'Clifton' the Johns Hopkins House, Baltimore, MD

'Clifton' the Johns Hopkins House, Baltimore, MD. 1858 

Photo: Doug Copeland

Photo: Wikimedia

'Clifton' is another remodel of an earlier house, a five bay home built in the Federal style in 1803 for Henry Thompson. In 1838, it was bought by Johns Hopkins, the same university benefactor, and was remodeled in 1858 to its current Anglo-Italianate design by Niernsee and Neilson, a firm whose Baltimore work I have previously explored. The house has a five bay plan inherited from its previous incarnation, but the wings and tower placement are very unprecedented. Unlike Locust Grove, Niernsee did not disguise the original house, seen as the tall central block here, but rather expanded it drastically, making it the centerpiece of a much larger Italianate composition, adding Anglo-Italianate surrounds to the windows, a small entablature sequestering the third floor, and an entablature-less cornice with simple beam brackets. A broad porch was built linking the entire design and wing (an unexpectedly large porch!) with simple arches with bulls eyes in the spandrels resting on chamfered, paneled pillars. The bulkiness of the porch is relieved by a rather delicate railings with Roman-style crosses tied with bulls eyes. A simple beam bracket cornice completes the design with a pediment indicating the front entrance. The house gets very Italianate in its tower, connected by a wing with double tombstone windows with no surrounds. The tower covers a port cochere and seems to combine the full gamut of tower motifs with an arched window on the second stage, a Renaissance surround rectangular window on the third (with Renaissance balconies), a Romanesque series of drops that underlie a simple dentilled string course, an uncommon fourth stage with three deep panels and a window in the center, and on the fifth a triple arched window with an iron balcony surrounding the whole. This might be one of the tallest Italianate towers I have featured. The rear of the house has a polygonal bay and a very strange broad eave with c scroll brackets that fill almost the whole second floor, perhaps the most exaggerated brackets I have seen.

A blog post shows detailed shots of the house and the interior during renovation, with great images of the stunning plasterwork, fine stenciled walls, and unique woodwork. The design of the tower, semi detached and connected by a low wing suggests strongly to me Osborne House, one of the UK's premier Italianate palaces:

Photo: Wikimedia

Sloan's "City and Suburban Architecture"

City and Suburban architecture was published in 1858 and represented a very different side of Sloan from his Model Architect. While previous publications had focused on primarily residential and garden designs, CS offered plans for churches, houses, commercial, institutional, and industrial buildings. All these idioms were practiced by Sloan (recall he was most prolific in his schoolhouse designs). Sloan's residential designs in CS were primarily for row houses of stone, rather than the expansive and imaginative rural villas in MA. CS includes as well far more detail renderings of doors, windows, and architectural do-dads.

There are a series of shared characteristics to this volume. It reflects the more urban work that Sloan did for Joseph Harrison in connection to his house on Rittenhouse Square (featured as the final design in the volume) and his work in designing Harrison's developments both in the city and in West Philadelphia. These designs were far more Anglo-Italianate in inspiration, mostly designed as rowhouses in stone. The depressed arched windows with Venetian tracery are ubiquitous as well as the presence of rusticated first floors, all features from Harrison's house. They feature heavy window moldings and an interesting eclecticism with a mixture of classical Renaissance, rococo, and Rundbogenstil Romanesque decorative elements. The idiom expressed in this can be found all over Philadelphia, for instance in the Deaconess Training School.

Design 2:

This is a design of impressive variation for the typical three bay rowhouse. Each floor is carefully differentiated with the third and fourth floors varying the window placements and groupings to give a greater illusion of pavilions and varied volumes. The detailing is eclectic with rococo revival carved foliage and Romanesque details and drops under the bracketed entablature.

Design 5:

This is a rather fanciful rowhouse design for the end of a block with a tower. There are several correspondences with the Harrison house, including the use of depressed arches with Venetian tracery. The detailing here as well is eclectic, blending Rundbogenstil Romanesque designs with Anglo-Italianate classical detailing. Note the false wall in the rear.

Design 10

This is a more stylistically consistent design, with rococo forms, a rusticated basement, and only a small Romanesque fringe.

Design 11:

A particularly lavish basement with both rustication and pilasters and Sloan's signature depressed arch windows and Venetian tracery. The paired windows on the top story are a signature Sloan design.

Design 15:

Similar to Design 10 but with a fancier basement and balconies.

Design 16:

A variation on Design 15 but with heavier classical detailing and a simpler basement.

Design 17:

A plan for an entire row of 10 houses. This was likely the row that Sloan built for Joseph Harrison behind his house at Locust Street. It very closely matches the style of Harrison's house, especially in the treatment of the attic and window designs.

Design 19:

A high style symmetrical plan house with thick classical details.

Design 27:

One of Sloan's suburban detached designs. The house at Pine Street may have been designed based on this, though the triple window in the gable is far larger in the example. These designs are likely reflective of his work for Harrison in West Philadelphia.

Design 28:

Design 30:

The Joseph Harrison House (Second)- Holmesburg, PA

The Second Joseph Harrison House, 1856. Holmesburg, PA

Philadelphia SAH

The country house that Joseph Harrison commissioned Sloan to design for him, as he had for his city house (see previous post) was neither less grand nor less eccentric. This is potentially the only surviving photograph of the house, which was poorly documented. This picture was taken before its demolition in 1901 for a water treatment plant. Harrison had had Sloan design him a sophisticated, European, Anglo-Italianate structure for his city living. For his country house, he continued with the elaborate European styling. The house, at least from this angle, follows the pavilion plan. It has two pavilions jutting out from the sides with a porch in between enclosing a polygonal bay (it appears to hold a staircase) connected by glassed in bays. The roofline varies dramatically between the three elements, central bay, pavilion, and connecting wings. The façade is stuccoed with quoins and a thick entablature with closely spaced s curve brackets intersecting a thick architrave molding. The window surrounds are Greek in inspiration, with eared moldings and a small pediment, unclassically supported by small brackets. The whole was topped by a cupola. To one side was a classical greenhouse with an onion dome. But the real eccentricity was the Russian baroque belltower. Harrison spent time in Russia developing the railroads there, and like Samuel Colt, another industrialist who spent time in Russia, when building his house incorporated Russian designs. Colt added an onion dome to his factory in Hartford as well as a series of onion-domed greenhouses to his own Italianate mansion. Harrison's is rather more drastic and a great example of the folly-design found in the picturesque English Romantic tradition in which one's house reflected the souvenirs of their travels, even in the form of structures.

The Joseph Harrison House, Philadelphia, PA

The Joseph Harrison House, Philadelphia, PA. 1856.

Sloan designed the Joseph Harrison house in a prominent location in urban Philadelphia, on Rittenhouse Square in 1856. Harrison was an extremely wealthy railroad inventor and builder who was responsible for building a large portion of Russia's 19th century railroad system. Harrison bought an entire side of Rittenhouse Square in 1855 and set about building his house facing the square and also designing a series of row houses behind, filling the block. Considered one of Philadelphia's most extravagant houses, it housed an art collection that would form one of the core collections of the Pennsylvania Academy in one of its wings. The house was demolished in the 1920s.

Architecturally, the house does not follow a typical Italianate plan, and may have reflected a design that impressed Harrison in St. Petersburg, though which house this would be is anyone's guess. The house has strong European influences; it is completed in masonry with strong quoins (the whole is basically strong Anglo-Italianate in finish, and the central pavilion block has no entrance in the center of the façade, as one might expect. Rather, we find entrances placed to the sides, similar to how some European urban houses contain a building entrance and a carriage entrance both disguised as doors (here the carriage entrance is placed under the left hand pavilion). Additionally, there are no high stoops here; the stairs that elevate one from the entrance level to the principal floor are placed inside. The finish with balustrades, attic, and rustication is a perfect example of Samuel Sloan's more sophisticated taste having free reign.

The house is, from the front, a large symmetrical cube of three stories and three bays set on a high basement. The façade is stone, with quoins. The basement is rusticated with segmental arched windows. On the first and second floor, three tall windows with depressed arches each contain Venetian tracery with a small gothic column at the joining. The windows are framed only by a very deep molded surround that casts a strong shadow. The third floor varies the design, with small paired arched windows, a device seen in other Sloan designs in which the third floor breaks out into a series of grouped arched windows. The whole has an entablature without brackets with a tall attic railing above, which was carved with Harrison's monogram. The main entrances flank the central block, tall arches with massive doors and balustrades. The side pavilions are the real innovation here, not recessed or subordinated to the main façade, with a strong rusticated base and a smooth second story with a projecting oriole window. The pavilions balance the austerity of the central block with a richer texturing that allows them to hold their own and maintain themselves as visual focus points in relation to the massive bulk of the main block. The whole had a unique stone fence, almost Moorish or Gothic in design, running around the front of the property.

The rear of the central block differed significantly from the austere front. Two bay windows that ran the full height of the building connected by a two story porch with strong arches, Gothic-esque posts, and interlacing tracery. It almost has a Moorish air with the grand octagonal greenhouse and overlooked an impressive garden. This was probably one of Sloan's greatest accomplishments; it's unfortunate it didn't survive. Sloan published his plans, elevations, and details in his publication of 1858, City and Suburban Architecture.