Mr. Barber practiced out of Knoxville Tennessee from 1888 until roughly 1913, but he started out, in Dekalb Illinois, in the mid 1880’s.  He had examples of his designs built in every state of the union during those years, and several homes were even built in Canada and overseas.  Barber was able to achieve this, by advertising and selling pattern books that contained sketches and floor plans of his designs.  He published many different pattern books, and some even had several editions that were published yearly over a span of many years.  At that time, people who were considering building a house would often purchase his books to become better acquainted with the building process, and to see what was available for home designs.  Since these books were filled with interesting and attractive designs, it was very easy for people to fall in love with several of them, let alone one of them.  They would then engage in writing to Barber with information about their specific circumstances and the designs they preferred from the pattern books they saw.  Barber would then design a home for them that took into account their needs and desires as communicated by the letters they wrote and the information they provided.  Back and forth they would write to each other until a design was settled upon, and the architectural plans were drafted up.  Then Barber would send these finished plans on to his clients, so they could be used by a local builder or carpenter, to erect the home at the client’s homesite.  

The Brown home appears to be a spot on match for one of George Barber’s published designs, Design #2 that appeared in his pattern book entitled “New Model Dwellings and How Best to Build Them”, the first edition which was published in 1894.  As you can see, there are some minor differences between what Barber published for this design, and what was actually built for the Brown family, but the architectural attribution is unmistakable.   These design modifications were intentional as Mr. Barber wanted each and every one of his clients to experience the true professional services of a real architect, even though they have been located thousands of miles away from each other. Barber felt that through his customization of each design, he was quelling his critics that claimed he merely peddled stock plans for multiple clients, regardless of their site location, climate, or other factors that contribute to a successful design.  I would say that Barber’s strategy worked extremely well given the vast number of built examples of his designs.  You will probably find it interesting to note the estimated cost to build this design, back in 1894.  Again, pretty remarkable that something so labor intensive could cost so little, even for way back then.