Adapted from a rare 1933 catalog, this volume showcases sixty plans for two-story houses. It features photographs (most in full color), floor plans, and descriptive text that depict a splendid variety of economic styles, including colonial, mission, foursquare, and bungalow. Each house appears in a two-page spread, forming an elegant and highly readable presentation. The Plan Service Company of St. Paul, Minnesota, published a series of Ideal Homes catalogs in the 1920s and '30s. This particular issue has been long out of print, and its reissue offers professional architects and armchair renovators alike an authentic look at houses of the era. Daniel D. Reiff, an expert on vintage house design catalogs, provides an informative introduction.

It has required years of painstaking effort...to bring before prospective home builders the hundreds of practical, money saving ideas offered by this system... A little study of each plan shown will convince any thoughtful person that these are, in reality, the most carefully planned homes in America. — Better Homes at Lower Cost Faithfully reprinted from the Standard Homes Company's popular Better Homes at Lower Cost, this collection of early twentieth-century house plans was created with a simple system of standardization that allowed 1920s-era home builders to reduce construction costs while maintaining the integrity of an attractive and soundly built abode. Scores of excellent photographs, drawings, and floor plans depict seventy-seven meticulously detailed homes of wood, brick, stucco, and stone. From the substantial beauty of the eight-room "Homestead" and the classic colonial "Cambridge" to the spacious Spanish-style "Ponce de Leon," this is a rare and delightful time capsule for builders, home preservationists, architects, and readers interested in nostalgia and vintage home illustrations.

Splendid pictorial record of architectural style strongly influenced by Bauhaus movement. Over 300 illustrations show interiors, exteriors. Details on construction, site, cost, more.

Brown-Blodgett Company, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based home construction service, published a detailed plan book to help prospective homeowners of the 1930s choose architectural designs. This complete republication of the now-rare volume includes exterior photographs and floor plans for 100 of these charming structures. Floor plans, photographs, and line illustrations depict such classics as a two-story, six-room frame home with sun porch; a handsome brick residence with low sweeping gables, a fireplace, and vestibule; and a charming seven-room house with a tall, massive chimney balanced by a gabled entrance. Illustrations of each model are accompanied by text describing interiors, color schemes, closet space, and other amenities. An entertaining and valuable reference for restorers of older homes, this volume will delight devotees of American domestic architecture.

In 1927, the Chicago Tribune sponsored a competition for "trained men of talent, incorporating into the small home ideas of real worth, types of rare charm, and the best possible plans for comfort and convenience." This collection spotlights the challenge’s top results, presenting the nineteen prize-winning designs for five- and six-room houses, plus eighty additional sets of the best architectural plans. A new introduction by Daniel D. Reiff, Ph.D., adds interesting detail about the competition and the competitors. These fascinating snapshots of American domestic architecture of the 1920s include glimpses of New England and Southern colonials, Normandy cottages, stately Italianate dwellings, and other styles. Each of the designs features a floor plan and exterior views of the house. Architects, architecture buffs, and historians will prize these authentic renderings of the leading designs in American architecture of nearly a century ago.

Ideal homes investigates the tastes and aspirations of the suburban communities that emerged in Britain after the First World War. It explores how new class and gender identities were forged through the architecture and decoration of the home. This edition includes a chapter on researching the history of your own house.

This book explores the aspirations and tastes of new suburban communities in interwar England for domestic architecture and design that was both modern and nostalgic in a period where homeownership became the norm. It investigates the ways in which new suburban class and gender identities were forged through the architecture, design and decoration of the home, in choices such as ebony elephants placed on mantelpieces and modern Easiwork dressers in kitchens. Ultimately, it argues that a specifically suburban modernism emerged, which looked backwards to the past whilst looking forward to the future. Thus the inter-war ‘ideal’ home was both a retreat from the outside world and a site of change and experimentation. The book also examines how the interwar home is lived in today. It will appeal to academics and students in design, social and cultural history as well as a wider readership curious about interwar homes.