500 Small Houses of the Twenties

Rating:
Summary: A Reference Book for Memory Lane
Review: Did you ever find yourself stopping your car to oggle and old brick or stucco bungalow, now a bit run down but free from "modernization"? Ever wonder how they were designed or what kind of floor plan they might have? For the amateur or the professional architect, Henry Atterbury Smith's compilation provides an accurate and intriguing reference to the historical developement of the modern suburban environment. For those of us who enjoy dreaming of one day designing and building our own bungalows, this book is pure delight. The house plans are displayed with the information which would have been available at the time of their initial distribution which can be quite amusing as well as historically informative. This book represents a set of ideals aspired to by the Arts and Crafts movement, ideals which should be appreciated and emulated by the architects and builders of the twenty-first century. Do plan on a long, leisurely perusal of this book if you enjoy history, architecture and craftsmanship as much as I do!

Rating:
Summary: Houses Houses Houses and more Houses
Review: If you like old houses, (or at least early 20th Century houses) or you want to get a feel for some of the social history of the period, this is a wonderful book. I think it complements nicely the other house catalog reprints from Dover. While the illustrations and plans are smaller than those in some of the other books such as the Sears 1926 house catalog or the Aladdin built in a day catalog, it does show 500 houses. It also has some interesting articles concerning the state of domestic architecture circa 1925 or so.