Customer Reviews

The American Family Home, 1800-1960

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Few books, in my experience are written as clearly as this one. Clark leads the reader carefully and thoughtfully from 1800 to 1960, and shows why certain styles of home were popular in each era. His word choice is excellent and his sentence formation is flawless. He gives many examples and the book is well illustrated. For anyone wishing to understand why Americans have bought and built the houses they have, and what they hoped to get out of them, this is the book to buy. Get two.

"The American Family Home, 1800-1960," by Clifford Edward Clark, Jr., University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1986. This 281-page paperback reviews American home architecture, and includes social commentary on changes in the family and the status of women, as home styles changed from strict Victorian standards to the more relaxed bungalow and finally the ranch style. We learn that once austere Greek Revival style was the standard. In about 1850, a New York landscape architect, Andrew Jackson Downing, developed modern balloon construction rather than the then common post and beam method with mortised and tenoned joints. This method of construction was gradually adopted in America as it was simpler, required less technical expertise and allowed more flexible house plans. Along with this change came a host of pattern books that encouraged new styles. Gothic and Italianate styles followed.

The book does best with its discussion of the bungalow, which was conceived as a response to the Victorian styles after about 1900. The bungalow is a single story (or story and a half with dormers) with a wide, low pitched roof usually with a broad porch and a substantial overhang at the eaves to shade the windows. Ideally they are built of natural local materials to blend into their environment. That can mean redwood in California, fieldstone or cobblestone in New England, board and batten in Oregon, or adobe in Arizona. Bungalows were popular until the ranch style arrived at the end of World War II. The book does a good job of describing Levitown and related suburban developments of ranch styles.

In some respects the book is superficial. You will not find clear definitions of the various house styles. Instead this is a picture book with many illustrations and mostly watered down text. The classical center hall colonial is barely mentioned. You will find no mention of the I-house, the el, or the dogtrot. Technology has forced changes in houses. House plans show early bathing rooms and some discussion of venting sewers, but there is little discussion of the changes in house plans that resulted. Heating technologies meant a chimney in every room until the arrival of central heating systems (steam, then gravity air), which favored a chimney in the center of the house (until electricity allowed forced air heating systems). Lighting systems (candles, kerosene, gaslight, electricity) changed the role of windows. None of this is mentioned.

This book is most useful as an introduction to the subject. Its language is non-technical. Many readers will prefer a more detailed treatment of the subject. Illustrations. References. Bibliography. Indexed.

Whilst writing my tome on Sears Homes, I kept Clark's book close at hand as a resource. Years earlier, I'd read it cover to cover and just loved it. "The American Family Home" is written by a college professor but it's a warm, conversational and fascinating read. Lacks the dry-as-dust technical, clunky language that some architectural writers seem to relish (and employ!).

What I love most about his book is that he explains HOW and WHY American architecture evolved the way that it did. He explains (in delicious and interesting depth) why the early-1900s bungalow was actually a specific response to the ostentatious and ornate Victorians of the late 1800s.

This book was well-researched and well written. I highly recommend it, both as an entertaining book and a wonderful resource to help you gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of America's architecture.

Rose Thornton
author, The Houses That Sears Built