Howdy Y’all! Everyone give me a pat on the back because I finally finished moving to my new place, which I will of course be writing about for Looking Around. Moving gives one time to re-evaluate one’s life, and by re-evaluate I mean ask oneself why one has so much crap, junk, and also more crap.
Speaking of crap: It’s time to return to our Texas Standoff! Reminder: At the end of this post will be a bracket and a link to a Google Form where you will be able to vote on the first round for Worst Texas McMansion!
Montgomery County (House 9): AKA The Columned Catastrophe
TFW u love Big Oil so much u design a house just to waste energy and laugh at the dying earth
Comal County (House 10): AKA Bitches Brew
Instead of cooking Hansel and Gretel in a puny (yet rustic) wood stove, the Witch decided to #upgrade and get a $6,000 Wolf range/stove combo with dual burner action. She lusciously prepares the aftermath on her granite countertops complete with built in #farmhouse sink. Before being cooked and eaten, Hansel and Gretel complemented the witch on her tasteful #subway #tile backsplash!
Kendall County (House 11): AKA The Compound
The only thing I can think of that’s as futile as trying to grow that grass is trying to put together the Ikea furniture you just bought after a day of loading and unloading boxes. But this isn’t about me, is it?
Travis County (House 12): AKA FastFood FanFic
[AU] [T] [Romance] Olive Garden x Taco Bell. It’s 1908, and Olive, an Italian immigrant seeking greener pastures in Southern California has her life turned upside down when she meets the bold, brash, and ambitious Mexican-American boy who helps his family run the taco joint down the street.
[I would like to take the time to apologize for these words which I have just put into this world]
Collin County (House 13): AKA Smallpox Estates
I didn’t realize Hobby Lobby sold home exterior decorating kits!! Brb hot gluing a bag of river rocks to my window trim.
Denton County (House 14): (AKA Clone Wars)
Sometimes a house is so wild, more than one joke on the picture would ruin its natural dramatic effect. Hence, the author would now like to use this space to point out that this house also has a nub, lol.
Fort Bend County (House 15): Lawyer Can of Shame
Sadly, the Smithsonian is not interested in my extremely fascinating and culturally important research on extremely bad and ugly home foyer typologies. I’m also probably on a government watchlist now.
Without further ado, our final house!
Rockwall County (House 16): AKA Satellite of Nub
Everybody who has been to college (or even a coffeshop near a college) knows that guy who pretends to be a beat poet and thinks that smoking joints in public and treating women like garbage makes him extremely cool and talented. The sixties were 80 million years ago and yet beatnik cosplayer dudes remain their longest-running export. (Stuff with The Beatles on it is the second longest running export.)
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No single-family home (besides, perhaps, the ranch or the McMansion) is as instantly recognizable as the American Foursquare. Named both for its boxy exterior as well as its neat, cubic interior plan, American Foursquares were trademarks of early suburban domesticity beginning around the 1890s, remaining relatively popular until the 1920s when they were overtaken in popularity by the smaller, more economical Minimal Traditional style.
The Foursquare is notable for being one of the first affordable, middle-class home types to feature both electricity and a standard sink-toilet-bath bathroom, amenities previously afforded only to the elite.
Early, Highly ornamental Foursquare home with many transitional Queen Anne-style details. From Lambert’s Book of Suburban Architecture, 1894. Public Domain.
Foursquares are found most commonly in first and second generation suburbs. The archetypal Foursquare features a full-width front porch, a low-pitched hipped roof, and one or more dormers (also usually hipped.)
Typical American Foursquare from a 1915 Montgomery Ward Homes catalog. 1915. Public Domain.
The Foursquare is both a type of plan and a distinct building “style” (or form), which can lead to confusion if one wants to identify a Foursquare by exterior details alone. For this reason, front-gabled “foursquares”, while relatively common, are usually misidentified, even though their plans may be identical to their hipped-roofed counterparts.
A front-gabled home from the same Montgomery Ward 1915 catalog with a Foursquare interior plan. Public Domain.
Plan
The most common Foursquare plan features four main rooms on both floors. The front two rooms are usually an entryway (or hall), with a staircase leading to the upper floors, and a living room or parlor. Later examples often place the staircase between the entrance hall and the kitchen, as seen in the first Montgomery Ward example. The second story most commonly has a central hall, three or four bedrooms, and a bathroom.
1918 Sears Catalog showing a typical American Foursquare plan. Public Domain.
Architectural Style
The Foursquare was a versatile form, easily well-adapted to many different styles of architectural detail. Most Foursquares owned by working-class folks were plain, with little to no ornate detailing. More lush examples feature details from contemporary architectural movements, especially the Craftsman and Prairie styles.
A plain, relatively unadorned Foursquare from a 1916 Gordon Van Tine catalog. Public Domain.
The Langston: A Craftsman-styled Foursquare from the 1918 Sears Catalog. Note the low pitched roof, extended eaves with exposed rafters, and the ornate porch columns. Public Domain.
The Prairie style of Frank Lloyd Wright and his contemporaries, such as Walter Burley Griffin, was very influential on Foursquare houses, particularly in the Midwest. (Wright himself drew up plans for affordable prefabricated houses, his American System-Built Homes.)
Prairie Style: Walter Burley Griffen, Gauler Twin Houses, prototypes for speculative houses built for developer John Gauler. Chicago, IL (1908.) Photo by IvoShandor (CC BY 3.0)
Many features of the common Foursquare borrow from the Prairie style, including their low-pitched hipped rooflines, relatively modern, economical form, and wide, boxed eaves.
Three heavily Prairie-influenced Foursquares from a 1916 Gordon van Tine catalog. Note the low-pitched rooflines, and extended boxed eaves.
From Left to Right: note the massive piers and material choice on House 1; on House 2, the playful upturned eaves (common in 1890s Prairie style houses, such as the Edward R. Hills House by Frank Lloyd Wright); House 3 exhibits an explicitly Prairie style side-porch and a more streamlined form with its absence of dormers.)
The End of Foursquares
The American Foursquare remained popular for almost four decades, providing an economical, thoughtfully designed home for America’s middle-class families. Its contemporary, the bungalow, would eventually overtake it in popularity in the 1910s and 1920s. The Foursquare was one of the last popular house types to feature a mostly closed floorplan.
The Great Depression halted homebuilding, and the homes that were built at the time were much smaller out of financial necessity, hence the dawn of the small Minimal Traditional houses of the 30s, 40s, and 50s.
While the Craftsman bungalow has seen a resurgence in popularity as an architectural form in the last decade, the Foursquare, despite its economical allocation of space suitable for larger families, has yet to see a revival.
Foursquares were popular in first and second generation suburbs because they enabled families to build more house on a smaller lot. Their square form was as much a stylistic choice as it was a result of economical construction and economical structural savviness. Lot size, which increased as people moved further and further away from the center, became (and remains) less of a constraint, which is perhaps why the Foursquare hasn’t had the same resurgence as the more-sprawling bungalow.
Still, existing Foursquares have proven to be enjoyable houses for those who live in them, and continue to maintain their position as one of the most iconic and instantly recognizable forms of the American home.
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