Our beautiful old home is an architectural style known as American Foursquare. These houses were popular from the 1890s to about 1930. These houses have very simple designs, in response to the overly ornate Victorian houses popular just before this time period. The foursquare is known for it's floor plan, four rooms downstairs and four rooms upstairs. These houses often incorporate Craftsman style elements inside and out.
When we first bought our home, it was a pale butter yellow with maroon shutters and doors. We've touched up the yellow paint as best we could over the years and changed all the maroon features to blue. Sadly our house is in desperate need of a new exterior, either paint or siding, plus we need to put on a new roof and gutters. So I've begun researching this style of house to determine what colors would be in keeping with its original nature. All along we assumed our house was built around 1930 because that's what the land records say. We've found out since then, land records estimated the date of building. Upon doing research it's more likely that our house was built between 1916 and 1921.
How do I know this? Well, Sears and Aladdin were the only makers of the American Foursquare kits that I could find. That's right, you ordered your house out of a catalog and they'd ship all the labeled and cut parts to you by train and you'd be responsible for assembling it. When I looked at all the floor plans available for the various models, the only floor plan that matched ours was "The Hudson" model made by Aladdin from 1916-1921. It's an exact match and none of the others were even remotely close. So above here is the original ad for our house. I am particularly interested in the colors they suggest in this ad because if we're going to paint or side the house, this will be the opportunity to change the color of not only the house, but also the roof. I found a website that shows all the original colors for these houses: Foursquare site
I am leaning toward the colors in the above picture, mustard yellow house, white trim, dark green roof. M says no to the green roof. She thinks it will look odd and will harm the resale. I don't and the white house across the street has a green roof and I think it looks fine. So this is where we find ourselves, at the very beginning of a long process to fix / improve the exterior of our house. On that website I placed above, you can also see examples of foursquares and bungalows with different color schemes. What do you think? Would a house with a green roof be a deal breaker for purchase?
