Below are definitions and photographic illustrations of architectural term beginning with the letter "C".
| Camp Ceiling - A ceiling in the shape of a truncated four-sided pyramid. |
| Canton - A pilaster or engaged column projecting from the corner of a building. |
| Cape Cod - As its name suggests, a house style that developed and was made popular in colonial-era New England. Many modern Cape Cod homes were built as part of the Colonial Revival movement during the early to middle 20th century. They were cheap and easy to mass-produce, which made them extremely popular during the Depression era. The original Cape Cod homes were built by colonists from England in the late 17th century, and were modeled after the half-timbered houses popular in Great Britain at the time. After a few years of exposure to New England's stormy winter weather, the colonists made some substantial changes to the original half-timbered style. A traditional Cape Cod house will have a boxy, rectangular shape and be one and a half stories tall. A gable roof with virtually non-existent eaves will enclose the structure, and the use of dormers to provide additional lighting is common. The house will be wood frame, and covered with wooden clapboards or shingles. Symmetry is a dominant theme, with a center entrance, a large central chimney, and no external decoration or ornamentation. Shutters frame virtually every window. Modern Cape Cod houses follow the traditional model, except the chimney is usually placed on one side of the house and the shutters are inoperative. Most of the Cape Cod houses built in Boston during the 20th century have been covered with modern vinyl or alumnum siding. |
| Capital - The decorated upper end of a column or pier, which supports the entablature. |
| Carpet Pad - A rubber or felt pad placed underneath carpet to increase its resilience and noise transmission (especially footsteps). |
| Carpet Tile - A flooring tile made from a stiff-backed carpet material. Replacing worn, stained, or damaged carpet tiles is much easier than replacing an entire carpet, making them ideal for use in extremely high trafffic areas such as building lobbies and airport concourses. |
| Cased Opening - A trimmed opening without a door or window. |
| Cast Stone - An artificial substitute for quarried stone made from a mixture of concrete and small stone. It can be pre-cast into a wide variety of shapes, making it more affordable and less time consuming to use than "real" stone for some applications. |
| Cement - A mixture of clay and powdered limestone used as the binding agent in concrete and mortar. |
| Chat-sawn - A stone face with a rough pebbled finish obtained by using a mixture of loose abrasive and water during the sawing process. |
| Cheek - A side of a building projection, such as a buttress or a dormer. |
| Clapboard - A long, thin board with one edge thinner than the other used as siding. Clapboard siding is laid so the thick bottom edge of a board overlaps the thin top edge of the board below it. |
| Clinker - An extremely dense brick made by exposing the clay to extremely high temperatures in the kiln. Usually used for paving. |
| Closer - A brick or block that has been cut down to finish a row of bricks near the corner of a wall. |
| Coffer - A recessed panel in a ceiling, usually square in shape. (Also known as a lacunar.) |
| Colonial Siding - Siding made from plain square boards, laid so the bottom of every board overlaps the top of the board below it. |
| Colonnade - A set of regularly spaced columns supporting an entablature (and almost always one side of a roof). |
| Column - A rigid, slender structural member designed to support a load pressing down on it. Usually composed of wood or a masonry material such as brick or stone. In classical architecture, a column consists of a base, a shaft, and a capital. |
| Columniation - The layout of columns in a building. |
| Common Bond - A brick pattern consisting of a row of header bricks between every 5 or 6 rows of stretcher bricks. (Also called American Bond.) |
| Concrete - A stone-like substance made by mixing one or more aggregates with cement and then adding water to set it. |
| Coping - A protective finishing cap on top of an exterior wall, designed to shed water. |
| Corbel Arch - An arch-like arrangement of masonry that consists of two very wide corbels that meet in the middle, topped with a capstone. This is a "false arch", i.e., it doesn't provide any real support to the structure above it. |
| Cork Tile - A semi-flexible floor covering made from ground cork and resin, usually covered with a protective coat of clear polyvinyl chloride (PVC). |
| Corner Board - A vertical board at the corner of a building that siding is fitted against. |
| Cornice - The topmost element of a construction in classical architecture, usually consisting of a bed molding, corona, and cymatium. |
| Cornice Return - A continuation of a cornice around a roof's gable. |
| Corona - The slab of a cornice between the bed molding and the cymatium. |
| Corridor - A narrow passageway that multiple rooms open onto. |
| Cove - A concave surface that transitions from a wall to the ceiling, eliminating the traditonal 90 degree angle. |
| Cove Ceiling - A ceiling with a cove. |
| Crazing - A network of hairline cracks in the surface of concrete or plaster that was allowed to dry too quickly. |
| Cricket - A small roof used to divert rainwater around a roof projection, such as a chimney. |
| Crown - The highest part of an arch or vault. |
| Crown Glass - A primitive form of window glass created by twirling a sphere of molten glass into a disc. |
| Cul-de-Four - A half-dome built against a vertical wall. |
| Cupola - A lightweight structure built on top of a dome or roof. |
| Curtain Wall - An exterior wall that isn't capable of bearing any load except its own weight, usually held up by a building's frame. |
| Cymatium - The top-most element of a cornice. |
