Saltbox Houses in the Historic American Buildings Survey

Page 1: Introduction, Connecticut, Maine

John Osborn House

Introduction

What is a saltbox house? It is a Colonial style of architecture which originated in New England. Saltboxes are frame houses with two stories in front and one in back, having a pitched roof with unequal sides, being short and high in front and long and low in back. The front of the house is flat and the rear roof line is steeply sloped. The sturdy central chimney is a simple but effective focal point. The simplicity and strength of this design, first seen around 1650, continues to make saltbox houses popular today.

Listed below are representative images of saltbox houses found in the Historic American Buildings Survey collection. (Saltbox houses employ timber-frame construction; see the separate Timber-frame Houses reference aid for a fuller selection of HABS-documented sites that are especially good examples of that construction method.)

Select the small image to view a larger version. Select the Call Number of the structure to retrieve, via the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC), a bibliographic record for the entire group of documentation. The bibliographic record will provide fuller information about the house in question (such as date built, owners' names) and may include other photographs and/or other types of documentation.

Images can be downloaded from this site. The Library of Congress cannot give or deny permission to publish or otherwise distribute material in its collections, but a rights statement for the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record is available. Photographic and other types of copies can also be ordered from the Library of Congress Duplication Services by selecting the "Obtaining Copies" link in the bibliographic record and following the instructions given there.