brackets and arched windows were applied. The combination of a familiar form and the “picturesque” decoration helped the style maintain its dominance through the third quarter of the nineteenth century. In fact, vernacular examples developed into a truly American style with only passing reference to Italian models. The financial panic of 1873 and the subsequent economic depression directly led to the decline of the Italianate style.
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Examples of Italian villas and houses with Italianate detailing are common in expanding towns and cities of this era in the Midwest as well as older but still growing cities of the northeastern seaboard. They were least commonly constructed in the southeastern United States.
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Following the Civil War, a population explosion in the cities and towns of the northern and western United States naturally led to a huge demand for new housing. At the same time, house design books and building parts catalogues were becoming available nationally and streetcars and trains brought newer, more distant suburbs with space for large new houses within commuting distance of major cities. These factors along with a postwar industrial and economic energy resulted in the flowering of a variety of new architectural styles. Overall floor plans and forms became more varied and complex, with styles increasingly defined by the shapes of door and window openings and applied decoration at windows, doors, porches, and particularly front entries.
The Second Empire (or French Second Empire) style was considered to be the modern fashion of the late nineteenth century, mimicking the latest French building styles. Its distinctive mansard roof was named for an early French architect, Francois Mansart (1598-1666), and was used extensively during the reign of Napoleon III (1852 – 1870), France’s Second Empire. Exhibitions in Paris in 1855 and 1867 helped to popularize the style internationally. The mansard roof became particularly popular in urban areas where it provided a full attic story of living space and was also commonly used in remodeling older buildings.
Houses in the Second Empire style are essentially defined by this distinctive roof type, with other detailing reflecting a number of different fashions (most commonly Italianate details) or even a combination of several different styles. The Second Empire style was used for many public buildings during the Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1977) and is therefore sometimes referred to as the General Grant style. The Second Empire style rapidly faded from popularity following the panic of 1873 and subsequent economic depression.
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This style was most popular in the northeastern and mid-western states and less common on the Pacific Coast or in the southeastern United States. Second Empire townhouses were particularly popular in urban areas where the mansard roof provided a full upper story of usable attic living space.
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The Stick Style is often considered to be a transitional style, linking the preceding Gothic Revival with the subsequent Queen Anne. All three were inspired by the building traditions of Medieval English half-timbered construction with its visible structural elements, steeply pitched roofs, and projecting gables. Unlike Gothic Revival, the Stick Style stressed the wall surface itself rather than applying decorative elements merely at windows, doors, and cornices. Various patterns of wood clapboards or board-and-batten siding were applied within square and triangular spaces created by the raised stick work. This detailing was applied to a variety of nineteenth-century building forms, making it the defining element of the style.
The focus on patterned siding is reminiscent of High Victorian Gothic detailing, except that the latter were universally executed in masonry rather than wood. In fact, the Stick Style is a celebration of wood construction and in many ways the “structure” as defined by the stick work is the decoration. The undecorated, square-milled lumber gives a precise, geometric quality to Stick Style homes. Advocates additionally promoted the Stick Style’s structural “honesty” because the stick work was meant to express the building’s internal structure. However, unlike true half-timbering, stick work was merely applied decoration with no true relation to the underlying balloon-frame construction. During the 1880s the Stick Style was rapidly replaced by the related Queen Anne movement, which was both more widespread and influential.
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The Stick Style was less common than the contemporaneous Italianate or
Second Empire styles. Examples survive primarily in the northeastern United States and date from the 1860s and ’70s. It is likely that many original examples are now obscured, as their characteristic wall patterns and detailing, susceptible to deterioration, have been removed rather than repaired or replaced.
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The standard for domestic architecture during the Victorian era in the United States, the Queen Anne style is difficult to define, encompassing a wide range of architectural elements and borrowing and combining features from multiple stylistic traditions. The initial inspiration came from England, but developed into something uniquely American. During the second half of the nineteenth century, English architects led by Richard Norman Shaw developed and published house plans inspired by Elizabethan cottages and manors with their varied, asymmetrical forms and medieval-inspired half timbering. Like the philosophy behind the earlier Gothic Revival movement, Shaw and his contemporaries were reacting against urban industrialism and used architecture to promote the ideal of simpler country living, though without the religious connotations connected with Gothic forms.
American architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886), aware of Shaw’s movement, designed the first Queen Anne home in the United States in 1874, Watts-Sherman House in Newport, Rhode Island. The style also gained popularity as a result of exposure at the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876, promotion in the country’s first architectural magazine, The American Architect and Building News, and in new plan books available by mail order nationwide. Advancing technology also played a role in spreading the Queen Anne style across the country, with pre-cut architectural details readily available and affordable thanks to mass-production and railway distribution.
Shaw’s original designs were meant to be executed in brick, but his ideas were mostly reinterpreted in the United States in wood. Half-timbered construction was generally replaced by the balloon frame, with a multitude of applied decoration. The defining feature of the American Queen Anne style is the use of varied wall planes and forms using bays, towers, overhangs, wall projections, and multiple wall materials and textures to avoid any flat or plain expanses. No example exhibits all the varied elements and features associated with the Queen Anne style, though several subtypes exist, defined by different decorative details. For example, in some examples spindle work, or gingerbread ornamentation was used to embellish porches, gables, and overhanging walls. In free classic examples classical columns are used as porch supports, and Palladian windows and cornice-line dentils added a classical look. There are half-timbered examples with groupings of three or more window and features similar to early Tudor designs, and a small number of homes with patterned masonry or stonework were built, but usually these were architect-designed and found in urban locations.
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Queen Anne homes are nearly ubiquitous throughout the country, particularly west of the Appalachians and prominently in California from San Diego to San Francisco, with both townhouses and free-standing examples.
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Historic New England Example: Eustis Estate
Unlike preceding architectural styles, the Shingle Style is not defined by applied decoration and therefore there is little in the way of applied detailing at the doors, windows, cornices, porches, or on wall surfaces of Shingle Style homes. Instead, the focus of the Shingle Style aesthetic was complex shapes and forms encased within a smooth surface of wooden shingles meant to unify the irregular outline of the house. Also unlike preceding styles, the Shingle Style was uniquely American. Even so, it borrowed certain design elements from a variety of contemporary styles, such as the wide porches, shingled surfaces, and asymmetrical forms from Queen Anne designs. It also adapted gambrel roofs, lean-to additions, classical columns, and Palladian windows from the Colonial Revival movement and Syrian arches and the use of stone at the ground story from the concurrent Richardsonian Romanesque style.
The Shingle Style was never adopted or adapted for mass or vernacular housing, remaining a largely high-style, architect-designed aesthetic. As a largely architect-designed style, it was a consciously created American form and a reaction to the mail-order architecture that was popular during the 1880s. Among American architects who worked in the Shingle Style were Henry Hobson Richardson and William Ralph Emerson of Boston; John Calvin Stevens of Portland, Maine; and the firm of McKim, Mead & White. A good reference on the Shingle Style as well as the preceding Stick Style is Vincent Scully’s book The Shingle Style and the Stick Style, Yale University Press.
The Shingle Style was primarily a high-style architect-designed style. It reached its highest expression in seaside resorts of the northeastern United States – summer destinations such as Newport, Rhode Island; Cape Cod, Massachusetts; eastern Long Island; and coastal Maine. Scattered examples were constructed in all regions of the country though few vernacular examples exist. Despite being well-publicized in contemporary architecture magazines, the Shingle Style never gained the popularity of Queen Anne designs and thus surviving examples are unusual outside of coastal New England. It was also unsuitable to dense urban areas because of its typically expansive floor plan and wood construction.
The Philadelphia Centennial of 1876 is usually credited as the starting point for a rebirth of interest in the colonial architectural heritage of this country and the early English and Dutch houses of the Atlantic seaboard. It is not surprising that in celebrating one hundred years as an independent nation Americans proudly looked to the past for inspiration. The increasing popularity of colonial influences on contemporary architecture motivated a highly publicized tour of a group of architects in 1877 who observed and recorded Georgian and Federal houses of New England. These men would go on to form the well-known firm of McKim, Mead & White a year later. It was also this trip that influenced the first two landmark examples of the Colonial Revival style designed by the firm: Appleton House in Lenox, Massachusetts, and H.A.C. Taylor House in Newport, Rhode Island. The simplicity of colonial designs and honest use of materials with more economical plans than the recently popular Picturesque homes also contributed to the growing popularity of the style. Even a century after “modern” architecture was introduced, Colonial Revival motifs continue to be popular in new construction.
Early Colonial Revival examples were rarely historically accurate, with exaggerated forms and elements that took inspiration from the details of colonial precedents. Georgian and Federal examples had the largest influence on the revival with elements such as colonial door surrounds, multi-pane sash windows, and cornice dentils on a symmetrical façade. Secondary influences came from Post-Medieval English and Dutch Colonial examples, evident in gambrel-roofed examples or later Colonial Revival examples with second-story overhangs. More researched and accurate examples appeared between 1915 and 1935, aided by the publication of a large number of books and periodicals on the subject of colonial architecture. However, the economic depression of the 1930s followed by World War II led to a simplification of the style in later examples with stylized door surrounds, cornices, or windows merely suggesting a colonial precedent.
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Domestic construction during the first half of the twentieth century was dominated by Colonial Revival examples in a multitude of various sub-types. Well-suited for domestic architecture, examples can be found throughout the country.
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