'Floweree' the Charles Floweree House, Vicksburg, MS

The Charles Floweree House, Vicksburg, MS. 1866. HABS

This is perhaps Vicksburg's most impressive Italianate house (all images in this article comes from the HABS survey). Built in 1866 for Col. Charles Flowerlee, it is a rather uncomfortable hybrid Greek Revival/Italianate design that is an impressive and unique seven bay expansion of the five bay plan, finished in warm cream painted brick. The first floor features a central entrance with flanking windows and then two bay windows; these bay windows project slightly outside the façade, and are a strong Italianate feature seldom seen in these kinds of symmetrical houses. The central three bays have double height, square Tuscan pillars, hearkening back to the Greek Revival which run somewhat oddly into the bay windows, giving the house a strong variation of volumes with projections, diagonals, and varying shading effects, and presenting an exceptional sculptural quality. The top floor features a row of segmental arched windows with thick brick hood moldings, the same moldings seen in other Vicksburg Italianates that seem to be a local building trait. The windows flank a central grand entrance that repeats the paneled, pilastered decoration of the first floor entrance and the Greek Revival transom and side-lights fitted into a segmental arched frame, another Vicksburg feature seen in the Magnolias. The cornice is paneled, with filleted panel ends just like the Magruder house under a row of dentils; these are interrupted by c and s scroll brackets in pairs at the accent points of the house. Surprisingly, the house has a tall gabled roof instead of an expected hip roof, and a large seven bay Italianate conservatory projects from the back. The house is certainly an uncommon and individualistic design, but the contractor and designer are unknown; perhaps, given similarities to other houses in the area, it is a Beck design or a local tastemaker.

The interiors of the house are especially impressive, with some of the finest, most florid, and deepest plasterwork in the state. Every surface seems to have some viney outgrowth emerging from it. The house is for sale, and the realtor website has several color images of the exterior and interior. A video slideshow is also available. HABS fortunately provides some drawings, plans, and interior images.

Elevations:

 Plans:

 Interiors:

The Alexander Magruder House, Vicksburg MS

The Alexander Magruder House, Vicksburg MS. 1850 Photo: Wikimedia

Source: Wikimedia

This house was built in 1830 as a single story house in the Greek Revival style by Richard Featherston, but was remodeled into a two story Italianate structure in 1850 by Alexander Magruder, a doctor. It is a five bay symmetrical design, reflective of its Greek Revival roots, with sparing details, and a noticeable lack of window surrounds (the tracery looks to be an addition of the 1890s). The facing appears to be some kind of stone or perhaps a very deeply scored and textured plaster, with quoins in the corners, giving it a rather grand frame. The entablature on both the porch (with thick, square, Greek Revival pillars) and the house match, following the paneled style with sharply angular brackets. Perhaps its most attractive feature is the main door, which has an elaborate pilastered surround with panels matching the entablature, curvaceous brackets, and a fine basket handle arch transom. The house is currently a place one can rent to stay in. The fine and tastefully decorated interiors can be seen here.

Source: Jeff Hart

I'd like to mention another Italianate here, the demolished rectory of St. Paul's church (all images from HABS).

It was built in 1866 and designed by the priest, Jean Baptiste Mouton, and pieces appear to have been prefabricated in Ohio and shipped down. Despite the Gothic detailing, the house is solidly Italianate, given its cornice with angular brackets closely spaced, its symmetrical five bay plan, and its hip roof. It is one of several hybrid Italianates, like Indian Italianates, with a different stylistic vocabulary applied to a Italianate frame. Here, the Gothic details consist of window labels in a Gothic vein, a Gothic porch with a heavy ogee arch, and pointed windows. This last feature is an interesting transformation of the typical Italianate triple arched palladian into a Gothic formation. The whole façade was stuccoed and scored to appear like stone, making the undoubtedly brick house match the grandeur of Gothic stonework. Unfortunately, this was demolished in 1972.

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

'The Magnolias' Vicksburg, MS

'The Magnolias' Vicksburg, MS. 1877 Source: Wikimedia

Source: Wikimedia

Known as 'the Magnolias' this house has little information about its original builder, although it was constructed in 1877. Like McRaven, the house is a side hall plan with a porch façade, but unlike McRaven, it exhibits many more Italianate details. The window treatments of the house are all segmental arched with thick hood moldings swooping over, and the door fits a Greek Revival design into the segmental arched shape. The house is all about its jigsaw work, with the porch, like McRaven, supported on thin openwork posts with Gothic jigsaw designs and with a jigsaw balustrade. The spandrel brackets on the porch are especially delicate and frilly and form basket handle arches. The entablature is of the bull's eye paneled cornice type, with a row of panels in the frieze filled with incised Eastlake designs, and a layer of dentils with small bulbous brackets emerging. This run of short brackets is interrupted by longer brackets coordinating with the posts of the porch, keeping the verticality of the design. I have to say, while very kitschy, there is something quite authentic, especially to the 1870s, to the yard crowded with all kinds of clashing odds an ends, a Thorvaldsen Hebe, a canon, and Japanese lanterns. Victorians loved those kinds of tchotchkes in front of their houses as a sort of exterior furniture that personalized the house as the objects collected by the owner personalized the interior.

Source: Wikimedia

'McRaven' the John H. Bobb House, Vicksburg, MS

The John H. Bobb House, Vicksburg, MS. 1849 (1797) Source: Wikimedia

This house has a complex building history. Originally built in 1797 as a small house, it was expanded in the 1820s and further finished in its present form in 1849 by John H. Bobb, a hybrid Greek Revival/Italianate affair, of the side entrance plan, typical with southern houses. The house was used as a field hospital during the Civil War and Bobb himself was shot in a dispute over flower picking in his front yard, all giving the house, currently open as a museum, the distinction of being haunted. The house has a simple typical Greek revival façade, with spare lintels over rectangular windows. It's the porch which really brings in the Italianate design (the porch façade type), with thin supports, pierced with jigsaw designs and lacy brackets supporting a large Greek Revival entablature pierced by Italianate paired s scroll brackets. Of particular note is the somewhat odd extra layer at the top of the cornice with dentils that almost look like Gothic crenellations. 

Source: Jeff Hart

Similar is this house, at Adams and Grove, probably built as a Greek Revival (1850s?), somewhat later, and furnished with a similar porch and bracketed entablature. Note here how the architect has eschewed the double columns for the porches, instead creating openwork struts with ironwork inset into them instead of jigsaw work that do not divide at the floor of the second story. Also, note how the entablature is less dependent on the Greek Revival, somewhat less classically correct here.

The R. F. Beck House, Vicksburg, MS

The R. F. Beck House, Vicksburg, MS. 1875. Source: Steven Martin

Source: Steven Martin

The next few posts we will be looking at Italianate Vicksburg!

The R. F. Beck house was built by a building contractor in Vicksburg, MS as a showplace of his own design and construction skills, and it does not disappoint. It is a decidedly individualistic irregular plan house, with sparing detail, partially due to a rather unsympathetic paint job, but a rich treatment in woodwork. The house is irregular in plan, with a side that forms a pavilion plan façade, but lacks the tower component, instead suggesting a tower by the central placement of the octagonal cupola at the junction of the l-shape (although the entrance, as typical of this plan, appears in the center). The windows, all segmental arched except for the full arches in the gables, actually do have hold moldings, articulated in brick, something of a development of the 1860s and 70s, but these are hardly apparent because, unlike their probably original paint scheme which would have differentiated them from the façade, they are painted the same salmon color as the brick. The side façade, oddly, has deeper and more articulated moldings, with several layers, rather than a flat expanse. The entablature is of the paneled bull's eye type and features single s scroll brackets. An odd feature, the brackets are spaced somewhat oddly on the house and not at all aligned with the windows on the long section to the right, while there are bunches of three brackets at the gable peak, a very odd feature. The porch as well is noteworthy, being a rather lacy Gothic concoction with trefoils in the spandrels. The door surround is nice and thick, suitably emphatic, with chamfered panels arranged onto a typical pilaster and arch surround. These same panels are answered in the chimneys, a feature of the panel brick style.

'Longwood' the Haller Nutt House, Natchez, MS

'Longwood' the Haller Nutt House, Natchez, MS. 1859 Photo: Wikimedia

'Longwood' is perhaps Sloan's most famous commission, his most eccentric, and his greatest unrealized project. Dr. Haller Nutt, a wealthy planter and agricultural inventor, commissioned Sloan to design the house in 1859, and by 1861, the exterior was completed. The outbreak of the Civil War, however, caused the workmen from Philadelphia to abandon the project and return north. The house was left with a finished exterior, but an unfinished interior, with only the basement complete and the remainder framed. The house suffered neglect, as Nutt lost most of his wealth during the war, but has been restored as a tourist venue. As a unique survival, Longwood provides us with a wealth of information on the process of construction and framing in the 19th century, an ironic testament to the work of Sloan as a pioneer of balloon framing. Additionally, the house is one of the most important and well known monuments of Indian Italianate in the US.

Sloan's design for the house, an octagon, was based on the briefly popular octagon shape popularized by Orson Quire Fowler, a lifestyle theorist in the 19th century who theorized that the octagon shape was more healthful and economical, leading to a spate of houses based on Fowler's designs. The plan that Sloan selected as the basis of Longwood was published in the Model Architect v.2 in 1852 as an "Oriental Villa". It remains one of the most elaborate examples of the fanciful strain of Indian Italianate design in the US, but, like the style in general, it remains Italianate to the core with a spattering of oriental details and design elements.

The original design:

The plan is octagonal, but Sloan has complicated the design. Four of the facades on the first two stories project by several bays, forming a Greek cross shape; these bays alternate with double storied porches, filling out the octagon shape. Each façade on these first two stories has three arched windows; on the projecting facades, these are closely spaced with a hanging porch on the first floor with three arches answering the windows. One the recessed facades, there are two windows flanking a door on each story, forming three arched openings. The third floor reverses the rhythm of projections and recesses on the first two; where the façade projects on the first two stories, it recedes on the third and vice versa. The fourth floor abandons the triple arched motif in favor of paired tombstone windows, a typical Sloan maneuver to differentiate the third floor. The whole is topped by a tall polygonal drum with arched windows and an onion dome, the consummate Indian/Mughal design element.

As much as the house makes a pretense of Indian design features, it doesn't nearly capture the authenticity of Henry Austin's Indian houses in New Haven, such as the employment of candelabra columns. Rather, it uses primarily vernacular Italianate motifs, but arranges them in such a way as to suggest the oriental world. For instance, a look at the double story porches shows Corinthian columns (of a slightly lusher variety than a strictly classical design), but the scrollwork on the porch is designed to mimic the horseshoe arches and ogee shapes in Islamic architecture. Horseshoe arches can also be found on the balustrades. On the side balconies, we see horse shoe arches again with interesting moldings above the columns, a further feature that recalls the Alhambra. Finally, the fringes on every cornice line and the dome itself, which has an onion shape, pull the entire composition into the Indian mode. One bizarre feature that I am at a loss to explain is the strange tracery in the windows, which looks more Chippendale gothic than Moorish.

All following photos from Wikimedia.

Unfortunately, the interiors were never finished, but this allows us a good glimpse of the construction methods of the house:

'Mount Holly', the Charles Dudley House, Foote, MS

'Mount Holly', Foote, MS. 1856 Photos: Joseph

'Mount Holly' is a plantation house is central Mississippi built in 1856 for Charles Dudley. It was designed by either Samuel Sloan or Calvert Vaux, two of the most important Italianate architects practicing in the mid 19th century. Calvert Vaux is a strong contender, since the house closely resembles one of his published plans. Only an architect's intervention could explain the defining odd feature of the house, the fact that it conforms roughly to the irregular plan, but it lacks two of the most important features found on this style. First and most obvious, there is no tower. Rather the place where the tower should rise is a strongly projecting, gabled bay. Second, is the fact that the 'tower' element projects further than the left hand section that should extend the furthest. The emphasis has been entirely shifted to the center of the house, even though it is clearly irregular because of the strong recess on the right wing and the projection of the left wing.

Ornamentally, the house is as spare as they come. There are no window moldings, just paired tombstone windows. The brackets are paired as well, simple, and united by a architrave molding. Even the porches are simple, consisting of plain arches and square columns. The house was almost certainly stuccoed in some pastel beige. However, playfulness appears in the central door. It is recessed in a portico that is triple arched Palladian in form with an elaborate cornice, large, acanthus leaf brackets, and small brackets. This is a surprisingly high-style porch on a house that doesn't have a lot of ornament, and it relieves the simplicity of the facade. The chimneys as well have toothed and paneled brickwork. The house is currently abandoned by its owner and was listed in 2011 as one of Mississippi's most endangered places. The plan below is taken from one of Clavert Vaux' drawings on which the house seems to have been based and perhaps shows how the interior is arranged.

NOTE: This house burned down June 17, 2015

Photo: HABS