The Cradles of Classic American Home Styles

From Roots of Home: the Ten Colonial Cradles

America’s classic home styles were born in ten regional cradles that nurtured distinctive house forms rooted in Old World traditions. Below are the ten regions -- and the main vernacular house styles that emerged from each region's particular blend of culture, geography, climate, and resources:

St Lawrence and Mississippi Valleys

The first French settlement was founded at Port-Royal on the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1604, followed by exploration of the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley.

NORMANDY FARMHOUSE, ACADIAN COTTAGE

New England Coast

English Pilgrims established Plimoth Plantation on the New England coast in 1621 and spurred the founding of compact villages from Connecticut to Maine.

SALTBOX, CAPE COD COTTAGE, GARRISON COLONIAL

Hudson Valley

The Dutch founded New Amsterdam in 1624, while French Huguenots and Flemish Walloons settled into the Hudson Valley from New Jersey to upstate New York.

DUTCH GABLE TOWNHOUSE, HUDSON STONE FARMHOUSE, DUTCH GAMBREL

Delaware Valley

The Delaware Valley was first home to New Sweden (1638) and later Pennsylvania (1682), a haven for English Quakers as well as German and Scots-Irish émigrés.

SCANDINAVIAN LOG CABIN, PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH FARMHOUSE

Chesapeake Bay

On Chesapeake Bay, the Virginia colony was founded by the English at Jamestown in 1607, followed by Maryland established at St. Mary’s City in 1634.

CATSLIDE COTTAGE, WILLIAMSBURG COLONIAL, PALLADIAN MANOR

Carolina Low Country

The Carolina Low Country and its tidewater coast were first settled in Charleston in 1670 by English planters with roots in the Caribbean islands.

TIDEWATER PLANTATION, CHARLESTON SINGLE HOUSE, SOUTHERN I-HOUSE

Florida Peninsula

The Spanish established North America’s first settlement in Florida at St. Augustine in 1565, as well as a mission chain linked through Tallahassee to Pensacola.

SPANISH COLONIAL CASA, ST. AUGUSTINE HOUSE

Gulf Coast

Settled by the French at New Orleans in 1718, the Gulf Coast attracted French and Spanish Creoles, Acadians from Canada, and free blacks from the Caribbean.

CREOLE COTTAGE, FRENCH COLONIAL PLANTATION, SHOTGUN HOUSE

Southwest Borderlands

Starting in the early 17th century the Spanish crisscrossed the Southwest borderlands founding presidios, missions, and pueblos from Arizona to Texas.

PUEBLO ADOBE, DOGTROT LOG CABIN, TEXAS ROCK HOUSE

Alta California

Alta California was the last Spanish frontier where a chain of twenty one missions was created from 1769-1823 along the coastline from San Diego to Sonoma.

SPANISH COLONIAL CASA, MONTEREY HOUSE

Tidewater Cottage in the News

Recently, several media articles have appeared that chronicle the pre-fab tidewater cottage and our Simple Farmhouse designs. Below are links to these articles as posted on the Web, sans images:

• As McMansions Begin to Die Off, Look to the Past for Housing's Future, Washington Post, Housewatch, November 15, 2008, Katherine Salant
  
  Creating a New 'Old House' Section by Section to Feel Like Home, Rappahannock News, November 13, 2008, Laura Ruby

The original dozen designs in the Simple Farmhouse Portfolio, which you can view in detail on our firm's website, are styles that were commonly built in the Southern Piedmont region. Joining them is a new collection of Chesapeake Tidewater houses; a slightly tweaked version of the tidewater cottage is the first design in the collection. In addition to the Simple Farmhouse designs, which range from 1600-3200 sf and can be built from kits of parts or modular units, we are developing a new collection of small houses designed and engineered specifically for modular building. The new collection is called the Simple Cottage Sampler, and it will be available in 2009.The first ten cottages in the collection are inspired by the Ten Colonial Cradles of Home, which Russell wrote about in his new book, Roots of Home. The Colonial Cradles were the places in America that served as the seedbeds for our early house styles. Each of the Simple Cottages is an American classic style that emerged from a specific Colonial Cradle region.

We are hoping to build the first modular cottage on the exhibit floor at Restore Media's Traditional Building Show in Boston in mid-March. It is a real stretch to make that happen in just three months, but when the cottage design is ready, the process of modular building is very, very fast.

Factory-Made, Site-Assembled

At Bundoran Farm, the Currier Farmhouse from the Simple Farmhouse Portfolio has probably shed its housewrap skin since this photo was taken a month ago and looks less like a house under siege. The cornice return, like the rest of the exterior shell, was factory-crafted in Vermont by Connor Homes and shipped to the site.

Meanwhile, here in Middleburg a stonemason has built a retaining wall in front of the tidewater cottage, now reflected against a backdrop of early autumn colors. While fall in Virginia is not an eye-popper like fall in Vermont, it's subtle and serene with distinct charm.

Make It Wrong?

What have we here?

Why, it's one of the 13 choices of new home designs for residents of the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans. This project of Brad Pitt's states the following goal: “Because local cultural influences gave rise to the pre-Katrina architecture so emblematic of the area, preserving that identity remains vital in reclaiming the spirit of the neighborhood.” But it's mighty hard to find any attempt to preserve the area's architectural identity in this bizarre design from MVRDV, a firm from The Netherlands.

To view all 13 design offerings, visit the Make It Right website. Like so many other modernist attempts at low-income housing in the U.S., these houses look like sure-fire candidates for the wrecking ball in 20 years.

While the Make It Right project is certainly well-intended, the designs seem so out of touch with the intended recipients, even though community leaders were involved in the project. It's hard to imagine that the people who will be living in these houses would actually choose these designs over the vernacular styles — the shotguns, camelbacks, and creole cottages — that for 100 years have meant home to this culturally-rich, close-knit, vibrant community now in tatters.

Classic Virginia Style, Part 2

More photos of the new estate in Fauquier County...

In this view of the front of the house, one can see the distinct parts that give the impression of a house that grew over time.

Doric columns with triglyphs grace the traditional Greek Revival entryway.
Designed in the style of a traditional tidewater cottage, a new shed on the property shows why it pays to wait a few years before photographing a project. By now ivy-covered and flanked by a cottage garden, the little outbuilding looks as if it was built 200 years ago.

Landscape design by Arentz Landscape Architecture

Roots of Home's Official Pubdate

Today is the day that Roots of Home is officially available. For nearly a year we have been speaking, writing, quoting, and citing October 14 as the new book's pub date, but now that it's finally here, it's a quiet morning in Lake Wobegon.

People have other things on their minds today, as do we. So long eagerly anticipated, the book's due date has arrived in the midst of the worst economic week in decades. It does tend to suppress one's euphoria.

Still, beauty is beauty, and no bad news can alter the luminous, otherworldly, timeless appeal of the Poche Ezidore House, shown in this image from Roots of Home. This early 1800s Creole cottage in Gramercy, Louisiana, was lightly restored to repair structural problems but otherwise left with period detail and original surfaces unchanged. In Erik Kvalsvik's photo of the light-bathed dining room, one can almost sense the hush, the stories in the walls, the soft footfalls over centuries.

And that's the news from Lake Wobegon.

Classic Virginia Style, Part 1

Although we have been featuring prefab houses on this blog, we have a vigorous custom practice at Russell Versaci Architecture as well. Here are photos of a beautiful equestrian estate completed several years ago, which is just now being photographed for our firm's website and for publication. For a new custom home to become seasoned enough for the photo shoot, trees must grow, plantings fill in, materials weather, and the raw look must soften for the house to ease into its historic style.

Russell designed the buildings on the estate in classic Virginia style. The house, which sits on a 150-acre track of verdant Fauquier County farmland with mountain views, was built in parts in the manner of a real farmhouse expanded over several generations. The first photo shows the "earliest" part of the home, designed in 18th-century Jeffersonian classical style; it serves as the kitchen wing in the new old house.

The second photo shows the Greek Revival portion, which is the main part of the new house. In the fictional story, this part might have been added in the 19th century, along with the fieldstone carriage house, as the farm prospered and the family grew.

The narrative continues into the 20th century with a sunroom addition (not shown). Several smaller buildings complete the arrangement to make a farm compound with deep roots in Virginia tradition.

Working with Russell on this project were Rob Hale, who designed the interior cabinetry and casework, and project architect Kathleen Lofdahl. Horizon Builders was the contractor.

Certifiably Green, Part 1

This is the year for going green. In our local paper, several builders are trumpeting green building practices. It's an easy claim to make, but what does it mean?

There are two measures for determining that new buildings meet environmental targets -- Energy Star and LEED. Energy Star is a government program administered by the EPA and DOE. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is sponsored by the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council.

LEED was created in the early 90s to give quantifiable performance measures for sustainability--and also to motivate and stimulate the industry to strive to adopt best practices to earn the LEED distinction. Energy Star hails from the same time, but its focus is on energy rather than performance.

Back then, sustainability was a pretty hard sell. Long-term savings that required a higher initial cost for systems and materials were trumped by short-term cost issues. That was the case until recently, when "pain at the pump" and the shock of the monthly heating bill made it all too personal. Factor in the bad news from global environmental fronts, and sustainability suddenly becomes a major issue when planning new construction.

Today the market wants green buildings, and the industry wants to be able to market its green building creds. Hence LEED and Energy Star are much-sought distinctions these days.

As its name suggests, the Energy Star program focuses on energy, rather than performance. While the program is best known for the nifty labels on products that help consumers make buying choices, Energy Star also certifies new homes. A certified home is about 15% more energy-efficient than those built to the 2004 International Residential Code (IRC) standard, and about 25-30% more than most houses in general.

LEED rates new homes on a host of criteria, including operating costs, reduced waste, energy and water conservation, health and safety for occupants, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Certified homes qualify for tax rebates, zoning allowances, and other incentives, as well as demonstrate a commitment to environmental stewardship and social responsibility.

On the farm outside Middleburg, the geothermal heating system shown in the photos was sunk into the pond to provide energy for the prefab tidewater cottage in the background. The finished house will probably meet Energy Star requirements, and we hope it will earn LEED certification as well.

We are fortunate that the owners of the farm, our clients, are committed to the environment -- and also to traditional architecture. As designers, we are happy to be able to offer visual proof that a house built to green specifications can be beautiful and suited to its rural setting, designed in a vernacular style with appropriate detailing, built with traditional materials such as wood, stone, and brick, yet crafted using the efficiencies of factory fabrication.

Traditional Details: Wood Shingles

On the tidewater cottage, the hipped-roof dormers are topped with wood shingles that are overlapped and fantailed in a manner as old as the Virginia colony. The illustration and description below are taken from The Houses of Williamsburg: Construction and Detail (1960), an excellent reference on traditional detail used often in our practice:

"At the hips of a roof, the shingles are 'fantailed"...laid so that those on one side projected about 2 in. above and over those on the other. The choice of which side of the ridge to carry up in this manner was not settled by chance or whim, but with a sound regard for orientation: it had to be the side that received the most prolonged rain. In Virginia, where it was common knowledge that the northeasterly storms were the ones to be feared, the 18th-century builder chose the north or east."

On our 21st-century tidewater cottage, the shingles crest to the east, since the heaviest rain hits the farm from the west.

Qroe Preservation Development

Currier prefab at Bundoran Farm/ photo by Leigh Donohue, C'ville


Currier Farmhouse front elevation

In an article from the online Charlottesville magazine C'ville, writer Will Goldsmith gives props to Qroe Farm Preservation Development, the company developing Bundoran Farm, for sticking to what they promised. The company had vowed to maintain the working farm on the property, tuck the homesites away so they are not visible from the road, and, most importantly, keep 80% of the 2,300 acres undeveloped and in conservation easements. These principles are key to a growing movement called New Ruralism that is starting to gain ground. Qroe has been involved in this type of development for more than a decade, with four preservation developments completed in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, each with more than 80% of its acreage preserved in open space. Bundoran Farm is the first outside of New England.

Qroe has a terrific vision for preserving rural land. The company is committed to bringing together three diverse groups often locked in combat -- conservationists, farmers, and homeowners -- in innovative development projects that satisfy everyone's objectives.

We live in Loudoun County, Virginia, a once-rural area that has morphed in a short decade into a poster child for development run amok. Located an hour outside of Washington, DC, Loudoun was long-renowned for pastoral beauty, historic towns, and gracious farms -- all but destroyed in the 1990s when a high-speed freeway opened to connect farm and city. Suddenly, developers were everywhere. A huge chute opened, littering subdivisions, malls, SUVs and minivans all over Loudoun, rendering it for years running the nation's fastest-growing county. Loudoun quickly transformed from rural to "exurban," a term that sounds as hideous as what it describes. Build it and build it some more, and they will come. And they did.

That is, until lately. With rising gas prices and the "economic downturn," Loudoun is no longer looking so fetching as a place to either make money or live. If a long-distance commute becomes truly unaffordable, this bedroom community is going to be a landfill for empty bedrooms.

It's too late for Loudoun County. But perhaps in our new reality-checked America, more companies will emerge with a long-term vision like Qroe Farm's -- to conserve the land and nurture an area's rural heritage rather than simply get in, get rich, and get out.

Leesburg in Loudoun County, VA / photo by Tim Dillon, USA Today

A Prefab Currier at Bundoran Farm

The Daily Progress/Andrew Shurtleff

A prefab Currier, which is a design from the Simple Farmhouse Portfolio, is the first house to be built at the Bundoran Farm preservation development near Charlottesville. In this article from the Daily Progress, Brian McNeill writes about the Bundoran project, the Currier design, the prefab process, the builder group, the development company, and much more. The Currier is the design that has become Russell's iconic house. It is based on a custom home built in Waterford, Virginia, that Russell designed in the mid-1990s. We continue to hear from people who saw the house in a magazine a decade ago and have never forgotten it.

The custom home in Waterford on which the Currier is based

We have added a new blog feature: a list of links to recent online articles that are piquing our interest. We scan online media regularly to monitor trends in the housing industry and ensure that we are taking the practice in the right direction for changing times.

Beautiful Brick

Here is the brick to be used for the foundation and chimney of the tidewater cottage. It's a Cushwa handmade brick called Old Savannah. With lovely variation in texture, contour, and color, the bricks look as if they were salvaged from an old building.

Cushwa is the artisan line from Redland Brick, a company that also makes machine-moulded bricks and brick pavers at their other plants. Since 1872 the Cushwa plant has been handmaking bricks the same way: by pressing clay into sand-coated wooden moulds, then removing the bricks to be fired in a kiln. The colors of the finished bricks range from orange to black, depending on how close they are placed to the fire in the kiln.

Handmade new brick is a great choice for a new old house, but, like salvaged brick, it's an expensive one. Fortunately, there are brick products at all different levels of cost and quality for giving a house an authentically old look. Russell has spec'd Boral Thin Brick , a 3/4" thick brick facing made of concrete, in several Simple Farmhouse Portfolio designs.

The Chandler Farmhouse

At the Homestead Preserve in Warm Springs, Virginia, the Chandler is being built on a site with a drop-dead gorgeous view of the Blue Ridge mountains.

The side and back of the Chandler at the Homestead Preserve

Wouldn't this be a great spot to sit and watch the hawks ride the air currents as they fly south?

Reconfigured for the hillside setting, the Chandler now has a walk-out basement


Chandler front elevation as originally designed for flat land

The Homestead Preserve is a conservation development in a tiny hamlet close to the Homestead Resort in White Sulphur Springs, Virginia. The developers, Celebration Associates, acquired a tract of 11,500 acres of pristine land. Their first act was to transfer 9,250 of them to the Nature Conservancy for protection in perpetuity, and later, to donate conservation easements for an additional 935 acres to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation.

Homes are being built on just 325 acres of the Homestead Preserve. Residents enjoy privileges at the 200-year-old Homestead Resort, including golf, tennis, cultural and social events, and spas such as the Jefferson Pools in Warm Springs -- where a certain weary ex-President traveled in 1818 to take the waters in the Gentleman's Spa.

Like the tidewater cottage in Halfway, the new house at the Homestead Preserve was built from a factory-fabricated kit of parts crafted in Vermont by Connor Homes and delivered by truck to Warm Springs for assembly by a crew from Ilex Construction.

More "Roots of Home" Endorsements

Katrina Cottage

We have received additional endorsements for the new book, which will be on bookstore shelves on October 14th. We are grateful to author and interior designer Alexandra Stoddard, architect and Katrina Cottage designer Marianne Cusato, National Trust President Richard Moe, and Charleston interior designer Amelia Handegan as well as to a number of earlier contributors for taking time from extremely busy schedules to review the galleys and offer comments. All of the endorsements are posted on the online media site for Roots of Home.

HABS and Historic Precedents

Russell's new book is titled Roots of Home, which is how he refers to the particular mix of culture and customs that shaped an area's classic home styles. The first settlers in a region took building traditions they knew from where they came from and adapted them to the climate, resources, and landscape in the new place. Through the years the styles of the houses evolved with new migrations and cultural influences, and they are still changing today as they're modified to fit how we live in the 21st century.

To plan a new old house, we begin by researching the native-grown homestyles of the place in which the house will be built. In our office at Russell Versaci Architecture we have an extensive architectural library with more than 1000 volumes; many are antiquarian and most are out of print. On the shelves are hundreds of books with old drawings and photographs of houses that serve as a great resource for researching vernacular traditions.

Although we feel fortunate to have this extensive architectural library on site, we also rely on another resource -- one that's available to anyone with a computer. The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) is a huge electronic archive of drawings and photographs of early American architecture that is free and easy to search on the Library of Congress website. (For the story of HABS, read Russell's column titled Picturing Home, which appeared in the summer issue of New Old House magazine.)

All this information serves to introduce the drawing at the top of the post. It is a HABS drawing of a house that served as a historic precedent and design inspiration for the prefab tidewater cottage. The house was called Maidstone, and its record states that it was located in the vicinity of Owings in Calvert County, Maryland. Beyond that little bit of information, we don't know anything else about the house, like whether or not it still exists. Many of the houses in HABS are no longer standing. The project was begun during the WPA years to document in photographs and measured drawings the early architecture of our country before it fell to ruins or was bulldozed to make way for the march of progress.

A Prefab House Takes Shape

Outside Middleburg, the factory-fabricated cottage is looking very much like its rendering. On the second floor, the dormers now have their windows, and the roof has been covered with asphalt felt paper.

Clapboard siding and trim moulding are being applied, and the house is partially covered in GreenGuard Housewrap. The Marvin windows are double-hung with simulated true-divided light. The hipped style of the dormer was common in early Virginia and can be seen on houses in colonial Williamsburg.

Renewable Energy from the Pond

Geothermal energy from the pond
will be used to heat and cool the house

Aided by a week of near-perfect weather, the prefab Tidewater Cottage is quickly taking shape. As you can see from the photo, it's becoming easy to imagine the finished house nestled among the trees above the pond.

Although the pondside location is idyllic indeed, the decision to site the house there was more than just an aesthetic one. The pond will be used for a geothermal heating and cooling system that will save on energy costs and reduce pollution compared to a traditional HVAC system.

Eight feet below the surface of the pond the temperature remains a steady 55 degrees year round. The geothermal system will pump water through a system of looped coils on the pond bottom to extract heat energy to be sent to the house to provide heating in winter and cooling in summer. The system is being supplied by Mark Campbell of Renewable Energy Solutions in Rixeyville, Virginia.

Of course, it's still a lovely place to put the house.

Endorsements for "Roots of Home"

James Pitot House, 1799, New Orleans, LA,
from Roots of Home/photo by Erik Kvalsvik

In the past several weeks we have been delighted and honored to receive some wonderful endorsements for Russell's upcoming book, Roots of Home. Quotes have come in from architects Allan Greenberg and Robert A.M. Stern, Barbara Sallick of Waterworks, National Building Museum director Chase Rynd, interior designer Thomas Jayne, Thomas Gordon Smith and Bill Westfall of the Notre Dame University School of Architecture, British architect and INTBAU founder Robert Adam, Institute of Classical Architecture president Paul Gunther, and Lizz Plater-Zyberk of DPZ. The quotes are posted on our online media site here, along with lots more information on the new book, which will be published in October.

Halfway in Halfway

Floor deck with waterproofing on foundation

Insulated precast concrete foundation panels and floor joists

1st-floor wall panels and 2nd-floor gable ends

Here are progress photos of the factory-fabricated Tidewater Cottage being built on a farm in Halfway, Virginia, named such because it is situated halfway between Middleburg and The Plains. The construction crew from University Homes was impeded by several days of rain and record-breaking heat and humidity, but the weather has stabilized now, and things are going quickly.

It's the first time this crew has built a prefab house. The four framers are experienced, and, while the process isn't difficult for them, it does require a shift in mindset. Working with factory-fabricated parts means assembling from instructions rather than cutting the parts themselves.

The folks in the factory at Connor Homes have marked the house parts clearly, bundled them sequentially, and provided clear instructions. Once the crew finds the needed parts, assembly is quick and easy.

A Precast Foundation

The precast concrete foundation for the Tidewater Cottage arrived and was installed in just three hours. The first photo shows the assembled foundation, which was manufactured by Superior Walls. You can see the chimney, basement window, and just about make out the ledges and ties that will help support the handmade brick veneer.

The second photo shows the crushed-stone bed awaiting the foundation. The manufacturer uses crushed stone for the footing rather than poured concrete because it's faster and easier to install and more flexible. We will be adding a liquid applied asphalt membrane to waterproof the foundation.

The Upside of the Recession

In the recent Boston Globe article Rooting for a Recession, writer Renee Loth noted that the recession is having a curious upside. Having had to reign in their driving and spending habits, people are finding that a simpler life can be a satisfying life. With more time on their hands, they're living greener, gardening, spending more time with family and friends, taking up hobbies, and discovering new meaning in life beyond the mall.

Of course, marketing opportunity knocks even in a recession. While sales of SUVs and trophy homes are flat, other products that speak to a culture turning its back on conspicuous consumption are doing well. Such as Christopher Peacock kitchens like the one shown at left, as noted in Top-Shelf Kitchens by Penelope Green in the Providence Journal. And the $125 can of paint observed by trend-spotter Faith Popcorn (who introduced the word "cocooning" into our lexicon):

“How can $125 for 2/3 of a gallon of paint speak to anyone but the super-rich in this cool-not-to-consume economy? Because while conspicuous consumption is definitely out, consumption that expresses timeless values – concern for the environment, a sense of history, genuine craftsmanship, “authentic” materials and design – is still definitely in. Consumers at all income levels are still willing to pay a premium and forego other purchases to participate in these brands that include a sense of security along with their high price tag.”

Obviously, the recession will have disastrous effect on people whose livelihoods depend on failing industries and unsustainable practices. But for people who can afford high-end products, the desire for products made with a concern for the environment, historical sense, craftsmanship, and authentic materials and design is a promising trend.

Tidewater Cottage

This drawing shows the side elevation of the English tidewater vernacular-style cottage to be built near Middleburg. The front elevation is shown in the previous post. The house, which will be a caretakers' cottage, is to be built from a knocked-down kit of parts.

The sloping roof on the front and back of the main section of the house is called a catslide, and it was a signature feature of the Chesapeake Bay English tidewater cottage style.

The earliest versions of these cottages were one room deep, with steep roofs and gable ends. By extending the overhang of the roof in the rear, the cottage could be enlarged with additional bedrooms; the ensuing variation was called a catside. Later, the roof in the front was extended in the same way to shelter an outdoor living space called a porch. By the 18th century, homes all over the South had begun to sprout porches, galeries, verandas, and piazzas to help people cope with the sultry southern summers.

Home Delivery

In the past year we have begun working with Connor Homes in Middlebury, Vermont, to have houses fabricated and delivered flat by truck to the client's home site. Russell sees great potential in prefab and modular technologies to make good traditional design more affordable. He has written about the topic in two Architect's Principles columns in New Old House magazine, House in a Box in the Winter 2007 issue and Pennywise in Winter 2008.

We have two fabricated houses being built in Virginia at present, one at the Homestead Preserve in Warm Springs and one at Bundoran Farm near Charlottesville; both are designs from Russell's Simple Farmhouse Portfolio. A third is a custom design for a client that we expect to be delivered this week. We are especially excited about this one, since we'll be able to see the process at every stage from delivery to finished home.

The design is for a caretaker's cottage to be built on a Middleburg horse farm, and it's styled after the English tidewater cottages of colonial Maryland and Virginia. Tidewater cottages were timberframed and weatherboarded, with low brick foundations, double chimneys, and front porches. The front porch was new to the English colonies in the mid-18th-century, and it expanded the living area and served a social function as a place to chat with passers-by and greet visitors.

The design for the house in Middleburg is an amalgam of Russell's design and designs done by Rob Hale for the Simple Farmhouse Portfolio Tidewater Collection. Rob is the project architect on this house.

We'll photograph the house in its various stages and post photos here. Watch this space...

Wall Street Journal

Today the Wall Street Journal ran the article Selling History by the Square Foot, in which writer Christina Lewis noted a number of new communities with historic-style houses. Russell is quoted in the article, as is our friend Joe Barnes, Development Director at Bundoran Farm near Charlottesville, Virginia, where the first house will be the Currier from Russell's Simple Farmhouse Portfolio. Other communities mentioned include Brook in Waterland, a small development in New York State with 17th-century Dutch-style houses; Serenbe, a large community in Georgia with housing options ranging from loft spaces and townhomes in villages to cottages and estates edged by open space; and Phelps Settlement and Avery Lane Settlement in Connecticut, both of which feature traditional New England-style houses from Classic Colonial Homes of Deerfield, Massachusetts.

Marianne Cusato, "Get Your House Right"

This may be the best handbook on traditional design published since the 1920s, informative for both layman and professional alike. If you wonder what makes today's so-called "traditional" houses look so ugly, Marianne Cusato provides answers in a guidebook that walks you through "how things go wrong" (avoid) and "how to do it right" (use). In meticulously-drawn illustrations, she charts the course of design from first concepts to fine details, providing pearls of wisdom on things that can make or break the authenticity of a home design. Notations accompany each drawing, describing essential building elements and how they go together. Never before have I seen a more comprehensive or practical guide through the minefield of traditional design. Clear, insightful directions make Get Your House Right the perfect learning tool for builders at all levels, whether novices or those needing a refresher course. This book should become the primary text to teach architects the fundamental building blocks of the classical tradition.

Roots of Home

The final cover design for my new book, Roots of Home, arrived from Taunton Press. The photo was taken at the Tillman house, a new old house designed by Ron Arnoult in Louisiana. It was shot by Erik Kvalsvik, who took the photos for Roots of Home as well as for Creating a New Old House. Between the two books, Erik and I logged a lot of miles together traveling across the country photographing new old houses. Fourteen-hour days, the uncertainties of weather, and the stresses of travel made for some hard times, but our shared love of red wine, old books, and vintage clothes made it bearable.