The Old Neighborhood Part I

This is a typical American Foursquare house, which when built might have been referred to as a “colonial” only because of the Palladian window in its gable.  American Fourssquare houses (the name is modern) are both the result of tradition –  they derive in part from the simple American farmhouse – and reaction to the decorative and often over-wrought Queen Anne style and Stick Style designs of the last quarter of the 19th century. 

In this regard, the American Foursquare should be seen as defiantly modern, and actually as a precursor to even simple geometric houses of the interwar period.  The American Foursquare house developed especially between 1890 and remained popular into the 1920s. The Foursquare was a popular mail-order era style from mail-order house catalog companies such as Sears and Aladdin.