Driven by nostalgia, Colonial Revival homes are everywhere

Key takeaways

• Colonial Revival homes emerged in the late 1800s as Americans nostalgically reworked early colonial architecture into a new, hybrid style.
• Pattern books, railroads, and industrial-era technology made Colonial Revival houses possible, allowing for bigger windows, decorative details, and mix-and-match designs.
• Colonial Revival architecture still thrives today because the homes feel classic, durable and easy to maintain.
  

Less than 150 years after the United States became its own country, homebuyers, builders and designers found a lot to admire in the country’s colonial-era structures.

Patchworked across the colonies, these early homes and buildings were the work of immigrants who arrived in what they considered the new world until about 1820, imprinting themselves on the land. They were structures of survival and of heritage, with immigrants from the Netherlands building Dutch Colonials, French arrivals constructing French Colonials, Spanish newcomers building Spanish Colonials, and other colonists building Georgian- and Federal-style homes, for example.

By the 1880s, an interest in America’s early colonies led to a style called Colonial Revival architecture. Many of these homes share common features, such as white trim, bold front doors, matching windows, simple rooflines, and balanced designs. But it’s not always easy to spot one right away, said Michael Shafir, the director of architectural styles and classification for Homes.com.

The style draws on ideas from many sources, including early colonial, Victorian, and Gothic styles. “Colonial Revivals have the sort of classic, colonial style to the untrained eye,” Shafir said. “But to the trained eye, they’re just littered with random details from many, many different styles.”

He added that the main difference between Colonial Revival homes and true colonial homes is when they were built. “They were built by two very different groups of people at two very different points in time.”

The story of Colonial Revival popularity has some familiar elements, beginning with an architectural pattern book, in this case, A.J. Downing’s 1842 “Cottage Residences.”

Filled with examples and explainers on different houses, “Cottage Residences” afforded homeowners autonomy, Shafir explained, by giving them a menu of different types of cottages and their formulas. There were no formally trained architects in the U.S. when the book first came out, but carpenters and craftsmen could show potential clients the book and ask, “Well, which house would you like?”

“They are loosely based on original colonial building practices, but they incorporate a lot of different aesthetics and components from many different original colonial styles,” Shafir said. These were the Colonial Revivals, he continued, and while the homes weren’t Frankensteins per se, the style is “a hybridization of lots and lots of little details.”

In another typical move of the time, there was a heavily attended exposition, this time in Philadelphia. The city of brotherly love hosted the Centennial of 1876, celebrating 100 years of independence in the United States, and that’s often credited with the first stirrings of interest in American colonial heritage, Shafir said. Architects McKinney and White (because by this time, architecture existed as a profession) conducted a study of New England architecture, including its many original homes, which they displayed during the exposition.

People fixated on “the foundation of our nation, being proud of that identity, and reinterpreting symbolism from that period,” said Joanna McKnight, an eastern region architectural historian with Virginia’s Department of Historic Resources.

Enough time had passed for a suite of other architectural styles to blossom and fade — the Gothic Revivals, the Victorians and their many subsets — enough time so that 19th-century Americans felt disconnected from those original colonies, Shafir said.

You might see a faceted gambrel roof (associated with Dutch Colonials) paired with a hooded entryway (not something you would see in an original colonial home). While early colonists had severely limited materials and relied on straightforward building techniques from their home countries, these revivals had “infinite amounts more technology.” At the same time, railroad networks could “move resources and goods around the country at lightning speed.”

“These buildings may look romantic in the sense that they look quasi-classic, but don’t be fooled,” Shafir said. “They were built with technology and pattern books.”

If you look hard enough, you can see the technology in the details: multipaned, double-hung windows bigger than anything on an original colonial, molding that would’ve been impractical for a colonist trying to build a new life, and complex forms that were more stylish than practical.

There were still regional differences — you’ll find more clapboard-clad revivals up north and red brick revivals to the south — but advanced veneering techniques also meant 19th and 20th-century builders could construct something that looked like solid brick but cost less.

In McKnight's home of Richmond, Virginia, Colonial Revivals dominate the landscape, she said. Often, they’re straightforward one- and two-story brick examples with white columns and trim. Clay was a plentiful natural resource in the state, but it stood the test of time and is a “substantial material” that signaled “we’re wealthy, we are going to stand forever,” she said.

Many early revivals, in fact, were not designed by trained architects, Shafir pointed out. They were mostly very well-constructed by practiced builders following pattern-book instructions. That’s not really a problem, Shafir said.

Because they’re not as avant-garde as high-style experimentations, such as the International style, they’re often based on tried-and-true forms built to last. “This is not pushing any sort of architectural boundary,” he said. “It’s not evolutionary, it’s not transformative, it’s safe.”

Revivals also include the so-called Cape Cod cottage, he pointed out, which became an option approved by the Federal Housing Administration in its suite of post-war approvals aimed at quickly and cheaply expanding the country’s housing stock. The adaptable revival-style homes were easily equipped with resale-friendly garages, and their enduring popularity means revivals of some subtype or other span the U.S.

Although older colonial revivals petered out around 1955, there are still modern versions of the style.

“Colonial Revival persists today and is visible in the Garrison Colonial,” Shafir said, pointing to a muffin-topped cantilevered style that connects back to building techniques used in medieval fortresses.

“I think the American design psyche is nostalgic,” Shafir reflected. “People really identify with a sense of permanence and classicness … and these homes look classic and timeless.” Some of these older Colonial Revivals are also associated with old money, he added, layering an element of prestige atop the visual appeal.

“That’s why we’re still building this stuff,” he said. “Because it sells. People like it.”

And because the style is common, the building industry has folded itself around the demand, manufacturing products that homeowners might need to repair and update a Colonial Revival-style home. Although the quality of mass-produced shutters and brick veneer is far below the original materials used, their availability makes a revival home much easier to maintain than other custom houses, Shafir said.

Colonial revivals are just easy to live in, McKnight said. “They work in such a broad range of landscapes and environments that you see them everywhere,” she added. “I think it’s a very straightforward form and that’s why people love it.”