Curious Facts

Everything below is in the book — each one links straight to the page it comes from.

1. The publishers admit it is a scrapbook. The preface is disarming: the collection was "not so much intended to offer new and original studies, as to make a compilation from various published works" — an anthology of the age's house-plan literature. Read it in the book →
2. A whole cottage for about $750. The low-priced cottage is captioned "cost about $750.00" — every design in the book carries its 1880 price, which is what makes it a time capsule now. Read it in the book →
3. The cheap cottages have a stated audience. Three "cheap but at the same time tasty and convenient country cottages, for men of moderate means" — tasty being 1880's word for tasteful. Read it in the book →
4. One villa opens with a geometry lecture. "While it is true geometrically that a circle encloses the greatest amount of space with the least length of boundary, it is not true architecturally" — a warning against octagon-house logic. Read it in the book →
5. The chapel is built from its own hillside. The Wayside Sabbath-School Chapel below Nyack on the Hudson — 24 by 40 feet — is "built of brown stone, quarried from the neighboring hills," finished inside in oiled walnut and chestnut. Read it in the book →
6. A gable has a name. The double-house design shows "what is known as the Graham Gable" — pattern-book architecture, where even the gables come branded. Read it in the book →
7. Every page is also an advertisement. Design after design ends with its source and price — "One large quarto vol., 77 plates. Price, $10.00" — because the specimen book existed to sell Bicknell's full catalogue. Read it in the book →
8. The store front leads with its staircase. The city store design is "arranged with an important and conspicuous flight of stone stairs to the upper stories," picturesqueness being a commercial asset in 1880. Read it in the book →