Illustrated Architecture Dictionary ........... Styles of Architecture
American Foursquare Style
Alternate name: Prairie Box
1900-1920
Sometimes classified as a substyle of Prairie houses
Usual features:
- Simple box shape
- Symmetrical
- Two-and-a-half stories high
- Four-room floor plan
- Four rooms on each of two floors, arranged one on each corner with no through hallway
- Low-hipped roof with deep overhanging eaves
- Large central hipped dormer
- Front entry centered or off-center, a conspicuous focal point of the facade
- Usually has a front porch, which may turn the corner on one side
- One-story wings, porches, or carports are clearly subordinate to the principal two-story mass
- Double-hung sash windows common
- Most commonly built in frame and stuccoed frame, but they are also found in stone or brick.or concrete block, or wood siding
This was the earliest Prairie form
The Foursquare may be seen as a stripped-down version of a couple of late eighteenth- and mid-nineteenth-century forms, including the Georgian block and the square Italianate house.
The simplest Foursquares have two single windows on the second floor, while more elegant houses may have two double or triple windows, or even a third set of windows.
There may be a low, small dormer with a flat or pyramidal roof. As the style becomes more elaborate, the dormer arrangement moves from one or two to three sash within each of the dormers, and in some houses there may be dormers on all four sides of the main roof.
"Shirtwaist" Foursquares typically have a belt course below the windows of the second floor, separating the different materials used on the first and second floors (stone below and stucco above, for example).
The simple, square shape also made the Foursquare style especially practical for mail order house kits from Sears and other catalog companies.
Examples from Buffalo:
- Illustration above: Photo - 98 Tillinghast Place
- 222 Woodward Ave.
