The Thomas E. Powell House, Columbus, OH

The Thomas E. Powell House, Columbus, OH. 1853

Both Photos Columbus Illustrated and History of Columbus

Although not part of E Town Street, but part of the E Broad Street area, another mansions street in its own right, I couldn't resist this rather bizarre Italianate of 1853. The house is a symmetrical plan Italianate with a brick façade, and it's in this paneled brick style that it is most distinctive. The house is divided by its brickwork into three bays by pilasters topped with moldings. The side bays enclose double windows with filleted corners, while the central bay has a rectangular triple window with narrow side lights. The lintels above seem to be stone with incised designs, eared, rising to a shallow point. But the entablature is truly strange, comprising on the side bays three evenly spaced segmental arches with some kind of projecting finials and panels that match the curve of the arches. In the central bay, there is a more elaborately framed trefoil curve that suggests a triple arched Palladian design, but it is strange that that is not reflected in the window. The porch similarly has this trefoil shape, albeit with open spandrels, resting on thin columns. I can't actually tell the forms of the brackets from the images. The cupola seems almost oversize for the house, with curved frames around the tombstone windows and a balustrade above. The Midwest liked its fancy brickwork, but this is a very odd design. The house was torn down in 1928.

The Francis C. Sessions House, Columbus, OH

The Francis C. Session House, Columbus, OH. 1840, alt. 1862

From: Columbus Illustrated

From: Illustrated History of Columbus

The Sessions house, built for a banker on E Town Street, certainly started life as a Greek Revival house, given its 1840 construction date. But it appears that it was transformed into a fine Italianate residence in an 1862 remodel. The house was torn down in 1924 to make room for the current Beaux Arts Columbus museum. The house was a symmetrical plan villa, with a projecting central bay with a shallow gable. While the central bay was decidedly flat, the side bays were articulated with elaborate brick work which formed a thick set of quoins at the corners and recessed frames for the central sections of each bay. Whether these were part of the original house is unknown, although it would be very atypical for a Greek Revival house to have such fripperies. On the first floor, the sides featured rectangular windows framed by delicate fringed porches (with almost invisible balustrades atop), perhaps of iron (that wisteria really makes it unclear), while above, the windows had small wooden awnings with a fringe. The central bay had a recessed entrance with, again, a porch with triple arches and a rather weird set of three arches in the central span. Above was an iron balcony with fancy urns at the corners in front of a wide arched window with a bracketed wooden awning forming a Palladian form. Above, the cornice has a strong resemblance to the Baldwin house which survives up the street, with elongated brackets the break into strong s curves. These enclosed a pair of windows with concave corners, another reminiscence of the Baldwin house. The whole was topped with an octagonal cupola, with pierced s curve brackets, paired windows (also seeming to have concave corners), and a lacy iron cresting. All the bells and whistles abounded, with a conservatory and a whole other cube built on back. A shame it didn't survive, but it was replaced by an exceptionally fine museum building.

The James F. Baldwin and Barzellai N. Spahr House, Columbus, Ohio

The James F. Baldwin House, Columbus, OH. 1853

The Barzellai N. Spahr House, Columbus, OH. 1873.

Built 20 years apart and standing at opposite edges of the East Town Street Historic District, these two five bay plan houses make an interesting pair. The Baldwin house, above, is the earlier and more elaborate of the two. It features a brick façade with exceptional moldings over the windows that consist of a segmental arch, blind, with foliate carvings and panels under an engaged triangular pediment. The cornice has a heavy architrave molding with paired brackets separating windows under a run of dentils. These brackets are rather unique, since most of their surface is flat with a rope molding, and only toward the top of the bracket do they curve out into a very sharp s curve with a finial at the end. The porch might be a later addition; the ironwork balcony over the front door, on the other hand, looks original, and the door may have featured a balcony resting on brackets. Finally, we have the low monitor/cupola with much bolder brackets. But a unique feature here is that the square windows feature wooden, pierced cut outs that give the windows the appearance of having concave corners. I actually really like the paint scheme on this house. It's very similar to those I see in my article on paint schemes illustrated in a book of the period.

The Spahr house, built for a reverend, is 20 years later, but not drastically different. Unfortunately, this house has suffered from some remodeling in the 1920s, with a new porch and very odd windows (18 over 18!). It looks to me that what once might have been more elaborate hood moldings have been cut down to flat forms, something that was all the rage in the early 20th century, perhaps as a way of reducing ornament. But the house does retain its paneled cornice with double s scroll brackets.

A third house of note is at 124 S Washington Street, a little ways from E Town. It is currently the Replenish Spa Co-op. One of the few houses we have seen that has its original porch, the delicacy of the details sets it apart. The house is also five bays, but the central bay sticks out from the façade and has a gable. The windows have engaged pediment moldings with Eastlake designs, resting on sculptural brackets. The central window in the gable is rounded with an eared surround. The cornice type is fringed, as it features a very fine trefoil fringe running as the architrave underneath the rotated s scroll brackets. This fringe is repeated on the gothic arch gingerbread in the gable, surrounded by fine jigsaw work of stars and rinceaux. The porch repeats these same decorative features, a fringe, which looks more Moorish than Gothic below, which runs under the gable and atop the posts. The brackets here have francy rinceauz on the sides and are elongated. Although I do not know anything about the house, it is definitely a product of the late 1860s or early 1870s.

The Fernando Cortez Kelton House, Columbus, OH

The Fernando Cortez Kelton House, Columbus, OH. 1852

The Kelton house, just a bit past the houses featured in my last post, is not only well preserved on the outside but within, as it is currently a house museum which has a substantial collection of the family's objects intact. It's an early design, 1852, and as such is a somewhat transitional symmetrical house that grafts some Italianate features, notably brackets, onto what is essentially a Greek Revival design with slim stone lintels over the windows and a fine stone, Greek Revival door. The house does feature an early Italianate roof design. Like most early Italianates, there is no strong entablature or heavy sculptural quality to the cornice line. The brackets here are of the s and c scroll type and have deep ridges. One unique quality about this house is the tiny, fine drops at the corners of the eaves, a feature that is strikingly uncommon in Italianate houses and one of the coolest features on the house. It's also nice to see the original roof balustrade at the peak intact; roof balustrades were once a ubiquitous feature of 19th century architecture. Unfortunately, once they rotted off they were rarely replaced, distorting the appearance of many a house.

The Bonnet and Bauer Houses, Columbus, OH

The Frank F. Bonnet House, Columbus, OH. 1870s

The Herman Bauer House, Columbus, OH. 1870s

These three houses, all built in the late 1860s/1870s, are associated with later residents. Their plan is nearly identical, being a side hall design. On the east side of the street, the Bonnet house is the more elaborate of the two, with curved lintels and moldings with, while the Bauer house has simpler lintels. Both have Eastlake incised designs cut into the stone. The first floor windows on both houses are very long, indicating they may once have had iron balconies. Both have entablatures that are very similar, with an architrave molding, entablature windows (octagonal on the Bonnet house), and s curve brackets. On the opposite side is a house in a better state of preservation.

More elaborate than either, 565 E Town St. is the best example on the street of this typical type common to Columbus (and much Italianate architecture). In this example, all the key details are intact, with filleted windows and doors with conforming stone lintels with incised Eastlake designs. The cornice features an architrave molding, double c scroll brackets, dentils, and entablature windows. Even the bay window to the side preserves an iron crest. In a sense, though not especially thrilling, it is the houses like these, nice but not spectacular, that work as a group to create a visual effect and serve to emphasize the more dramatic stylistic examples.

The Philip T. Snowden House, Columbus OH

The Philip Snowden House, Columbus, OH. 1850

The Philip Snowden house is one of the premier homes left in Columbus' East Town Street district, an area of the city which was the wealthy district in the early 19th century. Snowden was a textile importer and built this house in 1850, though he only held onto it for a decade before he went bankrupt. The house is currently owned by the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. It follows a pavilion style plan, with shallow projective pavilions connected by a recessed pavilion with porch. It is the detailing of the house which is exceptional. All the windows of the house are round arched, with heavy stone surrounds. Each surround begins at the base with a curved ear in a Renaissance style, arising from stylized foliage. This transforms as one ascends to an engaged column supporting a capital of Gothic style foliage. The arch has a thick exterior molding with a toothed/arched design (very Romanesque); the keystone is established by a rococo cartouche. This juggling of styles in the 19th century is especially emphatic here. On the first floor, each window has a paneled apron. The porch is made of three arches and is an exceptionally lacy piece of ironwork resting on thin, stylized Corinthian columns with classical rinceaux in the spandrels. An image from the late 19th century shows a different porch, one which is far less delicate and much clunkier. To me, that certainly looks like a later development as well as it seems to ignore the entire rhythm of the façade and the paired windows.

From History of Columbus.

The door has a pilastered surround. The whole is topped by a cornice structure of the bulls eye type with the bulls eye window inset between rather elaborate panels beneath a row of dentils. The brackets alternate between smaller s scroll brackets and longer double s scroll brackets at emphatic points. Each pavilion is topped by an engaged round pediment (also bracketed) with a rococo foliage and shell element at the apex. The crowning touch to the house is its fine cupola, one of the most attractive of which I know, with a run of four arched windows, and paired brackets (from the picture once also repeated on the lower half) and a dramatic curved tent roof with a thick finial. One of the most impressive houses of its kind, I must say that its degree of finish and preservation make it one of my favorites.

The John Hardy House, Newcomerstown, OH

The John Hardy House, Newcomerstown, OH. 1874 Photo: scottamus

The John Hardy house in Newcomerstown (quite the town name!), built in 1874 was lovingly restored after a fire that require much of the interior to be restored, but it nonetheless has all of its amazing details and grandeur thanks to its invested owners (who by the way seem to have a lot of plants). The house, although in a small town, would fit in in any urban community with its grand central tower plan. Executed in brick, the trim of the windows and door is stone, and the owners have appropriately painted the wooden trim to match and simulate the stone. Score one for historic paint schemes! The windows alternate in style; the main facade windows are segmental arched with pedimented hood moldings, while the windows on each distinctive feature (bay window and tower) are round headed with Venetian tracery. A similar variation between body and tower can be found in the cornices, with a regular paneled cornice and brackets (s-curve) on the body and a more high style dentil cornice on the tower. The top stage of the tower itself has impressive engaged pediments with a heavy paneled cornice and a cluster of three arched windows (a constant nod to Romanesque bell towers). Two of the features on this house are particularly impressive. First is the door surround, a very urban looking stone door with pilasters, entablature, and an engaged round pediment, similar to those we saw on the Hauck house in Cincinnati, although it is perhaps a little bit less ornamented. Second is the amazing lacy ironwork at the top of the tower. Though most Italianates with towers have, or had, some sort of finial on the tower, this house has a cascade of thin wrought iron in rococo rocailles and fantastic blossoms that make me think of some vine growing on the house. Not only is this uncommon, but it is extremely rare that it survived and allows us to view how people in the country could come up with designs that have whimsy and uniqueness.

Summing Up Dayton Street

John Smith Photography See other posts for photo credits.

Although there are many more houses on Dayton Street that I could discuss, the 11 I single out offer a nice picture of characteristics that predominated on this street in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Because almost all the Italianate homes on the street were built in one go around the same time, it offers us a great snapshot of what appealed to wealthy Cincinnatians in the 1870s. A few characteristics can be singled out that broadly apply to the style of Anglo-Italianate that predominated here. While Anglo-Italianate design is found in some American cities, it is rarely found in the country. It seems that this kind of subdued, stone, Renaissance inspired style was an important indicator of wealth and taste in 19th century urban America, and set its adherents aside from those constructing more individualistic and less subdued houses. Dayton Street closely resembles in its aesthetics other neighborhoods in the country, such as Mount Vernon in Baltimore, parts of College Hill in Providence, and Brooklyn Heights in New York. While wealthy districts of Anglo-Italianate homes only seem to flourish in large cities as an expression of wealth; the like is rarely found in the country. Dayton street, like these other neighborhoods, displays a uniform set of characteristics that reflects the competition and influence home construction by the wealthy could have on others building in the same place. This list shows some features one can see consistently:

1. A mostly uniform cornice line, set at two and a half stories, as can be seen in the image above. While the cornices themselves display a wide variety of forms, brackets tend to be smaller and closely spaced, while entablatures are simple and mostly paneled. When windows enter into the design, they tend to elongate the brackets to make a strong frame for the window.

2. There is a strong horizontal emphasis provided by heavy string course moldings that clearly divide floors. Additionally, windows may be connected with horizontal moldings bands. Vertical emphasis is achieved by the framing of the facade and its elements with pilasters, quoins, and changes in volume to create complexity in an otherwise simple facade.

3. The favored material is primarily stone rather than cheaper brick. The use of stone allows the houses to have a more European and wealthy feel to them. Sometimes the stone is rusticated to delineate floors. Side walls of these houses are unimportant, and therefore the ornament and stone stop on the sides.

4. Ornament is not overwrought. Primarily, it consists of heavy, thick moldings, carved panels, and paneled keystones. The one elaborate feature is vegetal and rococo carving, an expensive mode of ornamentation whose use demonstrated the builder's wealth. This carving, however, is confined to specific architectural areas, window crests, panels, doors, and cornices.

5. The favored shapes for windows and doors are overwhelmingly arches. Houses often have a combination of round arched and segmental arched windows. Door surrounds are typically fancy, with several houses having an engaged arched surround:

6. House plans tend to be either symmetrical or rowhouse types.

7. Finally, there is a uniformity achieved by fencing to the street. The connected stone retaining walls and newel posts framing the iron fencing gives the street a connecting base that connects all the houses. Similarly, balconies of either iron or stone create variation in the streetscape.

All in all, Dayton Street provides a textbook example of unified Anglo-Italianate design in America. Other neighborhoods of a similar character could be analyzed in a similar way, and, although there would be regional variations depending on local taste, nonetheless, a house in Cincinnati, Baltimore, or New York would resemble others elsewhere. Despite not being a common style throughout the country, the Anglo-Italianate idiom shared common features that connected it and wealthy families, with their like around the urban landscape of the 1860s and 1870s.

The John Kelley House, Cincinnati, OH

Kelley House, Cincinnati, OH. 1870s. Photo: Christie

Remaining Photos: HABS

The John Kelley house was built sometime in the late 1860s early 1870s (likely the 1870s when the rest of the street materialized). Little is known about the man it was built for, but like other houses on the street, it has the same Anglo-Italianate flair. The simple limestone facade of this rowhouse plan is not broken up into courses, and unlike most of the houses on the street, it has a Corinthian columned porch. The first floor has round arched windows while the second features segmental arches, a variation common to many houses on the street. The surrounds are the same on each window, with strong Renaissance acanthus leaf brackets and a molding. Spandrels are carved with the usual Renaissance vegetal designs. Uniquely on this house, the cornice has been elongated. Although it is of the bull's eye type, the windows are semicircular rather than round. The addition of the stone course with panels and incised carvings makes it seem much bigger than on other houses. All in all, this house has one of the finer and more finished facades on the street.

The Ferdinand Karrmann House, Cincinnati, OH

Karrmann House, Cincinnati, OH. 1870s John Smit Photography

Photos: HABS

The Ferdinand Karmann house, named after one of its most notable occupants, was built in the early 1870s on Dayton Street, and it is notable among the other houses because it is a full three stories tall instead of the typical two and a half stories. It thus breaks the mostly uniform height of the streetscape. The house, which has the typical rowhouse plan displays some of the Anglo-Italianate features of other houses on the street. The limestone facade's first floor especially with its simple arched windows with thick moldings and the door surround with the engaged arch, brackets, and pilasters echoes the Hauck house and most of the other buildings on the street. The second and third floors are a bit freer with their design, featuring segmental arched windows with eared moldings, strong paneled string courses, and projecting pilasters framing each floor. The frieze that runs between the window moldings with incised carving is interesting in that it creates the effect of having pilaster capitals. The cornice is simple with carved brackets and dentils. The house is currently a church.

The Chauncey Murch House, Cincinnati, OH

The Murch House, Cincinnati, OH. 1860s John Smith Photography

Other Photos: HABS

The Chauncey Murch house is another of the fine Anglo-Italianate homes on Dayton Street built sometime before 1868. The house is in line with the other limestone Italianates on the street, following the rowhouse plan. This house is notable for its rustication on both the first and second floors, increasing the horizontal flow of the house. It's not the amount of ornament in this house, but its careful application. The windows are all round headed; on the first floor simple moldings and keystones embellish them, while on the second, they are set in rectangular surrounds with moldings on top and simple carved spandrels. The decoration of the balcony (whose underside is even carved!) above the porch is particularly impressive. The thickly carved acanthus leaf brackets surround the arch which has a plaque in the center with leaves pouring into the spandrels. The balcony above is also of stone and displays the traditional oval and circle French balustrade design. The cornice is particularly elaborate. Little of the entablature can be seen because of the large windows that punctuate it. The brackets themselves are thick and paired, with a dentil molding in the center of each bracket and smaller brackets between. This makes the cornice seem rather ponderous, but nonetheless, this is in line with other houses in Cincinnati, with their overwhelming cornices. Inside, the interiors have all the elegance one would expect, although there is an odd arch in the parlor with a segmental arch enclosing a round arch.