Why does every house seems to be called a "colonial?" (stone, chimney)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Here in Colorado everything is listed as a Victorian, or Craftsman. Most are not. I have had Realtors in our office that were looking at a set of plans I designed with their clients and whispering to the client "I thought you wanted a Tudor style home, why did they give you a Victorian design" I sorta laughed in my head and went and grabbed my book of American home styles. Even within styles there are sub-styles. I wish they would use the sub-style much more often, it really would help me work with remodel clients more if they would.
A good example is within the Victorian Group of homes, such as Queen Anne, Second Empire, and Shingle.
Queen Anne
Second Empire
Shingle
They are all Victorian homes due to the time frame in which they were designed, and some slight similarities of design elements and colors, but they do not look like each other in form.
Second empire will have a Mansard style roof, min. of 3-colors (body, trim and window sash) and other typical Victorian details within the wood work.
Queen Anne, (painted lady) usually asymmetrical, more chaotic outward appearance, overly ornate 3-7 body colors (most well known of the Victorian homes)
Shingle style is well... covered in shingle, simple form lack of your typical Victorian decor.
(Stick style is another form of Victorian)
usually when designing for a client that has a mix of styles we go with a more general term, such as "old world" when Tudor, French, or Spanish styles mesh"
This type of thing would be nice to know when talking to clients on the phone about a remodel or historic preservation project.
A favorite utterly tasteless house in the suburb of south Jersey where I grew up (where the race for bad taste is indeed major league) was a big house that seemed to have a line drawn down the middle- one half was fake English Tudor, the other half was fake French chalet. It was not a duplex.
My other favorite was Internationale Village (I guess the errant "e" conveys "class," something people are very concerned about when they are one generation away from immigrants in south Philly). There were three rows of condos- one fake Spanish hacienda, one fake Tudor, one fake chalet. A gorgeous old farm was destroyed for this, but hey, I wouldn't want to be the last real farmer in a sea of subdivisions called "Woodcrest/Point of Woods/Wexford Leas/Charleston Riding." (Like I said, one generation away from the Old Country).
(Do you get that I couldn't stand where I grew up, although now I appreciate what it must have meant to city people post-war? I just hated seeing anything that existed before 1956 disappearing, year after year. There was a 300-year-old Quaker cemetery that was removed. There was a grave in a field of a man in the 1600s and "his devoted slaves." Gone, gone.
Yes, the school system was great, and it was safe and Leave It to Beaver and all.
It is amusing to watch so many folks with no architectural training pick and choose disparate architectural elements that they have seen somewhere before and feel compelled that they must apply these to their house to desperately show how "classy" it is compared to all the neighbors in the original modest (and architecturally charming and appropriate) homes around them. When in fact it just screams bad taste, inappropriate, clumsy and awkward.
...and as Noahma mentions Real Estate agents are generally clueless and lazy on determining a houses stylistic origins. There is very little imagination and even less research and knowledge for most on labeling house styles. As designers we have to bite our lip sometimes but it is fun to have a client to be able to explain some of the whys and rules about certain styles that they may want to incorporate in a design.
Bill K
That's still the case. Real estate licensing school teaches you about the laws of real estate ownership & transfer. Learning about the actual real estate is up to each person or company. As is learning how to market & sell that real estate. Some of us take it seriously.
I think that's a regional thing. I know a friend/agent in Pa. that just this week as we were driving by an odd looking house remarked...I wonder what style THAT would be ( it was really weird) . We and the girls were going to dinner but he went on explain that as part of his license requirements he had to take a very detailed class in identifying various architectural styles etc. He's presently getting his brokers license but that class was before that. I was very surprised at this info but I suspect it's not common.
One is that the agent in question doesn't know anythinng about architectural styles.
Third, and I'm sorry to say, most frequently, it's becasue the listing agent wants to be sure it show up on EVERYONES search results. Since they know that the overwhelming majority of people here in NJ include Colonials on their list, that's what they call their listing, if there's any way to stretch the definition of Colonial to include their house. And sometimes even if there is no way to stretch the definition that far.
I'll give you a kudos for acknowledging this type of thing . And there are IMHO lots of others....but it does offer a bit of insight as to why
So many of "us" ....think so little, of so many of 'you'
Just to be clear...I'm not at this time including you in the "you" since you stepped up and acknowledged the 'problem'
(among a long long list of others).
Here in Colorado everything is listed as a Victorian, or Craftsman. Most are not. I have had Realtors in our office that were looking at a set of plans I designed with their clients and whispering to the client "I thought you wanted a Tudor style home, why did they give you a Victorian design" I sorta laughed in my head and went and grabbed my book of American home styles. Even within styles there are sub-styles. I wish they would use the sub-style much more often, it really would help me work with remodel clients more if they would.
A good example is within the Victorian Group of homes, such as Queen Anne, Second Empire, and Shingle.
Queen Anne
Second Empire
Shingle
They are all Victorian homes due to the time frame in which they were designed, and some slight similarities of design elements and colors, but they do not look like each other in form.
Second empire will have a Mansard style roof, min. of 3-colors (body, trim and window sash) and other typical Victorian details within the wood work.
Queen Anne, (painted lady) usually asymmetrical, more chaotic outward appearance, overly ornate 3-7 body colors (most well known of the Victorian homes)
Shingle style is well... covered in shingle, simple form lack of your typical Victorian decor.
(Stick style is another form of Victorian)
usually when designing for a client that has a mix of styles we go with a more general term, such as "old world" when Tudor, French, or Spanish styles mesh"
This type of thing would be nice to know when talking to clients on the phone about a remodel or historic preservation project.
Cape Cod Colonial seems to fit it for the most part.
it is for the most part symmetrical, it has dormers which was a common detail. Multi-paned double hung windows, shutters.
the side gable ends,
The German Colonial had the Gambrel roof as a common appearance, which the home you linked does indeed have.
It has a mishmash of several Colonial styles, it fits more in the cape cod, but the roof shape suggests German Colonial.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
