A Third Type of Indian Italianate

The Dr. P. W. Ellsworth House, Hartford, CT. 1850s?

Plan by Henry Austin for an unbuilt house.

This Indian Italianate I have depicted in the first image is the Dr. P. W. Ellsworth house that once stood on Main Street and Grove Street in Hartford, CT. Unfortunately, the house is poorly documented, and this is the only picture I could find of it. The house is in a unique style for this sub group. It has two bowed bays with four windows on each and follows the symmetrical plan. It's bowed bay style resembles some houses designed by Henry Austin on Orange Street and Chapel Street in New Haven. The house looks like it has stucco scored to look like stone or actual stone. The second floor windows on the sides have a curving balcony that runs along them with lacy ironwork and an exuberant fringe. the fringe is repeated above the unbracketed cornice in the cresting. The lack of molding around the windows is consistent with the Bristol house style. The crowning glory of the house is the two story porch. On the first stage there are candelabra columns, a trefoil ogee arch, and long sinuous brackets, all characteristics of a chhattri porch. The second stage is simpler, with plain candelabra columns and an iron balustrade. The whole is topped by a fantastic ogee dome with a tall finial. Above the central bay on the roof is a large stepped wooden piece for cresting.

The second image shows a plan by Henry Austin, kept at Yale University. This plan is utterly fantastic and crazy; it seems to have never been built. Perhaps it was just too much for New England. The plan shows a fully realized Indian facade. There are two projecting side bays with windows that have strong Bristol house like lambrequins and tracery. There are balconies on the second floor with equally complex windows. The bays are topped by very Indian looking projecting brackets and a wide eave. The central bay is a tour de force and seems to recall the entrance to the Taj Mahal. It is recessed behind the bays. There is a two story arch that creates a deep recess. The arch frame is paneled and topped by a huge cresting and small finials that resemble tiny minarets. The recess has paneling covering the wall surface (the play of volumes, panels, projections, and recesses is quite masterful) a circular window and a horseshoe arched window with a balcony. The door follows, paradoxically, the Greek Revival sidelight style, but the door and windows have lambrequins and tracery that mark it as distinctively Indian.

Both the Ellsworth house and the plan are bold, and they represent the taking of Indian Italianate to its logical conclusion of looking truly Indian, a feat that Eidlitz' Iranistan was able to achieve. The examples that survive are relatively tame by comparison. It is in these types that we can see Indian Italianate at its most exuberant and most out of control. It's not surprising that this house and plan found few imitators.

The Henry Z. Pratt House, Hartford, CT

The Henry Z. Pratt House, Hartford, CT. 1847 Photo: Samuel Taylor Col.

The Henry Z. Pratt house which stood on Washington Avenue in Hartford, once a street of mansions that is now mostly parking lots and government buildings, was probably designed by Henry Austin in 1847, a few years after the Willis Bristol house. Although most of the Indian Italianates we have looked at have followed the Bristol plan, this house is somewhat different. Some of Austin's drawings survive for a house similar to this, and though it is very likely that they depict the designs for this house, it is uncertain whether he was the direct designer. The drawings appear below and are from Yale University.

The Pratt house is a symmetrical plan villa like those of the Bristol type. The body of the house is similar, covered with stucco, with paired brackets, simple window surrounds, lacy iron balconies, and a low monitor. the unique feature of this house is the massive two story chhattri porch, which gives a completely different feel to the facade. The porch has particularly leafy versions of the candelabra columns in which the supporting urn, the lower shaft, and the capital are all covered with foliage. A bizarrely large echinus (the flat part above a capital) is a strange feature. The four point arch is scalloped, but the ends of each scallop have trefoil designs, which suggest Gothic architecture. Gothis is also suggested in the spandrels where elongated trefoil cut outs fill the space. The double s-curve brackets are very sinuous on this example. Another strange feature is that the frieze of the porch is open between the brackets, creating a very airy porch that is not as dark as it could be. The front of the house features a patio that runs the length of the house. The balustrade pictured makes me think that it might be later, but the patio could be original since it was once a more common feature than it is now.

The drawings of Austin show a house somewhat different. The main variation is the extra ornament, especially the eared moldings around the windows, a specialty of Austin, and the leafy ornaments all over, including above the window cornices and the scroll saw supports on top of the cupola. If these do represent two designs for the Pratt house, it seems that the fantastic porch was already enough for the family, and they dispensed with the extras to prevent the house from being overwhelming. Austin's design show no balconies on the house as well. Perhaps he added them in because of the popularity of the Bristol type. A lot can happen to a house between design and finish. This represents the second variety of Indian Italianate, but there is a very poorly attested third I will look at in my next post.

The Day-Taylor House, Hartford, CT

The Day-Taylor House, Hartford, CT. 1858

The Italianate style was extremely popular in Connecticut; I have shown you several New Haven examples, and, although there are less, Hartford nonetheless has an excellent collection of Italianate homes. Among the varieties Hartford presents, the Day-Taylor house, constructed in 1858 is one of my favorites. It stands on Wethersfield Avenue among a large collection of Italianates dominated by Armsmear, the home of Samuel Colt. The house is a particularly crisp version of the irregular plan with some irregularities of its own. The expected irregular plan calls for the recessed wing to be wider than the projecting section; on the Day-Taylor house, however, the recessed wing is about the same size as the projecting part, giving the house a far more vertical emphasis. Horizontality is reasserted in the choice to continue the cornice line around the tower. In the Norton house, the cornice line is broken by the tower, but continuing the cornice as the architect of the Day-Taylor house did makes the tower look more like an appendage on the roof rather than an independent tower.

One of my favorite details in this house is how the cornice forms a full pediment on the projecting section with an arch to accommodate a central round top window. This type of pediment treatment was known from antiquity and can be seen in the Palace of Diocletian at Split. The attic windows are varied between segmented arched, flat, circular, and arched, making an interesting pattern, and a belt course that defines the third story gives the house the appearance of having a particularly tall entablature. The windows have elaborate cast iron hood moldings, a feature that became more popular as the 1860s approached, and those on the projecting section are filleted. Iron is also displayed in the well preserved balconies beneath the windows. The way the porch wraps around the tower rather than being broken into two sections, one a portico in front of the door and one running along the recessed wing further deemphasizes the tower.