Thursday, January 4, 2018

The Lazarus and Leona Baer House, Vicksburg, MS

The Lazarus and Leona Baer House, Vicksburg, MS. 1870 Source: Jeff Hart
Source: Jeff Hart
The Lazarus and Leona Baer house was built as an irregular plan Italianate in 1870 for Jewish merchants. The similarity both in styling and in plan and details to the Beck house suggests that it may have been contracted to Beck, especially the way that the window moldings are rendered in brick, which is exactly similar to those on the side façade of the Beck house. The house disguises its volumes with numerous porches and protrusions. The main recessed pavilion is disguised by a double story porch with simple spandrel brackets and an entablature with alternating long and short brackets, with the long carrying the posts of the porch into the top of the porch. The main entablature has long angular brackets interrupting a run of shorter brackets. The gable in the projecting pavilion has decorative Eastlake bargeboards and this pavilion's two story bay window allows the house to keep its volumes and mass intact so that it does not appear flat, as it would without the window, since the porch extends to the edge of the projecting pavilion. The interior is just as elaborate, with fine Eastlake woodwork and an impressive multicolored floor in the first floor vestibule (seen below). The house currently operates as a bed and breakfast.


Similar in design, but simpler, is another house in Vicksburg, irregular in plan, with spartan windows, a simple entablature, and a jazzy Gothic revival porch.

Source: Jeff Hart

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