Traditional Home Design & Garden Design Ideas
Historic preservation brought back our ability to see buildings, creating a voracious market for architectural detail. Nowadays, you can get anything you want.
This is our traditional architectural design section that focuses on the more decorative building elements such as historical roofing and fireplace mantels. Listings are sometimes selective; not every furnace manufacturer can be found here, because that goes beyond our historic preservation design scope. Some systems, though, offer practical or aesthetic advantages peculiar to old houses, so we include them: invisible cooling systems that are easily retrofitted, for example; or fireplace inserts; grilles, registers, and fans; and residential elevators.
You may prefer to browse first in the traditional home & garden design subcategories:
Doors/Windows/Garage Doors: architectural windows; specialty lines of major manufacturers; screen doors; carriage and garage doors; custom work
Millwork: turnings; columns and capitals; exterior wood ornament; mouldings and trim
Mantels/Staircases: stock
designs; see also Millwork
Heating and Cooling: specialties including UV-blocking window film, heat registers, and fans
Shutters: Exterior and interior wood shutters, louvered and solid panel, also cottage style with decorative cut-outs
Roofing & Siding: From clay tile, slate and terne to quarter-sawn clapboards and fancy-butt shingles, cladding for historic and fine homes
Architectural Salvage: well known players in the resale of vintage elements
Fences/Gates/Treillage: wood to iron, with trellises, pergolas
Garden Ornament: pots; fountains; statuary
Gazebos and Glass Houses: summer pavilions and conservatories
Pavers & Stone: natural materials suitable for garden, patio, and interiors
Repair Products: specialty items for old-house applications
Traditional Home and Garden Details could be subtitled Elements of Style, Available for Purchase. Historic preservation and the restoration movement have brought back our collective ability to really see and therefore appreciate buildings. Do you find yourself playing that wonderful game, where you look at an old building or a historic neighborhood and try to guess style and date You do it by reading architectural elements--knowing, for example, that round-top windows in bays and a bracketed cornice means Italianate, mid-19th century. This attention to detail, growing over the past thirty years, has created a voracious market for architectural elements.
Here we have an excellent collection of those permanent fixtures that are key to style: windows and doors, fireplace mantels, wood and plaster mouldings, staircases, exterior shutters. Included, too, are architectural garden details that round out the impression . . . from statuary and fountains to fences and trellises. All periods of American design are represented. For true authenticity, consider using the occasional part salvaged from a house of similar vintage. Some dealers specialize by period, others by type of element (columns, lighting, mantels, etc.).
Every architectural style is made up of components selected according to design principles. Taking a hodge-podge approach to the selection of architectural elements, on the other hand, will produce cacophony (or, at least, incoherent mumbling). Where do you begin? The house itself provides the best guidance. Look at existing elements, interior and exterior, for clues to style. Sometimes there is more than one theme; for example, a predominantly Arts and Crafts house may have Colonial Revival woodwork in the dining room. Go ahead and honor the original intention, but pick one dominant theme in any additions (or replacements) of major elements. When you stick with one architectural style, everything you add will look as though it's always been there.
Decorating and furnishing are ephemeral and can be more personal, eclectic, or mixed. But key elements, the entry door, porch parts, fireplaces, window trim throughout--are often part of the architecture, and will be difficult or expensive to replace in the future. These elements, as well as such architectural details as hardware, should speak the same language.
