The Story of the American Country House: Developing an Idea

Send us Fan MailClive is writing a book for Yale University Press on the Story of the American Country House. John indulges him by discussing an introductory overview of the subject, with which Clive has been engaged since Yale published his The American Country House in 1990.  Here is a rich and colourful theme, celebrating a sometimes spectacular architectural tradition shaped by remarkable individuals.  There are numerous reasons people in Colonial American and the developing United States wanted houses outside the city.  Rural simplicity expressed a godlier life; country air was good for the health; the drama of the American landscape appealed to the Romantic imagination.  By 1900 there was a school of highly sophisticated architects who could serve any need.  While some American country houses bore a resemblance to their cousins across the Atlantic, they were, in the early 20th century, built for a different purpose, which was recreation and sport.  There was little sense that these were dynastic seats.  As soon as fashion changed or money ran out, owners moved on.  Hundreds of country houses on Long Island, for example, were demolished after the Great Crash in the 1920s.Clive and John consider these and other aspects of the subject, in the light of the renaissance of country house building that can be seen in many parts of the US today.