[the Misanthropist]

Here's one for the architecture buffs.

I've always found remarkable the great difference between Eastern and Western Victorian architecture. Bearing in mind we're talking about the same country, the same period and the same influences I think it's quite surprising. Let's take San Francisco as a the Western paradigm, being as it was THE city in the West, and Boston as the Eastern stereotype. If you think about wooden architecture, the ornate San Francisco victorians with their bay windows have nothing to do with their Eastern counterparts. And where you see brownstones and red brick rowhouses in the East you see stucco in the West. We're actually talking about cities of a similar size, 342k San Fran against 560k Boston, according to the 1900 census. How do you explain the difference in architectural styles?