The extent of the practice of Henry Austin, and the variety of the problems he met, are such that he may justly be regarded as a typical New England architect of his time. His ready acceptance and flexible handling of the Italian villa style are of some interest in relation to the larger problems of style and taste in mid-nineteenth-century America. Austin became an enthusiastic proponent of the style shortly after he opened his own office in 1837. How did it happen that both architect and client in the mid-forties favored the irregular, coarsely detailed forms from Tuscany? How was this picturesque approach to design handled by individual architects? It was of course another imported fashion like the Greek and Gothic, but for several decades it was more important in domestic work than either of these styles. On what did our architects base these fanciful compositions? It is toward answering such questions that an examination of this phase of Henry Austin's career in relation to that of some of his fellow...