1950s Ranch Homes Making A Resurgance

With both baby boomers and historic preservationists eyeing the once maligned ranch house, suddenly this design is in the spotlight again. The virtues of these basic homes with open floor plans and low pitch roofs are even extolled in the pages of a new trendy magazine -- "Atomic Ranch."

While the design first appeared during the first wave of American suburbanization and generally lacks many of the New Urbanist principles that have become popular today, there seems no shortage of ranch homes that await new homeowners looking for an antidote to the modern "McMansion."

"By one estimate, almost three-quarters of all houses constructed between the post-World War II era and the 1970s were ranches."