American Foursquare

A reaction to the ornate and mass-produced elements of the Victorian and other Revival styles popular throughout the last half of the 19th century, the American Foursquare was plain, often incorporating handcrafted "honest" woodwork (unless purchased from a mail-order catalog).

The hallmarks of the vernacular include a basically square, boxy design, two-and-one-half stories high, usually with four large, boxy rooms to a floor (with the exception of the attic floor, which typically has only one or two rooms), a center dormer, and a large front porch with wide stairs.

The boxy shape provides a maximum amount of interior room space, to use a small city lot to best advantage.

As with other styles in streetcar suburbs, it was tailored to relatively narrow lots, and was multi-story, allowing more square footage on a smaller footprint.

He in turn inspired other Prairie School architects, such as Walter Burley Griffin, to design similar Foursquares in the following decades.

Many examples are trimmed with tiled roofs, cornice-line brackets, or other details drawn from Craftsman, Italian Renaissance, or Mission architecture.