Seattle box is a regional style of

residential A residential area is a land used in which housing predominates, as opposed to industrial and commercial areas. Housing may vary significantly between, and through, residential areas. These include single-family housing, multi-family residen ...

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

that was popular in

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

and elsewhere in the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

in the early 1900s.

Exterior features

The Seattle box is a local variant of the Classic box or

foursquare house The American Foursquare or American Four Square is an American house style popular from the mid-1890s to the late 1930s. A reaction to the ornate and mass-produced elements of the Victorian and other Revival styles popular throughout the last ...

. Seattle box houses are two or two-and-one-half story single family homes with four main rooms (generally a kitchen, dining room, living room, and entrance hall) on the first floor and four bedrooms on the second floor. One of the defining features of Seattle box houses are extended

bay windows A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room. Types Bay window is a generic term for all protruding window constructions, regardless of whether they are curved or angular, or r ...

on the second floor corners of the facade, often with prominent ornamental

brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...

. Other distinctive exterior features include low angle

hipped roofs A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

and prominent

dormer windows A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a Roof pitch, pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the ...

in the center of the facade on the second or third (half) story. The entry is usually located on the left or right side of first floor, rather than the center, under a covered porch that is usually inset and supported by stout, blocky columns. The design of Seattle box houses reflect many of the

architectural style An architectural style is a set of characteristics and features that make a building or other structure notable or historically identifiable. It is a sub-class of style in the visual arts generally, and most styles in architecture relate closely ...

s popular in the early 20th century, especially

Arts and Crafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

and the

Prairie style Prairie School is a late 19th- and early 20th-century architectural style, most common in the Midwestern United States. The style is usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hip roof, hipped roofs with broad Overhang (architecture), ove ...

, however some incorporate elements of Tudor, Victorian and

Mission Mission (from Latin ''missio'' "the act of sending out") may refer to: Organised activities Religion *Christian mission, an organized effort to spread Christianity *Mission (LDS Church), an administrative area of The Church of Jesus Christ of ...

architectural styles.

Interior features

Like other

foursquare Four square is a ball game. Four square may also refer to: Internet and entertainment * Foursquare City Guide, a local search and discovery app * ''4 Square'' (game show), a British game show * ''4 Square'' (TV series), a Canadian children's s ...

house plans, Seattle box houses typically have eight main rooms on two floors: a living room, entry hall, dining room and kitchen downstairs, and four bedrooms upstairs. The upstairs bedrooms at the front of the house feature sitting benches in front of the bay windows.

History

Seattle box houses were built from the early 20th century until the 1940s. The basic plan for the Seattle box was first described in architect Victor W. Voorhees's plan book ''Western Home Builder'' (1907) as simply "Design No. 91". This design proved popular with builders, home-buyers and other architects in Seattle's rapidly growing residential neighborhoods and

streetcar suburb A streetcar suburb is a residential community whose growth and development was strongly shaped by the use of streetcar lines as a primary means of transportation. Such suburbs developed in the United States in the years before the automobile, when ...

s, to the extent that some blocks of Seattle's

Capitol Hill Capitol Hill, in addition to being a metonym for the United States Congress, is the largest historic residential neighborhood in Washington, D.C., stretching easterly in front of the United States Capitol along wide avenues. It is one of the ...

neighborhood developed around 1910 were built almost entirely according to this plan. Houses were also built according to the Seattle box plan, by Voorhees and others, in Pacific Northwest cities such as

Vancouver, British Columbia Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

Bellingham, Washington Bellingham ( ) is the most populous city in, and county seat of Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It lies south of the U.S.–Canada border in between two major cities of the Pacific Northwest: Vancouver, British Columbia (locat ...

and

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

. Many Seattle box houses are listed as historical landmarks in their local municipalities. In the early 21st century, elements of the classic Seattle box plan were revived in new home developments in Seattle's Central District.

References

{{reflist American Craftsman architecture American architectural styles House types House styles American Foursquare architecture

Exterior features

Interior features

History

See also

References