• airplane bungalow: The airplane bungalow is another type that emerged during the 1920s. The appellation “airplane” seems to have been applied after this style appeared on the market. This type was an attempt—modest at first—to extend the bungalow on the horizontal and accent the vertical. The low gable roof forms are the key to the design. The gables are contiguous and successive as in other structures, but the massing of roofs is quite different. Not only are roofs built so that they grow out of each other on the facade, but gables abut the main roof on the side elevations. Smaller gables cover the second-floor sections. This kind of house looks accretive, in that sections could have been added arbitrarily to the base structure, but that is not the case. All the roof and frame sections are tightly integrated, and there is nothing accidental about the design…
• American Foursquare: A two-story house style named for the square or block shape of the structure, with four rooms positioned over four rooms. One of the most popular styles from 1900-1930.
• back-to-back house: A house with a party wall at the rear as well as along the sides.
• back-to-back housing: Houses built in blocks, with the backs of one block forming the backs of the others. Common in British 19th c. industrial towns, they must not be confused with terrace-housing with walled rear yards and a path between those yards. Most true back-to-back housing has long been demolished.
• barabara: A sod house of Alaska.
• bark hut: A decorative summer-house of the “rustic” kind, covered with small logs, whole or split, with the bark still in place; or else with strips of bark nailed directly to the siding.
• bayed cottage: A cottage that sits on railroad lots. When built in the south called a “bayed cottage.”
• bay-front double house: The bay-front double house, primarily a 19th-century building, was a two- or three-story structure with several roof options: a mansard roof, a gable roof with the ridge parallel to the street, or a flat roof and accompanying parapet. The primary design scheme required a full-height, usually three-sided bay window or pavilion on each end that flanked a double entrance. The bays terminated in their own roofs. Dormers were frequently built on these units to utilize attic space, especially on those with mansard roofs…
• bay-front four-family house: A two-story rectangular structure that combines the twin house with the two-family house, in that each side was often a mirror image of the other…
• bay-front rowhouse: The bay-front rowhouse was one of the last editions of this universal city house. Later 19th century and early 20th century builders looked for ways to address the narrow facade. Most frequently they extended the house by means of a porch replacing the traditional stoop, and compressed the upper level with a three-sided oriel window. There were other variations in the window treatment on the second floor, but most motifs involved replacing the sash windows with an alternative form…
• beehive house: Small primitive prehistoric stone structures, they are still in use in Apulia (heel of Italy) and called ‘Trulli.’
• bee-hive house: A primitive Irish dwelling of hemispherical form built on a circular foundation, found also, built of stone, in Southern Italy.
• Bengal cottage: Mid 19th c. European garden-building with cob (or similar) walls, bamboo doors and window-frames, and a reed-covered roof.
• black house: House of turf, without windows or chimney, usually thatched, found in the Western Isles of Scotland.
• brephotropheum: In ancient Greece and Rome, an institution for foundlings.
• broch: Prehistoric dry-stone circular structure with cells (presumably for habitation) in the wall, surrounding an open space (presumably for livestock), as found in Scotland.
• buith: Rough hut used as a shelter or for temporary accommodation for shepherds, mountaineers, etc. 2. Living-quarters, temporary or permanent, for unmarried male farm-workers, servants, etc. Usually of one story, built of rubble or turf (often finished with render), it occasionally acquired an upper story as sleeping-quarters. This type of vernacular architecture gradually attracted the attention of late 18th c. designers, becoming the inspiration for agricultural housing and rustic buildings in landscape-gardens illustrated in numerous contemporary pattern-books.
• California bungalow: As built from 1895 to 1915—its first development period—the bungalow was known as the California bungalow. Because of the nature of the design and the kind of living which that design suggested, it was appropriate for this form to develop on the west coast.
• California cottage: A cottage with a central plan, a tall center, asymmetrical massing, patterned textures on exterior surfaces, projecting gables and bay, interconnected interior and exterior spaces, and either a steep roof on the centripetal types or a low, close-to-the ground roof in the centrifugal types. Common in the southwest plains, on the prairies, and in border states of the south.
• Cape Cod cottage: Originated with English settlers in the mid-1600s; although it is associated with the early Colonial period, the type actually prevailed well into the 1800s. The basic form consisted of a one- or two-room house with a loft above, and, often, a lean-to at the rear. Sometimes a third room was added at the end. A pitched, bowed, or gambrel roof sloped down just to the window tops. Built low and broad to withstand prevailing winds, the shingled or clapboard Cape Cod cottage often sat directly on timber sills without a foundation. If the sandy soil underneath eroded or blew away, the house could be dragged or floated to a new location.
• Cape Cod house: A one-and-a-half-story New England house, end-gabled with central chimney floor plan and steep roof, originally built in Massachusetts from 1700 on. Today, a small end-gabled house common in lower-cost housing developments, barely resembling the original.
• captain’s house: Also see square-rigger house.
• castelet: A small castle. The English form of the French chatelet; rare.
• catalog houses: After World War I, between 1900 and 1917, middle class society was expanding and, for the first time, beginning to buy more homes. To meet growth demand, companies started expanding in the residential building industry. Kit houses purchased through mail-order became popular in the 1910s, allowing new homeowners to be a part of the design and building process and giving the option of buying the home in stages.
• catslide house: Same as saltbox; the term is used in southern U.S.A.
• cave dwelling: A natural cave occupied by men as a dwelling place…
• center-gable cottage: The center-gable cottage has a long history of development that seems to emerge from the application of gables to Gothic revival houses. During the period 1870-1940, the gable itself, while always aligned over the entrance door, lost its narrow, steeply pitched gable roof and widened to function more properly as a dormer. This house, built during the period 1870-90, was rectangular in shape, with the Wide side toward the street, and has a central hall plan with four rooms to each floor. The center gable was a frame house with clapboard siding, although shingles were later used in gable ends. The fenestration was symmetrically arranged in three bays. The house had a porch that was shallow in the older models and shallow but wide in the later ones. The porch carried its own roof supported by square posts…
• central hall: A house type featuring a centrally placed door in the façade which leads into a central hallway flanked by rooms such as parlor and living room.
• chatelet: A castle of small scale.
• cluster-block: Several story’s of apartments grouped around a central service-tower combining stairs, elevators, etc.
• cob house: A house constructed with walls of cob.
• Colonial cottage: From 1870 to 1940 several Colonial Revival houses developed; this section deals with two of them. The fervor for American culture that swept the country after the 1876 Centennial resulted in the revival of two house types, the New England eighteenth-century cottage of English medieval origins, and the Georgian. Well into the twentieth century the vernacular tradition included these in its inventory, as well as the Dutch gambrel, the so-called Cape Cod, and the large hipped and pedimented cottages with colonial motifs, which are all discussed in other sections…
• Colonial gambrel cottage: The colonial gambrel cottage is a subtype of the generic model. Throughout most of its history, which includes authentic 18th-century examples as well as several revival-style types, the house has been thought of as Dutch in origin and spirit. The revival style was popular during 1900—1940 and was referred to as Dutch colonial. The shape of the building was strongly dictated by the shape of the roof, which in the Dutch-Flemish tradition frequently had flared eaves. In many models the flare was wide enough to provide some shelter over the entrance. The roof ridge ran parallel to the street, so that the facade was available for a full design treatment. A three-bay front was common, but five-bay units can be found. The second-floor level was outlined by either a long shed dormer that covered most of the roof, or by two or three evenly spaced gable dormers. The dormers were repeated on the rear elevation. The entrance was understated, with only a hood or a pediment to mark the door and the shallow porch. Some pediments evolved into porticoes with slender columns. Fenestration was for the most part symmetrical on all elevations…
• Colonial hipped cottage: Colonial-style hipped roof cottages appeared before the end of the 19th century, but were especially popular during the first few decades of the 20th. The overall shape and plan were closely related to the generic cottage. There is historical continuity in the use of a square plan and the cubical shape, but the real essence of this colonial revival lay in the application of colonial motifs to the basic form. The entire design became formal and, for the most part, restrained. The roof took on a flat with a balustrade, while chimney caps were vaguely colonial or Queen Anne. The roof carried a central hipped dormer. The façade received slightly different treatments on each level, the first floor being a wide, plain wall pierced by large cottage windows, by a paneled door with molding plants derived from historic patterns, and occasionally by sidelights. The porch was distinctly classical: the porch posts were columns, and most often the porch treatment included an order of architecture complete with a short pediment over the porch steps. The second-floor windows did not align with the first. Windows were indented toward the center, which often displayed an oval window on the center line. In a few cases, a second-floor door replaced the oval window for access to a balcony…
• conch house: Natives of the West Indies – many immigrating to America to work in Florida’s cigar industry – brought the Conch house to Miami and Key West in the late 19th century. (Native Bahamians were colloquially called “Conchs” at that time.) This simple one- or two-story building form was raised on piers and featured a porch or two-story gallery, often decorated with gingerbread trim, to catch cool breezes. The earliest examples are said to have been crafted by ships’ carpenters using a cross-braced timber system based on shipbuilding techniques, but the vast majority are actually balloon frame structures sheathed with clapboards.
• concrete block houses: A standard for foundations and later as a substructure under brick or other forms of cladding, concrete block is one of the most ubiquitous 20th-century building materials. An early form was the handmade picturesque rusticated concrete block. So called because the exposed surface resembled textured stone, rock-face block first appeared late in the 19th century when innovations in cement making made it possible to press concrete blocks on work sites.
• cottage: A small country dwelling place usually originally built for a farm laborer and his family.
• cottage orne: A rustic, romantic Victorian house using tree trunks and branches as columns and brackets.
• cottage ornee: A rustic, romantic Victorian house using tree trunks and branches as columns and brackets.
• court of honor: Some 16th century symmetrical Western European country houses built on U-shaped ground plans resulted in a sheltered central door in a main range that was embraced between projecting wings, but the formalized cour d’honneur is first found in the great palaces and mansions of 17th century Europe, where it forms the principal approach and ceremonial entrance to the building. Technically, the term cour d’honneur can be used of any large building whether public or residential, ancient or modern, which has a symmetrical courtyard set apart in this way, at which the honored visitor arrives.
• cracker house: Log cabin adapted to a semi-tropical climate, with a large, cool porch surrounding the house and raised off the ground.
• Creole house: Originally a person of European ancestry born in the West Indies or Louisiana during the French Colonial period. Soon expanded to include the descendants of French soldiers and African-West Indian women. Finally, it came to distinguish one likely to be of mixed racial and cultural background who, unlike strangers and foreigners, spoke the Creole language and was well acclimated to the complex culture and difficult environment of the New Orleans area.
• Cross House: A house with a cross-shaped plan where a building element intersects with the rectangular main structure, usually at the center entrance, and extends through the house to the rear, particularly in the 17th century Chesapeake Bay region.
  curved-front cottage: A version of the Colonial hipped cottage with a circular form to the façade elevation. The circular shape is rarely a semicircle, but it is deep enough to serve as a bay window that may extend the full height of the façade. A few designs in this mode use twin bays. An extension of this kind of plan uses circular forms in the plan of the porch while leaving the facade walls flat.
• dak-bungalow: A travelers’ rest house of East India.
• Danish hut: See bengal cottage.
• detached house: A house that covers much of the area of a platted lot.
• Dog-Trot house: A log house in which two pens were separated by a path, which commonly was enclosed as a center passage and ultimately as a center hall.
• domicile: A place of fixed residence, a home.
• double house: In Charleston, South Carolina, a formal, two- or three-story townhouse, generally symmetrical with a center entry and large central hall. Not two Charleston Single Houses combined.
• Double-Cell house: A double-pen house.
• double-decker: A two-family structure with one floor over another with nearly identical plan.
• Double-Pen: A two-room log cabin with a dividing log wall.
• double-pile: A house two rooms deep.
• double-pile house: Pile is a row of rooms: single-pile house therefore has a single row of rooms; double-pile house is two rooms deep, sometimes, but not always, with a corridor between the two rows…
• dumbbell tenement: A five- to seven-story multiple dwelling built in New York City prior to 1901; characterized by a long, narrow plan with an indentation on each side (forming a shaft for light and air); hence its resemblance in plan to a dumbbell.
• Dutch gambrel house: A house with two-slope roof with short upper slopes and flared lower slopes.
• Dymaxion: A word invented by R. Buckminster Fuller and defined by him as “mass-produced logic.” The term has been known widely for its connection with his Dymaxion House, a design for a dwelling of hexagonal plan supported by a central mast and cables, close about which was a core of utilities.
• Dymaxion Deployment Unit: A round Modernist house designed by Buckminster Fuller in 1927, and revised in 1941, to highlight the use of technology and new materials.
• earth house: Same as earth house.
• end-to-end double house: In the end-to-end double house, the shared or party wall is not readily perceived. Most of these houses did not have identical floor plans, so that they were less democratic and more hierarchical than twin houses. This condition is evident in the handling of entrances; one has primary street frontage and the other faces a side street or another building…
• English bungalow: During the 1920s and 1930s many builders turned to an alternative bungalow design, the English bungalow. The planes suggested by low gables were filled in, so solid walls were tied to the gables. The open gable gave Way to mass in receding planes. The result was a compact brick or stucco house with successive gables and different motifs on each gable wall. The English bungalow included from one to three gables, a terrace usually on the street side, and an end-wall fireplace chimney. Gables were steep but not broad; one raking cornice of the gable often descended far below the wall line, even to ground level. Some gables served as screens behind which the entrance door was set, parallel to the street and hidden from view. Other features included varied window placement and size, combinations of cladding, a combination of roof forms (a hip on one end and clipped gable on the other), decorative louvers in the gables, arches, ornamental brickwork, and shingled roofs. All this produced a cozy five- or six-room house whose facade could look different from that of its neighbors…
• English cottage: The English cottage underwent a revival in the first few decades of this century. This picturesque cottage featured asymmetrical massing of steeply pitched roofs, stucco walls with clean edges, unusual window patterns, tall chimneys, and English detailing—all calculated to produce a charming, moderately rustic design. On plan, rooms were often clustered around a hall, and room sizes and shapes differed so as to provide new spatial experiences and opportunities for built-in furniture, a window treatment, and perhaps access to a terrace or a porch. These different interior spaces often projected from the main body of the house. Specific detailing included brick trim around openings, the use of Tudor framing in gables, some changes in materials, clipped gables, and high-contrast coloration…
• erde house: Same as earth house.
• farmstead housing: An open-gable cottage that served as farmstead housing.
• fireproof houses: In the early 1900s brick, cement, and asbestos shingles were marketed as economical “fireproof” choices for the small suburban house…
• four-decker: A four-family structure in which apartment units are accessed through a central hall. Units are stacked over one another and usually repeat a basic floor plan.
• four-family house: The four-family house is the largest multi-family or apartment building to be discussed in this section. The bay-front type of “flats” building was a two-story rectangular structure. It combined the twin house and the two-family house, in that each side was often a mirror image of the other, but the four-family had two families per floor, each family having four or five rooms, a kitchen, and a bath…
• foursquare: The name given to the simple, square-shaped house built in profusion as middle-class housing between 1900 and 1930.
• frame house: A house of wood frame construction, usually sheathed and covered with lap or panel siding or shingles.
• framed house: A house of wood frame construction, usually sheathed and covered with lap or panel siding or shingles.
• French cottage: Throughout 1870-80 the cottage with a mansard roof was referred to as a French cottage, and historians link this cottage to the development of the Second Empire style. In vernacular design the French cottage was less Second Empire than the design of high-style buildings, and it was more generally French. One could argue that it was a hybrid affair with Italianate features, and that over time it absorbed other kinds of cottage detailing.
• full Cape house: A Cape Cod house with two windows on both sides of the front door.
• futuristic homes: While tradition held through the 1950s and 1960s, innovative designers were always looking for new expressions. As the space age unfolded, visions of the ultra-modern future captured the American imagination, sometimes inspiring house designs that would have looked more at home on other planets than on Earth. New building methods made virtually any structural feat possible, and bizarre shapes were no problem. Most fell by the wayside, but the geodesic dome, patented by Buckminster Fuller in 1954, caught on in the 190s, and by the next decade more than 80,000 sets of plans for dome homes had been sold.
• gable front and wing: A front-gabled house with an ell at the rear.
• gable front-and-wing: A front-gabled house with an ell at the rear.
• gabled cottage: A house rectangular in shape, with the wide side toward the street, and a central hall plan with four rooms to each floor.
• gabled-ell cottage: Either a simple ell with only a single corner, which was utilized as the entrance, or a simple T shape with the projecting stem toward the street and the cross-piece behind.
• gallery apartment house: One of two or more stories with open galleries at each story giving sole access to the apartments within.
• gambrel cottage: The gambrel roof has contributed a cottage to the history of the vernacular house. Because of the shape and pitches of both sections of the roof, the gambrel encloses a great deal of second- or third-floor space. The house proper has the largest roof of the cottage types in which the roof is a principal design element. The shape of the roof is so forceful that it separates itself from the lower level, obliging builders to find ways to make sure that the roof did not overpower the entire structure. They did this by intersecting the roof, which broke the form down yet expanded the square footage. The intersection also produced cottage-type elevations where fenestration could be varied and changes in color and materials could be accommodated. These later changes in color and materials helped to layer the gambrel cottage. Clapboard lower stories and shingled upper stories were common. Clapboards contributed horizontal lines in the design. The cornice line and belt or string courses between floors also pulled the house away from the compaction implied by the roof…
• ganosote: The smaller bark house of the Iroquois…
• Germanic post and girt: A style of construction in which east post was placed 4′ apart, was comparatively small (e.g., 4″ X 4″) and had a comparable girt connecting paired posts.
• Gothic cottage: A small center gable cottage. Variations can be found in brick, stone and wood.
• Greek house: The ancient Greek house varied in design according to the period and the wealth of the owner, but there were three common features. The house was divided into two parts; the men’s apartments (andron) and the women’s apartments (gynaeceum or gynaekonities). The entrance door of the house opened into a vestibule (prothyron); on both sides of the vestibule, in the interior, were the doorkeeper’s room and shops for business and work. The vestibule led to an open court (aula) which was surrounded on three sides by columns, in the middle of which was the altar of Zeus Herkeios, the patron deity of domestic life. Large houses usually had a second court entirely surrounded by columns. At the sides of the aula were rooms for eating, sleeping, and storage, as well as cells for the slaves. On the sides of the court opposite the vestibule there were no columns, but two pilasters which marked the entrance to an open room or vestibule called the prostas or parastas. On one side of the parastas was the sleeping room of the master and mistress of the house (thalamos). Some houses had an upper story, usually smaller in area than the lower story. The roof of the Greek house usually was flat. The rooms usually were lighted through doors which opened into a court.
• hacienda: Spanish for a large estate devoted to agriculture, also the house of the ranch owner; in the southwestern United States, a low sprawling house with projecting roof and wide porches.
• half house: A Cape Cod house or saltbox having two windows on one side of the front door and none on the other.
• hall-and-chamber house: A two-room plan common in the English colonies. The hall served as a general reception, entertaining, and work space while the parlor was usually for sleeping, although there were many variations.
• hansel-and-gretel house: A house associated with fairy tales of Germanic origin. The story of Hansel and Gretel is a fairy tale in which two children lost in a forest come upon a gingerbread house trimmed with candy, but which is presided over by a child-eating witch.
• heath-hut: See moss-hut.
• hipped bungalow: The hipped bungalow is the most classical of bungalow designs. The low hip roof serves as a pediment for three or four columns that carry a restrained entablature. This temple-front building is relieved by a hipped dormer, an open porch rail, and pedestals for the columns. The structure is low to the ground and utilizes the full width of the facade for a porch. The bungalow is built with wood-frame construction, and clapboard cladding is most common. Other cladding materials include stucco, hollow concrete tile, cement block, and shingle in rustic or Craftsman-style bungalows…
• hipped cottage: The hipped cottage is a generic house type that was built throughout most of the 1870-1940 period. It had the unique ability to be rendered in many styles, from Italianate to prairie, and could be adapted to most climatic conditions. This cottage was a classic box characterized by a large hipped roof, an almost square floor plan, and compact massing often cubical in shape. In many parts of the country it has been called a four-square. But no matter what its name or form, it is a substantial and dignified house…
• homestead house: A house with rectangular plan and side hall.
• house boat: A large flat boat upon which is erected a dwelling sufficient for residence…
• I house: A symmetrical two-story, gable-ended house with a rectangular one-room-deep floor plan, center entry, and three or five bays.
• iglooyah: Also see igluegeak.
• iglu: An Eskimo house, constructed of snow blocks or various materials such as wood, sod, poles, and skins; when of snow, a domed structure.
• igluegeak: The Eskimo dome-shaped snow house. When the Eskimo has no permanent iglu for winter use, or when out hunting, or when visiting another village, he builds a domed structure of snow, therein constructing the only true arch made by aborigines of the Western hemisphere…
• inn: A small hotel or tavern.
• Italianate hipped cottage: The Italianate version of the hipped cottage is one of the oldest subtypes of the period under study. Italianate design predates and postdates the Civil War. Early Italian styles tend toward the Tuscan, which usually includes a pronounced tower. The vernacular hipped cottage is more generally Italian. It has a strong vertical orientation centered on vertical alignment between stories, including multistory bay windows and elaborate design schemes on the axis of the entrance. The roof profile is low, which reinforces the upward thrust of the facade, and many cottages are topped by a belvedere, which helps to extend the building visually. The vernacular Italianate is an ornamented style: it uses brackets or modillions and quoins to articulate the edges of forms; moldings, pronounced lintels, and sills to add texture and articulate the fenestration; and brackets, pendants, and cut or turned pieces to ornament porches and other entrances…
• Italianate Tuscan Villa: Villa with a square tower.
• izba: A Russian log cabin, log house, or hut.
• karmang: The permanent winter house of the central Eskimo. Its walls are usually of stone and while ribs, and, partly, the sides of the excavation that forms its basis…
• kayata: The smallest lodge of the Klamaths.
• kit houses: Between 1906 and 1940, thousands of North American homes in the United States and Canada were built according to plans sold by mail order companies such as Sears and Montgomery Ward.
• kullpi: A pre-Inca stone dwelling of the Peruvian highlands, constructed of boulders and resembling the chullpa burial towers.
• lacustrine dwellling: Same as pile dwelling.
• latchash: Among the Klamaths, a lodge, whatever the material of its construction, and also, in general usage, a house.
• lean-to house: Same as saltbox.
• log buildings: Although the Swedes were the first settlers to build log structures in America, the major tradition of log building here originated independently in the late 1600s to the early 1700s with German-speaking settlers in the mid-Atlantic region. From Pennsylvania and Virginia, the tradition of log building began spreading south and west with migrating Germans and Scots-Irish in the 1730s and reached its height during the period of frontier expansion from the mid-18th to mid-19th centuries. The basic log house form was the one-room, or single-pen, plan. The central-chimney “saddlebag” plan evolved when the single-pen house was enlarged by setting the gable end of a second log building against the chimney of the existing structure. An easier way to add on to a log house was to place a second cabin next to the first, gable to gable, and simply roof over the intervening space, producing the “dogtrot” (two pens and a passage) house. Pine and spruce were the preferred woods.
• log cabin: A house built of logs which are horizontally laid and notched and fitted at the ends to prevent spreading.
• Loire-château: Type of 19th c. architecture based on French Renaissance 16th c. châteaux of the Loire valley in the time of François Ier…
• longleat house: A mansion built in 1578 upon an estate which is on the border between Wiltshire and Somersetshire, England…
• mansard cottage: Throughout 1870-80 the cottage with a mansard roof was referred to as a French cottage, and historians link this cottage to the development of the Second Empire style. In vernacular design the French cottage was less Second Empire than the design of high-style buildings, and it was more generally French. One could argue that it was a hybrid affair with Italianate features, and that over time it absorbed other kinds of cottage detailing.
• metaulos: See Greek house.
• mia mia: A hut of circular plan, the walls of which are of trees sloped or bent inward; peculiar to Australia and neighboring islands.
• moss hut: Fabrique in a primitive, rustic style, usually made of branches of trees with the interstices filled with moss, sometimes clad with thatch or bark. IT could be a mnemonic of the Primitive Hut, or be a simpler cottage orné.
• New England houses: Like the Cape Cod cottage, this structure derived in the early 19th century from the central chimney hall and parlor cottage of New England. Two front rooms sit at either side of an entrance lobby from which a stairway ascends to two rooms in a half—story. Several smaller rooms are arranged across the first floor rear. Commonly, “lie-on-your-stomach” or “ankle” windows located below the eave of the gable roof (often in an entablature) light the upstairs rooms.
• Nissen hut: A semicylindrical structure of corrugated steel, adapted to military use, taking its name from the designer, a British engineer.
• octagon house: A Victorian house having eight sides; especially found in the Hudson Valley of New York.
• open-gable cottage: A cottage with a wide gable and plain form. It could just as well be called the flush-wall, center-axis cottage, because these features characterize its design, but that would be an awkward label. The open-gable was built for almost 50 years throughout most of the country. It has been a two-story house, though there were one-and-a-half story versions clad in brick, shingle, and clapboard, the last being the most prevalent. The open-gable cottage has clean lines, simple form, and no projections off the façade; it carries the façade wall up into the gable, with no distinction between façade and gable until the early 1890s. This house has a classical orientation, in that the façade is a linear temple front in which thin corner boards or pilasters carry a low, wide pediment. The introduction of cornice returns reinforces this impression. The façade is organized around a center axis running from the apex of the gable to the ground level. Able windows are placed on or along the side axis, and porches with three posts have the middle post placed on the same line. What detailing appears is often derived from bungalow or Craftsman designs.
• organic cottage : This cottage had a central plan – a strong feeling for centrality through living halls, circulation around a core, and tension between centrifugal and centripetal forces. Common design characteristics were a tall center, in that the central plan was expressed through vertical thrust; asymmetrical massing; patterned textures on exterior surfaces; projecting gables and bays; interconnected interior and exterior spaces; and either a steep roof on the centripetal types or a low, close-to-the-ground roof in centrifugal types.
• palafitte: French and Swiss term for a lake dwelling.
• palazzo: The super town house of Italian nobility (i.e., palace), later a description of any big, urbane building in an Italian town.
• pallazi: The Italian word for “palace.”
• parstuga: Three-room dwelling of the Swedes, the long rectangular plan of which consisted of two stugas joined by a vestibule and a third chamber.
• pedimented bungalow: During the 1920s another version of the bungalow began to appear. It was a five- or six-room house that had an intersecting gable roof, with the first gable parallel to the street, covering the two front rooms, and the second roof perpendicular to the street, covering the remaining rooms. Whatever the motif, the facade had an entrance pediment. In some cases the porch was small and served the entrance door with a hood or a small portico. Other versions extended the porch across the facade, with a pediment marking the entrance. Pediments were triangular or curvilinear. Pergolas were also used as a porch covering, and the pediment and pergola were joined. Occasionally the pergola would extend beyond the porch to become a porte-cochere…
• peristylon: See Greek house.
• picket hut: A rude dwelling made by driving stakes, or “pickets,” into the ground and roofing them. The Mexican jacal construction is a form of picket hut.
• Pict’s house: In Scotland, a rude dwelling built often upon the side of a hill, so that parts of the house are excavated, while others are enclosed by walls of unhewn stones. The rude stonework was carried up in a conical or domical shape until the roof was completed; then the earth was heaped above it, or a layer of turf or peat was used to cover everything. These buildings were sometimes large, containing many chambers.
• pile dwelling: A house built upon piles, especially when surrounded by water or swamp, the piles being long enough to hold the house with its platforms and accessories at some distance above the surface…
• pit dwelling: A residence wholly or in part underground and formed by an excavation. Records of houses which appear to have been entirely subterranean are not uncommon…
• pit house: A house with sunken floor and rounded shape covered by mud plaster, common to the Great Plains.
• plains cottage: Some vernacular house types have not been formally identified as having a particular style. One of these is the plains cottage, the development period of which coincides with the growth of Queen Anne, Eastlake, and shingle-style cottages. The plains cottage is an extant house type that sits on railroad lots in towns between the Mississippi River and the west slope of the Rocky Mountains. It was also built in the south; in Biloxi, Mississippi, it is referred to as a “bayed cottage.”…
• platform residence: A house or group of houses of American Indians built on an artificial platform, or terrace of earth…
• point-block: High apartment-building with the circulation and services in the central core and the residential areas grouped around it on several story’s.
• portico-front four-family house: A house two stories in height and carrying an entablature with a large portico attached to flat-front buildings or set between planking bays or pavilions…
• poteaux-en-terre: A house with upright posts driven directly into the ground.
• prairie cottage: The Prairie-style hipped cottage have been both a natural outgrowth of the development of the hipped cottage, and an outright borrowing of prairie motifs. Like the four-square, the prairie found receptive builders and owners on the prairies and plains. Indeed, some of the literature of the period referred to this preference for the unconventional stucco house as a “popular Western tendency.” The vernacular prairie cottage never abandoned the almost square plan and cubical shape of the prototype. However, it did have strong horizontal lines transmitted by its low roof and wide eaves. On the facade the porch roof and the banded windows reinforced the horizontal thrust of the main roof. The prairie cottage often had a stucco finish that gave it a monolithic quality, which even so was relieved by wood strips. Other prairie wall treatments included a type that used one kind of cladding on three-quarters of the elevations and a second cladding on the last quarter.
• prairie hipped cottage: The prairie-style hipped cottage appears to have been both a natural outgrowth of the development of the hipped cottage, and an outright borrowing of prairie motifs. Like the four-square, the prairie found receptive builders and owners on the prairies and plains. Indeed, some of the literature of the period referred to this preference for the unconventional stucco house as a “popular Western tendency.” The vernacular prairie cottage never abandoned the almost square plan and cubical shape of the prototype. However, it did have strong horizontal lines transmitted by its low roof and wide eaves. On the facade the porch roof and the banded windows reinforced the horizontal thrust of the main roof. The prairie cottage often had a stucco finish that gave it a monolithic quality, which even so was relieved by wood strips. Other prairie wall treatments included a type that used one kind of cladding on three-quarters of the elevations and a second cladding on the last quarter.
• Prairie House: A style of Midwestern architecture influenced by Japanese forms, invented by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). It later developed into the Usonian House style.
• prefab: Bomb-damage during the 1939-45 war obliged the British Government to establish a program to build temporary housing. This took the form of single-story dwellings, prefabricated in factories, with exteriors clad in aluminum, asbestos sheets, or concrete, and with bathrooms and kitchens (though small) fully equipped.
• prefab housing: A house or building whose substantial parts were made entirely or in sections away from the building site.
• prodigy-house: Large, showy, late-Elizabethan or Jacobean house with North-European Renaissance detailing and certain post-Gothic features, such as mullioned-and-transomed windows…
• pueblo: A settlement. 2. A Native American settlement or village in the Southwest, typically consisting of attached and terraced multi-storied adobe or stone dwellings. 3. An individual house in the village.
• quadriplex: A four-family structure in which apartment units are accessed through a central hall. Units are stacked over one another and usually repeat a basic floor plan.
• Queen Anne cottage: An organic cottage with Queen Anne style motifs.
• rambler: A popular name in some localities for a dwelling of one story and rambling plan.
• rectilinear cottage: The rectilinear hipped cottage was especially popular in the plains states. In the decade following 1910 this square-looking version of the hipped cottage developed as an alternative to the Italianate and Queen Anne styles. Eschewing ornamental details, the rectilinear builder changed color at the upper level, changed materials, used trim boards or belt courses that framed the Walls into panels, and modified window placement. The rectilinear was a practical design that paralleled the development of the prairie-style design. The first floor of the rectilinear cottage contained social and service areas organized in an open plan, while the second floor had the usual array of bedrooms and a bath…
• residenz: In German, a residence, especially that of a sovereign; applying equally to a royal or other palace and to the city in which it is situated…
• riad: Traditional Moroccan house with interior courtyard or courtyard-garden.
• Roman house: The ancient Roman dwelling consisted of a quadrangular court (atrium) which was entered by the door of the house and which served as the common meeting place for the family. An opening (compluvium) to the sky provided light and served as a chimney and as an inlet for rain which fell into the impluvium, a tank sunk in the floor beneath. The tablinum served as the master’s office. In some homes a garden surrounded by side buildings and covered colonnades was added at the back of the house; it was called the peristylium and usually was entered through corridors (fauces) located near the tablinum. Great houses had a kind of entrance hall (vestibulum) raised above the street and approached by stairs. In the ordinary house, there was only an indication of one; the door led directly into the ostium, which opened directly into the atrium. In later Roman houses, a second story became usual. As the dining room was generally in the upper story, all the rooms in the upper story were called coenacula. There were three-story houses in Rome as early as the end of the Republic.
• Saddle Bag: A log structure of two rooms (pens) backed up to a central chimney.
• saddlebay: A style of two-pen log house in which the chimney became central to the two pens.
• sand-roofed house: A Yuman house covered with roof, common to the Colorado River region of the U.S.
• Sears catalog homes: It was possible to purchase plans for houses through the mails. In addition to the books and trade manuals published by architects for carpenters and builders, there was a company which was responsible for the design of a great number of houses later built in this fashion – Sears, Roebuck & Company. After 1900, they apparently began to offer this service.
• semidetached: Descriptive of a pair of houses with a party wall between.
• shingle cottage: An organic cottage with a central plan and horizontal expression.
• shotgun: A one-story house with a two-story section to the rear. Association with 19th century New Orleans.
• shotgun house: A simple dwelling of three or four rooms lined up one behind the other, with the connecting doors aligned, theoretically allowing a shotgun to be fired through the house without hitting anyone.
• Single House: In Charleston, South Carolina, a long, two- or three-story, one-room-deep house with a central stair, sited perpendicular to the street. It is entered at midpoint, usually along a full-length porch or piazza.
• single-family house: Houses built in all shapes and styles. Constructed from almost every kind of manufactured construction material produced. These houses also reflect a wide range of socioeconomic factors, both public and private tastes, and numerous responses to climactic conditions.
• single-pile house: House-plan one room deep, contrasted with a double-pile plan.
• sister houses: Houses built in a neighborhood in the 1890’s that mimicked each other in size and style…
• six-family house: A six-family structure in which apartment units are accessed through a central hall. Units are stacked over one another and usually repeat a basic floor plan.
• sixplex: A six-family structure in which apartment units are accessed through a central hall. Units are stacked over one another and usually repeat a basic floor plan.
• snow house: A habitation built of snow.
• sod house: House built from blocks of cut sod and sometimes with an interior plastered with clay.
• solar house: Dwelling heated using energy from the sun’s rays.
• Spanish bungalow: The Spanish Bungalow – like so many variations on the bungalow theme—developed after 1910. Geographically, it emerged in California, the southwest, and Florida. Examples of the style may be found in other sections of the country, but they are not as numerous as in the Sunbelt climates. Throughout its development the bungalow has lent itself to the imposition of fronts on a basic plan. The Spanish bungalow is related to the English style, in that a gable plays an important role in facade design. The gable may be triangular or curvilinear, and the gable portion often projects in front of the main body of the house. Beyond this single gable, arches or even arcades organize other sections of the facade…
• speculation house: A house built for speculative purposes.
• square house: This structure is a square or nearly square box with peaked-hip roof (sometimes truncated at the very top). Being two rooms wide and two rooms deep, it is essentially a 2- or 2 1/2—story version of the pyramidal cottage. However, most cube houses provide substantially greater floor space than pyramid cottages. This form type was popular throughout the first three decades of the 20th century.
• square-rigger house: A colonial New England hip roof house with chimneys at both gable ends, or on both sides of a central hall, or centered between the front and back rooms. Many such houses had a widow’s walk and/or cupola on the roof.
• stick cottage: An organic cottage with tall proportions, applied stickwork as exposed framing and bracing, ornate gables, and picturesque profiles.
• stinash: The Modoc term for house lodge. In Klamath it means a willow-framed lodge.
• Stone-Ender: A gable-ended, timber framed Colonial house strongly associated with early Rhode Island and known for the massive fireplace that constituted nearly the entire end of the house as seen from the outside.
• straw house: See grass house.
• suburban cottage: The suburban cottage takes is name from its design and location. Throughout a forty-year period, this cottage evolved from a narrow city cottage into a wide-bodied colonial cottage with a large lot or prominent siting. The house remained rectangular on plan and in shape and carried its full two-and-a-half-story height throughout its development. In the 1880s the structure presented its straight gable roof to the street with moldings that spanned the gable and turned it into a pediment. The facade carried a bay window on one or both stories, as well as on a side elevation. The entrance porch was small, with a modest but ornamented hood over the entrance. Queen Anne detailing was present on the porch in the form of turned posts and brackets, and in the gable. Often there were two kinds of cladding, or changes in cladding pattern…
• swamp dwelling: See pile dwelling.
• swamp village: See pile dwelling.
• swell-front: A rowhouse where the stoop is replaced by a porch extending the living space on the lower floor, and a bay-window extends the space on the upper floor…
• tai-no-ya: Literally “confronting houses.” In the Shinden style of Japanese architecture, one of the residence annex buildings which were erected to the east and west of the main building, and sometimes to the north; these were connected to the main building by open corridors.
• tee’pee: From the Dakota ti, a house. A pi is a common plural ending, it is probable that in the beginning the form tipi, applied to a single structure, grew out of our mistaking plural for singular…
• temple form: A late-18th-century Virginia three-part house, consisting of a two-story central block with a lower form on either side, smaller than the grand plantation houses of the period.
• three-decker: An early form of meetinghouse pulpit, having three parts: reader’s desk, pulpit, and clerk’s desk.
• three-family house: The triple decker, a unique three-family structure, originated in New England mill towns and cities. Constructed from about 1870 to 1920, the triple decker, could absorb cottage details even though it had outgrown the cottage scale. Most were long, rectangular buildings with the narrow side toward the street that provided three living spaces, one family to a floor. Most stacked one unit over the next, and ground-level motifs were repeated throughout an elevation. The main entrance, which might have an entrance porch, was on one side of the facade. Bay windows were common on either the facade or a side elevation. Roof treatments included flat roofs with an overhanging cornice, and gable-to-the-street roofs with a closed gable. Regardless of the facade porch treatment, most of these buildings had rear-access porches on all three levels…
• three-quarter house: A Cape Cod house or saltbox having two windows on one side of the front door and one on the other.
• timber house: A type of house, usually lofty, found in secular Gothic architecture, especially in Central Europe; characterized by a lower story of masonry which supports the timber construction above, usually with richly carved gables.
• ti’pi: From the Dakota ti, a house. A pi is a common plural ending, it is probable that in the beginning the form tipi, applied to a single structure, grew out of our mistaking plural for singular…
• tower-block: High-rise blocks of apartments (flats) were widely adopted after the 1939-45 war as a result of Modernist propaganda in order to replace existing low-rise housing with what was perceived as something better. Failure to provide proper supervision of public spaces (entrance-halls, landings, stairs, lifts, etc.), led to their misuse, as well as isolation of flat-dwellers. Other major problems included failure of prefabricated systems, community breakdown, and the loss of the traditional street, prompting a reaction (e.g. New Urbanism and the re-creation of low-rise housing in streets.
• tower-house: Compact fortified house of several story’s with its main chamber or hall on an upper story, usually over vaulted lower floors. Common in Scotland (where many spectacular examples survive) and Ireland, tower-houses were still being built in 17th c.
• triple decker: The triple decker, a unique three-family structure, originated in New England mill towns and cities. Constructed from about 1870 to 1920, the triple decker, could absorb cottage details even though it had outgrown the cottage scale. Most were long, rectangular buildings with the narrow side toward the street that provided three living spaces, one family to a floor. Most stacked one unit over the next, and ground-level motifs were repeated throughout an elevation. The main entrance, which might have an entrance porch, was on one side of the facade. Bay windows were common on either the facade or a side elevation. Roof treatments included flat roofs with an overhanging cornice, and gable-to-the-street roofs with a closed gable. Regardless of the facade porch treatment, most of these buildings had rear-access porches on all three levels…
• trulli: In the Apulia region of southern Italy, cone-shaped constructions over 1,000 years old; constructed without mortar or cement by piling stones in a cylindrical shape (about 2 meters high) and then tapering in to a characteristic cone at the top; the tip of the cone usually is whitewashed and painted with figures or symbols; usually located among vineyards to serve as storage structures or as temporary living quarters during the harvest.
• tupik: From the Eskimo; a tent…
• Tuscan villa: A villa with a tower.
• two-family house: A kind of two-family building whose units usually have similar floor plans; it is arranged with a dwelling or an apartment on each floor. The upper level has either an exterior interior access. While a duplex may share a wall and a roof, it does not share a porch.
• two-family suburban cottage: Design of the two-family house followed design developments in cottages. The suburban two-family cottage employed large-scale geometric elements, such as a broad gable roof and a two-story, three-sided bay window that was answered by the formal porches. The facade divided into two “columns,” the bay and the porches, topped by a pediment. Subsequent breakdowns of the large forms included five vertical bays-—three in the bay window and two in the porch section—and a pair of centered windows in the gable that divided on center, making each side a mirror image of the other. Horizontal divisions were at the water table, the floor line between stories, and the cornice that closed the gable. The windows were placed at the same distance from the floor and ceiling on both levels, so that they looked like a band of evenly spaced windows. The massing of elements on the facade relied on the push-pull balance between the projecting bay window and the recessed porches. The porches were detailed with columns and open rails that helped activate the surface and provided opportunity for the
• Usonian houses: A term used by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright to refer to his vision for the landscape of the United States, including the planning of cities and the architecture of buildings.
• vardastuga: The single-room log cabin of Sweden, a prototype of early Swedish buildings in America.
• villa: A country house for a well-to-do city dweller’s escape (Italian).
• Wealden house: Medieval timber-framed dwelling-type found mainly in the South-East of England, and named after the Weald, a district, once forested, between the North and South Downs. It consists of an open hall the full height of the structure with a two-story bay on each side of the hall, having a single roof in one direction over the whole, the ridge of the pitched roof (sometimes hipped) following the length…
• wickeeup: Also see wickyup.
• wickiup: A temporary dwelling built of arched poles covered by brush, bark, or mats. Wickiups were used by Native Americans in the American Southwest and California. Also spelled wikiup.
• wickyup: A temporary dwelling built of arched poles covered by brush, bark, or mats. Wickiups were used by Native Americans in the American Southwest and California. Also spelled wikiup.
• wikomik: In Indian habitation made of logs, bark, or other material…
• worker housing: Housing which is inexpensively built by its very nature, and intended to house workers.

Also see Architecture Type index.

Also see Architecture index.