American Homes: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Domestic Architecture - A landmark reference with more than 1,000 illustrations, elevations, and palns [Hardcover]

Lester Walker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2, 2002

A landmark of architectural history, AMERICAN HOMES surveys over 100 American housing styles and illustrates them through nearly 1000 line drawings. Using his own unique combination of "exploded" diagrams and floor plans and easy-to-follow text, award-winning architect and author Lester Walker has created the definitive bible of home design, fully practical but wonderful, too, for armchair browsing and dreaming.

Walker describes each style's signature features, and how, where, when, and why the style developed in response to the landscape. The full evolution of American residential architecture is represented, including Dutch Colonials, Log cabins, Southern plantation mansions, Carpenter Gothics, Neo-modern styles, and more.

For anyone who has ever designed or owned a home--or just lived in one--AMERICAN HOMES is the quintessential reference to our country's dwellings, past, present, and future.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Lester Walker is an award-winning architect and author of numerous books related to houses and architecture, including Little House of My Own, Housebuilding for Children and Block Building for Children. He has been a professor of architecture at City College of New York and has lectured and presented seminars at Harvard, MIT, UCLA, and the Rhode Island School of Design. His work has appeared in such magazines as House Beautiful, Time, House and Garden, Life, and Progressive Architecture. He lives in Woodstock, New York, where his architectural firm is based.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers (September 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579122523
• ISBN-13: 978-1579122522
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #874,249 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Splendid Architectural Overview, April 22, 2004

By 

Robert I. Hedges - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: American Homes: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Domestic Architecture - A landmark reference with more than 1,000 illustrations, elevations, and palns (Hardcover)

"American Homes" by Lester Walker is a bargain at the price Amazon is charging. It is a lavishly illustrated (albeit in black and white) comprehensive work detailing every style of American home in drawings, sections, and elevations emphasizing the differences that make a certain home or style unique. In this way it is extremely useful for anyone with even a passing interest in architecture to learn about the varying styles of American homes.

Mr. Walker does not visibly seem to favor any one style over another, and avoids editorializing for the most part. Instead he seems to love all the differing styles for what they are, in different ways, and for different reasons, depending of the particular house in question. In addition to specifics on certain examples and styles, Mr. Walker also gives the reader a historical perspective of housing developments in a developmental time frame, starting with Pueblo and Tipi styles to the Inflatable, Deconstruction, Brutalism, and Neomodern styles that are decidedly more recent. As a fan of creative contemporary architecture, I especially found the coverage of the International Revival movement, the quirky Silo and Yurt homes of the early 1970s, and Fantasy homes from the 1940s in the shapes of an elephant (Margate City, NJ), Mother Goose (Hazard, KY), and a pig (Los Angeles, CA), among others, to be delightful.

This is a wonderful volume and I highly endorse it to anyone from architectural historian to collectors of Americana.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding resource, November 12, 2007

By 

Thomas T. Verga (Staunton, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Homes: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Domestic Architecture - A landmark reference with more than 1,000 illustrations, elevations, and palns (Hardcover)

I teach a High School architecture class and I highly recommend this book for several reasons.
1) The black and white line drawings allow my students to focus on the specific details without being distracted by the colors of photographs.
2) The drawings are highly descriptive of the elements of style that distinguish one period from another and one region to another.
3) Walker breaks down the sections first by year and then by region.

You are able to see how the styles changed over a period of years and focus on the phases of development.

I especially liked that he devoted separate chapters to individual architects that made a significant contribution to the development of the distinct styles and Walker does a good job of picking houses that showcase these talented individuals.

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great History, January 4, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: American Homes: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Domestic Architecture - A landmark reference with more than 1,000 illustrations, elevations, and palns (Hardcover)

I really love this book - it has given me some useful information on the kinds of houses and buildings I may see all over the country - an historical education that I have wanted. And this book makes it fun & easy to learn. The illustrations are cool and the format is very helpful.