Glossary

Apron: A raised panel below a window sill.

Architrave: The lowest part of an entablature, sometimes used by itself.

Balustrade: An entire railing system including a top rail, balusters, and often a bottom rail.

Batten: A narrow strip of wood applied to cover a joint along the edges of two parallel boards in the same plane.

Beaded-Profile Panels: Panels manufactured to resemble traditional bead board.

Boxed Eave (boxed cornice): A hollow eave enclosed by the roofing, the soffit and the building wall.

Bricked Eave: Eave condition where the top of a brick masonry wall is corbelled out to the eave eliminating the soffit.

Brickmold: Window or door trim, typically 2 inches wide.

Bungalow: A low house one story house with a broad front porch, sometimes with a partial second floor set in the roof typically with dormer windows.

Carriage Porch: A roofed structure over a driveway at the door to a building, protecting from the weather those entering or leaving a vehicle.

Casement: A window sash which swings open along its entire length; usually on hinges fixed to the sides.

Chimney Cap: Cornice forming a crowning termination of a chimney.

Classical Architecture: The architecture of Hellenic Greece and Imperial Rome.

Classical Revival: An architecture movement in the early nineteenth century based on the use of Roman and Greek forms.

Colonial Revival: The reuse of Georgian and colonial design in the U.S. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Corbelling: Brickwork projecting successively more in each course to support or meet a structure above.

Corinthian: the slenderest and most ornate of the three Greek orders of architecture, having elaborate capitals with volutes and acanthus leaf decoration.

Corner Board: A board which is used as trim on the external corner of a wood-frame structure.

Cornice: An ornamental molding at the meeting of the roof and walls; usually consists of bed molding, soffit, fascia, and crown molding.

Colonial Revival Style: The reuse of Georgian and colonial design in the U.S. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Corbelling: Brickwork projecting successively more in each course to support or meet a structure above.

Corinthian: the slenderest and most ornate of the three Greek orders of architecture, having elaborate capitals with volutes and acanthus leaf decoration.

Corner Board: A board which is used as trim on the external corner of a wood-frame structure.

Cornice: An ornamental molding at the meeting of the roof and walls; usually consists of bed molding, soffit, fascia, and crown molding.

Craftsman Style: A domestic architecture embracing simplicity, handiwork, and natural features, often with shingles, masonry details, overhanging beams and rafters, and low-pitched gable roofs.

Crown Molding: Projecting molding forming the top member of a cornice, door or window frame.

Dentil: One of a band of small, square, tooth-like blocks forming part of the characteristic ornamentation of some classical orders.

Doric Order: The column and entablature developed by the Dorian Greeks, sturdy in proportion, with a simple cushion capital, a frieze of triglyphs and metopes, and mutules in the cornice.

Entablature: In classical architecture, the elaborated beam member carried by the columns, horizontally divided into architrave, frieze, and cornice.

Fascia: Vertical board that terminates a sloped roof at the eave.

Four Square House: American houses popular from the mid-1980’s to the late 1930’s with simple two or three story rectangular forms and hipped roofs and handicrafted features characteristic of Prairie and Craftsman styles.

Frieze: The middle horizontal member of a classical entablature, above the architrave and below the cornice.

Gable: The vertical triangular portion of the end of a building having a double-sloping roof, from the level of the cornice or eaves to the ridge of the roof.

Gable L: Describes the massing of a house having a hipped roof with a projecting gable form at the front, typically two-thirds the width of the facade.

Gable Roof: A roof having a gable at one or both ends.

Gambrel Roof: A roof with two slopes of different pitch on either side of the ridge.

Half-timbering: A technique of wooden-frame construction in which the timber members are exposed on the outside of the wall.

Hipped Roof: A roof which slopes upward from all four sides of a building, requiring a hip rafter at each corner.

Hood: A cover placed above an opening or an object to shelter it.

Ionic Order: The classical order of architecture characterized by its capital with large volutes, a fasciated entablature, continuous frieze, usually dentils in the cor-nice, and by its elegant detailing.

Jack Arch: A flat or straight masonry arch.

Knee wall: Short, vertical wall that closes off the low space created by a sloping ceil-ing and the floor.

Light: A pane of glass, a window or a subdivision of a window.

Lintel: A horizontal structural member (such as a beam) over an opening which carries the weight of the wall above it.

Louver: An assembly of sloping, over-lapping blades or slats designed to admit air and/or light and exclude rain and snow.

Modern style: A contemporary house style utilizing modern industrial materials and detailing arranged in open plan configurations in which space flows between the inside and outside.

Mullion and Muntin: The vertical and horizontal members separating (and often supporting) window, doors, or panels set in series.

Ogee Curve: a double curve resembling an S-shape.

Oriel Window: In medieval English architecture, a window corbelled out from the wall of an upper story.

Palladian Motif: A door or window opening in three parts with a flat lintel over each side and an arch over the center.

Pediment: In classical architecture, the triangular gable end of the roof above the horizontal cornice. Also, a surface used ornamentally over doors or windows.

Pergola: A structure of posts or piers carrying beams and trelliswork for climbing plants.

Pilaster: An engaged pier or pillar, often with capital and base.

Porte cochère: A carriage porch.

Portico: A porch or covered walk consisting of a roof supported by columns; a colonnaded porch.

Post-and-beam framing: A type of framing which horizontal members rest on a post as distinguished from a wall.

Rafter Tails: A rafter, bracket, or joist which projects beyond the side of a build-ing and supports an overhanging portion of the roof.

Roof Pitch: The slope of a roof expressed as a ratio of its vertical rise to its horizontal rise.

Sash: Any framework of a window. May be movable or fixed; may slide in a vertical plane or pivoted.

Shed Dormer: A dormer window whose eave line is parallel to the eave line of the main roof instead of being gabled.

Shed Roof: A roof shape having only one sloping plane.

Shutter Dog: A pivoting bar for fixing shutters in the open position against a wall.

Side Gable: Describes the massing of a house having the gable end (or roof ridgeline) perpendicular to the street.

Simulated Divided Light: Refers to a light in a window sash that is visually sub-divided by applied muntins that simulates a true divided sash.

Skirt Board: A board set horizontally at the bottom of wall cladding.

Soffit: the exposed undersurface of any overhead component of a building, such as a beam, cornice, lintel, or vault.

Stile-and-rail: Type of door construction that utilizes a framework of vertical and horizontal members infilled with panels.

Tudor Style: A house style inspired by English medieval cottages featuring steeply pitched roofs, half-timbering, tall mullioned windows, high chimneys, dormers and asymmetrical massing.

Tongue-and-groove: Method of joining materials, usually wood, where a tongue or projection in one board fits the groove of its neighbor.

Transom: A horizontal bar of wood or stone across a window. Also the window or opening above the transom bar.

Verge: The edge projecting over the gable of a roof. Also, the area of planting, lawn or pavement between the sidewalk and the curb on a street.

Vergeboard: An ornamental board hanging from the rake, or verge, of a gable roof.

Vernacular Architecture: A mode of building based on regional forms and materials.

Victorian Style: A broad category of post classical architectural styles from 1840-1910 based loosely on medieval and other non-classical forms and incorporating new building technologies.

Vocabulary: A collection of related architectural elements, materials or stylistic conventions used to describe a building or structure.

Water Course or Water Table: A board or masonry projection fixed to the foot of a wall to shoot water away from it.

Wing: a subsidiary part of a building extending out from the main portion or body.