PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

        I think that someday the whole world will be run by electrickery.

—Woody Guthrie (Folk Icon)

It isn’t often that an author has a chance to revise a book that has been in print for over twenty years. Happily, I have that opportunity here. The timing is propitious: Most of the house styles considered in my guide were popular for a generation—twenty to twenty-five years. So what has changed in the last twenty-five years?

If one peruses so-called shelter magazines, there is a plethora of commodious houses with “professional” chef kitchens, three car garages, and bathrooms that resemble spas with amazing accommodation for self-indulgence. There are now voluminous “great rooms” and “media rooms”—“smart homes” with electronic gadgetry unimagined by Edison or even Tesla a hundred years ago. Presumably, all of these components are incorporated into structures that accommodate the fantasies—or perceived necessities—of the aspiring homeowners. The culture of excess is still evident in America today.

But nothing is ever that simple. We have all become environmentally conscious and support a world of recycling and energy efficiency. Transfer stations have replaced the town dump in rural America. Many share an ongoing goal to get “off the grid” and aspire to LEED certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). This is the seal of approval for sustainable building practices. We drive more cars with plug-in capacity and have photovoltaic solar collectors on our houses. “Big Oil” is considered anathema to many and we aim to heat our houses with geothermal heat exchangers.

My hope expressed at the end of the first edition was that we would see more focus on regional styles that were unpretentious and understated. Indeed, the Pueblo style is still evident in the southwest. New England barns and vernacular farmhouses still serve as prototypes for many new houses and rustic mountain houses are popular—whether modest in scale or extravagant mansions. In this edition, I have added a twelfth chapter in which I will discuss contemporary regionalism in more detail.

I like to think that in my practice I followed my own advice. Ten years ago, my wife, Liddy, and I built our house in the Litchfield Hills of northwestern Connecticut. We named it Rathedon. I am often asked, “What style is it?” I tend to reply that I like to think that it simply “has style” rather than being an example of one or another particular style. This is consistent with my belief expressed on the last page of Chapter 11 that houses should “live comfortably with their surroundings, [be] courteous to their neighbors, and [be] deferential to the environment.” I am gratified whenever I see similar efforts around the country.

In our own project, we began with an articulated floor plan that takes advantage of our distant southern views and an interesting outcrop that we integrated into our garden. The southwesterly summer breezes are welcome while we enjoy our screened porch. The design is an amalgamation of three-dimensional forms that emerge from the logical organization of the floor plan. The character derives from familiar gabled shapes echoing regional vernacular structures.

The massing of the whole is an inevitable expression of the interior spaces, all secured visually to the site by the substantive chimney mass. The chimney is not unlike the great central chimneys of the early New England colonial houses. Thus, it is not idly that I reiterate my conviction that “there should always be a place in our communities for comfortable, livable houses that express the character of the region, the site, and the people who live in them.”

South Kent, CT

2018

An early sketch of Rathedon.

The ground floor has a screened porch, living room, family room, dining room, kitchen, office, bedroom, and mud room.

Rathedon as it appeared in 2017. This photograph was taken a decade after completion.

The second floor has three bedrooms and my studio/office above the living room.