Every rural community has a wide range of housing styles. Many times the styles of your housing stock are based purely on what style was prevalent during the time period it was constructed. For others, the homeowner had already fallen in love with a certain style before they started construction.

However each community’s housing stock has been built out, the mixture of styles is what makes every rural town unique. But it is important to understand this mix. It will help you understand how your community was built out. It will also help you understand the age of your housing stock, the likely condition, and potential issues that face your community from a housing standpoint.

There are many architectural styles. Too many to discuss with this post. However, considering the rural Midwest, it is relatively easy to remove a number of housing styles from consideration here. Styles like Salt Box, Georgian, Federal, and Greek Revival are numerous along the East Coast, but there are so few in the Midwest that they are not viable for this article.

Victorian

The first housing styles of consideration are the Second Empire, Queen Anne, and Richardsonian Romanesque. For the sake of this post, I’m throwing all of those into the category of “Victorian”. To some architects, this may be an over-generalization, but they are all characterized by their large size, ornate woodwork, shapely windows, and varying rooflines.

Each of these styles has very distinguishable characteristics, but they are similar in size and era.

Second Empire

Second Empire is known for steep mansard roofs with dormers set into them. They also have plenty of ornate woodwork all around the exterior.

Second Empire Style House, Nyttend

Queen Anne

The Queen Anne, with its multiple intersecting roofs, turrets, and large bay windows, is what most people link back to a Victorian style. It is also heavy in ornamental details, an aspect that homeowners typically like to highlight with their color scheme when renovating. It is the most popular of the Victorian housing styles.

Queen Anne Style House, Jo Naylor, CC-BY-2.0

Richardsonian Romanesque

The Richardsonian Romanesque was relatively closely related to the Queen Anne with the same asymmetry and grand scale. But they were always constructed with stone or brick facades and typically incorporated more arches into the design.

Keating House (Richardson Romanesque Example), Jeffrey Beall, CC-BY-SA-2.0

What ties these together is their age, size, and architectural detail. They were all built generally in the late 1800s (especially those in the Midwest) to 1900. These houses were generally grand and massive in scale. If well taken care of, they can be a great part of your housing stock. Their large scale and intricate architectural details make them picturesque. Well-cared-for versions of these styles often adorn marketing pieces for communities.

However, these Victorian styles are often the problem child of the community when not taken care of. Think of the prototypical haunted house that you see in movies, TV, etc. It is typically a run-down version of one of these three.

Due to their age, they are often the more affordable of the homes in town. But the Victorians are not a good type of house to consider as affordable housing. They are often fraught with issues. The internal infrastructure is typically well out of date. Coal-converted furnaces, knob and tube wiring, and iron water pipes can still be found in a number of these houses if they haven’t been fully renovated. Rot is also not a friend of these homes, creating leaky windows, sagging soffits, and disintegrating architectural details.

The repair and maintenance demands of these large structures can be oppressive to those homeowners that try to use these types of homes as affordable, entry-level housing. Throw in the poor energy efficiency of these homes and their aging infrastructure, when not well maintained, then repair and maintenance is is out the window to a low-income household.

The Early 1900s

After the massive Victorians came the smaller, more affordable, housing styles that filled many rural towns in the early 1900s.

Cape Cod

The first of mention is the Cape Cod style. Popular from the 1920s through the 1940s, there are quite a few of these throughout the Midwest. They are typically known for their small size and the dormers in the roof that provide light to the half-story above the main floor.

Capes were the most common housing style used in the post-World War II housing boom.

Cape Cod Style House, Ian Poellet, C.C. BY 4.0

Craftsman

Another popular style that come out of the early 1900s was the Craftsman. Also known as Bungalow, these houses were typically used on more narrow lots as they were a relatively narrow house style that expanded back from the front lot line rather than laterally like the Cape Cod or Ranch. This efficient lot usage helps make them an affordable housing style.

A number of architectural cues for the Craftsman were pulled off of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie Style. But everything was made in a smaller, more affordable arrangement. This made the style attractive as a housing style available through Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman Magazine. Hence the house was mass-produced to great effect.

My first house was a Bungalow. It served as a great starter home for my young, low-income family at the time.

Both the Cape Cod and Craftsman houses make for affordable homes in general. They are small in size, efficiently use smaller lots, and some are over 100 years of age. Their small size makes them easier to maintain as well. Imagine the cost to replace the HVAC system in a Craftsman vs. replacing the same in a massive Victorian.

Yet, they are an aging housing type. With many over a century old, repairs to these houses can start to add up. Thankfully housing repair grants used on these homes can go a long way.

Solberg Bungalow

Later 1900s to Today

Ranch

Ranch homes are currently the most-searched-for house style according to a recent Google report. They are also the most popular style of house in the Midwest where land prices are lower, allowing for housing to remain single-story and spread horizontally. Ranches are known for their low rooflines and large windows along the front of the house.

Although they’ve been around since the 1920s, ranch homes came into popularity after World War II with the rise to prominence of automobile-centric development. They were simple and cost-effective to construct in high numbers, making them quite affordable.

Ranch Style House, Stilfehler, C.C. BY 4.0

Raised Ranch / Split Entry

Raised Ranch and Split Entry dwellings are relatively similar houses with different entry points. A Raised Ranch lifts up the typical ranch style with a foundation that is typically partially below grade allowing for additional living space or garages below the main living area. The entry point for a Raised Ranch is still on the main floor, whereas the entry point for a Split Entry is typically halfway between the main floor and the basement.

This house style often serves as a great starter house as the topography of the lots where these work out is not usually flat and is typically less desirable. Hence, a lower land cost, relating to a lower purchase price.

Solberg Raised Ranch

Tri-Level / Traditional 2-story

Tri-Levels, as the name relays, has three different levels. Typically with two levels stacked and the third halfway between.

Tri-Level Style House, Stilfehler, C.C. 4.0

These three groups of housing styles from the later 1900s to today will obviously be the most likely to grade well in a housing conditions assessment. However, many speculative housing developers built a number of these homes as cheaply as possible. So they may be maintenance problems in the long term.

There’s Plenty More

While this is a breakdown of the most common housing styles in the upper Midwest, it is not an exhaustive list. One of the great things about this country is the wide array of backgrounds and tastes that help to form our housing stock. Immigrants have influenced many aspects of this country from the very start. This includes the housing stock. It is a large part of what makes each community unique and great.