American Colonial Architecture

American colonial architecture covers the several building styles used in the British colonies that became the United States, running from about 1600 through the nineteenth century and including First Period English work in a late medieval idiom as well as colonial Georgian design, alongside the separate Spanish, French and Dutch colonial traditions built by other European settlers in North America. Distinct regional versions developed depending on which settlers built where and what techniques they brought: wood framed construction in New England, Dutch influenced building in the Hudson River Valley and Long Island, plainer southern colonial houses in Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas, Swedish and German influenced building in the Delaware Valley, and Spanish colonial forms, later touched by Pueblo building traditions, in the Southwest and California. The style adapted English building methods to American materials and climate and laid the groundwork for the later Georgian and Federal styles.