Product Description

American Houses is a historical guide to the architecture of the American home. While other architectural field guides show only façades, this book includes floor plans, showing how the form of a house arises from its function. Photographs and drawings of exteriors illustrate the significant field marks of each style and help pinpoint the key elements that can identify a house even when it has been remodeled beyond recognition. Beautifully illustrated, clearly written, and impeccably researched, American Houses is an essential reference for anyone interested in the history of American residential architecture.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #87638 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
While the U.S. boasts many great public buildings, designed by architects both homegrown and imported, Foster's operating premise is that most of America's vital and expressive architectural tradition has been a domestic one. The great breadth of this tradition—from Monticello through "Early Louisiana Shotgun" to Frank Lloyd Wright—is immaculately and exhaustively described by Foster, a teacher and former partner of Walter Gropius's Architects Collaborative. The book's three extensive sections ("Colonial Traditions," "19th-Century Styles" and "20th-Century Revivals and Innovations") offer not only a visual primer on virtually every important strain of American home building but also extensive and useful annotation on their social and aesthetic backgrounds. The author's numerous drawings are models of clarity. It is useful to have the characteristics of such familiar styles as Gothic Revival and Mission so clearly delineated, and less well-known styles are amply explored. The author of two previous Field Guides, on trains and airplanes, Foster clearly intends this book to be used rather than consulted, to be thrown in the car or jammed in a shoulder bag rather than put on a shelf. While Foster is no Tom Wolfe–style polemicist, he is not afraid to be critical when it aids understanding. And more through implication than direct statement, Foster considers the vernacular tradition he describes as belonging to a quickly receding past, one that this book will do much to help preserve.
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Review
"For armchair architectural historians and students of American architecture, this book is a gem." (Library Journal )

About the Author
Formerly vice president and partner of the Architects Collaborative, the famous firm founded by Walter Gropius, Gerald Foster has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Boston Architectural Center as well as the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited at the DeCordova Museum and at various galleries. His books include A Field Guide to Airplanes, A Field Guide to Trains, and American Houses: A Field Guide.

Customer Reviews

A Field Guide with Little Imagination
There is a great tradition in the United States of Field Guides to American Domestic Architecture. Almost all of the Guides break down into two camps. The first group are the Guides that illustrate architectural styles through the use of photographs. The second group of Guides show styles through the use of black and white line drawings. Of the two camps, I prefer line drawings because they allow the reader to focus on the mulitple architectural details that come together to form an architectural style.

Gerald Foster's "American Houses" is a good example of the line drawing style of Field Guide. Gerald Foster is a competent artist in what I call the illustrator school of architectural drawings. He took highly detailed drawings from the Historic Architectural Building Survey (HABS)and rotated the drawings so as to center on a corner view. Hovering below the corner view is a representative floor plan.

The drawings are competent and pleasant to look at but where Foster falls short in my estimation is the sheer repetive nature of his drawings. Almost all of the drawings are from this same corner view and after a while the view becomes monotonous. A more imaginative artist would have shown buildings from different angles. A good artist can bend static buildings and provide new insights into their construction.

The drawings are competent and George Foster has done enough homework in order to do a good job of describing the different styles. Its a good Guide and if this is your fist Field Guide, you will be very happy with it. However, there are better examples of Architectural Field Guides. For this line drawing style of Field Guide, I would recommend Lester Walker's "American Home" and "The Visual Dictionary to American Architecture." The illustrations in these books are both more exciting and educational.

A wonderfully entertaining read
This book is a great overview of American architecture. It is entertaining for the non-architect but full of detail and histry for those who already have a lot of knowledge of the subject matter. Foster has obviously spent considerable time and energy researching his material. The floorplans are informative and help the reader to visualize a certain style and to understand the practical forces that shaped each architectural style. A must read for anyone with an interest in American architectural history!

"Related" Topics
Brilliantly researched, "Gerry" Foster manages to build the houses he describes in our minds through his illustrative diction and syntax. With its diagrams and managable set up, this book is a treat for all those who aspire to understand what goes into the frame work of an American home. For those who have read Foster's Field Guide to Trains, I assure you will agree with me when I say that I look forward to more works by this highly talented painter, architect, author, and father. I had the pleasure of recently meeting with his daughter, Shelby Foster, who only confirmed my belief in her father's intelligence, as she was able, eager, and willing to discuss the behind the pages research that went in to this wonderful read. We, the readers, can only hope that her upcoming novel contains as much information seamlessly weaved with a powerful narrative voice as her father's works. In all, a must read for any student, formal or unformal, of modern day American homes, and their history.