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.

'Two Rivers' the David McGavock House, Nashville, TN

'Two Rivers', Nashville, TN. 1859 Photo: Brent Moore

Photo: Wikimedia

If this plantation, built in 1859 for the very wealthy McGavock family could have something elaborate, it does. In fact, it's a surprisingly urban design one might see in a wealthy city rather than in the countryside, which testifies to the taste and wealth of the family. It was eventually sold to the city which built a golf course around it. The house has a symmetrical plan, but the facade is far more elongated than the typical symmetrical box, somewhat dwarfing the windows in a sea of brick. The house creates rhythm and emphasis by defining the side bays with paneled brick pilasters and causing the central bay to project through its heavy, elaborate porches. As usual, the central bay differs from the side bays. The sides have rectangular windows topped by flat hood moldings with swirling rococo foliage. The central window is a segmentally arched with Venetian tracery that has not two but three windows contained within it, an uncommon design. This is topped by a drip molding. The central door is recessed and flanked by arched windows.

The porches run across the facade on the first floor and the central bay on the second, creating that all important central emphasis on a symmetrical house. In that, this house has some affinity with the New Orleans Porch Facade type. The thick paneled pilasters create filleted rectangular openings which feature brackets with carved acanthus leaves, raised diamond panels, and rosettes, no doubt reproduced carefully from a Greek Revival pattern book. The balusters are a Renaissance type, another indication of wealth (turned balusters cost money, especially that many). The cornice is paneled, with variations of s scroll acanthus leaf brackets and simple s scroll designs that are paired on the main facade. The central section is topped by a boxy paneled attic with a few carved moldings and vegetable accents. The cornice wraps around the entire house, but the facade treatment is not repeated on the sides which have a simpler design. HABS documented the house and provided the interior views and plans seen below.

The Cyprien Dufour House, New Orleans, LA

The Cyprien Dufour House, New Orleans, LA. 1859 Photos: Wikimedia

The Dufour-Baldwin House at 1705 Esplanade is one of the grandest compositions on the street. Built in 1859 by Cyprien Dufour, attorney and essayist, and designed by the architects Henry Howard and Albert Diettel, the house has an imposing presence on the street and conveys its builder's wealth effectively. It is the typical side hall plan of the Porch Facade type, with stucco, Gothic ironwork, and paired Doric columns. The first floor shows the typical expectations for Doric, with an astragal molding separating capital from shaft, ornamental rosettes in the necking, a flared echinus, and a flat abacus capping the whole (diagram below). Oddly, the second floor capitals are unclassical, with an elongated necking and no echinus. The abacus is shrunken, giving them a very strange and elongated appearance.

The other elements of the house are typically Greek, with thick, simple window surrounds, a fine doorway with carved classical wreaths and anthemia on the segmental arched door, and a simple paneled cornice with paired s curve brackets separating a run of dentils. The whole is topped by a paneled attic construction with different sized rectangular elements that draw the eye upward and articulate the divisions of the facade. However, when we look to the side, more strangeness abounds. The triple arched windows on the projection are especially strange. Frequently, one sees triple arched palladian windows where the side members are shorter than the central, as seen here. In this case, the architects surrounded a segmental arched window with two round arched windows, giving the structure an awkward look. You can tell the molding doesn't know what to do where the two different arch types intersect. It's an odd design, but a unique one; this is exactly the sort of fun one expects in a port city with all its different influences.

The Lanaux House, New Orleans, LA

The Lanaux House, New Orleans, LA, 1884

The Lanaux House, built for the family whose daughter inherited the nearby Johnson house is a late Italianate built in 1884, designed by James Freret, a significant Louisiana architect. Plan-wise, the house is somewhat of a conundrum. It takes as its base the typical side hall plan that follows the Porch Facade type, but completely obscures the rectangular design with the diagonal tower on the left, which houses the main entrance and features elongated windows, and another diagonal box window projection on the right, leaving only one flat surface on the front. This gives the house an interesting undulating appearance which requires adjustments to the porches so that they connect to the projections. Unlike the brick and plaster houses we have seen on Esplanade Avenue, this home is faced in clapboard. It also features a tall hip roof that accommodates a French style dormer window. Later than the other Greek Revival designs, the house has an expected Corinthian columned porch on the second floor, while the first floor has segmental arches with keystones, clunky brackets, and incised Eastlake carving in the spandrels, supported by Corinthian columns. The segmental arch is reflected in all the first floor windows and entrances around the house. The sides of this house are excessively plain, but the paneled cornice runs around the entire house, forming a clear cap on the facade with thick s-scroll brackets. I find the plan interesting, since it invites one into the house as if it's enfolding a visitor as well as the emphasis placed on the large central windows. The house is now the Melrose Mansion bed-and-breakfast, and a visit to their site offers several views of the modernized interior.

The Freeman Annabelle House, New Orleans, LA

The Freeman Annabelle House, New Orleans, LA. 1847

This home, at the opposite end of Esplanade (1014) is known as the Freeman Annabelle house, though little seems to be known about the original occupants. As I mentioned, this is a classic New Orleans Italianate/Greek Revival hybrid, and indeed is a basic vernacular type in the city. This type, which I'll call the Porch Facade type, consists of a typical side hall plan and has a two story Greek revival porch, usually with Corinthian or Ionic columns, a deep Greek Revival cornice with brackets, and Greek style window surrounds. This house is a good introduction to this type, featuring flat windows with eared, molded surrounds, a segmental arched door with pilasters, Corinthian double columned porches which cover both levels of the facade, and a tall Greek Revival entablature with pairs of long s and c scroll brackets interrupting runs of smaller brackets. The facade is plastered with brick painted the same color on the sides. An interesting feature on this house, as can be seen below, is the lacy rococo cresting on the left side that hangs down from the cornice forming a fringe on the roof and running around the large projecting bay with a second story ironwork porch. Incongruously, the ironwork on the front of the house is Gothic in form, showing the mixture of cast iron styles displayed on the same house. Often there will be classical, rococo, romantic (very vegetal), and gothic thrown together to form one eclectic composition. The house is now condos.