The New Haven Railroad Station, New Haven, CT

The New Haven Railroad Station, 1848-49 

This will be my last post for this slew of Indian Italianate designs, and this is by far the most exotic. This was formerly the State Street train station in New Haven, designed by Henry Austin in 1848-1849. It was never very popular. The low placement of the tracks, as can be seen in the architect's elevation, was a major design problem that caused the terminal to fill with smoke from the trains. In the New Haven Historical Society, a child is quoted as saying to his father on arriving in the station "Dad, is this hell?" The father replied "No, son, this is New Haven." It was converted into a market in 1874 and was eventually destroyed by a disastrous fire (after a few renovations in the 80s) in 1894.

The center of the station is clearly Italianate. A projecting central section of seven bays had arched topped windows, brackets, and a central pediment. There were six more bays to either side leading to the towers. The towers are where exoticism comes into play. The tower to the left had a typical Italianate base with tombstone windows and strong belt courses, suggested by other works like the Norton house. The roof, however, flared outward and terminated in a bizarre cupola with arched, dripping, rooflines. The whole was capped by an elaborate finial. The right hand tower was even larger; the first stages below the main cornice consisted of a tall Venetian style window. As one went past the exceptionally broad eave, there was a cruciform cupola with a general round arched silhouette that framed the clocks. Above that was an octagonal pavilion with a low peaked roof that seems to emulate the Athenian Temple of the Winds.This was topped by what appears to be a weather vane. To add to the peculiarities, the central cupola had two stepped roofs reminiscent of a pagoda in the original design (this was toned down in the final plan a bit). As a contemporary observed when defending the exuberance of the station, the station was "of more ornament and elegance than otherwise might have been." (O'Gorman, 134) The orientalism of the exterior was reflected in the Moorish style divans and furnishings of the waiting rooms.

Considering stylistic influences, one can see the influence of Indian stupas, particularly in the left hand tower, with its stages. One critic has seen the influence of Indian chaitya arches in the shape of the roofs on the towers. Others have compared the towers to minarets and the central cupola to Chinese pagodas. At the end of the day, the station was eclectic but firmly within Austin's Indian Italianate style. It was truly one of the most fantastic buildings ever constructed in this style and it is a shame to have been lost. The same playfulness seen in the Brighton Pavilion can be seen in the innovative approach to ornament and design in the New Haven station, making it both a stylistic and spiritual heir to the Anglo-Indian design it pioneered in the US.

The James Dwight Dana House, New Haven, CT

The James Dwight Dana House, New Haven, CT. 1849

The James Dwight Dana house on New Haven's Hillhouse Avenue, represents another important example of Indian Italianate by Henry Austin that does not follow the Bristol house plan. Built in 1849 for Dana, a celebrated natural history professor, the house breaks with what we have seen by following the side hall plan. The house is finished in stucco scored to look like stone, and has no window surrounds to speak of. The real pleasure in this house is the exotic detail. Starting from the porch, we can see the candelabra columns that are the most often encountered, with an 'urn', lotus bus, fluted shaft, and dripping echinus. The plinths of the columns are elaborate on the Dana house, with chamfered corners and spiked tops, adding an even greater touch of variety. The porch balustrade is also interesting with hardly describable balusters that almost look Art Nouveau. The tops of the columns are repeated inside the porch and look like stange inciples hanging down. Note the odd window tracery (almost Queen Ann) and the etched glass on the door. The tracery particularly reflects the designs at the Bristol house.

The cornice is also delightful. Although the house lacks brackets, this is made up for by the fringe design that runs around the house. The fring has free-form horshoe arches with balls at the end, simulating tassels. There are steps in the brick to suggest an architrave and frieze. A wing juts out to the north, which is enlivened by a shallow bay window and an odd decorated oriel in the corner. On both window protrustions, there is a similar fringe and trefoil motif. The back of the house has an very strange corner bay with fish scale shingles or tiles that is pierced by windows. I'm not really sure what to say about that except that its cool. The cupola on the roof, which is very hard to see from the street, is of a unique type that is almost entirely glass. It has dozens of small closely spaced windows in it without strong divisions and has scrolled supports. Looking at its spare design, it almost looks modernist and recalls the Metripolitan Opera in New York. A comparison with Austin's drawing from Yale University, shows many variations. There is no cresting on the porch roof, and the north wing is not included. The following pictures illustrate some of the aspects up close and include interior shots and plans from HABS.

Austin's original plan above.

 The HABS plan.

The Interior:



The interior is rather simple. The s-curve newel post can be found on several of Austin's houses. There appears to be etched glass in some of the windows.

Henry Austin and the Indian Italianate: The Willis Bristol House, New Haven, CT

The Willis Bristol House, New Haven, CT. 1845

This week we will be looking at one of my favorite sub-genres of Italianate, the Indian Italianate! It's just plain goofy in concept, but it truly embodies all that is great in Victorian architecture: experimentation, curiosity, and the love of the strange and exotic.

As I said at the beginning, Italianate architecture can take a variety of styles of ornament. One of the strangest of these styles is Indian ornament, an odd little design type which, though never widespread or popular, produced some fascinating buildings. The architect who seems responsible for merging Indian and Italianate was Henry Austin, New Haven's premier 19th century architect. In a monograph of his work Henry Austin: In Every Variety of Architectural Style (39), it is argued that he was influenced by an illustration of capitals at Ellora in India published by Henry Repton in Designs for the Pavilion at Brighton (1808) and through this worked picked up a fascination with Indian architecture that was to influence his designs. John Foulston's work as well in England and his book The Public Buildings Erected in the West of England included some Indian designs and drawings of Indian columns. The Brighton Pavilion, pictured below, was designed by John Nash between 1815 and 1822. The design, which goes to the extreme of Victorian exuberance and exoticism, was heavily criticized in its day as being frivolous and carnivalesque.

Photo: Wikimedia

In Victorian architectural theory, "non-historical", by which they meant non-Western, styles were not suitable like Gothic, Classical, and Renaissance design for use in serious buildings. Instead, they were appropriate for kiosks, garden structures, bandstands, and other 'frivolous' or 'holiday' uses. Moorish design, also a non-Western style, was employed by Jews in the hunt for a non-Christian, non-Pagan, style for religious buildings. Indian buildings and eastern scenes appeared on the period's decorative arts, such as transferware plates manufactured in England. Indian was thus a marginalized style with no serious associations for the Victorian mind, used on minor ornaments and exotic religious buildings. Austin in designing homes on main streets in New Haven, a rather puritan city, was going out on quite the limb, theory-wise. At the same time as the Bristol house was being designed, Leopold Eidlitz, an architect with Jewish connections, was designing in Bridgeport, CT a house named 'Iranistan' for P. T. Barnum in 1848, pictured below.

Iranistan was more straightforwardly Indian than Austin's designs which retained more Italianate features. It figures that to the Victorian mind an outrageous and eccentric figure like Barnum would choose such a strange and silly style for his home. Austin's work was not a carnival stage like Barnum's house, which was admired much in its day; rather he tried to expand the average upper-class New Englander's taste to conceive of Indian design as appropriate to their own homes. Perhaps Austin argued what some contemporaries thought that Indian and Persian architecture was the origin of the 'serious' Gothic style. Indeed, pointed arches did characterize Moorish architecture and some believed it had been transferred to the west through Asian sources.

The earliest of Austin's designs in this style is the Willis Bristol house, built in 1845, which has all the hallmarks of the design. The house is on Chapel Street near Wooster Square in New Haven, a development area where Austin designed a slew of homes and was built for a bank president and shoe manufacturer. The house itself is a symmetrical plan villa with a stuccoed exterior and wooden details. Italianate features include the wide eaves and brackets and the overall design and massing. The treatments of particular elements, however, are all Indian. Characteristics of this ornament style as seen in this house are:

• So called 'candelabra columns'. As seen on the Bristol house porch, these columns are based on Indian precedents. They include vegetal elements in a series of thick, bulbous protrusions at the base, a slender central element, and a large stylized capital. These are the most long lasting element of Austin's design and these columns often appear on Italianate houses in Connecticut without other Indian features.
• A noticeable porch with a round or ogee arch including foils or semi-circular cut outs around the arch (this is called a multifoil arch or scalloped arch). The porches often include large, oversized brackets and sometimes they are especially large on the house. These porches might have been inspired by the Indian chhattri, an open domed pavilion, so I follow O'Gormann in calling them chhattri porches.
• Fringes as a decorative element. In the Bristol house you can see it on the porch balustrade. In other houses it appears near the cornice. Sometimes the fringe has balls at the end of each drop.
• Exterior lambrequins. These are large cut out pieces of wood applied to a rectangular window to alter its shape. In Indian ornament, these often have a scalloped ogee arch, as you can see on the Bristol house.
• Horseshoe arches. You can see these on the door which has cut glass panels. It is an arch that has projecting sections on the sides. 
• Arabesques. Arabesques are stylized geometric patterns based on Islamic art which can be seen on the porch spandrels. 

These are the basic elements of the design. Most Indian Italianates do not include all of them. The most popular elements were the candelabra columns, which can be found throughout Connecticut, and the scalloped arches and porch design, which are also sometimes found. The Willis Bristol house includes every bell and whistle you could want on your Indian Italianate, and remains the cornerstone of this design sub-group. The ironwork, the beautiful tracery in the windows, the cut glass on the windows, and the oriels on the sides are all notable features. The house has a small monitor on the roof, which can be seen in the original designs. The fringe on the top of the cornice seems to have been lost. The following pictures show some of the details, interiors, and designs; it is one of the best documented houses I have seen.

Interiors from HABS:

Plans from Yale University:

56 Dwight Street, New Haven, CT

56 Dwight Street, New Haven, CT. 1862

This house is one of the lesser known Italianate villas in New Haven, but it is a real gem. The neighborhood it once belonged to was destroyed in the mid 20th century for a highway that was never finished, leaving it stranded. The house follows the symmetrical plan with a projecting center bay topped by a pediment which, strangely, is enclosed and paneled rather than open. The house is constructed of wood with filleted corners on the verge boards. It has a hip roof and cupola, pictured below, with a simple cornice of architrave, an empty frieze on the front (it is pierced by windows on the sides), and very plain brackets. The actual cornice has less of a dramatic appearance because of the paint scheme on the house that seems to ignore the function paint fills by articulating architectural elements. The real fascination with this house are the windows on the front of the facade, all of which have almost oversized brackets featuring bead molding and voussoirs, or keystones, atop the window frame.The first floor windows are topped with a delightfully uncommon broken ogee (or swan neck) pediments that have a carved palmette at the center. The space inside the pediment is paneled with a shape that follows the pediment's curve (these filled in pediments are strange!). The second floor windows have open round pediments with again a carved palmette at the center. The center window on the second floor is triple, a common treatment of the central window on symmetrical houses, but the curved pediment only appears on the center part of the window. Also the central window lacks the voussoirs and has paneling in their place. The front door was once surrounded by a curved glass transom and sidelights, but these have been filled in. The bracketed porch is held up by pairs of Ionic columns. The house strongly resembles the Perit house in its door and porch. Indeed, 56 Dwight is in some ways a zanier copy of the sober Hillhouse example. The sides of the house are plainer, enlived by bay and occasional round headed windows, and express the house's three stories more. The house is currently owned by a nearby church. I really wish it were repainted...nothing can damage a good house like dull paint!

A Unique House- The John Graves House, New Haven, CT

The John Graves House on Hillhouse Avenue, 1862.

The John Graves house makes a statement. On a street of mostly conservative, symmetrical, stuccoed Italianate villas, the Graves house breaks with the precedents of Hillhouse Avenue. Although in plan it is of the symmetrical type, the house's constantly shifting planes and masses, the restless breaking of the cornice line, and (from the side) the profusion of projections give the house a dynamic energy not seen in many Italianate villas. The front façade consists of two symmetrical bays, the third story of which breaks through the cornice line with a gable, almost giving the impression of half dormers. The corners are further enlivened by thick second story pilasters which seem to hover above the thinner first story corner boards. The center of the façade features two broadly jutting pilasters surmounted by a curved pediment that appears as a huge shadowy arch under which a balcony is placed. The depth of the arch is subverted by the projecting box window and balcony that rests upon a porch that juts out further still. Thus from porch to pediment, we see three large elements that recede as they move higher up. The whole is crowned by a more steeply pitched hip roof than is usually seen and a small cupola. The side elevations are just as complex.

 

The north side features three bay windows in a line with a shadowy recess under the central window.

The south façade also features a bay window and in the rear a large wing that because of the amount of windows gives the impression of a large box window. Again, a balcony tops this wing. A house with so many balconies and window effects was certainly designed to maximize the view of the avenue and surroundings.

Unlike the other houses I have posted, this house is of wood without any pretension of simulating stonework. The architect chose to emphasize this with many elaborate carvings and clear clapboard siding. Everywhere there are ornaments tucked into the houses nooks and crannies and blind panels filling wall space. A strong belt course in wood divides the first and second stories dramatically. The front windows have heavy cornices and brackets and vary from floor to floor. This house is a celebration of variety and carving ability. The brackets on the box window above the porch are particularly interesting as they intersect all the horizontal bands of the entablature. The following pictures show some of this delightful ornamentation.

 

First floor window treatments. The window is topped by a segmented arch. Note the paired s-scrolls that form the brackets and the carver's inclusion of foliage.

The windows on the second floor, with different brackets and elaborate foliage carving within the arch. Note the simple brackets on the cornice, a surprise given the elaborate treatment of the façade elsewhere.

                   The pediment and bay window.                                  A porch pilaster.

 

The delicately carved central flower on the porch entablature.

 

A close-up of the box window's cornice.

These pictures give you an idea of the delicacy and robustness alternating in the Graves House's decoration. While some people find this decoration monstrous, I tend to delight in the whimsy and complexity of it all. The same things that cause me to enjoy it are exactly the qualities that encouraged people in the mid 20th century to label the house a 'monstrosity' and encouraged them to demolish them. In looking at a house like this, you eye never knows what to focus on first, and that appeals to me, making this one of my favorite houses on the avenue. I've also always thought that the color scheme was particularly well done; the red window sash, the alternation of browns, creams, and yellow tints all are period appropriate choices and don't overemphasize the decoration as a "painted-lady" color scheme might have. The Victorians loved their browns and this house responds to that period's point of view.

The interior of the house has recently been renovated by Yale. The staircase is particularly fine with its carved newel post.

The gracefully curving stairs and the Renaissance Revival newel post.

The wainscoting along the stairs employs half of a newel post as a terminus for the paneling. The second view is of the stained glass in the box window over the porch.

 With this picture, shaded by the thick trees, I bid adieu to the John Graves House.