The Charles Heine House, Cincinnati, OH

Heine House, Cincinnati, OH. 1870s John Smith Photography

Remaining Photos: HABS

This house, adjoining the Hauck house was probably built by John Hauck in 1874-6 as a residence for his daughter and her husband, Charles Heine, a grocer. On exclusive streets like Dayton Street, one can often find family relations and friends building and buying houses to form their own enclaves. Much plainer than the Hauck house and following the rowhouse plan, the Heine house shares some features with it; perhaps the same architect was used for both. The house's doors in particular have the same design, although there is less carving. The windows also follow the same pattern, with segmental arched windows on the first floor with pillars, a rope molding, and keystone, and round arched windows on the second in the same style. The cornice features paired brackets and dentils, and is of the bull's eye type, although instead of being round, the windows are only semi-circular.

The Andrew Hickenlooper House, Cincinnati, OH

Hickenlooper House, Cincinnati, OH. 1871. Photo: Christie

Photos: Wikimedia

This house at 838 Dayton St. was built in 1871 by successful Civil War general Andrew Hickenlooper, who was involved in Sherman's march through Georgia. The house, which follows the rowhouse plan is one of the most elaborate of the houses on Dayton. Its limestone facade is articulated into three strong bays, like the Hauck house, in which the central bay is slightly less bold than the flanking bays. The first floor features segmental arched windows, all with strong moldings and keystones. These are divided into bays by Ionic pilasters with floral carvings. Notably, the string course molding advances and recesses with the pilasters. The second floor is where the real variation begins. The flanking bays project slightly and feature segmental arched windows with eared moldings and a curved pediment on acanthus brackets. These are pulled straight from Renaissance designs and make this house a good example of Anglo-Italianate style. The central bay is recessed and has just the eared molding around the window, but the carved swags, a notably lavish element, emphasize it significantly in the design. Basically, this house is well balanced in its distribution of elements that attract and diminish. The cornice features paired simple brackets; the flanking bays have a simple paneled cornice, while the central bay has a bull's eye cornice, keeping the three bay distinction all the way up. The whole is topped by a fancy stone cresting that simulates Greek acanthus leaf crestings. As in the Hauck house, all is liberally carved on the front, while the sides are very very plain.

'Mount Holly', the Charles Dudley House, Foote, MS

'Mount Holly', Foote, MS. 1856 Photos: Joseph

'Mount Holly' is a plantation house is central Mississippi built in 1856 for Charles Dudley. It was designed by either Samuel Sloan or Calvert Vaux, two of the most important Italianate architects practicing in the mid 19th century. Calvert Vaux is a strong contender, since the house closely resembles one of his published plans. Only an architect's intervention could explain the defining odd feature of the house, the fact that it conforms roughly to the irregular plan, but it lacks two of the most important features found on this style. First and most obvious, there is no tower. Rather the place where the tower should rise is a strongly projecting, gabled bay. Second, is the fact that the 'tower' element projects further than the left hand section that should extend the furthest. The emphasis has been entirely shifted to the center of the house, even though it is clearly irregular because of the strong recess on the right wing and the projection of the left wing.

Ornamentally, the house is as spare as they come. There are no window moldings, just paired tombstone windows. The brackets are paired as well, simple, and united by a architrave molding. Even the porches are simple, consisting of plain arches and square columns. The house was almost certainly stuccoed in some pastel beige. However, playfulness appears in the central door. It is recessed in a portico that is triple arched Palladian in form with an elaborate cornice, large, acanthus leaf brackets, and small brackets. This is a surprisingly high-style porch on a house that doesn't have a lot of ornament, and it relieves the simplicity of the facade. The chimneys as well have toothed and paneled brickwork. The house is currently abandoned by its owner and was listed in 2011 as one of Mississippi's most endangered places. The plan below is taken from one of Clavert Vaux' drawings on which the house seems to have been based and perhaps shows how the interior is arranged.

NOTE: This house burned down June 17, 2015

Photo: HABS

The William Treadwell House, Hudson, MI

\The William Treadwell House, Mudson, MI. 1860s Photo: Doug Copeland

Photo: NRHP

Sorry to my readers, I have returned at last! The William Treadwell house is a significant landmark near the town of Hudson, MI, a place known for its impressive collection of historic homes. This is a particularly exuberant example of the irregular plan with an exciting array of features. The facade is articulated in brick with limestone or sandstone hood moldings. The brick is plain without many raised features. The first floor is marked by not only segmental arched windows, but also elaborate wooden canopies trimmed in jigsaw work over each element, a particularly expensive and eye-catching feature. Cast iron balconies provide relief from the constant woodwork that this house showcases. The front door itself has a glass surround. The second floor takes as its central motif paired tombstone windows with a triple arched palladian window, seen on a few other Italianates. The brackets are particularly large on this house and are c and s curve in style. What really strikes the eye, however, is the tower, which has an elaborate balcony that surrounds the top stage. The balcony is gothic in style with a series of round arches and a crenellated banister. Large turned finials at each corner complete the effect and echo the larger brackets on the tower. Overall, the house has a constant sense of movement and restlessness. The house's interiors can be seen here.

A second house nearby in Hudson, at 313 Church St. (also built in the 1860s) is nearly identical to the Treadwell house. It differs primarily in the elaborate brick patterning in the cornice of large blind arches and the addition of a poorly thought out colonial-revival porch of the late 19th century.

Photo: Doug Copeland

The Schlosser House, Attica, IN

The Schlosser House, Attica, IN. 1865 Photo: Wikimedia

Sorry to have been remiss lately. With classes starting and all I have just been swamped, but I promise not to give up. This house, the Schlosser house, in Attica, IN was built in 1865 as a symmetrical plan house, but being in a small town in Indiana it has some unusual vernacular features. First, the lintels over the windows that consist of simple pieces of stone inserted into the facade (called labels) are a strong Greek Revival element. Here, they are heavily carved with Greek designs of acanthus with palmettes; the fact that the owner has picked them out in paint helps a great deal in noticing the design elements. The porch on the front is an elaborate affair, with complex fretwork scrolls (that have the air of steamboat Gothic about them). The central piece of fretwork between the two bracket shaped pieces is particularly interesting. The facing is brick, which forms a band to make an architrave that has paired double s-curve brackets under the eave. The side porch is startlingly simple, being basically simple posts without even a full entablature. However, the simplicity of the wooden design is not reflected in the elaborate cast iron balustrade over the porch, which is a lovely feature and was obviously designed to be used as a balcony, given the elongation of the second floor windows on that side. Although the paint scheme is probably not historical (they would never have picked out stone details like that), I rather like it with its mix of blacks, yellows, and greens. It goes to show that even when historical colors aren't used, a pleasing picture can be formed. The yellows and blacks are in fact harmonious Victorian colors, so it does even out. Even though the house was built in 1865, it is aesthetically a throwback to the early 1850s in its design, showing that regionalism could often trump high style taste.

The Nelson Stillman House, Galena, IL

The Nelson Stillman House, Galena, IL 1858 Photo: Richie Diesterheft

Photo: SD Dirk

This is a truly impressive house in a town of impressive homes. The Nelson Stillman house was built in 1858 by a successful grocer. After serving as a nursing home, it is now the Stillman Inn, a bed and breakfast whose owners have restored missing original features of the house and have taken excellent care of the property. As far as the plan goes, it is a typical irregular plan house with brick facing and a simple architrave and bracket cornice. The unique design features of this house are what really set it apart from the usual. First, the most noticeable feature is the tower. Unlike the traditional Italianate tower, this one has a strong ogee shaped gable on all four sides, a feature which is rarely seen (Norwich, CT has some similar towers). The ogee has no brackets, perhaps because they were just too hard to cut. It covers a double tombstone window topped by a round window. As if the tower gables weren't enough, an octagonal, almost Federal, cupola tops the tower with an open platform for viewing the surrounding countryside from the hill on which the house sits. I am not sure I have seen an open cupola like this on an Italianate, and I find it rather pleasing, even if it interacts a bid oddly with the ogee. Two other features catch my eye. First is the fact that all the windows on the front of the house are double (one is triple) and covered with wooden awnings with fringes, that make the house look rather festive. The tent shape to the awnings echoes the curves on the cupola roof and the tower gable nicely. Third is the porch, which, although it seems standard enough, has odd bits of jigsaw work hanging down from the cornice over the brackets. This is a bit of whimsy that is almost Steamboat Gothic in its inspiration and fun. It again adds curves into the house's design, giving the porch cornice a sort of undulation. The sides of the house are much plainer, keeping with the Victorian spirit of thrift which always seemed at war with their desire for display.

Photo: Eric Olson

The Italianate Bracket

The bracket is perhaps the quintessential feature of Italianate architecture, so much so, that the style was sometimes referred to in 19th century publications as the 'bracketed style'. Even though many Italianate buildings do not include brackets, the majority of them are profusely bracketed. Brackets served the function of keeping the wide eaves level and prevent bowing in the cornice. Brackets could be made of metal but were most commonly made of wood. They also served a decorative function, giving rhythm and vertical thrust to a house. While the facades of many Italianates are subdued, the brackets often provide a relieving ornament and whimsy that differentiates the exuberance of Italianate from the sobriety of Greek Revival.

There is no set rhyme or reason for bracket design. Earlier on, the brackets were primarily constructed at the site of a house by carpenters who were inspired by published house plans and details. As time went on brackets could be ordered in bunches from catalogs in a variety of shapes based on carpenter precedents. Because they were so unique to each house, brackets have literally limitless scope for variation and design. Sometimes similarities in brackets in one region can inform us of the vernacular. Nonetheless, despite these variations, there are common traits to Italianate brackets that allow us to grasp a bit of what the design process was behind them.

The basis for the most common Italianate bracket is two types of curves, the s- and c- curves. These give the bracket its general tapering shape below the molding that forms the bracket cap.

The general shape is often enlivened with extra pieces of ornament:

Finials: These turned pieces are probably the most common form of ornament on a bracket. They can be added to a block at the end of the upper part of the bracket, below the foot of the bracket, or from a block attached at the center. The finials give an icicle like effect to a bracket.

Medallions: Medallions or bull's eyes are circular pieces of molding. They are often put at points in the design where the curve spirals. They similarly adorn a lot of contemporary furniture and interior woodwork.

Strapwork: The strapwork is a set of thin boards cut with a jigsaw in a decorative pattern and glued or nailed onto a surface to give it a shallowly projecting design. In brackets, strapwork usually outlines the shape of the bracket and forms spirals.

Incised Carving: Incised carving was made affordable by the invention of the router. It consists of shallow relief cuttings into the wood in a decorative pattern. Mostly associated with Eastlake design and furniture, incised carving adds relatively inexpensive ornament to a surface.

Acanthus Leaves: Acanthus leaves are an expensive feature for a bracket. They usually are not placed on the sides but on the front, projecting slightly and adding an extra touch of fanciness.

Other design elements consist of carved garlands, fluting (cutting parallel grooves in the front of a bracket), beading, and elaborate caubuchons (jewel shaped pieces of wood).

Bracket Shapes:

As I said, the c- and s-curve form the basis of the bracket shape. The drawing below shows a bracket that uses one of these curves.

The number of curves can be doubled or tripled by adding more s- or c-curves. Sometimes this involves rotating one of the curves horizontally or varying their size. As the 19th century moved on brackets became more and more complex in how they used curves. The Bidwell house gives us an example.

Both types of curves can be combined to form composite s- and c-scroll brackets as shown below. Of course, this combination can be done in a lot of ways.

Special brackets:

There are two types of bracket I think deserve special mention because they tend to occur in specific contexts. The rafter bracket, beam bracket, or block bracket is a very simple rectangular block of wood attached to the eave. This occurs primarily in Italianate homes of the 1830s to the 1850s, and is a mark of an early Italianate. They were designed to resemble the exposed rafters peeking out from the eave in their Italian models. The Starr house and the Apthorp house have these types of brackets.

The Rotated or horizontal s-curve bracket is a type which, though it can occur anywhere, is particularly associated with Anglo-Italianate architecture because its shape conforms closely with Renaissance and Classical precedents. It is usually tarted up with acanthus leaves, scrolls, and palmettes, and was based on publications that showed ancient entablatures. The Lippitt house and the Graham house are examples.

The angular bracket is an uncommon type. It employs no curves, and instead has angles that define it. These can be stepped or even just consist of a simple diagonal piece of wood supporting the roof. The Hall house has angular brackets.

Finally there is an interesting bit of ornament that can sometimes be found on brackets, piercing. This consists of open space or holes piercing the wood of the bracket, creating a lighter effect. The Fisher house has pierced brackets.

Painting:

The painting of brackets is a complex business given the profusion of decoration. The book Victorian Exterior Decoration suggests these historically appropriate possibilities. The brackets are usually painted the color of the house's trim. If they are relatively simple with few decorative details, they should probably just be painted solidly with the trim color without picking out details in the body color. Brackets with strapwork usually have the strapwork frame painted the trim color and the space inside the frame painted the body color. Incised designs are usually picked out in the trim color or perhaps a third accent color to emphasize their presence. If the house trim color is simulating stone, they should never have details picked out and be painted to appear like stonework.

Brackets are a fun feature of Italianate and one of the elements that draws people to these houses. Although my discussion is certainly not comprehensive, it tries to give a bit of vocabulary to this fascinatingly elusive element of design.

The Hart-Root House, Middletown, CT

The Hart-Root House, Middletown, CT. 1880 Wikimedia

This house follows as well the rotated side tower plan seen at 281 High Street. It was built in 1880 and was inhabited by the Hart and Root families; it's currently a faculty residence. The house has undergone some changes in its career, with its tower being lopped off at some point (I'm sure it followed the usual plan of three arched windows). Still the richness of detail can be seen in it, and it seems to have many features in common stylistically with the Coite house, notably its panel cornice with bull's eyes intersecting the panels. Features I like about this house are the closely paired brackets in the gable front, a feature that gives the cornice a lot of volume. Although the window surrounds are simple, they jibe with the subdued ornateness, and the arched window next to the door is a strange feature, which I am not sure is original. As for the odd box window that juts out into the porch, I have no idea how old it is. It does seem to be integrated into the porch's composition with the pediment, but the design is very 1890s Queen Anne. It could be a clever modern piece. Still, if it can fool the viewer, it's doing its job.

The Thomas Jefferson Southard House, Richmond, ME

The Southard House, Richmond, ME. 1855 Photo: Taoab

 

The Thomas Jefferson Southard house, at Richmond, ME, was built in 1855 for one of the largest shipyard owners in Maine. Southard was also an important state politician and was a big developer in Richmond. He might have been the designer of the house, according to the HABS data pages, since he learned joining as a youth, but he also might have bought some plans. The house is considered one of Maine's most important Italianate homes and is built on an impressive scale. The Southard house follows the symmetrical plan and has clapboard siding with verge boards at the corners. The detailing and state of preservation are impressive. On the first floor, the window surrounds are plain enough, but a panel with flanking brackets support deep balconies for the segmental arched windows on the second floor that have rectangular eared moldings and cornices. The front door has the glass surround within an arch and a strong front porch with large brackets that might have a touch of the Indian about it. A unique feature of the door surround is the glass, which is painted elaborately with figures and rococo swirls. The central window on the second floor consists of two tombstone windows joined by a common arch, simulating the effect of Venetian tracery. The cornice has paired brackets and an interesting cut wooden fringe running underneath the eave. Other interesting features include the almost Gothic, pointed arch porch to the side which looks to have been glassed in and filled in at an early date, a beatuiful cupola with brackets and inverted brackets framing it at the corners, and a tent roof porch resting on brackets on the left facade. The following photographs from HABS show views of the house and interiors. 

 

 The interesting painted glass on the glass door surround.

 

 A view of the interesting wallpaper treatment in the library.

A view of the house when it was new.

The Oliver Ames Jr. House, Easton, MA

The Oliver Ames Jr. House, Easton, MA. 1862 Photo: Joel Abroad

The Ames house in Easton, MA, was built by Oliver Ames Jr. a member of a prominent local family who owned a shovel factory and was involved in the Union Pacific Railroad. It was designed by George Snell, an English architect who opened a firm in Boston in 1850. The house is clapboarded with wooden corner quoins and follows the symmetrical plan. It certainly reflects Ames' family stature in Easton. The house has several fancy features. On the first floor, the window hood moldings are typical bracket and cornice types; a wooden belt course separates the first and second floors. On the second floor, the windows are segmental arched with brackets, pediments, and carved doodads inside the pediments (people loved their carved doodads). One odd aspect is the tiny sills on the windows, which look almost comically undersized. The main porch is very deep with square columns with chamfered corners. It looks like it could be a port cochere. The central window on the front and side facades are double tombstone windows with a fantastic curving pediment over them that curves from the corners to a point. This shape almost looks Eastern European baroque, but can be found in Italianate houses, even though it's decidedly un-Italian. The cornice has paired brackets and is simple, with a thick architrave board and a panel, making it a paneled cornice. A central pediment breaks the cornice and has a small fanlight window.

A neat feature of the house is how the side facade is so well finished. It has a projecting central bay that echoes the central bay on the front (except it has a bay window). The stunning feature of the house is the cupola. The cupola has brackets and inverted brackets at the corners, giving it a flowing, almost exotic, look. Elaborate carvings top the triple arched windows. The hip roof curves up to an attachment at the center which serves as the base for the finial. It has pediments on four sides. This looks a bit pagoda like, since the roof moves up in stages. It's a wonderful cupola that rounds of an interesting house. Images of the lovely interior can be found here.

40 Main Street, Walpole, NH

40 Main St. Walpole, NH. 1860s? Photo: Doug Kerr

This Italianate in Walpole is at 40 Main St and it currently serves as law offices. and I am guessing it was built in the 1860s because of its style, although New Hampshire tends to be conservative architecturally. It follows the symmetrical plan and has flushboard siding, which simulates plastering. The design is simple but elegant. The windows have simple cornice and bracket hood moldings with fancy decorated brackets; the central segemental arched window has a curved cornice above it, delineating the central bay from the sides. The porch is a lovely composition with a shallow arch supported by Corinthian columns with s-curve brackets that have finials. In a way, the brackets remind me of those found on Indian Italianates, with their vegetal finials and elongated appearance. The door is also segmental arched and the molding that divides its side lights and transom is also curved along with the arch, a nice feature. The cornice has a defined frieze and paired brackets with small frieze windows. What really catches my eye in this house is the cupola, which is one of my favorite types. The cupola cornice on the four sides curves along with the central window, creating an undulation in the line, something I have a real weakness for. The cupola's high base is also neat because it makes it more visually dominant, unlike the cupolas which you can barely seen above the roof. The cupola windows have unusual Venetian tracery, something that is more commonly seen on facade windows.

The Benjamin Franklin Webster House, Portsmouth, NH

Benjamin Franklin Webster House, Portsmouth, NH. 1880 Photo: Patti Gravel

Benjamin Franklin Webster was a prominent builder in Portsmouth, NH, a city famous for its colonial architecture, who was responsible for many Victorian buildings in the area. This impressive structure is his own house that he designed for himself and his wife in 1880. The house is well preserved and is owned by a funeral home that is committed to preserving the beauty of the home (kudos to them!). The house follows the irregular plan, an appropriate choice for a house built on such a grand scale. The plan is not exactly followed, since the recessed wing has one extra bay than usual, and the tower is far higher than usual. The skill of Webster can be seen, however, in that the lengthening of the facade is balanced out by the heightening of the tower. Overall, the house is flushboarded, an impressive treatment for an entire facade.

The late date is no doubt responsible for some of the elaboration of details, which strongly reflect the designs of the 1870s. Everywhere on the house, the careful thought of an architect is evident in the fine and sometimes unique details. The window hood moldings have pediments on shelves supported by carved brackets with a strip of dentil molding. The pediments alternate between simple triangular ones and round ones which are broken by a keystone. An unusual feature is that beneath the porch, the windows have no moldings, but instead have long brackets helping to support the roof, an interesting and no doubt practical feature. The corners of the house have wooden quoins. The porch itself, supported on a lovely stone and wood base, has arched openings, somewhat odd Corinthian capitals, and brackets. It bows around the Renaissance Revival front door at the base of the tower. The cornice has the unique feature of having groups of triple brackets, with a long bracket flanked by two smaller ones. Dentils and a frieze of rosettes enliven the design.

The tower is a particularly beautiful design. It has pairs of windows going all the way to the top, eschewing the expected arched windows or triple windows on the stop stage that are usually found. The treatment of the paired windows is elaborate, with pilasters and wooden fringe defining them. Above the third stage of the tower, it transitions from being a square to an octagon with chamfered corners. This is handled with beautiful curved scrollwork that responds to the shape's transition. The octagonal top stage has windows on four sides with the intervening sides blind with arched panels. The whole is topped with an elegant balustrade. In every way, the home is fantastically preserved, and shows the careful thoughts of a designer rather than a builder.

 The bracketed windows under the porch.

The Henry Z. Pratt House, Hartford, CT

The Henry Z. Pratt House, Hartford, CT. 1847 Photo: Samuel Taylor Col.

The Henry Z. Pratt house which stood on Washington Avenue in Hartford, once a street of mansions that is now mostly parking lots and government buildings, was probably designed by Henry Austin in 1847, a few years after the Willis Bristol house. Although most of the Indian Italianates we have looked at have followed the Bristol plan, this house is somewhat different. Some of Austin's drawings survive for a house similar to this, and though it is very likely that they depict the designs for this house, it is uncertain whether he was the direct designer. The drawings appear below and are from Yale University.

The Pratt house is a symmetrical plan villa like those of the Bristol type. The body of the house is similar, covered with stucco, with paired brackets, simple window surrounds, lacy iron balconies, and a low monitor. the unique feature of this house is the massive two story chhattri porch, which gives a completely different feel to the facade. The porch has particularly leafy versions of the candelabra columns in which the supporting urn, the lower shaft, and the capital are all covered with foliage. A bizarrely large echinus (the flat part above a capital) is a strange feature. The four point arch is scalloped, but the ends of each scallop have trefoil designs, which suggest Gothic architecture. Gothis is also suggested in the spandrels where elongated trefoil cut outs fill the space. The double s-curve brackets are very sinuous on this example. Another strange feature is that the frieze of the porch is open between the brackets, creating a very airy porch that is not as dark as it could be. The front of the house features a patio that runs the length of the house. The balustrade pictured makes me think that it might be later, but the patio could be original since it was once a more common feature than it is now.

The drawings of Austin show a house somewhat different. The main variation is the extra ornament, especially the eared moldings around the windows, a specialty of Austin, and the leafy ornaments all over, including above the window cornices and the scroll saw supports on top of the cupola. If these do represent two designs for the Pratt house, it seems that the fantastic porch was already enough for the family, and they dispensed with the extras to prevent the house from being overwhelming. Austin's design show no balconies on the house as well. Perhaps he added them in because of the popularity of the Bristol type. A lot can happen to a house between design and finish. This represents the second variety of Indian Italianate, but there is a very poorly attested third I will look at in my next post.

The B. F. Young House, Bath, NY

The B. F. Young house, Bath, NY. 1850s

This is the B. F. Young house at 220 Liberty Street in Bath, NY, a town famous for its fine Italianate homes. The house was designed in the early 1850s by Merwin Austin, whose work we saw in the Brewster house in Rochester, for B. F. Young, an agent for the Pulteney land office. It's another example of Henry Austin's Indian Italianate that was brought to upstate New York by his brother. This house is an interesting example of the style because, unlike the other examples, it is sided with clapboard rather than stucco. The house has all the pieces of the style. There is a chhattri porch with an elaborate scalloped arch, large brackets, candelabra columns of the common variety, and arabesques. The brackets on the main cornice are paired without an entablature, and there are small brackets running between the longer ones. The windows in this house differ from other examples, following a much more traditional style (with a molding surround topped by a cornice) than other Indian Italianates, which often have no window surround. Elaborate wooden balconies are attached to each of the front windows, which seems to be essential to this style. The house has a wooden monitor on the roof. There seem to have been a few changes to the house; originally there was a balustrade atop the porch, and the front doors are a particularly poor replacement. I believe the house is now a double house.

The Erastus Brainerd Jr. House, Portland, CT

The Erastus Brainerd House, Portland, CT. 1852

I know the picture of this house covered in overgrown vines and trees might suggest a glamorously abandoned southern mansion, but it is actually near the center of downtown Portland, CT. My friend, pictured above, and I wandered onto the property so that he could gather information on the house for a project, so I got these pictures. The Erastus Brainerd house in Portland is another fascinating Indian Italianate, but it is also one in peril. Built in 1852 as a symmetrical plan house, probably by Henry Austin, the originator of this style in the US, the Brainerd house exhibits many of the characteristics associated with this style and found in the Bristol house in New Haven. Brainerd was the son of a quarry owner, an important role in a town which revolved around its famous brownstone quarries. Interestingly, Brainerd decided not to build out of brownstone, preferring the exotic Indian style.

It has a very large chhattri porch with an unscalloped ogee arch, candelabra columns, long s curve brackets, arabesque strapwork, and multi-foil piercings in the spandrels. A very cool aspect to the porch is that the arabesques are continued on the inside. These types of candelabra columns, with the lotus base, fluted shaft, and dripping echinus (the flat piece at the top of the column) sitting atop a plinth with chamfered edges, are an example of the standard design of candelabra columns in Connecticut houses. The door follows Greek Revival precedents with sidelights and a transom. The bulk of the house is like the Bristol house, stuccoed with iron balconies, a wide eave, paired, simple brackets, and a low roof monitor. The lacy iron balconies look original. A side wing to the left has a porch with very odd ogee arches and paired simplified candelabra columns that seem to sit on impossibly small turned bases. The rear of the house has a strange low addition with a fenestration I can't quite make sense of. There might be a strange shift in the house's floor as you near the back. The house also includes a matching carriage house.

The house was part of a hospital complex which is slated for demolition along with a lovely temple front Greek Revival house and a Stick Style home. It was used for years as an administration building and clinic, but the house seems quite sturdy and the interiors, though unused for a while, also seem intact, at least from what I saw. The plan is to demolish the houses for a CVS and condos, a travesty since both are in a registered district and since the house is a rare example of the impressive Indian Italianate style. Developers seem stymied over parking access to the site, and there even was a possibility they would tear down the house and build a simplified version elsewhere on the property with some details (a particularly bizarre plan that I can't make sense of). Fingers crossed that the plan will never go through! The following pictures show all the sides of the house and some of the interior.

The other house slated for demolition: