The Swann-Daingerfield House, Alexandria, VA

The Swann-Daingerfield House, Alexandria, VA. 1802/1833-99
Photo: Wikimedia.

Photo: Wikimedia.

The Swann-Daingerfield house is the third house I am exploring in Alexandria. The house has gone through many interesting changes over the years. It was built in 1802 as a Federal style house by Thomas Swann. In 1833, it was purchased by Henry Daingerfield, who proceeded to remodel the house to suit changing fashions until it was purchased in 1899 by a Catholic School. The house is currently a private home after a stint as student housing for medical students. Although it has a shallow mansard roof, like the Kellogg house, it was probably remodeled as an Italianate before it recieved any Second Empire notions. One way to tell whether a cornice was designed for a mansard roof is to look at its depth. A very deep overhanging cornice is more characteristic of Italianate design that a mansard has been added to; a shallower cornice was probably added at the same time as a mansard. This cornice is certainly too wide for it to have been added with the mansard. Daingerfield owned the house from 1833 to 1899, a long span in which he probably made changes to suit prevailing tastes and to allow him extra space. The house is beautifully detailed. It follows the five-bay plan and is faced with brick that has been painted a bluish green.

The cornice is of particular interest. Although the brackets, horizontal moldings, and dentils are common enough, the architrave molding, instead of being broken by the brackets into horizontal segments, curves sinuously around them, creating an interesting, almost Spanish Baroque, pattern. The window surrounds are also a treat. They are jigsawed so that their rectangular shape is enlivened by suggestions of brackets and ears; they are topped with a dentiled cornice, which is curved on the central window. These seem to be characteristic of Alexandria; another house nearby also has similar cut-out window surrounds. The porch is interestingly designed on this house. Instead of just surrounding the central door, it covers the central three bays. Additionally, the posts are spaced and the stairs are built so that there are wider openings in front of the windows flanking the door where one walks up the steps. The central section is divided into two smaller bays without stairs. This diffusion of the porch ascent from the center to the sides can be seen in some fancier examples of Italianate, and it seems to me this suggests grandeur. The design of the porch is simple, consisting of arches and panels in the spandrels with carved cartouches serving as the keystone; the porch looks similar to that on the Marshall house. Although I am not sure about when the stylistic changes were made, I would guess they occurred sometime in the 1860s. I believe this partly because of the elaborate nature of the forms, which are, however, not as complex as one might expect from an 1870s remodel. The roundness of the porch arches also is a more 1850s/60s design; in the 1870s segmental arches and filleted rectangles were more popular.

The John Marshall House, Alexandria, VA

The John Marshall House, Alexandria, VA. c.1850 Photo: Wikimedia.

The John Marshall house was formerly the neighbor of the Vowell-Smith house on Wolfe Street in Alexandria. It was built around 1850, was used as a hospital during the Civil War, and was, in 1927, made a synagogue (certainly a bizarre sanctuary choice!). Unfortunately, the house was demolished in 1961 for the construction of several smaller houses, depriving the Vowell-Smith house of an important contextual element. I only have this single photograph of the house from Wikimedia. It is an interesting example; following the irregular plan, the house appears to be faced with brick with stone and wood detailing. The tower on this house breaks through the cornice line, giving the house a great deal of vertical thrust; this verticality is softened a bit by the projecting balconies on the third stage of the tower. The use of double rectangular windows in the tower (the cornice-bracket combination looks almost identical to some of the windows on the Vowell-Smith house) and a fourth stage with tombstone windows is odd. The tower is much taller than the usual three and a half stages found on most towered Italianates, and the finial at the top increases the sense of height. Many Italianate towers and cupolas were originally topped with wooden or metal finials. These, as one might expect, tended to rot or decay, so they remain somewhat rare today. This one looks particularly interesting because the pointed finial is seemingly supported by four curving s-scrolls at its corners.

The house has an interesting mix of ornamental schemes. While the arched windows in the tower and gable and simple arched porch are securely Italianate features, the window hood moldings appear to be in the Gothic idiom. The hood moldings are pointed and extend slightly at the ends, which is a Gothic feature. I suppose the architect or the client simply couldn't decide on one style or the other. Another interesting feature is the way the door surround at the base of the tower projects slightly and has a blind balcony on top. Visually this provides continuity with the decoration of the particularly large porch without actually having the porch wrap around the tower. Oddly, the porch seems not to have had a balustrade on top, a feature one might have expected in a house like this. The hip roof is also strange; it seems to be steeply sloped near the cornice line but flat on top, making it almost a proto-mansard. One other odd thing is that, although I cannot see the other side of the house, there appear to be no bay or box windows, which is almost expected in any Italianate, especially one of this size. The house is an interesting specimen, particularly for its Gothic features. It was certainly a grand Italianate with its tall tower and luxurious trimmings, and it's unfortunate for its surviving neighbor that it didn't last. There is a carriage house visible in the image that I provide a close-up of below.

The Vowell-Smith House, Alexandria, VA

The Vowell-Smith House, Alexandria, VA. 1854

Alexandria is a city famous for its impressive Colonial and Federal architecture, but the city also has some excellent examples of Italianate that can be overlooked when exploring George Washington's town. One of the houses I posted in Springfield, 383 Union Street, reminded me of this house in Alexandria, VA because of its entrance with a surround of oversized brackets. The Vowell-Smith house also has a resemblance to the Brearley house and Henderson Hall type in that it is a three story symmetrical plan house with a projecting center bay and a pediment. This house was built in 1854 by Francis L. Smith, a lawyer, on a quarter of a block he inherited. The house was built on Wolfe Street, which by the 1850s had been so improved that several people built impressive mansions on the street, and the Smith house was one of the most impressive. The ornament on the house is grand without being bombastic. The cornice is made of simple stepped brackets and large dentils, which interestingly are not hanging from a molding but are simply flush with the board above them. The brackets are paired in the same way as the Brearley house; doubled brackets accentuate the corners while single brackets mark the placement of the windows. The windows are doubled on the front facade topped by two brackets and a cornice; on the third floor, the tombstone windows are arched with Venetian tracey and eared molding surrounds.

This treatment only applies to the front facade; the side facade looks almost Greek Revival with its simple windows, plain lintels and shutters. The house was obviously designed to impress from the front angle, but economy was employed on the sides. In the simpler sides, one can see the influence of Alexandria's Federal architecture, since, except for the cornice, the design is reminiscent of late 18th and early 19th century designs. The door surround has doubled s-curve brackets and finials like those at 383 Union St., but these are much simpler in the carving and shape with only raised swirls for decoration. The flat roof and the length of the windows above the overhang suggest there was originally a balustrade making this a balcony. Two notable features are the balustrade on top of the hip roof where a cupola might be expected, and the survival of the elaborate iron fencing around the property and the iron balconies on the first floor. The posts of the fence are even topped with what seem to be original urns. The following images by me illustrate a couple of the details.