Pyramidal cottage

Philip and Ella Morr House in Stevensville, Montana, in 1991.

A pyramidal cottage is a roughly square, one-story, house with a hip roof. The hip roof over a square structure forms the characteristic pyramidal shape. Alternative names include pyramidal house, pyramid cottage, and miner's cottage. These are modest Folk Victorian homes built in the United States from the late 19th into the first half of the 20th Century. ^{[1] [2]} Classification of American architecture does not include a rigorous definition of pyramidal cottage; there are unmistakable examples, but there are also variants which fit the description to some degree. ^[3]

Description

A concrete block cottage with a truncated hip roof, Lancaster House, Stevensville, Montana.

Pyramidal cottages are commonly wooden frame structures. ^[1] The roof may come to a pyramidal point, or it may come up to a central chimney. Over a less than truly square house, the roof may peak with a short ridge. ^[3] Like some larger hip-roofed Victorian houses, some roofs are truncated by a flat cut-off at the top, sometimes crested with decorative millwork. ^[3]

An engaged porch under the main roof, Washburne Historic District, Springfield, Oregon.

Roofed porches, original or added, may be attached to the front and/or back of the square main house. Full width front porches, or nearly full-width, are common. ^[3] Alternatively, a front porch may be engaged into the square footprint under the main pyramidal roof.

The floor plan consists typically of four large rooms (a "four-box plan" ^[4] ) one on each corner with a window on each outside wall. The rooms are generally connected directly to each other with no connecting hallways. Sometimes a small bathroom is included as a fifth room, but many pyramidal cottages were built before the advent of indoor plumbing. ^[3] The efficient four-box floor plan resembles that in the two-story American Foursquare. ^[1]

History

Pyramidal cottages were economical and efficient housing emerging during the rapid expansion of railroads and industrialization following the American Civil War, mostly but far from exclusively, in the Southern United States. ^{[1] [3]}

Philip and Ella Morr House, Stevensville, Montana. Cottage with modern addition. By Jerrye & Roy Klotz, MD.

With their initial small size, their location often in now inner-city neighborhoods, and decades of modification such as extensions and porch enclosures, extant pyramidal cottages are often inconspicuous. ^[3]

Gallery

• 
  A pyramidal duplex (note two front doors) in Jefferson County, Alabama.
• 
  Cottage near Mulga, Alabama.
• 
  A bungalow-style kit house by Harris Homes in 1920.
• 
  Mill-worker cottage located at 1312 Washington St., LaGrange, Georgia.
• 
  Gable Front House, Shotgun House, and Pyramidal Cottage in Jefferson County, Alabama.

External links

• Georgia (U.S. State) Hip-Roof & Pyramidal Structures.
• Lafayette's Miner's Cottages, Lafayette, Colorado.

References

1. Cassity, Micheal. "Pyramidal House | The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture". Oklahoma Historical Society. Retrieved 31 December 2025.
2. McAlester, Virginia; McAlester, A. Lee (1984). A field guide to American houses. New York: Knopf. ISBN   0-394-51032-1.
3. Hubka, Thomas (2 March 2017). "Hardly noticed, Pyramids recall Portland's housing history". oregonlive. Retrieved 31 December 2025.
4. Hubka, Thomas C. (2013). Houses without names: architectural nomenclature and the classification of America's common houses. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. ISBN   978-1-57233-947-7.