Hall and parlor house – side view. This West Virginia house was originally a log structure built between 1811 and 1830 with only two rooms and 400 square feet of living space. Wood clapboard siding, the ell, and shed were added later. This house and the I house demonstrate how houses are adapted and remodeled over time, representing different time periods, housing styles, and changing concepts of how families should live in their homes.
Photograph of George Judy Farm, Grant County West Virginia, 1933. Historic American Buildings Survey. (Courtesy Library of Congress)
Image featured in Investigating Family, Food, and Housing Themes in Social Studies by Cynthia Resor
This image would be a useful primary source for teaching students about how houses were generally designed during early American history. This will allow students to compare their modern housing with housing from earlier times.
I’m going to use this to prompt my students to compare their modern lifestyles and homes to those of historical Americans.
I love this image to introduce the standard of living for different parts of the United States, later to be expanded to the world, for late elementary and early middle grades education. It would be great for students to research different standards of living throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century in the United States. Students can find images to support their findings and compare it to what the standard of living is today.