Twentieth Century Revival Architecture and The Gentry

This case study focuses on the 20th century revival houses of a Midwestern University city, Urbana, Illinois. English Revival houses are most closely associated with faculty families viewed as constituting a “gentry class” housed in a traditional “faculty row.” Other people (businessmen, managers, operatives and self-employed professionals) have occupied the Colonial Revival and Dutch Colonial houses and Cape Cod cottages. Initially, the Early American style (the Colonial Revival diluted for use on ranch houses) was employed by developers and builders to house lower-middle class families in the new subdivisions of the 1960s. The occurrence of various style houses in Urbana is compared with national architectural trends as reflected in a leading builders' magazine.