What Is The Most American Form Of Architecture?

This article has some photos, but apparently they’re no longer white.

Or was it just the larger ones, there’s a couple photos of those as well, they’re still white.

I never noticed the little colored ranches - just the big white ones. Curious. There is also a huge barn there used for activity center and such. I played a few. square dances there.

I would say that Prairie Style Architecture, developed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, is one of the quintessentially American styles.

Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same
There’s a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same

IMO, I immediately think of [Western false front architecture](https://Western false front architecture) that made the tiny towns of the western US look bigger and more prosperous from the street than they really were.

Where’s that from?

Prolly most familiar these days as the theme song to the Showtime series Weeds.

Ah. Don’t watch many shows. Thanks.

Thanks, @crowmanyclouds. I’ve gone all these years thinking that was Pete Seeger’s.

Late to the thread, but I’ll nominate the doublewide trailer – or manufactured housing in general – as the most American form of architecture. Cheap, factory-made, can park it anywhere your truck can carry it.

Googie is what came to my mind as well. That’s when your whole building looks like the sign in front of an old Las Vegas casino.

I believe the professional opinion tends to go with the Octagon House and the so-called Western False Front (the ludicrously high all-façade street fronts so common in “wild-west” movie backlots). (“So-called” because I can show you plenty of real ones just a couple of miles west of the Hudson.)

My aunt recently sold the split-level house she had been living in for half a century or so. It had 5 steps up to the front porch that led to the landing where you could go left and up to the main floor or down-right to the basement. That seems like a particularly American design.

Googie…as in Guggenheim? And, since it’s in the news recently, are Howard Johnson (HoJo’s) restaurants part of this architectural group?

HoJos Postcard

A raised ranch, in other words.

No, Googie as in Googies Coffee Shop. See the Wikipedia link in @MrDibble’s post that I quoted:

The term Googie comes from the now-defunct Googies Coffee Shop in Hollywood

No idea why one particular restaurant became the name for that entire architectural style, apart from them being an early adopter of that style.

And yeah, I would say HoJo’s certainly falls into that category.

Because it’s fun to say?