Quote:
Originally Posted by pj3000
Because the overall same style characterizes all of those cities, as well as pretty much everywhere else in the more northern parts of the Northeast.
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Years back I read this book Albion's Seed, which argued that a lot of the regional differences in the United States date back to the original founding stock of the areas in question.
In terms of architecture, the author notes that New England was settled by people from the East Anglia region of England. This can easily be seen if you look at East Anglia, and see the large number of places which lent their names to cities and towns in New England (Ipswich, Norwich, Boston, Cambridge, Haverhill, Colchester, Braintree, Chelmsford, etc). One of the things which set East Anglia apart from the rest of England at the time is they built homes more frequently out of wood. New England Yankees ran with this, and took the wood-framed vernacular with them everywhere they ultimately settled through Upstate NY and the Great Lakes (it was only defeated in Chicago due to the Great Fire).
In contrast, the "Midland" culture came from a different crucible - Quakers from Lancashire, Germans, and others. They kept to more of a brick vernacular. As people migrated westward from Philly and down the Ohio Valley, they brought this vernacular with them, and it went as far west as St. Louis.
The fault line in Pennsylvania even makes logical sense. Rowhouses are common in Allentown, but absent in Scranton. Scranton and the whole Wyoming Valley was actually first settled not by Pennsylvanians, but by settlers from Connecticut, who fought
a set of low level wars with Pennsylvania over the land in question.