A Third Type of Indian Italianate

The Dr. P. W. Ellsworth House, Hartford, CT. 1850s?

Plan by Henry Austin for an unbuilt house.

This Indian Italianate I have depicted in the first image is the Dr. P. W. Ellsworth house that once stood on Main Street and Grove Street in Hartford, CT. Unfortunately, the house is poorly documented, and this is the only picture I could find of it. The house is in a unique style for this sub group. It has two bowed bays with four windows on each and follows the symmetrical plan. It's bowed bay style resembles some houses designed by Henry Austin on Orange Street and Chapel Street in New Haven. The house looks like it has stucco scored to look like stone or actual stone. The second floor windows on the sides have a curving balcony that runs along them with lacy ironwork and an exuberant fringe. the fringe is repeated above the unbracketed cornice in the cresting. The lack of molding around the windows is consistent with the Bristol house style. The crowning glory of the house is the two story porch. On the first stage there are candelabra columns, a trefoil ogee arch, and long sinuous brackets, all characteristics of a chhattri porch. The second stage is simpler, with plain candelabra columns and an iron balustrade. The whole is topped by a fantastic ogee dome with a tall finial. Above the central bay on the roof is a large stepped wooden piece for cresting.

The second image shows a plan by Henry Austin, kept at Yale University. This plan is utterly fantastic and crazy; it seems to have never been built. Perhaps it was just too much for New England. The plan shows a fully realized Indian facade. There are two projecting side bays with windows that have strong Bristol house like lambrequins and tracery. There are balconies on the second floor with equally complex windows. The bays are topped by very Indian looking projecting brackets and a wide eave. The central bay is a tour de force and seems to recall the entrance to the Taj Mahal. It is recessed behind the bays. There is a two story arch that creates a deep recess. The arch frame is paneled and topped by a huge cresting and small finials that resemble tiny minarets. The recess has paneling covering the wall surface (the play of volumes, panels, projections, and recesses is quite masterful) a circular window and a horseshoe arched window with a balcony. The door follows, paradoxically, the Greek Revival sidelight style, but the door and windows have lambrequins and tracery that mark it as distinctively Indian.

Both the Ellsworth house and the plan are bold, and they represent the taking of Indian Italianate to its logical conclusion of looking truly Indian, a feat that Eidlitz' Iranistan was able to achieve. The examples that survive are relatively tame by comparison. It is in these types that we can see Indian Italianate at its most exuberant and most out of control. It's not surprising that this house and plan found few imitators.

The Brewster-Burke House, Rochester, NY and the William H. Glenny House, Buffalo, NY

The Brewster-Burke House, Rochester, NY. 1849 Photo: Bill Badzo

Photo: Wikimedia

These two houses in upstate New York, miles away from Henry Austin and New Haven, are shockingly similar to the Willis Bristol house and are examples of the Indian Italianate that Austin introduced. In the case of the first house pictured, the Brewster-Burke house in Rochester, the architect is thought to be Merwin Austin, the brother of Henry Austin. Thus, family connections allowed Indian Italianate to spread to upstate New York to Rochester, a city with many ties to Connecticut. It is likely that Merwin saw what Henry was doing with the Bristol house and decided to emulate the design for Henry R. Brewster, a real estate speculator, banker, and grocer, in 1849, four years after the Bristol house was built. It was constructed in the Corn Hill neighborhood in Rochester, an affluent district which, although somewhat damaged by time, is one of the earliest success stories in preservation history. The second house, the William H. Glenny house I am less sure about. The image comes from A Picture Book of Earlier Buffalo (1912) but not much more is said about the house. Given it's proximity to Rochester, it is possible that Merwin Austin or perhaps a follower might have copied the design of the Brewster or Willis house likely around the same time in the early 1850s. Glenny was a prominent merchant. 

Both houses are much alike. They are both symmetrical plan houses that have a very similar massing finished with scored stucco. The cornices have paired brackets but no entablature, as in the Bristol house. They each borrow different things from the Bristol house's design and add their own elements. The Brewster-Burke house has a chhattri porch with a scalloped ogee arch and quatrefoils cut out in the spandrels. The brackets are oversized and are an s and c scroll shape with interesting spirals cut out. Candelabra columns are also included, but these are far more angular and have deep fluting that make them look like grass bundles. The windows have lintels with simple triangles. A monitor caps the roof and a long wing to the side has a porch that mimics the central porch. The house ends in a structure with three pointed Gothic arches, that served as a summer kitchen and carriage house according to the plans, demonstrating the stylistic link some theorists of the period found between Indian and Gothic architecture. Throughout the house has ironwork balconies on the windows, while the main porch has a fantastic wooden balcony with exotic finials on the posts. The side seems to have had a porch that was as fantastic as the main porch with carved ornament, but this has disappeared along with an exceptional fence, pictured below from HABS. The house was threatened many times with demolition but has been saved mostly intact, despite some losses. 

The Glenny house in Buffalo has been demolished, though I do not know when. Unfortunately, the porch in the image is completely obscured by foliage, but I imagine it is a chhattri porch similar to the other examples of this type that looks like it might have a goofy tent roof. The house appears to be stucco and have a monitor. What this house does that the Brewster-Burke house does not is emulate the exterior lambrequins and tracery of the Bristol house, a quirky but lovely quality. It seems much less expansive than the Brewster-Burke house, lacking side porches and additions. Both these houses are great examples of the westward diffusion of architectural styles from the eastern US and they represent fascinating examples of Indian Italianate. The following pictures from various sources illustrate the Brewster-Burke house, which remains a National Register landmark.

The back of the Brewster-Burke house. Photo: Wikimedia

Photo: Bill Badzo

The following photos are selected from HABS which has many more images.

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: