From cottages to mansions, it’s easily identified by its characteristic half-timbering, a decorative treatment that appears to expose structural elements. The spaces between the timbers are “nogged” (filled-in) with stone or brick, and are usually stuccoed, but occasionally left exposed.

They may also be a combination of brick, rubble stone, and half-timbering. Steeply pitched roofs have intersecting gables and dormer windows. Casement or double hung windows are multi-paned, often with diamond shaped panes. Irregular floor plans, slate or terra cotta tile roofs, and massive, decorative brick chimneys are other characteristics.

Tudor Revival was based on 17th-century Elizabethan architecture in England, revived by English architect Richard Norman Shaw in the 1880s. Elements of the style first appeared in the U.S. on houses of Queen Anne form. When Tudor Revival finally emerged as a style of its own, its houses resembled a type of English country cottage popularized in builders’ guides.

The style was one of the more popular of early 20th-century styles in Louisville. Upper Clifton, Cherokee, and Seneca Gardens are some of the neighborhoods that have a large number of Tudor Revival houses.

Identifying features are usually Italianate style/forms with a Mansard roof. The mansard roof, a dual-pitched hipped roof, could exhibit one of five profiles — straight, flared, concave, convex, or S-curved.

French Second Empire style often included eaves with paired decorative brackets and paired windows and doors. Molded cornices, wrought iron roof cresting, and multi-color patterned slate roofs are other defining characteristics.

Floor plans often included pavilions, outward projection of a building’s center or side.

This tall style was popular for remodeling as well as new construction because the boxy roof allowed for a full story of useable space. For a period during the 19th century, property tax laws exempted attics from taxation, so a mansard roof had the added benefit of providing a tax-free floor.

Second Empire style reached Louisville in the 1870s. The mansard roof was essentially all that was needed to make any house French Second Empire, and the style was adaptable to houses of many types, elaborate mansions, urban row houses, and simple cottages.

Long rectangular dwellings, one room wide and generally one story tall. They can be two stories in what is called a Camelback, with a second story in the back. Believed to be first built in the U.S. in Louisiana by free Haitians because of the compact lot size required, the shotgun house design may have been brought to Louisville by French fur traders and possibly first built in Shippingport.

Louisville’s surviving shotguns were built after the end of the Civil War, and mainly between 1890 and 1915. Louisville now has the largest collection of Shotgun houses in the entire country, only after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. They are a special and unique vernacular architecture to Louisville.

Shotguns are found in many of Louisville’s neighborhoods such as Portland, Germantown, Butchertown, Russell, California, and the older sections of the Highlands.

Shotgun houses are among the most common late 19th century and early 20th century house types in the urban South.

The terms craftsman and bungalow are often used interchangably, though there is a fundamental distinction. Craftsman refers generally to the Arts and Crafts movement and is considered an architectural or interior style, whereas bungalow is a particular form of house or building. Thus, a bungalow can exhibit a craftsman style, and many of them indeed did so.

Low-pitched, gabled roof, wide overhang of eaves, exposed rafters (rafter tails) under eaves, decorative brackets (knee braces or corbels); incised porch (beneath main roof); tapered or square columns supporting roof or porch; 4-over-1 or 6-over-1 sash windows, often with Frank Lloyd Wright design motifs; hand-crafted stone or woodwork, often mixed materials throughout structure.

Bungalows can either be front-gabled, side-gabled, or cross-gabled.

Bonnycastle is one of the neighborhoods that has a large number of craftsman houses in Louisville, though they can be found all over the city in neighborhoods built in the early to mid-20th century.