The architect Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852) was perhaps most responsible for bringing the Neo-Gothic style of domestic architecture to the United States during the early Victorian era. In his book The Architecture of Country Houses, he describes how homes ought to be objectively beautiful, and that they ought to be truthful to the state of life and personality of the owner. Here are some excerpts about his philosophy of farm houses:

How shall we make a farm-house truthful and significant, so that it shall look like a farm-house? Only by studying the characteristics of the farmer’s life, and expressing, first of all, in the forms of his dwelling, the peculiar wants and comforts of that life…

Some of these we conceive to be the following: extended space on the ground, to afford room for all the in-door occupations of agricultural life, which will always give the farm-house breadth rather than height; a certain rustic plainness, which denotes a class more occupied with the practical and useful than the elegant arts of life; a substantial and solid construction, which denotes abundance of materials to build with, rather than money to expend in workmanship. The genuine farmer is peculiarly the man of nature—more sincere, more earnest than men of any other class; because, dealing more with Providence than with men, he is less sophisticated either in manners or heart, and, if less cultivated, is more frank, and gives us more homely truths and less conventional insincerity than dwellers in cities.

The farm-house, to be significant, should therefore show an absence of all pretension. It should not borrow Grecian columns, or Italian balustrades, or Gothic carved work from the villa; or merely pretty ornaments from the cottage ornée. It should rely on its own honest, straightforward simplicity, and should rather aim to be frank, and genuine, and open-hearted, like its owner, than to wear the borrowed ornaments of any class of different habits and tastes. The porch or the veranda of the farm-house should not only be larger, but also simpler, and ruder, and stronger than that of the cottage, because there is more manly strength in the agriculturist’s life than in that of any other class ; the roof should be higher and more capacious, for it is to overshadow larger families and larger stores of nature’s gifts ; and, above all, the chimneys should be larger and more generous-looking, to betoken the warm-hearted hospitality of the farmer’s home. Their large and simple tops should rather suggest ample hearths and good kitchens than small grates and handsome parlors. Now, the real elements of beauty in the farm-house must be found in giving expression to the best and most beautiful traits in the farmer’s life…

…The farmer’s life is not one devoted to aesthetics, and we do not look chiefly for the evidences of carefully elaborated taste and culture in his house, as in the dwelling of the scholar and the man of letters.

But we ought to find, in every farm-house, indications of those virtues which adorn the farmer’s character, and which, if expressed at all in his dwelling, must give the latter something of the same beauty as the former. His dwelling ought to suggest simplicity, honesty of purpose, frankness, a hearty, genuine spirit of good-will, and a homely and modest, though manly and independent, bearing in his outward deportment. For the true farmer despises affectation; he loves a blunt and honest expression of the truth; and he shows you that he knows the value of a friend…

It would be false and foolish to embellish highly the dwelling of such a man with the elaborate details of the different schools of architecture. We must leave this more scientific display of art and learning to villas and public edifices, and endeavor to make the farm-house agreeable, chiefly by expressing in its leading forms the strength, simplicity, honesty, frankness, and sterling goodness of the farmer’s character. Although we must recognize, first of all, the constant industry which gives so much dignity and independence to his life, in the arrangement of the interior of his house mainly for useful ends, yet we would also introduce every comfort and convenience denoting the intelligence and ease of the successful farmer’s life in a country where that life is so truly intelligent and reputable as our own…

The principles which we would lay down for designing farm-houses may be stated as follows—so far as the production of beauty is concerned. That the form of the building should express a local fitness, and an intimate relation with the soil it stands upon—by showing breadth, and extension upon the ground, rather than height. That its proportions should aim at ampleness, solidity, comfort, and a simple domestic feeling, rather than elegance, grace, and polished symmetry.

That its details should be simple and bold, and its ornaments, so far as they are used, should rather be rustic, strong, or picturesque, than delicate or highly finished. That in raising the character of the farm-house, the first step above the really useful, is to add the porch, the veranda, and the bay-window, since they are not only significant of real but of refined utility. So far as the useful is concerned in the farm-house, its principles are better understood, but we shall do no harm in recapitulating the most important:— The farm-house should be built of strong and enduring materials, whether of timber or stone, so that it may need repairs very seldom…

…though a farm-house should always be built of solid materials when economy will permit, yet there is a mental satisfaction in finding at all times, that it is constructed of materials most abundant on the farm, or at least in the district where the house is placed.

Wherever good building materials abound, their use in building the house of the owner of the land, not only enables us to understand that the abundance and cheapness of those materials have made it easy to build a large house there, but it also affords us an index of the natural products of the earth, and has therefore a local meaning, much more valuable than any novelty that we may gain by bringing our bricks from Holland, like the original settlers of New York, or importing portions of a French chateau, like some of our modern architectural virtuosi.

Downing is very traditional in trying to find the golden mean between extremes in attempting to discover what a building ought to look like.  He was repelled by the extremes of snobbishness and utilitarianism, both of which, unfortunately, are too prevalent in our culture.