Walk into a new housing development today, and you see the same house repeated 500 times.
They are beige. They are vinyl. They are “safe.”
Now, drive through a town built 100 years ago.
You see personality. You see geometry that makes you stop and stare.
Before efficiency and cookie-cutter blueprints took over, American architecture was experimental.
Builders weren’t afraid to put eight sides on a house. They weren’t afraid to use steel for walls. They built for the climate, for the lifestyle, and sometimes, just to show off.
We stopped building these homes because they were too hard, too expensive, or too weird for modern tastes.
But when you step inside one, you realize we lost something along the way.
Here are 15 forgotten American house styles that prove our ancestors had more imagination than we do.
1. The Sears Mail-Order Home
Imagine buying your house from a magazine.
Between 1908 and 1940, you could order a 30,000-piece house kit from the Sears catalog.
It arrived by train. It came with 750 pounds of nails, 27 gallons of paint, and an instruction manual.
Every board was numbered. You and your neighbors assembled it like giant LEGOs.
These weren’t flimsy shacks. They were built with old-growth lumber that is superior to anything you can buy at Home Depot today.
We stopped because building codes got complicated and mortgage rules changed. But thousands are still standing, defying age.
2. The Shotgun House
In the crowded streets of New Orleans, space was money.
The Shotgun house was the solution.
It is typically only 12 feet wide. One room leads directly into the next, with no hallway.
Open the front door and the back door, and a breeze shoots straight through the house—hence the name.
It was a brilliant, low-cost cooling system for the humid South.
We replaced them with sprawling ranch houses and AC units, trading community porches for privacy fences.
3. The Octagon House
If you see a house with eight sides, you are looking at a radical 1850s health craze.
Orson Fowler, a phrenologist, claimed that squares were “unnatural.”
He believed the octagon shape allowed for more sunlight, better airflow, and no dark, dusty corners where disease could hide.
It was a nightmare to frame. It was impossible to furnish.
But for a brief moment, it was the future of healthy living.
4. The Lustron Home
After WWII, we needed houses fast. The answer was steel.
The Lustron was a prefabricated house made of enameled steel panels.
It was delivered on a truck. You could clean the walls with a garden hose. You hung pictures with magnets.
They were rust-proof and termite-proof. But they were too expensive to manufacture, and the company went bust.
Today, finding one is like spotting a classic car in the wild.
5. The Queen Anne
Modern minimalism hates the Queen Anne.
Built between 1880 and 1910, these houses were a riot of excess.
They didn’t just have a roof; they had five different rooflines. They had towers, turrets, and stained glass.
They were built to show off the newfound wealth of the Industrial Revolution.
Today, we can’t afford the carpenters to build them.
6. The American Foursquare
If the Queen Anne was a show-off, the Foursquare was a soldier.
Appearing around 1890, this was the ultimate efficient family machine.
It was a perfect cube. It maximized every inch of interior space on a small city lot.
Four rooms downstairs. Four rooms upstairs. No wasted hallways.
It was the Honda Civic of housing: reliable, unpretentious, and indestructible.
7. The A-Frame
In the 1960s, Americans wanted escape.
The A-Frame was the ultimate vacation machine.
It is exactly what it sounds like: a giant triangle.
The roof goes all the way to the ground. Snow slides right off. It is cheap to build and impossibly strong.
So why did we stop?
Try hanging a picture on a slanted wall. Try finding a kitchen cabinet that fits in a triangle.
They were great for a weekend, but terrible for a life.
8. The Atomic Ranch
In the 1950s, the future was bright.
The Atomic Ranch reflected the Space Age.
It turned its back to the street and opened up to the backyard with walls of glass.
It wasn’t about shelter. It was about “indoor-outdoor living” and cocktail parties by the kidney-bean-shaped pool.
It fell out of favor when energy prices spiked and those giant glass walls became giant heating bills.
9. The Second Empire
If a house looks like the Addams Family lives there, it’s probably Second Empire.
Popular during the Civil War era, these homes were built to intimidate.
The defining feature is the “Mansard” roof. It’s a roof that goes practically vertical.
This wasn’t just a style choice. It was a loophole.
By making the roof almost vertical, you created a full third story of living space that was technically an “attic.”
It was a tax-dodging mansion.
10. The Gothic Revival
Before we had suburbs, we had “Carpenter Gothic.”
In the mid-1800s, builders wanted wooden houses to look like stone European cathedrals.
They added pointed arched windows, steep gables, and incredibly intricate “gingerbread” trim cut with the newly invented scroll saw.
It was dramatic. It was moody.
It died out because painting all that intricate wooden trim every five years is a homeowner’s worst nightmare.
11. The Dutch Colonial
You know this house by its roof.
It looks like a barn. That “gambrel” roof wasn’t just for style.
It was a tax dodge.
In some areas, you were taxed on the number of stories. The gambrel roof allowed you to fit a full second floor of living space while legally calling it an “attic.”
12. The Tudor Revival
In the 1920s, stock market millionaires wanted to pretend they were English lords.
So they built “Stockbroker Tudors.”
These houses mimicked medieval cottages with steep roofs, massive chimneys, and decorative “half-timbering.”
They were drafty and expensive, but they sold a fantasy of old-world stability.
13. The California Bungalow
Before air conditioning, we had the Bungalow.
With its low rooflines and massive front porches, it was designed to merge the indoors with the outdoors.
You didn’t hide inside; you sat on the porch.
The exposed beams and natural wood weren’t unfinished. They were a rebellion against the stuffy Victorian parlors of the past.
14. The Prairie Style
Frank Lloyd Wright hated Victorian boxes.
He thought tall, skinny houses looked anxious. He wanted a house that looked calm.
So he created the Prairie Style.
These houses hug the ground. They have massive overhanging eaves and endless horizontal lines.
They were designed to blend into the flat Midwestern landscape.
They disappeared because they demanded craftsmanship we can no longer afford. Every brick and window was custom.
15. The Brutalist Residential
Concrete isn’t just for parking garages.
For a brief period in the 70s, architects fell in love with “raw concrete” (Béton brut).
These homes were fortresses. They were cold, imposing, and virtually indestructible.
People hated them. They looked like bunkers.
But they remain the purest expression of strength in American architecture.
Conclusion
We don’t build these anymore.
Codes are too strict. Labor is too high. Tastes have flattened.
But if you are lucky enough to own one, don’t update it to look like a modern flip.
Don’t paint the brick. Don’t cover the beams.
You are the custodian of an endangered species.
Keep it weird.