500 Small Houses of the Twenties (Dover Architecture)

Too tiny to see properly without magnification

I love the plans in this book, but be aware that the pictures are very, very tiny. Even with a magnifying glass you can't read the measurements. Too bad! If there had been fewer plans and larger pictures, this book would have been a winner.

if you bought othe rooks that look like this, you will want this one too if you are erious about a smaller ouse. not so many fantasti photographs b ut house plans galore that you could actually live in that suit the environment (note shadeed windows on cover drawing. i designed my house from similar books and it stay comfortable 48 weeks out fo the year with no heating or or cooling costs.

LOVE it. I purchased this book from an Amazon seller about 6 years ago & I still look through it all of the time. The graphic pen illustrations, floor plans & descriptive info on each model are all excellent. There are a few photographs here & there, and a bit of information about building, and home decor of that time. It you love the 1920's, there is no way that you could not love this book. I have selected one of the homes in this book to have built in the not so distant furture

My girlfriend likes to watch HGTV where it seems all they want to do is bust out the "non-structural" walls of homes like these and make more space for granite counter tops and open kitchens during a renovation. We happen to live in a neighborhood full of small houses like these, and my girlfriend also laments every open house, where a second story is added to a bungalow so it can be flipped.faster or have the rent raised, Well, I personally have no problem with any of that because I like more room and space, and if the owner bought it they can do what they want with it. Why? Because this book gives me HOPE. Yes the plans are small. At the back of the book is an interesting chapter showing the more detailed blueprints and plans you could have bought from "The Service" if you lived in 1923. Guess what? With cad 3d software you can make your own detailed plans from any plan in this book! I'm hoping to connect with a local architect and see if there really are any material/building issues with attempting this substituting modern materials, such as double paned windows and non-lead paint. BTW, all the houses made from plans in this book can be constructed out of standard masonry blocks (the kind you reinforce with rebar and fill with concrete) which in this book is called "hollow building tile," and then given a stucco, brick, or wood facade. Curiously I'm wondering if the "6 room colonial" model home built in Larchmont Gardens NY is still standing. I'm excited to see it on Google maps if it is...

Just wish plan pictures were clearer. Very interesting to look at plans from 100 years ago. Descriptions of plans are a good read.

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If you love architectural history, this is a great book. House plans are small, but apply today if couples want to downsize. The author provides facts on home kits of period. If you look hard enough, you'll find many of these homes still exist.

This is not the best of house plan books. It has a few pluses and a lot of negatives in my estimation.This book has a lot of beautiful sketch images of what the artists felt the prospective houses would look like if you want to look at the pictures of house exterior sketches this book might be to your tastes.Unfortunately when it comes to the actual floor plan diagrams they leave much to be desired.The floor plans that won the contest this book is publishing plans from were photographically copied from the blue prints and as you can see by one of the photos I took and so are hard to read as the plans are filled in black with white writing.I wish I could say that the book improved as it went along, but, although the non winner floor plans are easier to see as is shown in the other pics they still leave a lot to be desired.Some of the plans are so tiny as to be nearly impossible to look at the floor plan diagrams without a magnifying glass and I do mean the plan pics I’m not referring to the room specs lettering which in those small pics is virtually impossible to read even magnified. Those with the smallest poorest reproduction size are awful and unreadable.Luckily most of the plans in the book are like shown the pic with the easiest to see floor plan where you can see the layout fairly well. Unfortunately even in most of the best of the plans in this book you will need a high powered magnifying glass to make out what the room specs are as the specs are because they are printed so tiny that unless you have a magnifier you can barely read them (they are worse then legal fine print in legal contracts with regards to specs readability).A few of the houses were reproduced large enough to see the specs but the print even on those is very very small and not the easiest to read under normal room lighting.If I rated solely on the plans I’d give it a 1 star or no stars or not review at all. As a plan book it fails miserably.I gave it a 2 star review because the picture sketches/photos of the exteriors are gorgeous.If this was a picture book and did not have any floor plans only the sketches it would have gotten 5 stars from me. The pictorial renderings of house exterior views is just that good.As it is, I give it 2 stars and warn that as a plan book it fails epically especially because the room sizes on the plans are virtually unreadable, but as a book of pictorial illustrations of old house exteriors it is a success.So to sum up if you want a picture book of exteriors this will suit you very well BUT if you want to view readable plans you may want to look elsewhere as the plans are rendered too small in size in this book to be of much use to you.

This is a great book for plans and looking at houses - perfect!!

明らかに何らかのカタログをそのまま転載したような体裁の本。「Ｓｍａｌｌ　Ｈｏｕｓｅｓ」と言うには少し規模が大きい物も掲載されているのでその点にも注意が必要。