Introduction
* The landscape reveals a visible, tangible aspect of culture.
* Members of each culture and subculture, working over decades and centuries, fashion their own distinctive landscapes from the raw materials provided by the natural environment.
* These landscapes so accurately mirror the cultures that created and occupy them.
* People reveal a great deal about themselves - their society, economy, and way of life - in the form of the buildings they erect.
* Each ethnic group that entered Texas had a distinct architectural heritage, a distinct tradition that is evident in style, floorplan, and choice of building materials.
* Figures 4.1 (p. 70) and 9.1 (p. 186) in Jordan
3 Principle aspects of the rural landscape are:
3) Settlement Patterns
Vernacular House: An indigenous style of building constructed of native materials to traditional plan, without formal drawings.
The folk architectural traditions of Texas are: Middle Atlantic, Lower-Southern, Hispanic, and Texas-German.
A) Middle Atlantic Folk Architecture:
1) Single-Pen: or one-room plan, simplest house, English origin, square or nearly square, 16 ft per side, aligned front & rear doors for ventilation, single fireplace.2) Cumberland: enlarge a single-pen house by putting another pen on the gable end opposite chimney, common in central and western parts of the state.
3) I-House: the prestige dwelling of rural upper-southern Texas, particularly the Blackland Prairie, adds a 2nd story to a double-pen house, house is tall & narrow.
B) Lower-Southern Folk Architecture/Plantation
1) Dogtrot House: 2 main rooms separated by roofed, open-air passage.2) Shotgun House: 1 room wide but several rooms deep, associated with blacks, originated in Africa.
3) Pyramid and Hipped Roof Houses: large houses, introduced by French settlers.
C) Hispanic Folk Architecture
1) Three principle construction materials: adobe bricks, pickets, mortared stone.2) Floor plans either simple 1 & 2 room houses or the Iberian patio or court-yard houses of the wealthy.
D) European and Texas-German Folk Architecture
1) German Houses: half-timbered construction filled with stone or brick, second-story windows tucked-up under eaves of house.2) Czech Houses: can be identified by large roof areas.
Four distinct survey types found in Texas: metes and bounds, irregular rectangular, rigid rectangular, and long lot. Figures 9.21 and 9.22.
A) Metes and Bounds: a system of property description using natural features (streams, rocks, trees, etc.) to trace and define the boundaries of individual parcels, originated from England/Colonies and Spain/Mexico.
B) Long-Lot: a farm or other property consisting of a long, narrow strip of land extending back from a river or road, typically 10 times longer than wide, French origin.
C) Rigid Rectangular: adopted in 1785 by the United States Federal Government, survey lines oriented in the cardinal directions, land divided into townships 6 miles square; then subdivided into sections 1 mile square.
D) Irregular Rectangular: land parcels still square or rectangular, but size and line directions vary; most common Texas survey type.