Architectural styles of American houses: how to identify 16 styles from Colonial to Mid-century

Architecture · 4 September 2026

American houses fall into about sixteen styles that follow one another from the 1600s to the 1970s, and each can be identified from the sidewalk by two or three features: the roof, the windows and the front door. In order they are Colonial (saltbox, Cape Cod, Dutch), Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Queen Anne, Shingle, Richardsonian Romanesque, Colonial Revival, Craftsman, Tudor Revival, Spanish and Mission Revival, Ranch and Mid-century modern. The list below gives each style its dates, the three features to look for, and the parts of the country where it dominates. The grand public versions of several of these styles, from Monticello to the Farnsworth House, are in the Buildings by style collection; the European originals they copy are in architectural styles in chronological order.

1. Colonial, 1600s–1780

Look for: a steep roof, a massive central chimney, small windows with many panes, no porch. Variants: the New England saltbox with its long rear roof slope; the Cape Cod, one and a half storeys with dormers; the Dutch Colonial of New York and New Jersey with a gambrel roof, two slopes on each side; the French Colonial of Louisiana on posts with a wide porch; the Spanish Colonial adobe of the Southwest with flat roofs and thick walls. Where: New England, the Hudson valley, the Chesapeake, the Gulf coast, New Mexico. Most "Colonial" houses on the market are 20th-century Colonial Revival; the originals are rare and usually museums.

2. Georgian, 1700–1780

Look for: strict symmetry, five windows across and a door in the middle, a panelled door with a decorative crown or pediment and a row of small panes above it, paired chimneys at the ends. Brick in the South, clapboard in New England. Named for the four King Georges, it is the style of the plantation houses of Virginia and the merchant houses of Boston and Philadelphia, based on English pattern books.

3. Federal (Adam), 1780–1830

Look for: the Georgian box made lighter: a semicircular or elliptical fanlight over the door, sidelights, a Palladian window in the centre of the upper floor, delicate mouldings, sometimes an oval room. The style of the new republic, based on the work of the Scottish architect Robert Adam, whose Kedleston Hall is in the collection. Where: the seaports, Salem, Boston, Charleston, Savannah, Alexandria. The White House (1800) is the grandest Federal-period building.

4. Greek Revival, 1825–1860

Look for: a front gable turned to the street like a temple pediment, columns or pilasters across the front, a wide flat band of trim under the roof, a door surrounded by rectangular transom and sidelights, white paint. The most popular style in America before the Civil War, from Southern plantation mansions with two-storey columns to farmhouses in Ohio and upstate New York with a single pediment over the door. Jefferson's Monticello (1809) is its Roman cousin. Details in Neoclassical architecture.

5. Gothic Revival, 1840–1880

Look for: steep cross-gabled roofs, pointed-arch windows, decorative bargeboards ("gingerbread") on the eaves, board-and-batten siding, a one-storey porch. Popularised by Andrew Jackson Downing's pattern books as the picturesque cottage; the "Carpenter Gothic" of rural churches and the house behind the couple in Grant Wood's "American Gothic". Where: the Northeast, the Midwest, the Hudson valley. The grand version is in Gothic architecture.

6. Italianate, 1840–1885

Look for: a low-pitched or flat roof with wide overhanging eaves held up by big ornamental brackets, tall narrow windows with rounded or arched tops, often a square cupola or tower, and cast-iron detail in cities. The dominant style of the 1850s–1870s: San Francisco's painted Victorians, the row houses of Brooklyn and Cincinnati, the commercial blocks of every Main Street with cast-iron fronts. Modelled on Italian farmhouses and villas by way of England.

7. Second Empire, 1855–1885

Look for: the mansard roof, steep on the sides and nearly flat on top, with dormer windows breaking through it, usually with iron cresting along the ridge. Named for the Paris of Napoleon III, whose new boulevards it copied; the style of post-Civil War city halls and mansions, and, later, of every haunted house in American film, from Psycho to the Addams Family.

8. Queen Anne, 1880–1910

Look for: an asymmetrical front with a corner tower or turret, a wraparound porch with turned spindles, patterned shingles in the gables, bay windows, stained glass, several colours of paint. This is what most people mean by "Victorian": the elaborate wooden houses of San Francisco, Cape May, Galveston and small towns across the country, made possible by the balloon frame, mass-produced millwork and the railroad. The style has nothing to do with the real Queen Anne, who reigned in 1702–1714.

9. Shingle, 1880–1900

Look for: the whole house wrapped in unpainted wooden shingles, roof and walls alike, with wide gambrel or hipped roofs, rambling asymmetrical forms and few ornaments; the Queen Anne calmed down. The style of the New England seaside, Newport, the Hamptons, Maine; the early houses of H. H. Richardson, McKim, Mead and White, and the young Frank Lloyd Wright.

10. Richardsonian Romanesque, 1880–1900

Look for: heavy rough-faced stone, deep round arches over doors and windows, squat columns, towers with conical roofs. Named for Henry Hobson Richardson, whose Trinity Church in Boston (1877) started it; mostly public buildings, courthouses, libraries and train stations, but also the mansions of Chicago and St Louis. The American answer to the European style in Romanesque vs Gothic.

11. Colonial Revival, 1880–1955

Look for: a symmetrical facade, a front door with a fanlight, sidelights or a small portico with columns, double-hung windows with shutters, often a gambrel roof (Dutch Colonial Revival) or a side-gabled box. The single most common style of American houses built between 1900 and 1950, and the default "traditional" house ever since; bigger and looser than the Georgian originals, with garages and bigger windows. The Cape Cod revival of the 1930s–1950s, the small houses of Levittown, belongs here.

12. Craftsman (Arts and Crafts, bungalow), 1905–1930

Look for: a low-pitched gabled roof with wide unenclosed eaves and exposed rafter tails, decorative beams or braces under the gables, a deep front porch on tapered square columns that sit on heavy piers, natural materials: wood, stone, brick. The bungalow of Los Angeles and Pasadena, spread nationwide by Sears and other kit-house catalogues; Greene and Greene's Gamble House in Pasadena (1908) is the masterpiece. The Prairie style of Frank Lloyd Wright, low, horizontal and hipped, as in the Robie House (1910), is its Midwestern cousin.

13. Tudor Revival, 1890–1940

Look for: steep gables, decorative half-timbering with stucco or brick between the beams, tall narrow windows in groups with diamond panes, massive chimneys with chimney pots, a rounded or Tudor-arched front door. The romantic English style of the 1920s suburbs, from Shaker Heights to Beverly Hills; called "Stockbroker Tudor" at the time. Almost always brick or stucco veneer over a wood frame, whatever the half-timbering suggests.

14. Spanish Colonial Revival and Mission, 1915–1940

Look for: low red-tiled roofs, white or cream stucco walls, arches, wrought iron, a courtyard, few and small windows; in the Mission variant, a curved parapet copied from the California missions. The style of Southern California, Florida and the Southwest after the 1915 San Diego exposition: Santa Barbara, Palm Beach, Coral Gables, San Antonio. Its ancestor is the Baroque of Mexico, in Baroque architecture.

15. Ranch, 1945–1975

Look for: one storey, long and low, a low-pitched roof with wide eaves, an attached garage, a picture window, sliding doors to a patio at the back, minimal ornament. The most common house in America: about half the houses built in the 1950s and 1960s were ranches, from California, where Cliff May designed the first ones in the 1930s, to every suburb in the country. The split-level, with the garage half a storey below the bedrooms, is its 1960s variant.

16. Mid-century modern, 1945–1970

Look for: a flat or single-slope roof, walls of glass to a garden or view, exposed post-and-beam structure, an open plan, no ornament at all. The architect-designed minority among the ranches: the Eichler tracts of California, the Case Study houses, Palm Springs, and at the top the Farnsworth House and the Glass House. Details in mid-century modern architecture.

A quick key: roof, window, door

• Mansard roof: Second Empire. Gambrel roof: Dutch Colonial or its revival. Flat roof with brackets: Italianate. Steep gables with half-timbering: Tudor. Low gable with exposed rafters and a big porch: Craftsman. Flat roof, glass wall: Mid-century. Red tile: Spanish. One storey, long and low: Ranch.
• Pointed-arch windows: Gothic Revival. Round-arched windows in heavy stone: Richardsonian. Tall narrow windows with arched tops: Italianate. Diamond panes: Tudor. Picture window: Ranch.
• Door with a fanlight: Federal or Colonial Revival. Door with a rectangular transom and sidelights under a pediment: Greek Revival. Door under a tower and a wraparound porch: Queen Anne. Door in a round stone arch: Richardsonian.

Two rules save most mistakes. First, the date: a house built after 1900 with columns or a fanlight is a revival, not an original. Second, the region: red tile in Ohio is a Spanish Revival novelty; red tile in Santa Barbara is the local vernacular.

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