| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Linda E. Smeins. Building an American Identity: Pattern Book Homes and Communities, 1870–1900. Walnut Creek, Calif.: Altamira Press. 1999. Pp. 335. Cloth $52.00, paper $24.95.

Linda E. Smeins has written a monograph about the commercially published pattern books that distributed architectural plans of residence to American homebuilders during the nineteenth century. These mass-produced publications disseminated architectural styles and, to a certain extent, philosophies of domestic design that inspired the structure of houses in towns and cities across the United States. Smeins shows that the authors of the pattern books sold them for different reasons: some intended their books to be guides to good architectural taste, some used them as catalogs to sell building designs by mail order, and others hoped to attract clients for architectural consultation and commissions. By way of explaining the historical context and significance of the pattern books, Smeins also discusses important, if familiar, topics such as the evolution of architectural aesthetics, the concept of the moral home, women's role as consumers, and the idea of the suburb. . . .

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