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Know Your

Architectural Elements

How to Tell Greek Revival from Colonial Revival and More

Excerpts from the Architectural Style Guide reprinted with permission from Historic New England, historicnewengland.org

This Architectural Style Guide is intended as a general introduction to American domestic architecture,
and common stylistic trends of New England architecture, beginning with seventeenth-century
colonial architecture through the Colonial Revival architecture of the early twentieth century.

Post-Medieval English: 1600-1700

Built in 1692 for the family of William Boardman, a joiner, the Boardman House Overlooking a farm and pleasure grounds, this country seat, also known as “the
survives remarkably intact from its original construction. Grange,” was a powerful force in the lives of five generations of the Codman family.
In the 1790s, John Codman carried out extensive improvements to the original
photo: Historic New England
Georgian house and surrounding grounds. photo: Historic New England
Built during the first generation of settlement by English colonists, style included innumerable variations on a simple English theme: a
Post-Medieval English (or First Period) architecture owes much of its symmetrical, two-story house with a center-entry façade, combined
appearance to building traditions from Europe. In New England, with a two-room-deep center-passage floor plan. By the end of the
colonists departed from traditional European wattle and daub (woven seventeenth century, the upper classes in the colonies began to embrace
lattice of wooden strips covered with a material made with some the European concept of gentility, displaying their elevated taste and
combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung, and straw), constructing station by maintaining codes of dress, speech, and behavior. This status
wood-frame homes covered with weatherboard, clapboard, or shingles. was also aptly displayed by the orderly symmetry of Georgian architecture,
This was a direct result of the prevalence of local timber. In addition, a legacy that survives today.
New England seventeenth-century homes were typically two stories tall
with steeply pitched roofs, essential for shedding heavy snow loads.
Central chimneys were also standard, being the most efficient way to Federal: 1780-1820
heat these buildings during cold New England winters. Today, surviving
examples have almost all been restored to their early appearance and
thus retain very little original material.
Post-Medieval English architecture is limited to those areas of the
country settled before 1700. Connecticut and coastal regions of
Massachusetts contain the highest number of these structures, although
other examples can be found moving inland along major waterways
such as the Hudson River.

Georgian: 1700-1780

The dominant style for domestic construction in the United States
from 1700 to 1780, Georgian architecture grew out of the Italian
Renaissance in Europe. Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), an Italian architect,
devised a set of design principles based on the Classical proportions of
Roman ruins. In turn, these principles were brought to the colonies,
gaining popularity beginning around 1700 principally through
architectural pattern books. Barrett House, also known as Forest Hall, was built c. 1800 by Charles Barrett Sr.
Georgian architecture gets its name from the succession of English for his son Charles Jr. and daughter-in-law Martha Minot on the occasion
kings named George (beginning in 1715). In the United States, the of their marriage. photo: Historic New England

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