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JULY 16
I’ve never braved residence in D.C., but I did have a go at neighborly apartment living in sylvan Beltsville. And it made a single-family suburbanite out of me. My wife and I adopted a total austerity program for several years and got the hell out of earshot of our ghastly fellow box-dwellers. Now, as far as I can tell from James C. Massey and Shirley Maxwell’s House Styles in America: The Old-House Journal Guide to the Architecture of American Homes, we live in a Cape Cod cottage with Colonial Revival touches (pictured is a Sears catalog Cape). But if I want to be certain, I’ll need to take a photo to the authors’ lecture, “Post-Victorian House Styles in America: A Primer,” when they’ll probably discuss not only the dominant styles (of which a wide range exists locally—many of the book’s illustrations are shots of D.C.-area dwellings), but also a few of the stylistic hybrids. Even if you’re living in one of the area’s many mausoleums for the living (some friends of ours took one look at a hi-rise Maryland monstrosity called the Point and fled to Bowie), you too can hear the one-family/one-lawn gospel at 6:30 p.m. at the National Building Museum, 401 F St. NW. $7. For reservations call (202) 272-2448. (Glenn Dixon)