Archive
Deep dives into the history of buildings, architectural styles, and construction techniques across centuries.
Identifying the architectural style of a historic house starts with reading the building itself, not the décor, landscaping, or later additions. The most reliable clues are the overall shape, roofline, window pattern, entry treatment, materials, and decorative details. I learned this the hard way during my first year as an agent, standing in front of […]
Walk up to any house built before 1940, and the building will tell you its age—if you know where to look. Not in the real estate listing or the tax records, but in the pitch of the roof, the way the window sash divides the glass, the depth of the cornice shadow against the siding. […]
Walk through enough older houses and you stop seeing them as static objects. Instead, each one becomes a sequence of decisions made by different hands, often decades or centuries apart. A doorway that feels slightly too narrow for its room, a run of brickwork that changes colour halfway along a wall, floorboards that switch direction […]
I have walked through hundreds of period houses where the question hung silently in the air: is this one worth the fight? The answer rarely lies in a single feature or a convenient date on a plaque. It emerges from a slower, more careful reading of the building itself — its materials, its scars, its silences. […]
