The James S. Marsh House, Lewisburg, PA

The James S. Marsh House, Lewisburg, PA. 1860s Photo: Joseph a

The James S. Marsh house, built in the 1860s by an important iron foundry owner in Lewisburg is an excellent survival story. Left in terrible repair and condemned after conversion into apartments, the house was restored by the Ludwigs as you can read here (with accompanying photos).

It is a tour de force of Italianate design and includes all sorts of bells and whistles. It is a symmetrical five bay house with a gable roof and, unusually, a cupola. Usually cupolas are placed on hip roofs and not gabled roofs. On the first floor, the house has segmental arched windows and on the second and third round arched windows. All have a similar drip molding that conforms to the arch shape and ends in Gothic style finials and almost all have Venetian tracery. In the center is a triple arched palladian window, also with a conforming molding. The designer even put grand windows in the attic story at the end, a rather expensive decision. The finish is stucco with impressive quoins at the corners and a rusticated basement. The front looks a little bare. It's likely that it had an entrance porch that matched the side porch, a rather rich design with a fringe, s and c scroll brackets, and arches interrupted by carved keystones and a wooden fringe. The cornice is the fillet cornice type with a deep architrave and filleted panels alternating with filleted windows topped by a run of fringe made by pieces of wooden molding. The brackets are s scroll type and the sides form curved rinceaux. Particularly lavish is the cupola with wood rusticated to look like masonry. The backets and two windows match the facade windows with Venetian tracery and strong moldings with added multi eared surrounds. A different cornice type, the undulating cornice was used here. An earlier view of the house shows a grand balustrade on the cupola and a balustrade atop both porches. These things always rot off. 

The John T. Leigh House, Clinton, NJ

The John T. Leigh House, Clinton, NJ. 1860.

John T. Leigh was one of the major leaders of Clinton. He founded the towns major bank and helped it incorporate in 1865 along with Bosenbury. He also provided the land on which the town's major institutions were established. Leigh suitably built himself a grand Italianate house to reflect his influence (on the appropriately named Leigh street). The house suffered a fire in 1971 and then became the town municipal building with additions added to provide needed office space.

The house is a five bay, symmetrical plan block articulated in fine brick and brownstone. The first floor features five almost floor to ceiling windows with a grand porch that bears much in common with that at the town's Bosenbury house, including the chamfered columns, filleted flat arches and the central engaged pediment over the entrance. The columns of the porch are themselves interesting for their extremely exaggerated moldings, making them look a bit exotic. The cornice of the porch features a cut out fringe. On the side porches, only one of which survives, the columns are pierced with cut out designs. The second floor features a typical brownstone lintel design over the windows with a palladian window in the center with a corresponding hood molding on brackets. A projecting brick architrave molding sets off the third floor with its windows that correspond even to the proportions of the palladian window. The brackets are executed with a high degree of carpenter's elaboration with the main body being a large c scroll and then a rosette with a small s scroll below, rather layering on bracket type over bracket type. The whole is topped with a cute little cupola also with three windows. I suspect that there are some missing doo-dads like a finial.

Overall this is a beautifully preserved house with an imposing presence (standing in front of it, its proportions are very grand and it's rather tall). Design-wise, there is much to remind us of Samuel Sloan's work.

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 Francis Crum House, Columbus, OH

The Francis Crum House, Columbus, OH. 1850

The Francis Crum house stands next to the Snowden house on the east side of E Town Street. It was started in 1844 by another builder, but finished after a long delay by Francis Crum in 1850. The house is a three bay, side entrance plan house, with an additionally two bays added later, slightly recessed. This is a common form of extension for houses of this plan. The house shares some of the design features of the Snowden house, with round arched windows on the first floor and three point arched windows on the second. The surrounds are more abbreviated than the Snowden house, with hood moldings ending in foliate Gothic stops with a rococo cartouche in the center. The windows feature Venetian tracery. The cornice and entablature follow the bull's eye form, as next door, except here the windows are elliptical intersecting the panels. The brackets are especially elaborate, being a s scroll form attached to a rotated s curve design. Deeply carved acanthus leaves and finer carving on the brackets distinguish it from Snowden's. The cupola is very low, with strong brackets echoing the cornice, and rectangular windows with arched ends. Note how the cupola is centered on the original three bays rather than taking account of the addition. Unfortunately, the house has experienced some mutilation, with the front door replaced by a colonial revival form and the first floor of the side wing obliterated with a columned, glass picture window. Both these changes are probably from the 1910s-20s. 

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 Crouse House, Syracuse, NY

This is a rather interesting design, demolished, from Syracuse, NY. It was built by John R. Crouse, a major banker in Syracuse, in the 1850s, and in 1904 became the law school at Syracuse University. Fronting on Fayette Park, one of the city's early planning and mansion districts, it would have had a rather over-landscaped Victorian park as its front yard. It was demolished in the 1920s. The house bears a striking similarity to the design of Henry Austin for the Willis Bristol house is New Haven, CT, particularly in its proportions. There it was a simple form with Indian architectural elements grafter on; here the same sort of design is interpreted in a Gothic mode. Following the symmetrical plan, like Austin's house, it featured a spare stuccoed facade, with a generous third story and long s scroll brackets, paired and without an entablature. The gothicism is restricted to the windows, as the porch is a rather typical design. Above each window is a simple Gothic molding with carved stops; each window is inset with a unique gothic tracery overlay, with intersecting pointed arches and foils in the tracery. The bay window to the side receives a similar treatment, with more traditional pointed arches. A low cupola, another Austin feature, topped the whole with large brackets. Note how the ironwork similarly matches the Austin formula. Though I could not produce an exact chain of influence, it is clear that Austin's plans, perhaps published or seen in person influenced this house. Other images can be seen here, here, and here.

'Orianda' the Thomas Winans House, Baltimore, MD

The Thomas Winans House, Baltimore, MD. 1856

Photo: Wikimedia

The Thomas Winans house is another one of these Russian themed estates of the 1850s. Winans' father was an inventor who worked on the construction of the Russian railroad, like Harrison in Philadelphia. He named his estate Crimea, after the peninsula in the Ukraine, and his house Orianda, after a Greek revival palace in the Crimea designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel as one of his commissions for the Greek royal family (never built). The house has a five bay plan (the entrance is to the right of the above photo) with a porch around the door matching the porches to the sides and to the rear. The house, like other country houses around Baltimore, is finished in fieldstone with stone molded window lintels and simple decoration. The porch is quite attractive, with a lattice railing and ogee spandrel brackets. A cupola tops the whole almost entirely glass with a pointed roof. The house has no brackets, but instead uniquely features very strange thick gothic finials hanging down from the large eave at the corners of the house and cupola. This is a highly individualistic feature that rarely appears. It currently sits in the middle of a large park on a dramatic bluff overlooking a valley and is a museum and event facility (more images there).

'The Mount' the James Carey Jr. House, Baltimore, MD

The James Carey Jr. House, Baltimore, MD. 1858 Photo: Doug Copeland

Baltimore had some impressive country estates surrounding it, such as 'The Mount' built for a Quaker businessman and philanthropist, John Carey Jr in 1858 by William H. Reasin, a local architect. The house is supposed to be renovated soon, but seems to have caught on fire. Fortunately it was saved from destruction but remains vulnerable. The house is beautifully proportioned, with a five bay plan and a fieldstone façade with quoins; the windows have simple stone lintels. The central bay projects from the façade grandly, with an thick arch at the base a stone stringcourse and two arched windows above; basically there are three arches each diminishing with each floor. A row of bricks diagonally set into the sides of the projection where the stringcourse ends, indicates there was a porch once, now gone. The simple entablature has double s scroll brackets (with very shallow curves) and the whole is topped by a fine centered cupola with a broad eave and nicely framed triple arched windows. The house's massing and simple design makes it a beautifully simple villa. Hopefully, the house will be restored soon!

The Thomas W. Palmer House, Detroit, MI

The Thomas W. Palmer House, Detroit MI. 1864-74 Photo: Scott Weir

Potentially one of the most intriguing houses of Detroit, it was built between 1864 and 1874 for one of the most important senators in Michigan history, Thomas W. Palmer. The house is the product of a variety of remodels, continued throughout a decade, and thus there is no single date for its construction. The house as it stood after the remodels was a pavilion plan house with a central tower, but it started off as a simple Federal or Greek Revival farmhouse, which survives in the right hand pavilion of the central block. That is why the house's pavilions are actually asymmetrical, with the right hand pavilion being taller and thinner than the left. It doesn't follow the typical pavilion plan. The left hand pavilion features paired rectangular windows joined by a rather baroque pediment on brackets. The right hand pavilion has a triple arched palladian also topped by a curving baroque pediment (the sort of baroque styling seems to have been a favorite in Detroit). Both have c scroll brackets, paired, with tiny thin brackets in between pairs. The central tower has double tombstone windows (they looked painted), a round window, and a broad arch that outlines the whole. The tower has s scroll brackets, but of a rather strange type, with very strong curves and an elaborate trefoil shape at the top; a Gothic quatrefoil balustrade and partial roof top the whole. The porch, unlike a typical pavilion plan stretches around the right hand pavilion, with a triple arched palladian entrance in the center and ogee brackets.

The side of the house looks to be from a later phase and features a second, taller tower, somewhat plain with a basket handle arch outline with small Romanesque drops. Oddly, the squat tower is topped with a cupola with a tent roof. Note the ladder that provides access to this tower angled on the roof! A final side wing seems to be of the latter phase with segmental arched windows and a small entablature. While not necessarily a harmonious plan, and even though it feels somewhat imbalanced like a slope to the right, the house is very picturesque in the finest tradition of individualistic Italianate conceptions. It was demolished to provide a home for the current Detroit Institute of Arts.

The Emil S. Heineman House, Detroit, MI

The Emil S. Heineman House, Detroit, MI. 1859 Photo: Scott Weir

A slightly less elaborate version of the later Ward house was built for Emil S. Heineman, a clothes merchant, in 1859, five years before the Ward house. Like the Ward house, Heineman is a symmetrical plan and has a similar fenestration, with double arched windows on the flanking bays and a triple arched palladian (somewhat more extreme) in the center even in the porch, as well as protruding windows on the first floor (boxed rather than bay). Clearly, a slew of Detroit Italianates followed this type. The decoration of the windows and porches is finer here, with cast iron hood moldings on the windows with central leafy anthemia in a rococo style and leafy finials. The porch has very thin columns and long dripping brackets. Of course, the necessary balustrades are provided, a sort of stylized Renaissance motif with urns. Notably, the windows on the second floor and the sides all feature Venetian tracery. Curvaceousness does not transcend the third floor, where the windows are simple rectangles paired as the principal floor windows. These are enclosed by an architrave and thin paired double s scroll brackets interrupting a run of smaller brackets. The whole is topped by a triple arched palladian cupola, with an engaged arch in the cornice and squiggly brackets. By comparison with the Ward and Newcomb types, one can readily see the restraint of the 1850s in comparison with the 60s and the 70s.

The David Ward House, Detroit, MI

The David Ward House, Detroit, MI. 1864 Photo: Scott Weir

Continuing with Detroit's love affair with arches, the David Ward house, built in 1864 for a wealthy lumber mill owner, is almost the inverse of the Newcomb house. It also follows the symmetrical plan with a gabled central bay and bay windows on the two flanking bays on the first floor, but where the Newcomb house had triple windows on the sides and doubles in the center, here the arithmetic is reversed, with the triple arched palladian in the center, an arrangement even reflected in the front door and the porch, which extends to cover the one angle of the bay windows. Whereas the Newcomb house pulled out all the stops, the Ward house is a bit tamer, with simpler, more spindly porch supports, windows that only have thick brick surrounds with carved terminals for the molding (almost Romanesque in style), higher pilasters on the bay windows, and much less classical balconies, with crosses for balusters. The third floor has a very interesting feature. Instead of having the windows break the architrave molding, the architrave curves downward to run under the windows, a rather unprecedented breaking of traditional conventions. Additionally, the central gable window is provided with its own balcony (rather obviously for show). Here the double s scroll brackets are grouped in triads on the corners, pairs and singles on the gable, an interesting way of mixing it up and emphasizing the corners strongly. Sloan would have been proud of this arrangement. The cupola is a triple arched palladian with some stocky brackets. Like a lot of symmetrical plan houses, it has side porches which makes it somewhat pyramidal in shape. It's interesting that the Newcomb house and the Ward house represent two kinds of very masculine design. Newcomb does it with elaboration and Renaissance complexity, thick stone and strong elements. Ward does it with thickness and bulk of elements, particularly the window surrounds.

The Cyrenus Adelbert Newcomb House, Detroit, MI

The C. A. Newcomb House, Detroit, MI. 1876 Source: Scott Weir

Built in 1876 for a major Detroit retailer and opera house owner, the Cyrenus Adalbert Newcomb house (gotta give the Victorians props for their unique names), is an exceptionally high style symmetrical plan villa with a protruding central bay with an open pediment. The house is a play on variations, with brick and stone and arches in various combinations all vying to be different and grab attention. On the first floor, we have two bay windows, with columned pilasters. Interestingly, the cornice of this window has an architrave molding that forms a gable over each window, clashing with the roundness of the window arch but reflecting the angularity of the pointed keystone. The first floor porches are characterized by fanciful, foliate and decidedly unclassical capitals supporting shallow basket handle arches. Heavy balustrades top each element. On the second floor, we have triple arched palladian windows (the arch variation is very slight) on the sides, and a double tombstone window in the center; all are joined into a single unit with thick stone surrounds and a bracketed, pedimented cornice (open on the sides, closed in the center). The third story has a stringcourse that separates it visually, a very Sloan touch, with a repetition of the window patterns between flanking and central bays, though with simpler surrounds and no cornice. These interrupt the architrave molding which supports paired double s scroll brackets that appear very elaborate with bulls eyes and incised designs, and a run of smaller rotated s scroll brackets, resting on yet another molding! To top it all, and to contrast with the angularity of the gables, the cupola is classically designed with Tuscan pilasters, a further triple arched palladian, and an engaged segmental arch in the cornice. The only variation on this scheme are the segmental arched windows found on the simpler side façade. The whole effect is one of extreme richness and complexity, kind of like a piece of renaissance revival furniture transformed into a house. Nearly every trick in the architectural book to jazz up and make complex the façade is used. Surely nothing could be more appropriate for the man responsible for Detroit's over the top opera house downtown.

The Neil Flattery House, Detroit, MI

The Neil Flattery House, Detroit, MI. 1859 Source: Scott Weir

The Neil Flattery house, built in 1859 for a city politician and merchant, is an interesting example of the pavilion plan treated asymmetrically. Typically, pavilion plan houses will enforce a somewhat rigid symmetry around the central bay, but here, asymmetricality is created by the varying window treatments, with a box window with paired tombstone windows above to the left and a two story bay window to the right, injecting a bit of the irregular plan spirit into the design. The pavilions themselves feature little engaged gables that jut out from the eave, encasing small pointed windows (note the miniature balcony attached to the one on the right, a particularly precious Victorian touch). The more recent image shows the house in its later conversion to stores, but the woodcut shows it in its prime with original details intact. The house featured a plain brick façade onto which a series of decorative details were added around openings which drew the eye to them, such as the rococo piles of foliage above the window moldings, the heavy brackets on the bay windows, and the triple arched palladian porch around the main entrance. The cornice featured an architrave molding with a run of double s scroll brackets paired at the accent points at corners and around windows. The engaged gables find their way into the elaborate cupola, creating a continuity with the main façade. Note that the brackets on the cupola actually run all the way down the sides and drip onto the roof, giving it an almost Jacobean sculptural appearance and serving as bracket surrounds for the windows.

The Francis Adams House, Detroit, MI

Francis Adams House Detroit, MI. 1860s Photo: Scott Weir

The Francis Adams house, built sometime in the 1860s (he moved to Detroit in 1857 and was established at this location by the late 1860s) for yet another lumber merchant, is one of the zanier Italianates I've seen. It's hard to classify what stylistic influences are at work on this building, but rococo revival springs to mind, as we saw its influence in the Backus house in Baltimore. This symmetrical plan brick home has a very sedate first and second floor, with pairs of tombstone windows sitting atop bay windows on the flanking bays and a triple arched palladian in the central bay. But like the Swain house, the top is where the action occurs. The cornice's architrave molding swoops and dips fantastically along the façade, interrupted only by paired c scroll brackets; this culminates in the central open pediment which appears to be a rococo/Flemish form topped by a pile of carved vegetation. This pediment rests on stepped brackets and encloses a window with a swooping hood molding that reminds me of Chinese designs. The whole is topped by a magnificent cupola that repeats the triple arched palladian form as well as the vegetal carving. In considering the house, it is clear that some continental European baroque forms are at work; considering Adams and his wife were both Maine natives, it's anyone's guess why they chose such a playful European form for their home.