One of America’s oldest continuously occupied cities, Boston is made up of buildings constructed in many different ways over a period of more than three centuries. New architectural styles appeared while others became old-fashioned and died out, but sometimes buildings in different styles were built at the same time. Familiarize yourself with the styles of various periods and the city’s layers of history will explain themselves to you as you stroll through any Boston neighborhood. Unpainted post and beam construction. Buildings often have gables and overhanging first floors with decorative brackets or pendant ornaments; casement windows have diamond panes, doors have decorative patterns of nails. No public or commercial buildings in the style survive. Symmetrical facades of brick or painted clapboards display such classical details as dentils along the roof line, monumental pilasters or quoins at the corners. Doors are paneled with rows of glass panes alongside or above. Windows have double-hung sashes with 6, 9, or 12 panes of glass.

A lighter, more delicate version of the Georgian style, featuring attenuated classical columns or pilasters, fan lights over doors, Palladian windows, and flat facades divided horizontally by narrow stringcourses. The use of stylistic motifs from far away times and places, often applied to new building types using modern construction methods, to create buildings with romantic historical associations. Simpler, more robust and monumental than the Federal style, Greek Revival buildings were often constructed of Quincy granite or brick with granite details and featured Doric columnsWooden buildings were painted white and resembled smallBuildings in this style linked the ancient democracy of Greece with the civic ideals of the young American republic. Bold classicism applied to a variety of building types, from severe gabled blocks to asymmetrical aggregations of cubic forms. Buildings often featured paired or arcaded round-headed arches, protruding balconies, square towers, and deep, overhanding cornices punctuated with prominent dentils or lively jigsawed brackets.

A style of city planning as well as architecture, the Second Empire style was inspired by the grand boulevards and ostentatious public buildings of Paris as rebuilt under Emperor Napoleon III. The mansard roof with dormer windows is an essential component, and large structures often feature a projecting central pavilion, sometimes with flanking side pavilions. Much of the South End and Back Bay was built up during this period with brick mansard-roofed row houses, their continuous cornice lines creating unified streetscape vistas. Characterized by thick, roughly textured walls of warm-toned stone or brick, pierced by deeply recessed round arches and window groupings edged with bands of contrasting color. Facades and roof lines are often irregular; attached cylindrical towers are capped with conical roofs. A popular style for impressive public buildings such as court houses, churches, armories, and railroad stations. Through the incorporation of such medieval elements as windows with pointed arches and stained glass, flying buttresses, crockets and gargoyles, buildings were intended to evoke the Christian Age of Faith.

Used primarily for churches and collegiate buildings in the 20th century. The playful use of Gothic, or "Gothick," motifs, such as steep gables, pointed arches, carved bargeboards, and crenellation, to embellish picturesque structures with literary and historical associations. Inspired by the writings of John Ruskin, highly decorated buildings featured asymmetrical massing enriched by banded brick walls, colorful terracotta ornament, patterned roof slates, and fanciful ironwork, often in a Venetian Gothic manner.room darkening curtains sears A more academic version of Gothic preferred by architects who had studied European prototypes, especially English rural parish churches. curtains deesideBuildings are characterized by simple massing, low roof lines, towers instead of steeples, and exterior surfaces of rough stone or half-timbering.curtains deeside

Often quaint and picturesque in the extreme, the Queen Anne style was used primarily for domestic buildings or for public buildings with “arty” or even bohemian associations. Massing is highly irregular, turrets and porches appear in unexpected places, and such decorative details as bay windows, balconies, stained glass, brackets, patterned shingles and terracotta plaques are varied and abundant. curtains again subiacoThe sunflower is a frequent motif.ikea curtains iron hem instructions A transitional style between the Gothic Revival and Queen Anne, the Stick Style can be identified by steep gable roofs with cross gables, decorative wood trusses, overhanging eaves, and patterns of horizontal, vertical and diagonal boards (stickwork) applied to the wall surface.kylie oyster curtains

Irregular in massing like the Queen Anne style, but without the abundance of fanciful ornamentation. Roof and walls are covered with continuous, naturally weathered shingles that flow uninterrupted around corners and projections and sweep down roofs and dormers to create an enclosed unified shape consistent in texture and color. Some Victorian architects searched for inspiration in remote locations. ready made eyelet blockout curtainsAlthough a minor architectural note in conservative Boston, buildings in exotic styles add a cosmopolitan flair to the urban fabric. Stimulated by the 1876 Centennial of the nation’s founding, many architects became intrigued by the architecture of the American colonial and Federal periods. Colonial Revival (also called Neo-Georgian) was a popular, widespread, and long-lived style for both homes and public buildings, especially government buildings such as post offices.

Historic motifs were freely interpreted and often exaggerated for novel effects. The culmination of all the classical revivals, buildings in the Beaux Arts style feature symmetrical massing, flat roofs, and a hierarchy of interior spaces expressed externally by a rusticated ground floor, grand entrance portals, and large windows on the elevated first story. Grandiose examples have ambitious decorative programs inside and out, with sculpture, carving, decorative ironwork, and classical columns, balustrades, cartouches, and other details, often executed in grey granite to a high degree of finish. A self-consciously “Modern” style imported from France, Art Deco ornament employed bold sweeping curves, stepped forms, chevron patterns, the ziggurat, the fountain, the sunburst, stylized floral ornament, and other Jazz Age motifs. Buildings, especially the new skyscrapers, have flat facades and stepped set-backs. “Moderne,” a slightly later related style, used streamlining to further simplify architectural forms.