"Adobe residences from the Spanish and Mexican eras were the original California houses. Architects, designers, builders, and homeowners today, as in the past, look to their simple, utilitarian features-such as plain, whitewashed walls, beamed ceilings, and intimate open-air courtyards-and try to emulate their forms to capture the charm of a romanticized past. Leading architects of style movements such as the Spanish Colonial Revival traveled to California...

In California, authentic Spanish colonial houses were built with local materials for comfort and convenience, with both construction and ornamentation traditional of Spanish and New England settlers. This book gives architects, home builders and historians a chance to view photos, sketches, and twenty-six full pages of measured drawings of interior and exterior doorways, paneling, balconies, wrought-iron, and mantels-most from houses that are no longer...