Vernacular Building and Victorian Architecture: Midwestern American Farm Homes

Abstract

Homes Art historians tend to treat only the large and ostentatious examples of Victorian architectural styles and relegate to limbo the more commonplace and simple structures of the vernacular tradition of American building. Cultural geographers have investigated aspects of the vernacular farm home, but they have concentrated upon external features of these structures in order to document the dissemination of various kinds of farm houses or analyze the evolution of a particular type of farm house in a given region. No study has been made that attempts a thorough treatment of the farm home as a distinctive and significant generic art form. Some urgency prompts the beginnings of such a study because of the disappearance of primary source materials. Because of urban growth, freeway construction, and large acreage agribusiness that absorbs the small family farm, many nineteenthcentury farm houses are gone from the rural landscape. The preservation of local and family history becomes more difficult with the passing of each generation and the dispersion of photographic and written documents that comprise family memorabilia. The nineteenth-century American farm home is a vanishing phenomenon that merits recognition and evaluation as a significant part of American architecture and culture.