I bought 140+ floor plans to understand Blue Prince

Описание: Today we’re talking about FLOOR PLANS! I’ve been playing Blue Prince and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, which means I have been deep in the fictional floor plan world. I think video games are one of the perfect mediums to explore houses since you can see maps and walk through the home as you might IRL.

These games got me thinking of my own collection of floor plan books. In the video we tour through Idlewild, the home of an 1850s writer by reading all about it (floor plans included) in the Calvert Vaux's book, "Villas and Cottages". From there we learn more about Andrew Jackson Downing and his book "Cottage Residences" that started the trend of selling floor plan books to ‘regular’ people not builders. I also unlock a pretty cool mystery about Harriet Jacobs which I learned from a book of floor plans.

The house plan CD I bought in 2020: https://everything4lessstore.com/407....

The video games I talk about:
Blue Prince, 2025
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, 2024

0:00 Intro
0:20 Blue Prince
2:07 I bought 140+ floor plans
3:03 Idlewild
5:45 History of house plan books
6:26 AJ Downing
8:21 Floorplan of Suburban Cottage
11:35 Blue Prince again
12:43 Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
14:30 Unraveling a mystery
17:35 Conclusion

Title changed from 'Exploring a home that doesn’t exist' on 6/5/2025
Title changed from 'Visiting a home that doesn’t exist' on 6/2/2025

Sources:
Northern Lion playing Blue Prince:    / @northernlion  

Suburban Homes from Morgan Park, 1886

Remodeling the Bungalow Farmhouse by K.H. Hinchcliff, E.L. Hansen, and D.G. Jedele, 1963

Villas and Cottages by Calvert Vaux, 1857

Historic New England: Kit Houses, Builder's Guides, Plan Books, and Kits Over Time: https://kithouses.org/location/chrono...

The Country Builder's Assistant Reprint by Asher Benjamin, 1917: https://archive.org/details/reprintof...

A treatise on the theory and practice of landscape gardening by A.J. Downing, 1841: https://archive.org/details/treatiseo...

Cottage Residences by A.J. Downing, 1842: https://archive.org/details/cottagere...

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, 1861: https://archive.org/details/incidents...

Harriet Jacobs: A Life by Jean Fagan Yellin, 2004

The poems, sacred, passionate, and humorous, of Nathaniel Parker WIllis by NP Willis, 1860: https://archive.org/details/poemssacr...