Architectural term coined in 1949 by Vincent J. Scully jr to describe a style of mid-19th century American timber-frame domestic architecture. Scully posited a common theoretical link: the desire to express structure with an externally visible wooden frame. ‘This new aesthetic sensitivity to the expression of light wood structure’, wrote Scully in 1953, ‘in a sense stripped the skin off the Greek Revival and brought the frame to light as the skeleton of a new and organically wooden style.’ While acknowledging European sources, Scully concluded that the Stick style was, like the other style he identified, the Shingle style, essentially American. He cited as noteworthy examples A. J. Downing’s board-and-batten cottage designs of the 1840s and 1850s, Richard Morris Hunt’s J. N. A. Griswold House (1861–3), Newport, RI (see HUNT, (2), fig. 1), and Dudley Newton’s Cram House (1875-6), Middletown, RI. Despite its wide acceptance, a few critics have questioned the validity of Scully’s term. Rarely is there a direct correlation between external woodwork and actual structure; Hunt’s Griswold House drawings bear this out; and there is little evidence that American designers sought structural expression. Their goals had more to do with the Picturesque, historicism, eclecticism and a wish to follow the latest fashion from abroad. These houses recall a variety of wooden building types, from the half-timbered Late Gothic domestic architecture of England, France and Germany to the Swiss chalet and Scandinavian, Tyrolean and Slavic vernacular building. They reflect the contemporary European taste for houses that invoked these traditions.

• Stick style
  • USA, §II, 3: Architecture: The Civil War and late 19th-century eclecticism