A Victorian Housebuilder S Guide

Drawings, floor plans, elevations, specifications, and vintage cost estimates depict 20 distinctive Victorian structures, from cottages to mansions. Includes more than 580 black-and-white illustrations, reproduced from a rare 1869 catalog.

Although there are other books about renovating old houses, this is the first that prioritizes the identification and preservation of the historic, character-defining features of a house as a starting point in the process. That is the purpose of this book: to describe and illustrate a best-practices approach for updating historic homes for modern life in ways that do not attempt to turn an old house into a new one. The book also suggests many ways to save money in the process, without settling for cheap or inappropriate solutions. Scott Hanson is a historic-building preservation professional and has 40 years' experience rehabilitating historic houses. He has illustrated this authoritative book with hundreds of step-by-step photos, illustrations, charts, and decision-making guides. Interspersed throughout are photo essays of 13 restored historic houses representing a range of periods and architectural styles: Italianate, Victorian, Queen Anne, Federal, Colonial, Colonial Revival, Greek Revival, Ranch, Adobe, Craftsman, Shingle, and Rustic. With interior and exterior photography by David Clough, these multi-page features show what can be achieved when a historic home is renovated with a desire to preserve or restore as much historic character as possible.

How well have architects succeeded in building housing and what lessons can be learned from their triumphs and failures? The Housing Design Handbook will give you a complete understanding of what makes successful housing design. Through the analysis of work by Levitt Bernstein and a wide range of other UK practices, it illustrates good design principles and accumulates a wealth of knowledge in a readily accessible format for the first time. Written by a recognised authority in the field, the book provides: a range of cases to illustrate the way that different issues in the design of housing have been approached and with what degree of success a review of the place of housing as the most significant built form in the urban landscape an understanding of the importance of achieving a sense of place as the bedrock of social continuity a discussion of how flexibility might be achieved in order to accommodate future changes in housing need, if wholesale demolition and replacement is to be avoided more recent examples which explore why certain social groupings are more resistant to design innovation than others and why there has been such an architectural breakthrough in market led, higher density urban living. David Levitt examines the ideas behind the schemes and assesses how successful and sustainable those ideas have proved, making this an essential reference for professionals and students practicing and studying the design and commissioning of housing.

The Victorian suburbs that are such familiar elements of the British townscape were once building sites where armies of anonymous workmen converged to cover open land with streets of modest but comfortable houses. Despite their large scale and uniform appearance, most developments were built a few houses at a time by small firms operating on the narrowest of profit margins. Everyone on the building site had his place in the hierarchy of trades and the sequence of work, and each craftsman guarded his own tools and trade secrets, his only means of surviving in work that was dirty, strenuous and sometimes downright dangerous. In this lively investigation of the nineteenth-century building industry, Kit Wedd celebrates the achievement of the men who, plot by plot, translated surveyors' drawings and piles of bricks into streets of dwellings that are as desirable today as when they first appeared.

This book explores the rich domestic architectural heritage of Prince Edward Island with chapters on the interiors of 50 of the most interesting historic homes on the Island. The houses selected for the book include examples of every important architectural style, and range from the late 18th century to the late 20th. Included are such well-known houses as Beaconsfield and Fanningbank, the official residence of the lieutenant governor in Charlottetown. Other houses featured are drawn from every corner of the province. Each house is featured in a chapter with descriptive text and beautiful colour photographs taken for this book.

Philadelphia-based builder Owen Biddle was a major influence on later architects, thanks to this well-illustrated and much studied guide. One of the very first manuals of American architecture, this essential sourcebook offers authentic views of interior and exterior designs of buildings erected in the decades following the American Revolution. Reproduced from a rare 1805 edition, this handsome volume features 135 drawings. Its text and illustrated details depict typical building materials, styles, architectural ornamentation, and interior designs. A fascinating look at how public structures and private homes were designed, contracted, built, and embellished during the Federal period, this work is an essential reference for students, professionals, and all aficionados of architectural history.