Second Edition, March 2003

Revised and expanded with contributions by Thaddeus Gearhart, Chris Geddes, Lyle Hansen, Dale Heckendorn and Holly Wilson. Originally published in 1983 as A Guide to Colorado Architecture, written and edited by Sarah J. Pearce with contributions by Merrill A. Wilson.  The entire publication is available in PDF or hard copy.  Suggested readings are available that include architectural dictionaries, general architectural guides, Colorado-specific publications, and sources on special property types.

Preface to the First Edition

The Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation of the Colorado Historical Society initiated a project to develop an architectural guide for Colorado in March 1983 with the assistance of a grant from the Colorado Commission on Higher Education.  The purpose of the guide is to standardize the terminology used in describing Colorado architectural styles to assist surveyors in recording properties for the Colorado Inventory of Cultural Resources.  The terminology will provide consistency for encoding and retrieving architectural information from the computerized data system.  This document is not intended to be a history of architecture in Colorado, but simply a guide to common architectural styles and types.

We wish to acknowledge the contributions of the people who assisted the project by reviewing and commenting on the typology.  Special thanks to deTeel Patterson Tiller of the National Park Service, Gracy Gary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Vicki Rottman of the Colorado State Highway Department, Don Etter of Holland and Hart, and Barbara Norgren.

Sarah J. Pearce, 1983

Preface to the Second Edition

This second edition is primarily a reprint of the first.  Some changes to the text were made in the interests of clarity resulting from twenty year’s use of the original guide.  Some new architectural and engineering styles and types were added to reflect resent survey and registration work.  A few styles and types were removed as they no longer constitute current classification practices.  However, this publication should not be considered as fully representative of the current thinking on Colorado architecture and engineering.  It is designed primarily to return to print a guide un-available for nearly a decade.  It will serve as the beginning point for a third edition which will better present a modern perspective on Colorado architecture and engineering encompassing the past twenty years of cultural resource survey.

New styles, forms and types will be added regularly to the online Guide to Colorado’s Historic Architecture and Engineering.

We wish to acknowledge the field work and analytical research of numerous cultural resource professionals whose reports formed the basis for many of the additions to this publication.  These individuals include Clayton Fraser, Laurie and Thomas Simmons, Carl McWilliams, and Maria Mondragon-Valdez.

Dale Heckendorn
Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, 2003