telescope house

English

Best Endeavor, Maryland, a National Historic Place

Noun

telescope house (plural telescope houses)

1. A house with multiple extensions connected serially, decreasing in size.
   • 1940, Maryland Writers' Project, Maryland, a Guide to the Old Line State (Federal Works Agency, 1940) [1]

     The need for space to house an increasing family, or an increasing prosperity, also resulted in a type of building Marylanders call a ‘telescope house.’

   • 1978, James A. Michener, Chesapeake, Chapter "Refuge"

     As they passed beneath Peace Cliff he observed Mr. Steed looking with some interest at the telescope house, then quickly looking away, but he attached no significance to the incident.

   • 2002, 100 Of the World's Best Houses (Images Publishing, 2002) p. 326

     The “telescope house” was common to eastern Pennsylvania, especially in the utopian communities that gathered there more than a century ago.

   • 2007, Janelle McCulloch, editor, In Residence: McInturff Architects‎^[2], Images Publishing, page 110:

     Our solution builds on the classic mid-Atlantic telescope house in plan and section, reaching out and up into the trees.

   • 2012, John J. Cullinane, Maintaining and Repairing Old and Historic Buildings, John Wiley & Sons, page 113:

     The Lee-Fendall House is a “telescope” house, which is a vernacular piece of architecture developed on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.