Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-306) and index.

This study of the social, technological, and architectural evolution of the American house from the seventeenth to the twentieth century focuses on eighteen houses which are open to the public as house museums: Fairbanks House (Dedham, Mass.), Joshua Hempsted House (New London, Conn.), Schifferstadt (Frederick, Md.), Heyward-Washington House (Charleston, S.C.), George Read II House and Gardens (New Castle, Del.), Montgomery Place (Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.), Monticello (Charlottesville, Va.), Gore Place (Waltham, Mass.), Rundlet-May House (Portsmouth, N.H.), Joseph Priestley House (Northumberland, Pa.), The Octagon (Washington, D.C.), Lindenwald (Kinderhook, N.Y.), Harriet Beecher Stowe House (Hartford, Conn.), David Davis Mansion (Bloomington, Ill.), Sinclair Lewis Boyhood Home (Sauk Center, Minn.), Wyck (Philadelphia, Pa.), Gropius House (Lincoln, Mass.), Pope-Leighey House (Mount Vernon, Va.).

An appendix gives technological profiles of more than one hundred homes.

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