General Reference and Publications / Slide Libraries and Architectural Databases / Recent History and Modernism / Modernism and its Roots / Victorians and Revivals / 18th Century back to the Renaissance / Medieval back to the Fall of Rome / Ancient Architecture / Other Architecture / Landscape Architecture

General Reference and Publications:

The Cupola F.A.Q.  Just in case you are looking for additional information on cupolas (or domes, widow's walks, lanterns, gazebos, belvederes, etc.), you may find this section of my site helpful.  It provides answers to frequently asked questions like: what is a cupola; where can you buy one (or plans for one), where can you visit or stay in one, and where can you find more.  Updated regularly.

Jackie Craven's Architecture Web Guide at About.com.  An extensive directory of architecturally related links on the web.  Offers a particularly nice architectural history section.  Also a good list of architectural bulletin boards and discussion groups.

Cyburbia.  A portal website with an urban planning focus.  Includes discussion forums, extensive photo galleries, planning links, and more.

The Architectural Style Guide.  From the City of Cincinatti website, a primer of late 19th and 20th century American architectural styles.  Some other fine guides to historic American architectural styles using local examples are available from the Colorado Historical Society, and from Ingolf Vogeler at the Eau Claire branch of the University of Wisconsin.

Joffre Essley's House Design Coffee.  A friendly exploration of residential design, including architectural criticism and advice, building dictionary and style guide, and musings on architecture and the home.

Shannon Kyle's Ontario Architecture website.  A general architectural style guide from a Canadian perspective.  Includes an exceptional illustrated glossary of building terms.

Chuck LaChiusa's Illustrated Architectural Dictionary.  A great resource, with excellent examples taken from historic buildings in Buffalo, New York.  Part of the his Buffalo Architecture and History website.

Ann Whitehead's Dictionary of Architectural Terms.  A concise dictionary of basic architectural terms, prepared for the Utah Heritage Foundation.

The American Institute of Architects official website.  A general resource for architects and those wanting to learn more about them and the services that they provide.  Features an architect finder, industry news, educational resources, A.I.A. contract documents, publications, and more.

The Preservation Directory.  Covers historic preservation, cultural resources, heritage tourism, urban planning, and historic real estate in the United States & Canada

The Royal Institute of British Architects official website.  Similar to the A.I.A. site described above, except from a British perspective.

The Society of Architectural Historians.  Beyond being the official site for this group, this website offers some interesting architectural study tours, digital resources including brief biographies of American architects and an architectural image exchange, and more.  Based in Chicago, Illinois.

The Architectural Index.  Designed mainly for architectural research, this site is a periodical index of architectural publications.  Offers a free area covering older magazines (1982 - 1988), otherwise one must pay for the service.  You'll still need to find the magazine, since only the name of the magazine, date, and page numbers of each article are listed at the site.

Sólo Arquitectura.  One of the larger and better directories  of architecturally related websites.  In Spanish only.

The Vitruvio website.  An architectural webguide that focuses on architectural history, theory, and design.  Offers a pretty comprehensive list of famous architects from all over the world (living or dead), incorporating relevant links when available.

The Architectural Review.  An English magazine whose website offers information on architectural competitions, exhibitions, book reviews, articles, links and more.

Jetsetmodern.  Sleek online magazine and design resource devoted to 20th century modernism.

The Old House Journal website.  An informative and entertaining magazine for old house lovers.

Slide Libraries and Architectural Databases:

The American Memories Project.  An impressive photographic database covering a broad range of American subjects, including a huge collection of historic architectural drawings and building images.

Archiguide.  Online guide to contemporary architecture and urban art from around the world.  In French and English.

The ArchInform website.  An international architectural database containing thousands of buildings indexed by architect or location.  Has a 20th century architectural emphasis.  Some pictures, but most entries just have simple building data.

The Digital Archive of Architecture.  Includes hundreds of Architectural History photos from the collection of Professor Jeffery Howe of Boston College.  His Digital Archive of American Architecture is a sister site.

The Great Buildings Online website.  A cadd software company's fairly comprehensive encyclopedia of famous architects and their buildings throughout history.  Has a searchable index of architects, buildings, and places.

The Images of England website.  An extensive photographic survey of historical buildings and monuments in England.  Affiliated with the English Heritage website.

The North American and European Architecture and Sculpture site.  Mary Ann Sullivan's very large collection of works by notable architects and sculptors throughout history.  Site indexed by artist or architect, location, or date.  Be sure to scroll down after selecting an index type to view the results, or you may think nothing happened.

The Online Archive of California.  Part of the California Digital Library.  Similar to the American Memories Project in some ways, except with a California emphasis.  Features oodles of historic building and other photos.  One of their more dramatic collections features photos of the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 (well worth the wait for the entire page to load).

La Poder de La Palabra (The Power of the Word).  A vast art and culture website, available in Spanish only.  Its architectural galleries include buildings from all over the world, categorized by architect, location, and period.

The Spiro Architectural Slide Database website.  A searchable index of slides from the University of California, Berkeley.  Offers an extensive collection of thumbnail (slide-sized) images of historically significant buildings and their descriptions.  The site is more geared toward research on a particular architect or building than general browsing.

The Thais.it website.  Among its eclectic galleries is a slide library focusing on ancient and medieval architecture.  Other galleries feature Italian sculpture, Italian cities, botany, mineralogy, entomology, and more.  Content in Italian and (often) English as well.

The University of Washington's City/ Buildings Database.  An image database of historic architecture around the world.  Sorted by country, then city.  Easy to browse.  They also host a large, searchable collection of architectural images on another site.

Fantastic Places.  Tom Palmer's architectural and travel photography site includes a fine pastiche of American architecture in its architectural sampler.  Photos organized by state and city.

Glass, Steel, and Stone.  An ambitious architectural photography site dedicated to the best of the built environment.  Offers vast galleries of architectural images, often accompanied by personal commentary.

The Leo Masuda Architectonic Research Office website.  Offers a decent pictorial overview of Western Architecture from the ancient times to the Baroque period.  Also features sections on Japanese and MesoAmerican architecture elsewhere on the site.

J. Cohen's World Architectural History Survey Examples.  This site has a pretty utilitarian look and feel, but beneath all those text links is a very extensive collection of quality photographs of architecturally significant buildings.  Covers architectural history from ancient to modern times.

Recent History and Modernism:

The Pritzker Prize website.  Run by the organization that awards the architectural equivalent of the Nobel prize.  A list of former prize winners features short a biography of each architect and examples of their work.  It includes some of the most prominent names in contemporary architecture.

The Skyscraper Museum.  An interesting site chronicling the history of the skyscraper.  Its Big Building Exhibit offers a very nice chronology of the world's tallest buildings to date.  Not one of my most reliable links though.

Hans Netten's High Rise Pages.  All about the tallest structures in the world.

Robert Adams' How to Build Skyscrapers.  Thought provoking City Journal article about modern skyscraper design.

The Building Big website.  An excellent architectural primer, chronicling the history and design of some of the world's biggest, tallest, most awesome structures.  WGBH of Boston produced the site to supplement their five part public television series of the same name.

Modernism and its Roots:

The American Built Environment course slides.  Eleanor Weinel, an Associate Dean at the University of Oklahoma, provides a photographic overview of American architecture.  Focuses on the shapers of modernism between 1870 and 1960.

The Arts and Crafts Home.  A commercial site specializing in Arts and Crafts, Gothic Revival, and Aesthetic Movement home furnishings.  It is an exceptional design resource on these styles.  It achieves this through its impressive research sections and product catalog.  The site also features extensive Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Mission Style coverage as part of its ambitious International Arts and Crafts documentation project.

Decopix.  Randy Juster's sleek photo gallery of Art Deco architecture from all over the world.

The Eichler Network.  All about Eichler homes and their California Modernist connections.

The Galinsky website.  With its photo essays on selected buildings of the last century, this site provides a great overview of the modern movement in architecture.

The Julia Morgan Index.  A rather plain site, but loaded with images of Julia Morgan's work.  Morgan was among America's first woman architects.  Part of Mary Ann Sullivan's huge Digital Imaging Project site.

Bernard Maybeck and Brookings, Oregon.  A site that details the prominent San Francisco architect's involvement in the planning of this coastal city.  Offers several of his essays on architecture and conceptual drawings, as well as links to other Maybeckian sites.  Part of the Oregon Coast Net website.

The San Francisco Bay Area Arts and Crafts home page.  San Francisco may be better known for its Victorian architecture, but it is also the center of an exceptionally fine and sophisticated collection of American Arts and Crafts architecture.  This site profiles its chief practitioners.

Jim Stetson's John Hudson Thomas website.  Showcases the Arts and Crafts inspired works of a lesser known early 20C architect practicing in Berkeley, California.

Kilrush Design's Walter Burley Griffin site for PBS online.  A handsome site describing the life and works of an exceptionally gifted Prairie School architect, who, before a falling out, had once headed up Frank Lloyd Wright's Oak Park studio.

Matt Jalbert's Gamble House site.  Take a virtual tour of the definitive Craftsman bungalow (requires QuickTime).  The architectural firm of Charles and Henry Greene (Greene and Greene) created this masterpiece in 1908 for a retired executive from the Cincinnati based Proctor and Gamble Company.  Its influence can still be seen today.

Chris Miller's All-Wright website.  Comprehensive coverage of Frank Lloyd Wright including his life, works and influences.  The Building Guide section is well crafted and lists Wright works by location.  Nice collection of other Wrightian links too.

The Louis Sullivan page at the All-Wright site.  An excellent resource on the great Chicago architect that was a mentor to Wright, and who is credited with giving the skyscraper its modern form.

J.H. Delmar's Wright on the Web site.  Offers photo galleries and links to a myriad of web resources relating to Frank Lloyd Wright.

DGunning.org.  Excellent online tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's Oak Park, Illinois neighborhood.  Also includes a database of historic architecture in Oak Park; an extensive display of Wrightian works elsewhere; and an intriguing tour of the apparently Expressionist inspired National School of Art in Cuba.

The Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park website.  Offers pictures and history of Wright designed structures in Oak Park, Illinois, where he opened his first office.  This link tends to go offline for extended periods, but when available, it offers good coverage of his Oak Park practice.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Info site.  A collection of writings about America's most famous architect, from William Allin Storrer.  Storrer is a leading authority on Wright and his works; his guidebooks are indispensable for any serious Wrightophile.  A great source for recent Wright related news.

Mark Hammons' Organica website.  Covers the impressive Prairie Style legacy of Purcell and Elmslie, an early 20th century architectural firm based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Well put together, and exceptional detail.  Also, when operational, it offers a good overview of other Prairie School participants.

The Minneapolis Institute of the Arts Unified Vision website.  Beautifully crafted online exhibit on Prairie Style architecture in Minnesota, including works by Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, George Washington Maher, and the partnership of William Gray Purcell, George Grant Elmslie, and George Feick.  Includes detailed tour maps for those interested in visiting the sites in person, as well as an excellent virtual tour of the Purcell's own house in Minneapolis.

The Prairie School Traveler.  John Panning's ambitious project to locate and document every extant Prairie Style work in the United States and Canada.  The states of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin are well represented here.

The Prairie Styles website.  Offers excellent biographical material on some of the lesser known members of the Prairie School, as well as its more famous leaders, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Once you select an architect or artist, pick the "Commissions" button to view samples of their work.

The Charles Rennie Mackintosh pages from Armin Grewe.  Nice photo essay covering the life and works of the great Scottish Art Nouveau architect.

The Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society.  Celebrates his life and works.  Their website offers bios of Mackintosh and his associates, a photo library, and other Mackintosh related resources.  They also offer a very helpful guide to Mackintosh works in and around Glasgow.

The House for an Art Lover site.  Mackintosh and his wife, Margaret MacDonald, designed this handsome house for a 1901 competition.  It remained unbuilt until 1996, when an interpretation of their design was completed in Glasgow's Bellahouston Park.  This site has recently become quite graphics intensive and really requires a fairly speedy connection to enjoy its offerings.  It also has shown a tendency to go offline for hours at a time, so try again later if unavailable at the moment.

The Hunterian Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow.  The largest single repository of the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.  Its Mackintosh House exhibit has placed the reassembled interiors of the architect's demolished Glasgow home on permanent display. 

The Gaudi and Barcelona Club.  Covers Antoni Gaudi, the famous Art Nouveau architect from Barcelona, Spain.  Includes a Gaudi biography and a gallery of his works.  Another good resource on the architect is Pedro Uhart's Gaudi Designer site, available in French, English, and Spanish.

Le Cercle Guimard.  Celebrates the work of Hector Guimard, the architect behind the design of those exotic Paris Metro stations entrances and THE driving force behind Art Nouveau architecture in France.  In French, but an English version is in the works.  The Hector Guimard website archive offers another good view of this influential designer in English.

Frank Derville's World Wide Art Nouveau server.  Documents many of the artists and architects behind the Art Nouveau movement, with photos and links to other Art Nouveau related sites.  Wonderful collection of some Art Nouveau doors.

Jalf Flach's Rondom1900.  A marvelous photographic collection of European Art Nouveau architecture, including many fine works not often seen elsewhere.  Features architectural galleries organized by country, with accompanying commentary in both Dutch and English.

Martin Turcan's La Belle Epoque in Slovakia.  Photo essay on late 19th/ early 20th century architecture and the Secessionists in Slovakia.  Text at both sites in Czech only.

The Felhandler/Steeneken Architects website.  Offers a nice collection of links on the Aesthetic Movement (Architecture and Design from the late 19th and early 20th Century).

Victorians and Revivals:

The Biltmore Estate official website.  The largest privately owned home ever built in America.  Designed for George Washington Vanderbilt and his family by architect Richard Morris Hunt in Chateauesque style, and landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of many of America's finest parks, including New York's Central Park.  Very nice QuickTime movie tours showing parts of the house and grounds.

The GORP, Hudson River, and Hudson Valley Network websites.  Feature pictures and articles on the grand estates along the Hudson River, often described as the American Rhine.  These include, among others, the definitive American Gothic Revival, Lyndhurst (once used as a backdrop for the show "Dark Shadows"), the elegant Montgomery Place, and a Moorish inspired fantasy, called Olana.

Kirkbride Buildings.  Focuses on the picturesque American design of hospitals for the mentally ill in the last half of the 19th century.

Long Island's Gold Coast.  A guide to the historic estates of Long Island, New York.

The Newport Mansions website.  View some of the most glamorous "cottages" of America's Gilded Age, found in the historic resort town of Newport, Rhode Island.  Well worth an architectural pilgrimage to one of the most impressive collections of late 19th Century architecture in North America.

The Historic Asylums website.  Chronicles the sad state of America's old state hospitals and asylums in an era when most consider them white elephants.  Set in serene park like settings, these enormous Victorian piles speak of a time when institutional architecture was positively inspired.  They were often richly detailed, with elaborate rooflines replete with cupolas, towers, and spires. Take a look at the Richardsonian Romanesque Buffalo State Hospital in New York, the palatial looking (Jacobean?) Evansville State Hospital in Indiana, or the French Renaissance Revival Clinton Valley Center in Michigan (featuring a great cupola shot) to see what I mean.

18th Century back to the Renaissance:

The Palace of Versailles official website.  Tour one of the largest and most influential buildings in the world, and walk through the gardens that established the French as masters of garden design.  A Baroque masterpiece that was the seat of French power for over a century before the French Revolution.

Vaux le Vicomte, the chateau that set the stage for the Palace of Versailles.

S. Colla's and A. Nardi's website featuring Northern Italian Villas.  A photo history tour of some of Italy's finest 16th century villas.  Most featured here were designed by the master architect, Andrea Palladio, who influenced architectural design for centuries with his writings and works.

The Virtual Reality Tours from the Art History Department at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.  An exceptional site that offers panoramic coverage of several notable Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo buildings.  Stunning photography.

Medieval back to the Fall of Rome:

The Castles on the Web site.  Great site on castles, palaces, abbeys, and cathedrals from around the world.  Offers an impressive collection of photos and medieval links.  Includes information on heraldry, castle accommodations, castle terms, medieval legends, weapons, and more.

James Dupont's Castles of the United States website.  A fun site featuring various American castles, displaying both historically correct and campy interpretations of the medieval metaphor.

Professor Alison Stone's Medieval Art and Architecture site.  Offers an extensive collection of English and French medieval building pictures.

Edward G. Kane's Roads to Ruins.  Fine site on medieval German castles, specializing in those built mostly before 1500 A.D.

The Stave Church tour.  Pictures and descriptions of many of these exceptional medieval wooden structures.  Part of the Ancient Worlds site.

Ancient Architecture:

Henrik Rydenfelt's Ancient Worlds site.  An online community for ancient history buffs.  Includes discussions and articles on early Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Babylonian, Celtic, Teutonic, and Amerindian cultures.  It is also the home of S.P.Q.R., an adventure style game built around a digital reconstruction of the a Forum Romanum.

Dr. Hawass.  The official website of the prominent archaeologist and Egyptologist.  Features fascinating articles about archaeology and the preservation of ancient Egyptian monuments.

Dr. J.'s Illustrated Sites of Greece.  Wow!  A superb resource on the architecture of classical Greece. From Dr. Janice Siegel, a professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Hampden-Sydney, VA. Part of her ambitious DRJClassics site.

Leo C. Curran's Maecenas website.  Offers an enormous photo collection of ancient Greek and Roman monuments.

James Q. Jacob's Photo Galleries.  Feature some of best coverage of ancient Indian Ruins in the Americas on the Net.  Part of a larger, personal site.

David Moore's Roman Concrete website.  Discusses concrete in ancient Roman construction.  Includes a chapter on the construction and history of the Pantheon in Rome, built circa 100-125 A.D.  Its dome was unsurpassed in clear span for more than a millennium.  It still stands today, an incredible feat of ancient engineering.

Bill Thayer's website.  A Herculean project covering all things ancient Roman, as ambitious in its scope as Rome had been in its world conquest.  Definitely a site well worth perusing.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World website.  I'll bet you can't name them all without a visit to this site.  Only one has survived.  In the summer 2007, The New7Wonders Foundation announced the results of their world-wide poll to name the New 7 Wonders of the World, a mix of ancient and more modern structures still standing today.  In 1994, the American Society of Civil Engineers sought nominations from around the globe to name the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.

Other Historic or Regional Architectural Sites:

The Ancient LEGO Building Contest.  Features Lego reconstructions of some of the world's greatest ancient monuments (mostly Greek and Roman).  What fun!  Part of the Lego inspired Ancient Theme site.

Geir Tandberg Steigan's handsome Arc! website.  Highlights some of the historic architecture of Oslo, Norway; Brussels, Belgium; Bordeaux, France; and a few other places.  Text in Norwegian only.

The Belarusian Architecture pages.  Documents the rich architectural history of this former Soviet state located adjacent to the Baltic States.  Part of the Virtual Guide to Belarus website.

Belgiumview.  A photographic survey of historic and contemporary architecture in Belgium.  Nice big images.  Viewable in Dutch, French, or English.

Chicago Landmarks.  Highlights the Windy City's extraordinarily rich history of late 19th and early 20th century architecture.

The Eiffel Tower.  All about the widely loved but once controversial Paris landmark, created for the Paris Exposition of 1889.  Some believe the design was inspired by this former Silicon Valley landmark.

Lowell Boileau's Fabulous Ruins of Detroit.  Beautifully photographed and compellingly narrated, this haunting site focuses on a shrinking metropolis's architectural cast offs.  The table of contents seems the best way to navigate this vast site.

Finnish Pumpkin.  Showcases Finnish architecture, focusing more on older, historic buildings than modern ones.

The Folly Fellowship.  What's an estate garden without a little architectural staging?  British towers, ruins, and other monuments built to the whims of eccentric landowners are the focus of this site.  Many on view under its Google Folly Map.

Historic Bridges in the News.  A survey of bridge news and online resources.  Well organized and informative.  Part of Lawrence Biemiller's personal website.

Tom Rinaldi & Rob Yasinsac's Hudson Valley Ruins.  Showcases some of the decaying architectural treasures of the "American Rhine", the Hudson River Valley in New York State.

The Images of Rome website.  A handsome site offering quality pictures and drawings of historic Roman Structures.  The St. Peter's Basilica (the Vatican) page has some excellent old drawings and good modern shots, including ones looking out from the roof and cupola.

The Lighthouse Directory.  Information, photos, and links for over 12000 lighthouses around the world.

The National Trust.  The British organization that protects and makes publicly accessible some of Great Britain's most spectacular historic buildings and gardens.  Pictures and descriptions of most of the properties are available on site.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation.  The American version of the much larger British National Trust.  They operate over 25 historic properties across the United States.  Pictures and descriptions of each are available on site.  If interested in preservation in the U.S.A., this is a great organization to join for learning more.

Northeast Architecture.  Ethan McElroy's photographic catalog of architecture in the northeastern United States.

Portmeirion.  All about the delightful Welsh resort that provided the village setting for the Kafkaesque British TV series, The Prisoner.

Remains.se.  Photos of forts, castles, strongholds, ruins, rock carvings, historic/old buildings, and the built remains of other eras.  Galleries organized by country, with a strong showing of Scandinavian works over two centuries old.  From fellow architectural enthusiast, Henrik Göransson.

The Third Reich in Ruins.  Using historic and contemporary photos, Geoff Walden provides an extensive tour of what remains of Nazi construction in Germany.

The Traditional House under Threat? website.  A graphic display of some of the caveats of historic home renovations in England.  Put up by the Victorian Society of Birmingham.

You-are-here.com.  Great photographic coverage of Los Angeles architecture.  The site also includes another fine photo section that highlights modern architecture in selected European cities.

Landscape Architecture:

The Enchanted Gardens of the Renaissance.  Marvelous annotated tours through three of Italy's most incredible gardens.  Not quite like being there, but they'll probably inspire you to plan a visit someday.  This is part of the excellent World Art Treasures website.  Note: this link has a history of going offline, but usually is back up within the next business day.

The History of Landscape Architecture site.  Images used in a course by professor Kenneth Helphand of the University of Oregon.  Covers landscape and garden design throughout the ages.

The Longwood Gardens site.  Take a virtual tour of Pierre S. du Pont's magnificent gardens and conservatory, located near Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.  American landscape design on a palatial scale.

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