Outstanding in Its Field

A previous, post A House is Not a Home , showed some old houses visible from our back road travels along the VA eastern shore. This post features a couple of houses we see every time we drive to the county library travelling the back road vs. Route 13.

This four-square house stands abandoned surrounded by fields that were once farmland. Four-square construction is described as solidly built, but the architecture is considered unimaginative. A foursquare has a square footprint  and was the style of many farmhouses.

A four-square house is characterized by a basically square, boxy design, two and one half stories high, usually with four large, boxy rooms to a floor and a center dormer. Other common features of four- square construction include a hipped roof and arched entries between common rooms. The layout was simple. The first floor consisted of a dining room, living room, kitchen and foyer punctuated by a center hall leading upstairs to four bedrooms and a bathroom. The bathroom was usually located between the bedrooms on one side of the house while the stairway separated the other two bedrooms on the opposite side. Some models included a bathroom on the first floor. The top floor was a large open space with one to four dormers punctuating the roofline.

Back to the house first shown in this post. A closer look shows that a new roof and dormer were put on, perhaps in an attempt to save the house from deterioration by the weather.

Stickers are visible on the windows of the new dormer.

But no other obvious repairs can be seen and the elements can freely enter through the house’s open windows. In time, it will most likely completely deteriorate.

Here’s a different place along the same back road – a building that has completely collapsed.

Here’s from another view in B&W and same view in color.