What Are America’s Most Iconic Homes?
According to the National Building Museum, these houses, more than most, have impacted the way we live
- By Megan Gambino
- Smithsonian.com, April 27, 2012
(Model by Studios Eichbaum + Arnold, 2008. Photo by Museum staff.)
The Turner-Ingersoll house, located in Salem, Massachusetts, has the distinction of being the oldest surviving 17th-century wooden mansion in New England. Built by John Turner, a sea captain, in 1668, the original structure contained just two rooms and one enormous central chimney. But three generations of Turners as well as Samuel Ingersoll, who purchased the home in 1782, funded several additions, expanding it into a 17-room, 8,000-square-foot mansion.
“This house is architecturally powerful, but it is drawing a lot of its emotional power through literary associations,” says Mellins. Writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, born just blocks away, was a cousin of Ingersoll’s daughter Susanna. He frequently visited the mansion said to be the inspiration of his 1851 novel The House of the Seven Gables. The book begins, “Halfway down a bystreet of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst.”
Now called the House of the Seven Gables, the mansion has dark-stained siding and small rectangular windows, but its most dominant—and replicated—feature is its gabled roof.
Comments (4)
Ah, the East coast bias. California's Sea Ranch influenced nothing. The Greene and Greene houses set the standard for the style that would be come a "California Craftsman" home. Individual G&G homes may be hard to put on the list, but they are neither less deserving nor less iconic than those on the list. Look only to the Robert R. Blacker house ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_R._Blacker_House ) or the Gamble house ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamble_House_(Pasadena,_California) ) for examples. Indeed, the Gamble house is a public museum, and one of the best examples of the style, form, methods, and techniques that would come to define West coast style for the next century beyond its construction. How many houses on this list can say the same? --Thom
Posted by Thomas on May 15,2012 | 01:18 AM
Agree with most on the list but Richard Morris Hunt's contributions with the Vanderbilt's "Biltmore" in Ashville, N.C. or "The Breakers" in Newport, R.I. can hardly be ignored. Probably America's first most influential but if not tragically passed-over architects Benjamin Latrobe's "Decatur House" in Washington, D.C. was home to many powerful early American lawmakers. Julia Morgan's "San Simeon" also known as Hearst Castle could also stand shoulder to shoulder with Vizcaya!
Posted by Marc Legris on May 10,2012 | 07:56 PM
Um, I think you missed Falling Water in the list, Arline.
Posted by PTBoat on May 7,2012 | 10:09 AM
I don't disagree that these homes are quite iconic and impressive, but I cannot fathom a list of iconic homes not including one of the Frank Lloyd Wright homes. Maybe not as old or as big, but certainly one of the, if not The most iconic of homes.
Posted by Arline Esposito on May 3,2012 | 06:12 PM