Illustrated
Glossary
By Peter Barr
Selected
Architecture Terms
From Top to Bottom:
Towers
Dormers
Roofs
Eaves
Cornices
Walls
Windows
Porticos
Columns
Towers
Towering
above many Italianate, Octagon and Queen Anne homes are campaniles
and cupolas. Campanile is a term used in Italian
to describe a church
bell tower and it typically rises up from the ground level.
Top
 A cupola is
a tower that rises from the roof level and is sometimes referred
to as a belvedere (literally meaning a good view). Both afforded
light and ventilation to the house.
Top Dormers
 Dormer
is the name of a window set vertically into a sloping roof. Its
name derives from the French
word meaning “to sleep” because
these windows most often provided light and air to attic-level bedrooms.
Dormers come in a variety of styles associated with roof shapes,
including gabled dormers (shown here), which are the most common, hipped dormers
(as found
on the Bowen House at 320 Dennis Street) and shed dormers (associated
with Craftsman and Colonial Revival style homes, such as
796 West Maple Ave).
Top Roofs
The
shape of a structure’s roof can sometimes help you to
identify the home’s style:
 Gambrel roofs
are the distinctive feature of Dutch Revival buildings. They
were originally found on 17th-century
Dutch and English colonial
homes.
Now associated with barn roofs, these roofs have two separate
raking slopes that break near the ridgeline to create a profile
that resembles
the section of a bell.
 Hipped roofs have four uniformly pitched sides. On a square home a hipped
roof will resemble a pyramid.
 The
key feature of Second-Empire style buildings, Mansard roofs
are hipped roofs that are nearly flat on top and steeply sloped
on the sides, generally
covering the entire
height of the
top story to a building. The steeply sloping sides can
be straight, concave
or convex. It was named after the seventeenth-century
French architect Francois Mansart, who first popularized the
form.
 Gable or pediment roofs
create two triangular areas on the short sides of a rectangular
structure. Triangular pediments
are also
used as decorative
elements above doors, windows, fireplaces, etc. Greek Revival
homes often have gable roofs with broken pediments,
open at the bottom.
 Queen
Anne-style roofs combine hips and gables. This combination
roof alone qualifies a home as Queen Anne.
Top Eaves
Eaves are the lower edge of the roof that projects beyond the wall underneath.
 Rafter
tails are the exposed ends of the parallel beams that support the
roof. They are typically found
on Craftsman-style
homes and
porches.
 Verge
boards, also called bargeboards or gingerbread
trim, are often
ornately carved or pierced boards that are fixed
to the
projecting edge of a gable roof. Decorative verge
boards are one of the key
features of Gothic Revival and Queen Anne homes.
Top Cornices
In classical
architecture, the ornamental molding at the top of a wall, typically
under the eaves, is divided into
three parts:
the architrave
below, the frieze in the middle and the cornice above.
Informally, however, the term cornice is
used to describe all three of these
moldings.
Brackets and
beams are projecting supports found under eaves,
windows and shelves. These
may be structural but are more
often
merely decorative.
Brackets
are especially prominent on Italianate buildings.
Beams are one of the key features of Crafsman-style homes.
Beam
Bracket
 A corbel is
an overlapping arrangement of bricks or stones in which each
course extends farther out from the
wall than
the course below.
 Dentils are
small blocks used in a series. Their name derives from the fact
that they resemble teeth.
They
traditionally appear below
Ionic or Corinthian cornices.
 A frieze is
a broad horizontal band along the top of wall that, on an Ionic
and Corinthian
temple,
was covered
with
relief
carvings. Most American friezes are plain—without
relief sculpture. These plain friezes play
a prominent role on Greek Revival homes.
 A knee brace is a triangular shaped, decorative support under the eaves of a craftsman-style or bungalow home.
Top Walls
The
treatment of exterior walls of buildings provides clues to the
building’s style. Some of the vocabulary
associated with wall treatments includes the
following:
 The
term battered describes a sloping wall, which is typically found
on the foundations of Romanesque
and Craftsman
style structures.
 A belt
course (also called a stringcourse or band course) is a continuous
row or layer of
stones,
tile, brick,
etc, that
runs horizontally
along the face of a building.
 Board
and batten, associated with Gothic Revival architecture, is a type
of siding
consisting
of wide boards set vertically.
Joints between
the boards are covered by narrow strips
of wood called battens.
 Concrete Block became popular after 1900, when Harmon Palmer patented the first cast-iron hollow block machine. His invention allowed two men to produce eighty to one hundred fire-resistent, low-maintenance, low-cost (compared to stone) blocks in a day. Until the 1930s, the most popular face designs were rock face (shown here) and panel face.
 Clapboard,
pronounced “kla-berd,” also
called beveled siding, is a weather-tight outer wall surface
on wooden buildings. It is created
by overlapping thin boards horizontally.
 Half
timbering is a construction or decoration method in
which vertical, horizontal
and diagonal timbers make up
the frame
of the
wall. These timbers
are then filled with lath and plaster
(nogging), sticks and mud or clay
(wattle and daub),
stone, or brick.
It is associated
with the
Queen Anne, Craftsman and Tudor
styles.
Shingles are
thin pieces of wood or other material laid in overlapping rows
and
used to cover
the roof or wall
of a
house. They first
became a popular wall treatment
in the early 1880s. Rough-cut cedar
shingles are associated with Shingle Style and Colonial Revival
architecture.
Machine-cut shingles
were often arranged
on Queen Anne buildings
in a variety of ways, including
diamond, octagon, and fish-scale patterns.
Rough-cut
Hexagon-cut
Fish-scale-cut
Top Windows
The
shapes and sizes of original windows often provide clues to
the style and
age of a building:
 Windows
and doors in non-residential Gothic Revival structures are
occasionally set
within pointed
arches, which
are sometimes referred
to as lancets.
They rarely appear in residential
buildings in Adrian.
 Greek
Revival homes in Adrian are easily spotted by the small
frieze
windows set
into the broad decorative
frieze
board
that runs along
the top of the exterior
wall of the house.
 Italianate
windows are typically much
taller and thinner proportionally
than
Greek Revival
windows,
resembling
the shape of a door.
In fancier homes, these tall,
thin windows are often crowned
by
window heads that help to shed water away
from the window opening.
 Palladian
windows, named after the 16th-century Renaissance
architect Andrea Palladio,
have a tall, central,
arched window flanked
by shorter rectangular
windows. They
rarely appear on buildings
in Adrian until after
the 1893 Columbian
Exposition.
 Tall,
thin, half-round arch windows first appear
in Adrian on Italianate
structures,
such as
the Hart-Cavallero
House, at 430
Dennis St, built
in 1856. At the turn
of the century, squatter, half-round
arch windows
and doors began
to appear on Romanesque
Revival and
Shingle-Style structures,
such as the Bowen House,
320 Dennis
Street,
built
in
1897.
Top Porticos
 A portico
is an entrance porch usually with columns
and a
roof that frames
the front
door of a house.
Rectilinear transom
windows, which
sit above a door, are more
typical of a Greek Revival
doorway. Colonial
Revival
buildings
often have
fanlights, which
are semicircular or
semi-elliptical transom
windows—usually
with glazing bars radiating
out like a fan. Sidelights are stationary windows
that flank a door.
Top Columns
A column
is a supporting pillar consisting of a
base, a cylindrical
shaft, and
a capital, which
is the
head or
top of a column.
Columns have played
a prominent roll in a number of American
architectural styles
since the late eighteenth
century. Most of the
traditional column styles
can
be distinguished
by their
capitals.
 Colossal columns stand more than one story
high. They are closely associated with Renaissance-revival and Neo-Classical style architecture.
 The
Corinthian order, named for the Greek city
of Corinth, is
the youngest
of the
three Greek
architecture
styles—and
was the favorite
of the ancient Romans.
It features
an elaborate capital
that is decorated
all the
way around — traditionally
with stylized representations
of acanthus leaves.
 The
Doric order is the
oldest and plainest of
the three
Greek styles
of architecture
and is
named
for the region
of Greece
once inhabited
by the Dorians. It
features a plain, saucer-like
capital and
traditionally
has no base.
 The
Ionic order is named after the region
of Greece
inhabited
by the
Ionians in ancient times. It
features a capital
with turning elements
called volutes that
resemble rams’ horns.
 Romanesque columns do not follow a set
order.
Frequently,
however,
many
feature
cushion
capitals that resemble
large pillows.
 An engaged column is a decorative half column attached to a wall as decoration, as shown here. When an engaged column is square in section, it is called a pilaster.
 Square
columns are more properly called posts.
Many Craftsman
and Bungalow
homes have tapered
porch
posts.
 The
Tuscan order, named for the Tuscany region
of Italy,
is basically
a simplified
Doric
order with
an added
base and plain,
unfluted, column shaft.
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