Colonial Revival
c. 1890s–1950s
A neat, symmetrical box with a centered front door, evenly spaced windows, and often shutters. It echoes early American homes, so it looks balanced and classic.
A pocket guide to the house styles and building details you may spot on the East Sacramento photowalk. No architecture degree required: if you can recognize a shape, you can shoot it.
November 7, 2026
Join me with the Sacramento Shutterbugs on a 3-hour photowalk exploring the architecture of East Sacramento on Saturday November 7 at 10am, starting at McKinley Park and ending at the CSUS campus.
Register and Share! Sign up for the walk and post your favorite photos on the group's Meetup page so everyone can see what you found.
Photowalk Itinerary
Lost track of the group or running late? Check the time below to see where we should be.
Architectural Styles
A style is the overall "look" of a building: its shape, roof, and decoration working together. Cards marked ◆ On the shotlist are the ones we're hunting for; the rest are neighbors you're likely to meet along the way. The dates show roughly when each style was popular.
A neat, symmetrical box with a centered front door, evenly spaced windows, and often shutters. It echoes early American homes, so it looks balanced and classic.
Low, wide homes with a deep front porch, thick tapered columns, and roof beams left showing under the eaves. The style celebrates handmade wood and stone.
Storybook cottages with steep roofs, dark decorative timbers over light plaster, a tall chimney, and often an arched front door.
Smooth white stucco, curved red-clay roof tiles, arched doors and windows, and sometimes a small iron balcony. It feels like a California mission meets a Mediterranean villa.
A small, cozy one- or one-and-a-half-story home with a low roof and a front porch made for sitting. Many Craftsman houses are bungalows.
A boxy, two-story house with a pyramid-shaped roof, a single dormer in front, and a wide porch across the whole facade. It's roomy and practical rather than fancy.
A long, low, single-story house with a wide footprint, an attached garage, and a big window facing the street. It's the classic postwar suburban home.
Clean lines, flat or gently angled roofs, big walls of glass, and very little ornament. The goal was to blur the line between inside and outside.
A small, modest home from the Depression and WWII years with a simple low roof and almost no decoration. Think of it as an older style with the frills stripped away.
The ornate one: lopsided shapes, a corner tower, a wraparound porch, and lots of "gingerbread" trim and fish-scale shingles.
Bold geometry with strong vertical lines, zigzag or chevron patterns, and stepped-back tops. You'll mostly find it on small commercial buildings and storefronts.
Raw, blocky concrete with deep-set windows and a heavy, fortress-like feel. It shows up mostly on campus, civic, and government buildings rather than houses.
Building Features
Features are the individual parts that make up a building: roof shapes, windows, patterns, and structures. Several of these appear across many styles, so they're great for spotting details even when you can't name the whole house.
The triangle of wall that fills the end of a pitched roof, highlighted here. A house might have one big gable or several overlapping ones.
A roof with one long, concave slope that sweeps down toward the ground on one side while the other side stays short. It gives a cottage a lopsided, tucked-in look.
A roof that slopes inward on all four sides, with no flat triangle of wall at the ends. It's common on ranch and older boxy homes.
A small window that pokes out of a sloping roof and wears its own mini roof. It lets light and headroom into the attic.
A small, usually round tower that sits on the corner of a building and often wears a cone-shaped roof. It's a signature of Victorian homes.
A low wall that continues above the roofline, hiding a flat roof or giving the front of a building a finished edge. It can be straight, stepped, or curved.
A window that juts out from the wall in angled sections, creating a little nook inside. It's common on Victorian and Craftsman fronts.
The ends of the roof's support beams peeking out under the eaves, often with decorative cut shapes. It's a hallmark of Craftsman homes.
Dark wood beams arranged in verticals, horizontals, and diagonals against light plaster. It is the calling card of Tudor-style houses, though on modern homes it's usually just decoration.
A zigzag pattern made from bricks or pavers laid at angles to each other. Look down at walkways, driveways, and patios, or at brick walls and chimneys.
A bridge whose deck hangs from vertical cables attached to big draped cables strung between tall towers. The Guy West Bridge near the CSUS campus is a local example.
A half-circle window above a door, with bars that fan out like a hand fan or a sunrise. It's a common touch on Colonial Revival entrances.
Panels on either side of a window, often with angled slats. Today they're mostly decorative, but they once swung closed against sun and storms.
A curved top over a door, window, or passage, often built from wedge-shaped stones with a center "keystone." You'll see rounded arches on Spanish and Tudor entrances.
A triangular or curved cap above a door or window, held up by flat pilasters or columns. It gives Colonial Revival entrances their formal, temple-like look.
A roof covered in curved, overlapping clay tiles that form rows of rounded ridges, usually in terracotta red. It goes hand in hand with Spanish Colonial Revival houses.
A covered platform at the front door, with columns holding up its own roof. Porches are a defining feature of Craftsman, Bungalow, Foursquare, and Victorian homes.
A tall brick or stone stack that rises above the roof to carry smoke away from a fireplace. Shape and brickwork vary by style, and Tudor chimneys are often the tallest and most decorative.