'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

The Thomas-Jencks-Gladding House, Baltimore, MD

The Thomas-Jencks-Gladding House, Baltimore, MD. 1849-51

The impressive staircase. The dome is Tiffany. Photo: Meredith Kahn

It's fitting to end this look at Baltimore's Anglo-Italianate architecture with perhaps the city's most impressive house, the Thomas-Jencks-Gladding house at 1 Mount Vernon Place. One of the earliest houses constructed in the neighborhood, it anchors the area around the monument and provides, along with the Peabody Institute across the street, an impressive gateway from the monument to the downtown. The house was designed by Niernsee and Neilson, a firm we have encountered before, and was built in 1849-1851 for John Hanson Thomas, a politician. It was one of Rudolph Niernsee's very first designs. Later it was sold to the Jencks in 1892 who altered much of the interior and added a bay window on the east facade for the dining room. Despite these alterations, however, the house retains a great deal of mid-19th century design inside. Both the Thomases and the Jencks were part of Baltimore's high society, and the house served as an impressive showplace for the family to their notable list of guests. Abandoned in 1953 after the last of the Jencks died, the house was restored by Henry Gladding in 1962, an early example of preservation for a Victorian structure. Usually in the 1960s, people couldn't get rid of Victorian architecture fast enough. Perhaps the classicism of the design made Gladding want to preserve it. The house is currently called the Hackerman house and houses the Walter's Art Museum's Asian art collection.

The house is particularly noteworthy for its transitional blend of Greek Revival and Italianate elements. It follows the five bay plan and features on each side the recessed central bay common to other Baltimore five bay homes. The east side is only three bays wide, making it appear more like a symmetrical plan house. The house is faced with brick, which is probably correctly painted white to resemble stucco. Some of the elements could go either way stylistically, like the double Corinthian columned portico. The composition of the door with its transom and sidelights separated by pilasters is definitely Greek Revivial in form. So are the cast iron palmettes above the cornice. The house is Italianate in its elaborate hood moldings and bracketed cornice. Starting from the ground floor, the house sits on a rusticated stone basement. The windows are very tall and are connected in pairs by cast iron balconies. The hood moldings on these and the second floor windows are bracketed with a small frieze and dentils above. The moldings lack a strong cornice, which is replaced by Greek style vegetal carving. A strong, simple cornice separates the first and second floors in a highly Renaissance fashion we have seen before in Baltimore.

The second and third floors are not separated and feature on the second floor tallish windows with their signature hood moldings and small third floor windows directly under the cornice's architrave. The second floor windows have small iron grilles inset into the frame. The cornice features an architrave and alternating brackets and panels in the frieze, making it a panel cornice. The central bay is slightly different. Besides the presence of the Greek Revival door, the windows on the upper floors are tripartite to emphasize the central bay's greater width. The portico is also notable as one ascends it from the sides rather than directly from the front, a feature, which as I suggested before, lends the house a certain grandiose quality. The following images from HABS show some of the exterior details. You should definitely check out this site where the author exhaustively posted dozens of pictures of the house's mid-19th century interior architectural details.

This view shows the house with shutters, which may have been the original condition of the windows.

Thus, for now, we end this exploration of Baltimore's Anglo-Italianate architecture. The city is full of examples, some of which I will post later, but these give you a good idea of the city's characteristics. The adherence to English and Renaissance models so prominent in Baltimore's Italianate is not as staid as it sounds. The second floor bay windows, the play with the cornice, the recessed facades, all constitute the city's own interpretation of English design. Although the buildings have the elegant air of London terraces, the uniqueness of designs and the avoidance of monotony make these examples truly American and a unique collection of Italianate designs. 

The Decatur Miller House, Baltimore, MD

The Decatur Miller House, Baltimore, MD. 1853

Photo: Marc Szarkowski

The Decatur Miller house is at 700 Cathedral street in Baltimore at the corner of Cathedral and West Monument Street, only one lot south of the Mencken house. It was built in 1853 for Decatur Miller, a prominent merchant, investor, and politician, who hired Niernsee and Neilson as designers, a firm whose works are all over the Mount Vernon neighborhood. The house is an Anglo-Italianate row house with ornamentation different from much of what we have seen so far. Although Baltimore's Italianate houses in Mount Vernon were all constructed around the same time in the Anglo-Italianate idiom, they are all distinctive in their detailing and tend to avoid the repetitiveness of many of their English prototypes. This individuality is one reason I felt so drawn to looking at these houses as a group.

The house follows the typical design we have seen so far of four stories faced in brownstone. The brownstone cladding is only on the principal facade on Cathedral Street; the side facade on Monument has brick with brownstone detailing. The first floor is set apart visually with rusticated masonry, a particularly Renaissance feature; the door has flanking pilasters carved with a cable motif. The excellent ironwork balcony separates the first and second floors. Although ironwork is often associated with the south, it was once much more common on buildings in the north. The Monument St. facade features an exquisite cast-iron balcony with a tent roof, pictured above, designed by Hayward, Bartlett, & Co. Each floor features a different window treatment, much like the Albert house across Monument St; with each floor there is simplification of the ornament as well as the expected reduction in size. The second floor has round arched windows stopped with paneled spandrels and an entablature, while the segmentally arched windows of the third floor keep the rectangular surround but have rosettes in the spandrels and a cornice rather than a full entablature. The fourth floor segmental arched windows have a simple surround, but the way they intersect the architrave of the main cornice gives the cornice the appearance of undulating, an unusual feature. The cornice itself is horizontal with a course of brackets with a course of dentils underneath. I really wish I had a better picture of this interesting house, but alas I have to work with what I've got. If anyone has one, I would be grateful!

The Albert Schumacher (Asbury) House, Baltimore, MD

The A. Schumacher House, Baltimore, MD. 1855

Adjoining one of Baltimore's most impressive churches, the Mount Vernon Place Methodist Church, is the Schumacher/Asbury house. It is called the Asbury house because it is owned by the church and is named after the first American Methodist bishop, but it was originally built for Albert Schumacher, a merchant in 1855. It was designed by Niernsee and Neilson, a significant Baltimore architectural firm in the mid 19th century responsible for many homes in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood. The house, which follows the row house plan, was one of the most sumptuous constructed in the city. The Architecture of Baltimore: an Illustrated History (130) quotes a contemporary description of the house as of the 'Roman style' and 'costly'. The description discusses the impressive library on the front of the second floor, the mosaic finishes, octagonal parlors, and third floor dome. Another blogger relates how impressed he was on a tour of the home. The house is indeed a grand and eccentric specimen.

The house's first floor is entirely rusticated, resembling a traditional treatment of the first floors of Italian Renaissance palazzos, and is pierced by arches. It looks to me like the house is stuccoed and scored to resemble stone. The second floor is where things get strange. There is a large balcony separating the first and second floors resting on large brackets with a balustrade of ironwork set in a stone frame, a costly and uncommon treatment. Instead of having the usual three windows, there is only a central bay window intersecting the balcony, with arched windows, a paneled frieze, and a crowning balustrade. This is where the impressive library is. Flanking the arch are stone panels set into the facade with curved, chamfered corners. An almost awkwardly large belt course separates the second and third floors; on the third, there is a return to the three bay scheme. The surrounds are rich, featuring segmental arches, thick eared moldings with panels in the spandrels, and keystones. Above the windows, is again, an awkwardly large space before the cornice, which is of the expected Anglo-Italianate type, horizontal, dentiled, thickly bracketed. Small circular windows pierce the frieze of the cornice, which is in some ways a throwback to Greek Revival designs in which circular windows with wreaths are often found in the frieze. The whole features tall blank pilasters that frame the composition.

It is an odd house. The architects, although some of their spacing is a bit strange looking, accomplished a beautiful and eye-catching design. From the description, I would really like to see some plans and interiors; it sounds as if there are a lot of complex shapes at play inside.

And I thought I would include a picture of the adjoining church (photo by Wally Gobetz).