Ordinary Homes of the United States

Time period: 2010s to present Location: Suburbs and rural areas The modern farmhouse has its roots in the late 1980s, starting out as a down-to-earth interior design trend for people tired of or turned off by the shiny glitz of 1980s conspicuous consumption. That said, the farmhouse is also a a status symbol. The gilded penthouse condo stands for financial and industrial wealth, the farmhouse stands for wealth from land ownership. Farmhouse style is based on the farm owner's house, rather than the shacks and labor camps of tenant farmers and migrant farmworkers. Farmhouse style grew in popularity in the 2010s, through the popularity of home improvement TV shows that showed how old farmhouses could be modernized from merely rustic, to rustic but with modern comfort and style. Compared to the 19th-century and early 20th century farmhouses that serve as inspiration, modern farmhouses are much larger and have modern floorplans.  Modern Farmhouse design features - Interior and exterior ...

  Time period: Late 20th century to present Location: Rural areas and exurbs Barndominium, sometimes abbreviated as barndo, is a fun but inaccurate word that combines Barn and Condominium.  In reality, barndominiums are standalone houses in rural or exurban areas, multifamily barndos are basically unheard of. More accurately barndos are barnhouses - they combine the wide open spaces and storage areas of a barn with the insulation and residential finishes of a house. The idea started in Connecticut in the 1980s for people who own horses for recreational riding.  In the original example, the houses were detached from the horse stalls, which were sold condo-style in a large shared barn located near the houses. Later developments, especially if they were a single custom home, would combine the house and the barn. The idea found even greater popularity in the 21st century in the South, Midwest, and West, and with modern variations where the barn holds boats, cars, workshops, a...

Examples shown are smaller buildings located in urban areas. Group living at suburban and rural colleges have larger yards and more parking. The largest sororities are found in the South, and have over 40,000 square feet of indoor space and are located on 1-acre lots. Time period: Mid/late 1800s to present Location: College towns Four types of student group living, separated by gender or economic system Key features - Located in clusters close to college campuses - Shared common spaces and bathrooms - In addition to residential uses, may also contain study halls and space for parties From the 1600s to the mid 1800s, college education in the United States was rare, limited to small institutions established by churches to train ministers. Liberal arts education was added in the 1800s. Enrollment was small - a couple dozen to a couple hundred students per college. In the mid 1800s, as the country grew and started to industrialize, there was a movement to expand higher education as farmin...

Time period: 1990s to present Location: Southern California, Inland Empire especially Riverside County Small trailer parks for farmworkers Key features - Allowed in agricultural zones - Utility connections have been a challenge Cities get the spotlight in discussions of the housing crisis, but in California, where a million people work on farms, there's also a rural housing crisis. Here is a story of the polancos: farmworker communities named after a California Assemblymember's landmark law.  California's fruits and vegetables are grown mostly in the San Joaquin Valley, the Imperial Valley, and the Central Coast. Work is seasonal but labor intensive - during harvest, dozens of workers are needed on each farm. However, while there are lots of farm jobs, there isn't much housing in this area. This is especially true in eastern Riverside and Imperial counties, where there are few cities and towns. Rural land did not allow more than one house per farm. Many farmworkers...

  Time period: 2010s to present Location: North Dakota and other oil fields  Portable dorms and apartments for oil field workers Key features - Modular building made up of sections that can be transported by truck - Usually built in large complexes housing 100-2,000 workers, with dining halls, laundry, gyms, medical clinics, and other amenities Starting in the 2000s, high oil prices made hydraulic fracturing - also known as fracking - profitable in many parts of the United States. This process involves drilling lots of wells and pumping high-pressure liquid to crack the rock, releasing oil and gas.  Fracking helped relieve the energy crisis, but also created a housing crisis. Once an oil field was discovered, fracking the oil required a lot of workers - but only temporarily. Existing hotels and housing in remote oil field towns could not meet the demand, and were a long drive from the drill sites. Building new apartments was also challenging since anyone who might otherwi...