Historic New England’s traveling exhibition, Drawing Toward Home: Designs for Domestic Architecture from Historic New England features one hundred drawings of houses selected from the rich collections of Historic New England.

Drawing Toward Home is at the Boston University Art Gallery through January 17, 2010, then travels to the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., from February 13, to August 15, 2010, as part of Historic New England’s centennial celebration.

While the drawings are all domestic buildings, they range in date from the late eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, depict an array of building types ­­— estates, modest single-family houses, summer cottages, and even a typical Boston multi-family dwelling known as a three-decker, plus designs for buildings that were never constructed.  The drawings document the development of the architectural profession in America.

As the center of domestic life, the house is perhaps the most important building type in a democratic society. The literature on residential design is vast. Its history parallels the range of drawings shown in the exhibition, from books like Cottage Residences by Andrew Jackson Downing (1842) to the currently popular Dwell magazine. People are endlessly curious about other people’s houses. There are home tours, historic house museums, the weekly “House and Home” section of the New York Times, and so on. Home ownership is the American Dream. As products of the architect’s craft, the drawings in this exhibition bring these and other associations to the mind of the viewer.

Drawing Toward Home illustrates changes in taste and technology and presents many of the drawings as works of art.  The exhibition includes designs by both famous and little-known architects and houses designed in the Federal, Victorian, Arts and Crafts, and International styles.  It features exterior elevations, plans, sketches, details, and highly finished, beautifully rendered drawings.  In addition, there are drawings for landscaping, outbuildings, fences, and even a proposal for an elaborate birdhouse.

James F. O’Gorman serves as chief curator; co-curators are Lorna Condon, Christopher Monkhouse, Roger Reed, and Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr.