More than 100 magnificent home plans provide lovers of Victoriana the finest examples of period architecture. Compiled by Isaac Hobbs, a prominent Philadelphia architect of the period, the book also offers an informative discussion on the principles and practices of practical home design and construction. Designs and floor and ground plans for villas, cottages, and other residences are revealed in 122 detailed engravings, among them a six-room ornamental cottage (without bathroom facilities) for $1,500; an elegant Elizabethan villa, with entry hall, library, china closet, and five bedrooms, for $27,000; and an ornate Gothic suburban residence, complete with parlor, sitting room, dressing rooms, six bedrooms, and two bathrooms, at a cost of $33,000. Invaluable to architects, preservationists, and home restorers, this authentic guide to a wealth of house styles from the late 1800s will also delight anyone intrigued by Victorian life.
This fascinating book presents a series of 44 designs for vacation homes of varying styles and sizes, created over a century ago by a select group of New York and New Jersey architects. Many of them are two-story, and most were intended to be built on low-to-medium budgets. All of them reflect the ideals of comfort and charm and state-of-the-art technology of the Victorian period. The original publishers compiled a splendid variety of designs, presented them as "seaside and country houses" and included designs for a Victorian club house, pavilion, school house, and a "small seaside chapel." A total of 200 illustrations — including perspective views, front and side elevations, and first- and second-story floor plans — depict these appealing designs. Occasionally the architects have specified construction materials and finishing details such as paint, color, and trim, and in all cases they have included the overall anticipated costs, which range from about $500 to about $9,000. The Victorians, of course, loved architectural embellishments of every kind, and it is no small part of the charm of this book to study the profusion of gables, porches, portholes, dormers, porticoes, chimneys, pinnacles, and more, lavished on even the most modest designs. Above all, the houses and cottages appear to be both comfortable and reassuring, appealing reminders of a gracious age long gone. Those studying and working in the fields of architecture, history, and sociology will find in this wonderful book exuberant examples of a rich and charming architectural style. Those who wish to join the growing number of home builders and restorers re-creating Victorian homes will find inspiration in each of these thoughtful designs.
Reprinted from a rare 1878 offering from a leading Northeastern architectural firm: front and side elevations, floor plans and descriptions of 50 "practical designs of low and medium priced houses," ranging from 2- to 11-room dwellings, most in the cottage style. With complete specifications for two, a sample contract, advertisements, and price estimates.
Exquisitely detailed, exceptionally handsome designs for an enormous variety of attractive city dwellings, spacious suburban and country homes, charming "cottages" and other structures — all accompanied by perspective views and floor plans.
Originally published in 1878, this now-rare collection of designs supplies views of a remarkable variety of modestly priced structures: houses, villas, cottages, many others. Handsome drawings of perspective views and elevations, some of which include floor plans, plus suggestions for interior design. 98 black-and-white illustrations.
At the height of the Gilded Age, America's wealthiest families began to cluster in Newport, Southampton, Bar Harbor, and Tuxedo Park. In these idyllic locales they built luxurious summer "cottages" away from the grit and grime of New York or Boston or Philadelphia. The Belle Haven peninsula, in Greenwich, Connecticut, is home to one of the first and most spectacular residence parks in the country. Its development occurred rapidly, and between 1884 and 1894 Belle Haven Park was transformed from scenic pastureland set above the glistening ribbon of Long Island Sound into a bastion of Victorian luxury. Successful American magazine described the Belle Haven of 1902 as "a nonpareil spot, surpassing in beauty, while equaling in elegance, the pet of the fashionable world, Newport, and outshining Tuxedo in brilliance and gaiety." The New York Times, meanwhile, called it "the flower garden of Greenwich, and, indeed, of the whole Connecticut shore." Victorian Summer: The Historic Houses of Belle Haven Park, Greenwich, Connecticut focuses on that great flowering of Belle Haven, from 1884 to 1929. The 45-year span began with Robert Law Olmsted's storied firm laying out Belle Haven's graceful, lamp-lit streets, and continued with the Gilded Age's most renowned architects designing masterpieces, in styles ranging from the whimsical Queen Anne to the ponderous Richardsonian Romanesque, for the illustrious movers and shakers of the day - men who raised up the Manhattan skyline, co-founded U.S. Steel, formed Nabisco, ran Standard Oil's domestic business, and mined gold, silver, and iron ore to supply an exploding railroad industry. Victorian Summer features estate biographies - each telling the story of a house, an architect, and a predominant owner. Some of these houses are sadly gone or unrecognizably changed--though preserved here in photographs--but many shine on as brightly as ever. Together the biographies weave a portrait of the Gilded Age and its aftermath, with an emphasis on the architecture, but touching on such events as the Civil War, the industrial boom, and the sinking of the Titanic.
This incredibly rich, firsthand source for the most popular styles of 19th-century Victorian architecture presents 26 cottage designs — including Gothic, bracketed, Italianate, "rustic," more — and 155 illustrations (includes floor plans).
Printed in full color on heavy cardboard stock 4 authentic Victorian houses in H-O scale: Italian-style villa, Octagon, Second Empire, Stick Style. Exploded diagrams, numbered and labeled pieces for easy assembly.
Twenty-nine meticulously rendered, ready-to-color illustrations portray the many distinctive styles of actual Victorian-era homes, including a seaside cottage in the "stick style"; an Italianate San Francisco residence of the 1880s; the unusual Octagon House in Ottawa, Illinois (1856); a Moorish-styled urban residence in Baltimore (1886), and the elegant "Vinland," a Newport, Rhode Island, residence (1882–1884).
