The rugged beauty of the Cape's landscape has been captured in writing since the days of Henry David Thoreau. Yet few mention the area's architecture, aside from references to the "Cape Cod houses," the basic cottages that the earliest settlers built. From Provincetown at the northern tip to the village of Woods Hole at the opposite end, the residential architecture of Cape Cod encompasses an extensive range of styles. Scattered among the charming Capes are stately Federals and Greek Revivals built for sea captains, detailed Carpenter Gothic cottages constructed by Methodist camp-goers and sprawling Victorian and Shingle-style summer mansions built during the Gilded Age. Journey with Cape Cod native Jaci Conry as she reveals the architectural influences of different eras on this timeless peninsula.

Many homes across America have designs based on plans taken from pattern books or mail-order catalogs. In Houses from Books, Daniel D. Reiff traces the history of published plans and offers the first comprehensive survey of their influence on the structure and the style of American houses from 1738 to 1950. Houses from Books shows that architectural publications, from Palladio&’s I Quattro Libri to Aladdin's Readi-Cut Homes, played a decisive role in every aspect of American domestic building. Reiff discusses the people and the firms who produced the books as well as the ways in which builders and architects adapted the designs in communities throughout the country. His book also offers a wide-ranging analysis of the economic and social conditions shaping American building practices. As architectural publication developed and grew more sophisticated, it played an increasingly prominent part in the design and the construction of domestic buildings. In villages and small towns, which often did not have professional architects, the publications became basic resources for carpenters and builders at all levels of expertise. Through the use of published designs, they were able to choose among a variety of plans, styles, and individual motifs and engage in a fruitful dialogue with past and present architects. Houses from Books reconstructs this dialogue by examining the links between the published designs and the houses themselves. Reiff&’s book will be indispensable to architectural historians, architects, preservationists, and regional historians. Realtors and homeowners will also find it of great interest. A catalog at the end of the book can function as a guide for those attempting to locate a model and a date for a particular design. Houses from Books contains a wealth of photographs, many by the author, that enhance its importance as a history and guide.

Three mysteries precipitate an investigation into an otherwise ordinary suburban property, revealing a past inextricably woven into four centuries of American history. When Eleanor Phillips Brackbill bought her suburban Westchester house in 2000, three mysteries came with it. First, from the former owner, came the information that the 1930s house was a Sears house or something like that. Thrilled to think it might be a Sears, Roebuck & Co. mail-order house, Brackbill was determined to find evidence to prove it. She found instead a house pedigree of a different sort. Second, and even more provocative, was the discovery of several iron stakes protruding from the propertys enormous granite outcropping, bigger in square footage than the house itself. When queried about them, the former owner told her, Someone a long time ago kept monkeys there, chained to the stakes. Monkeys? Was this some kind of suburban legend? A third mystery came to light at closing, when a building inspectors letter contained a reference to the house having had, at one time, a different address. Why would the house have had another address?Her curiosity aroused, and intent upon finding the facts, Brackbill gradually peeled back layers of history, allowing the house and the land to tell their stories, and uncovering a past inextricably woven into four centuries of American history. At the same time, she found thirty-two owners, across 350 years, who had just one thing in common: ownership of a particular parcel of land. An Uncommon Cape not only tells the story of an eight-year odyssey of fact-finding and speculation but also answers the broader question: What came before? and, through material presented in twenty-two sidebars, offers readers

Cyfrol ddarluniadol llawn a chynhwysfawr yn dangos ôl ymchwil trylwyr yn cynnwys cyfoeth o wybodaeth am hanes adeiladau o darddiad canol oesol ym Maesyfed. Dros 600 llun du-a-gwyn, 5 llun lliw a 15 map. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru

The evolution of housing in America. This book is concerned essentially with the model of domestic environment in this country, as it has evolved from colonial architecture through current urban projects. Beginning with Puritan townscape, topics include urban row housing, Big House and slave quarters, factory housing, rural cottages, Victorian suburbs, urban tenements, apartment life, bungalows, company towns, planned residential communities, public housing for the poor, suburban sprawl.

Tells the story of life in America in terms of the houses Americans have planned, built, and lived in. From this we can reconstruct the growth of ideas, of cultural patterns, and of practical expedients that have led to the problems and possibilities that are our present inheritance.