Product Details
124 Distinctive House Designs and Floor Plans, 1929

124 Distinctive House Designs and Floor Plans, 1929
By National Building Publications

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Product Description

An annual publication intended as a reference work for contractors, suppliers, architects, and homeowners, the 1929 Home Builders Catalog offered a beautifully illustrated look at a variety of homes. Painstakingly reproduced from a rare edition, this volume offers old-house restorers, preservationists, and lovers of 1920s architecture an authentic view of American homes of the era.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #339911 in Books
  • Published on: 2003-02-14
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 128 pages

Customer Reviews

Very good quality reproduction5
Originally published as The Fourth Edition of the 1929 Home Builder's Catalog, this 127-page reprint features 124 of the most popular housing styles of that era. Far and away, the predominant style featured is the Tudor Revival, but there are also Craftsman-style bungalows, modest cottages, Cape Cods, Colonial Revivals, Dutch Colonials and more.

Some of these homes are quite grand, such as The Edgewater (p. 16), with more than 2,000 square feet of living area (not counting an optional sunporch). On page 6 is The Elyria, which is another reincarnation of The Sears Mitchell, with room dimensions altered by a few inches, to make it all legal. (So who copied from whom? Did Sears steal the design from Homebuilders or did Homebuilders steal it from Sears, or did they both take it from Aladdin - who also had their own version of this house?)

The descriptions that accompany each home are almost stark, given the traditional puffery and verbosity of that era's advertising styles. The Cullor, on page 42 is described as, "A story and a half home that has a lot of character and living comfort. Shingles, siding and brick combined harmoniously to create a very pleasing exterior."

And that's all they have to say about that.

Good book. Fun read. And the wee tiny print is legible. A good addition to your library on architectural history.

If you like Tudor houses, you'll enjoy this book4
Fine examples of a type of photorealistic drawing that you don't see anymore, which are reason enough to buy the book. The majority of homes are Tudor or Old English, like the ones on the cover, with just a few Colonials and Bungalows mixed in. The writing is quaint, with bedrooms called chambers, and mentions of breakfast nooks, servant's quarters, and telephone cabinets.