How To Learn About Architecture On Your Phone

In 1984, when Virginia Savage McAlester published the seminal AField Guide to American Houses, the text she wrote to fill a void became an instant classic adopted by realtors, builders, architects and schools, as well as Americans who wanted to know about their own homes’ architectural style and history.

“I wanted to identify the homes in my own neighborhood when we were working to become a historic district,” she recalls. “I went to the bookstore, expecting to find something like A Field Guide to Birds, but about houses. There were lots of books about mansions (like those in Newport and Manhattan’s Upper East Side) but nothing about the small and mid-sized homes that most Americans lived in. I wrote this book to understand my own early twentieth-century neighborhood – and to help others understand theirs.”

Her 2013 second edition updated the original survey, which had catalogued American houses up to 1940.

“By the year 2000, more than three-quarters of American houses had been built since 1940,” McAlester says. “How could I possibly have a Field Guide that did not include these?!? At the same time, preservationists were begging for more information on our wonderful mid-century modern houses that were now 50 years old and candidates for preservation and tax credits.

“So I expanded the guide to include houses built up to 2010, and added a section on the many intriguing ways houses are grouped into neighborhoods.”

The new version of the book was met with rapturous reviews that called it “magisterial” and dubbed McAlester “the Queen of Dallas Historic Preservation,” a term suggested by a fellow architectural historian, Stephen Fox of Houston.

But now, McAlester’s field guide is truly user-friendly for the 21st century, available in an e-book version.

“I had dreamed for many years about a truly portable version. Houses are everywhere we walk, drive and bike. Knopf (publisher of AField Guide to American Houses) said there was a new kind of e-book that would play on every platform—on phones, readers, computers, and tablets. They asked if I would like to work with them to redesign the book for that format. It was challenging but I am thrilled with the result. Every photo will enlarge to full-screen size. Small details can be examined. There is a great search function. And best of all, I can have the book with me wherever I go and whenever a question pops up. The e-book can work on its own, or be a great portable companion to the book.”

The e-book has all the popular features of the original, beginning with an extensive survey of Native American house types. In an inspired chapter entitled “Looking at American Houses,” she walks us through the subjects of style, form, structure and the neighborhoods in which American houses are grouped. Each house style is lavishly illustrated with line drawings showing identifying features, then with delightful photographs of real examples in real places. This is, without question, the most complete survey of our built environment, brick by brick. Putting it into a hand-held device is genius.

McAlester is refreshingly egalitarian; she does not value one house style or type over another, seeing them all as part of the rich tapestry of America’s big, small and medium-sized homes. She does not use the derogatory term “McMansion,” but she does include the style, calling it “Millennium Mansion.” She gives her full attention to pre-fab and modular houses and to green construction. She shows how the mobile home towed behind the family car before World War II grew into manufactured housing, first as a single- and then a double-wide.

McMansions and double-wides may not please architecture buffs, but they are American homes. For Virginia Savage McAlester, that is good enough.

This post first appeared on Forbes.com. To see the original, click here.