Customer Reviews

500 Small Houses of the Twenties (Dover Architecture)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Did you ever find yourself stopping your car to oggle and old brick or stucco bungalow, now a bit run down but free from "modernization"? Ever wonder how they were designed or what kind of floor plan they might have? For the amateur or the professional architect, Henry Atterbury Smith's compilation provides an accurate and intriguing reference to the historical developement of the modern suburban environment. For those of us who enjoy dreaming of one day designing and building our own bungalows, this book is pure delight. The house plans are displayed with the information which would have been available at the time of their initial distribution which can be quite amusing as well as historically informative. This book represents a set of ideals aspired to by the Arts and Crafts movement, ideals which should be appreciated and emulated by the architects and builders of the twenty-first century. Do plan on a long, leisurely perusal of this book if you enjoy history, architecture and craftsmanship as much as I do!

If you like old houses, (or at least early 20th Century houses) or you want to get a feel for some of the social history of the period, this is a wonderful book. I think it complements nicely the other house catalog reprints from Dover. While the illustrations and plans are smaller than those in some of the other books such as the Sears 1926 house catalog or the Aladdin built in a day catalog, it does show 500 houses. It also has some interesting articles concerning the state of domestic architecture circa 1925 or so.

Architects featured most frequently are George W. Repp, Frederick L. Ackerman, Whitman S. Wick, William Carver, Charles F. White, Jr., George H. Schwan, and R.C. Hunter & Bro.; designs also contributed by Verna Cook Salomonsky (the only woman architect represented at the 1939 New York World's Fair's World of Tomorrow), African-American architect Paul Williams, Claude Bragdon, James Dwight Baum, and others noted below.

Perspective drawings, floor plans, and descriptions of principal features of outstanding 1920s designs, many by leading architects of the period.
Reprinted from the major 1923 architectural publication, The Books of a Thousand Homes. Includes perspective drawings, floor plans and descriptions of the principal features of outstanding 1920's small homes, many by leading architects of the period, most inspired by colonial architecture and the bungalow concept.

1,135 b/w line illustrations, 262 b/w photographs and tone drawings.
Vast treasury of floor plans, descriptions, and perspective drawings and photographs. Bungalows, colonials, semi-bungalows, other styles presented. Concise descriptions outline special features of each house, details of construction, siting, materials, more. Also, essays with practical advice on house building. Architects, architectural and social historians, students and enthusiasts of architecture and design will find in these pages a rich selection of small-home concepts that once set the standard for a new era in American home design, and that still form an integral part of our landscape many decades after their first inspiration.

Henry Atterbury Smith's compilation provides an accurate and intriguing reference to the historical development of the modern suburban environment. This book represents a set of ideals aspired to by the Arts and Crafts movement, ideals which should be appreciated and emulated by the architects and builders of the twenty-first century.

It was in the 1920's that what we think of today as "modern" housing became the common standard. This meant electricity and inside plumbing (except in rural areas, many of which had to wait for the 1930's), closets, and a simple, efficient floor plan. This book, which is a reprint of Volume 1 of "The Books of a Thousand Homes" (1923), shows "almost every type of design for a small or midsized single-family dwelling that had been conceived up to that time," ranging from 3-, 4-, and 5-room starter cottages to two-storey 7- and 8-room houses such as you might see on your own street today. Most of the larger ones, with 3-4 bedrooms, would suit a modern buyer; a few have as many as 5. There are bungalows, Tudors, foursquares, English cottages, lots of Colonials, and even a type of early ranch (not so called). With these floor plans and exterior pictures (some are sketches, others BW photos) to help you, and perhaps a good planning software, you could even recreate a vintage house for your own use if you can't find one for sale. Of course, with two or more houses to a page, the plans are (as is usual in Dover reprints) rather small, and a good magnifier will be indispensable. House lookers, historians, and designers alike should find the book useful.

Imagine our surprise when we found our newly-purchased 1927 Denver house as a dead-ringer for the sketch of Plan No. 289 by George W. Repp. All the windows and outside details are the same as the sketch in the book but the floor plan at the back our house is different because our lot is more narrow. If you can discover the bones of your own old house in this book, you can see a sketch of the exterior and a drawing of the interior floor plan. It's fun to imagine how the house may have originally looked or work with the original to make it better and stay in character. The potential of these small houses to be comfortably livable can be quite exciting.

A lot of people think houses of the 20's means Arts and Crafts. Not necessarily. And this book is no exception. While you may get a few ideas there isn't really enough detail here.