Learning how buildings learn

March 30, 2009 6:51 PM

I want to have a skill and the skill is this: when examining a building casually, I'd like to be able to tell, within a span of about thirty years, when it was built (or altered).

It's just something I try to do to amuse myself. Obviously there's no way to date something precisely, but I can do pretty well by noticing whether there's "built-in everything" (a late '70s-'80s touch), a home intercom ('50s-'60s), or "nipple" type buzzers for servants (pre-50s).

What should I read, observe, or pay attention to in order to help with this? (Note that I'm an American walking around in American buildings, but I have my eyes open when I'm traveling too.)

posted by Countess Elena to society & culture (8 comments total)

I could be oversimplifying this but often buildings have a little plaque or indent into the brick near the bottom of the building that has the date that the building was erected on it. If it is a more significant building it may have the date it was built on a plaque somewhere obvious on the inside for those that are interested in that sort of thing.
Otherwise read up on architecture and interior design over the decades.
posted by who else at 6:59 PM on March 30

A Field Guide to American Houses is a good starting point for architectural styles.
posted by stefnet at 7:10 PM on March 30

Not houses, but a different kind of building: a typology of California freeway bridges, including how to identify eras.
posted by dreamyshade at 7:28 PM on March 30 [1 favorite has favorites]

Perhaps it's earlier than what you're interested in, but there's a great chapter in James Deetz's seminal In Small Things Forgotten that deals with 17th and 18th century architecture in New England.
posted by bubukaba at 7:34 PM on March 30

Seconding a Field Guide to American Houses. If you already do this to "amuse yourself", you'll love the book regardless.
posted by jeb at 7:39 PM on March 30

You don't say where you live in your profile, but if it's Oakland, CA, I have a class reader that does an amazing guided tour to downtown Oakland with some of these questions in mind, and some UC Berkeley classes to recommend to you.

My more general comment is that (you probably already know this, but) it's often a lot easier to date the general neighborhood, and then pick out exceptions to the rule.

You probably would get a lot out of an urban planning or cultural geography or "looking at cities" class that did field trips.
posted by salvia at 10:48 PM on March 30

(whoops, sorry. please keep the second, corrected comment)
posted by salvia at 10:48 PM on March 30

The FGtAH is great, probably just what you need, and of course there are scads of other books and sites on American architectural history. Basically, architecture is subject to fashion as well as technological change, so styles come and go over time as well as flourishing regionally. Knowing when this happened is rough enough for your "thirty years" window, but you can easily do better than that once you get the hang of it.
posted by dhartung at 11:52 PM on March 30