When henry thoreau published Walden in 1854, the title page was illustrated with an engraving of the modest dwelling he had built by the pond. (See Figure 1.) While the cabin seems unexceptional, it was an appropriate focal point for the book, a visible emblem of the independent, self-determined life he had made for himself and which he advocated for every American. Recognizing that the built environment expresses fundamental personal, social, and economic values, Thoreau saw that Americans in particular needed to build with a deliberation commensurate to the larger endeavor of defining their personal and national identities. Thoreau was not alone in his interest in developing a national architectural ideal; he wrote at the height of a period during which, as Gwendolyn Wright has put it, “The task of defining the American home was a national mission.” For Thoreau, the cardinal principle of housing-the first demand he made of America in its domestic architecture — was that living space must create or preserve the freedom and independence of the individual. This is the principle upon which all of his comments on housing and architecture are based and the criterion by which any particular architectural model is judged.