Research > Guides > House History > Historic House Design

Historic House Design

Many new amateur house historians find determining their home's historic period and style to be a challenging task. You can usually find the date your house was built by looking it up in PortlandMaps or contacting the county assessment office, but figuring out what it might have looked like when it was new can be difficult! Once you've looked through a few guides to historic period, try looking at some of these resources to get a more detailed idea of how houses were designed and decorated in the past.

Websites
Floor plan books
"Shelter" magazines
Color scheme & design books

Websites

These websites showcase archives of house plans from mail-order home companies. They show exterior views of each house (some in color), floor plans, and prices. Since most mail-order house companies also sold a multitude of cabinetry, fancy trim, plumbing and lighting fixtures, and furniture, you can sometimes get an idea for popular interior design of the period as well.

Antique Home: http://www.antiquehome.org/

An extensive website showcasing images from house plan catalogs from many companies (including Portland's Fenner Manufacturing), drawings of interiors from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, information on vintage gardening and other helpful resources. Includes a nice bibliography of historic house design resources.
Aladdin Company Sales Catalogs: http://clarke.cmich.edu/aladdin/catdir.htm

House plan catalogs in digital format from the Aladdin Company, for the years 1908-1954. Many of the catalogs have color pictures. The site also includes a nice tutorial on researching the history of your own house. From the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University.
Gordon-Van Tine: http://gordonvantine.com/

A brief history of the Gordon-Van Tine company, with illustrations and modern-day photographs of houses they designed.
Images of Sears Homes: www.searsarchives.com/homes/byimage.htm

Pictures from the Sears Modern Homes catalogs from the years 1908-1940. Most images include a floor plan and description of the house, as well as an illustration of what it was designed to look like from the outside. From the Sears Archives.

Floor plan books

These books of floor plans contain designs and basic plans of homes from our recent past. Some feature local designs, while others are generic. Some show plans that were available cheaply from house plan services, some feature styles once available as kit homes, and others showcase architect-designed houses that can give you a sense for the details of period architectural style. The books in this list are arranged by date, with the oldest house plans listed first. They are only a sample of what the library owns — look for more in the library catalog!

Cirker, Blanche: Victorian House Designs in Authentic Full Color: 75 Plates From the "Scientific American-Architects and Builders Edition", 1885-1894

(1996)

Oversize 728.37 V645 1996
—: Turn-of-the-century Houses, Cottages, and Villas: Floor Plans and Line Illustrations of 118 Homes From Shoppell's Catalogs

(1983)

728.37 T942 1983

Reprints of catalogs from 1890 and 1900.
Stevenson, Katherine Cole: Houses by Mail: A Guide to Houses From Sears, Roebuck and Company

(c1986)

728.37 S847h

Describes how to identify homes that were mail-ordered from Sears from about 1900 to 1940.
Stickley, Gustav: Craftsman homes: [more than 40 plans for building classic arts & crafts-style cottages, cabins, and bungalows]

(2002)

728.37 S854c 2002

Reprints of plans originally published in 1909.
Von Holst, H. V.: Country and Suburban Homes of the Prairie School Period: With 424 Photographs and Floor Plans

(1982)

728.37 V946c 1982

Shows illustrations of houses from 1913.
—: Aladdin "Built in a Day" House Catalog, 1917

(1995)

728.37 A316 1995
—: Distinctive small homes

(no date)

Humanities South Stack Call Desk (Central Library) O- 728.37 D614

Plans for small, "practicable and inexpensive" houses available from Portland's L.R. Bailey Company, published in the 1920s.
Oregon Home Designers: Homes of Character

(no date)

Humanities South Stack Call Desk (Central Library) O- 728.6 O66

Small house plans from Portland's Oregon Home Designers, published in the 1920s.
—: Homecraft: A Handbook for Home Builders and Home Makers

(c1923)

Humanities South Stack Call Desk (Central Library) O-720.9795 H765

Illustrations of house plans from 1923.
Montgomery Ward: Wardway Homes, Bungalows, and Cottages, 1925

(c2004)

728.37 M788w 2004
Boland, Harry B.: Portland Homes: Illustrating Floor Plans and Exterior Views of Modern Homes

(1926)

Humanities South Stack Call Desk (Central Library) O-728.6 U58

Illustrations of house plans that were for sale in Portland in 1926.
Ford, James and Katherine Morrow Ford: Classic Modern Homes of the Thirties: 64 Designs by Neutra, Gropius, Breuer, Stone and Others

(1989)

728.37 F699c 1989

Photographs and floorplans of architect-designed houses, both modest and glamarous (including two designs by Portland's Pietro Belluschi). Most of these houses were built outside Portland, but they can give you a feel for the features of thirties-era modern design.
Sears, Roebuck and Company: Sears House Designs of the Thirties

(2003)

728.37 H768s 2003

A reproduction of the 1932 Sears catalog Homes of Today.
—: Does Your Home Need Renovizing?: Read How This 1880 House Had Its Face Lifted

(1934)

Humanities South Stack Call Desk (Central Library) O-720.9795 D653

Describes an 1880 Portland house renovated in about 1934.
Tedesco, Paul H.: Portable and Prefabricated Houses of the Thirties: The E.F. Hodgson Company 1935 and 1939 catalogs: An Unabridged reprint

(2007)

728.37 T256p 2007

In addition to reprints of the Hodgson Company's 1935 and 1939 catalogs, this book includes photographs, advertisements, and historical information about the company.
—: Sunset Western Ranch Houses

(1999)

728.6 S95

A reprint of a 1946 book with drawings, photographs, floorplans, and garden designs for dozens of modern ranch houses.
—: New Homes for Western Living

(1956)

728.6 S95n 1956

Photographs, drawings, and floorplans of houses originally profiled in Sunset magazine in the 1950s.
Creighton, Thomas Hawk and Katherine Morrow Ford: Contemporary Houses Evaluated by Their Owners

(1961)

728.6 C91c

Photographs and floorplans of more than 20 houses from the late 1950s and early 1960s, described by their occupants.

"Shelter" magazines

You can find out a lot about how your house might have looked when it was new by exploring contemporary house design resources. "Shelter" magazines (magazines that focus on interior decorating, gardening, architecture, and related subjects) from the period your house was built are great sources for information, especially if you are willing to browse through them carefully.

—: Better Homes and Gardens

(1925-present)

Periodicals Stack Call Desk (Central Library) — for 1925-1959

Periodicals Room (Central Library) — for 1960-present
—: House & Garden

(1904-2007)

Periodicals Stack Call Desk (Central Library) — for 1904-1944

Periodicals Room (Central Library) — for 1945-1993

Like a lot of magazines, House & Garden has changed its name over time. Issues from 1904-1993 were called House & Garden; from 1996-1997 it was called Conde Nast House & Garden, and then from 1998-2007 the name was House & Garden again.
—: House Beautiful

(1897-present)

Periodicals Stack Call Desk (Central Library) — for 1897-1944

Periodicals Room (Central Library) — for 1945-present
—: Old House Journal

(1975-present)

Periodicals Stack Call Desk (Central Library) — for 1975-2003

Periodicals Room (Central Library) — for 2004-present

Old House Journal is not a historical shelter magazine; instead it is devoted to the historically accurate renovation of American houses. The early issues focus more on 19th century houses, but as the magazine has matured it has come to include renovation and do-it-yourself advice and articles on the history of houses from the early 1800s through the 1960s.
—: Sunset

(1898-present)

Periodicals Stack Call Desk (Central Library) — for 1898-1949

Periodicals Room (Central Library) — for 1950-present

Sunset was one of the first magazines to celebrate ranch style houses, and their annual "Idea House" building project has generated dozens of creative and dynamic house designs.

Color scheme & design books

Several books have been written about the history of color design in the United States. Most focus on exterior color schemes, but some also discuss historic uses of interior color. Also, remember that the library's picture file (in the Art & Music Room on the third floor at Central Library) has many many files of pictures of house interiors, exteriors, and architectural details.

Burness, Tad 1933-: The Vintage House Book: Classic American Homes, 1880-1980

(c2003)

728.0973 B963v 2003

This book is more like a scrapbook than anything else: color and black-and-white photographs, reproductions of advertisements, catalogs, and newspaper articles are carefully arranged by date. Interiors, exteriors, floor plans, and building parts are all shown on nearly every page.
Moss, Roger W.: Century of Color: Exterior Decoration for American Buildings, 1820-1920

(1987)

729 M913c
Moss, Roger W., editor: Paint In America: The Colors Of Historic Buildings

(c1994)

698.14 P1474
Moss, Roger W., and Gail Caskey Winkler: Victorian Exterior Decoration: How To Paint Your Nineteenth-Century American House Historically

(1987)

729.4 M913v
Pomada, Elizabeth, and Michael Larsen: America's Painted Ladies: The Ultimate Celebration Of Our Victorians

(1992)

728.37 P784a
Pomada, Elizabeth, and Michael Larsen: Daughters Of Painted Ladies: America's Resplendent Victorians

(1987)

728.37 P784d
Schweitzer, Robert: Bungalow Colors: Exteriors

(2002)

728.373 S413b 2002