'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 Stephen H. Farnam House, Oneida, NY

The Stephen Farnam House, Oneida, NY. 1862 Photo: Doug Kerr

Photo: Carol

The Stephen Farnam house is well documented and perhaps one of the most impressive homes on Oneida's Main Street. The builder (1862), Stephen Farnam was a hardware store owner, bank president, and axe manufacturer. Subsequent owners included a suffragette and a botanist. The house seems to currently be a Dark Shadows themed bed-and-breakfast called Collinwood Inn, a fine use for a house like this. It seems the alleged haunting of the house has helped it as a business. As an architectural specimen, though, the house doesn't need any ghosts to make it worth exploring. The house follows the irregular plan, one of the fancier designs, though unlike other examples, the tower juts forth to be almost flush with the left hand projecting pavilion, which has a very shallow roof slope. The house has brick walls and excellent Oneida woodwork. The windows are mostly rectangular, though it looks like they were all segmental arched once, with simple open triangular pediments and keystones with Eastlake incised carving. The simple paneled cornice features s scroll brackets.

It's the dominance of the shouldered, pointed arch that makes this house interesting, as if the builder fetishized that shape and fit in in to give the composition unity. A shouldered arch is an arch where the curve of the arch is interrupted by a vertical projection; in this case that projection is pointed. It's a fascinating shape since it combines curves and straight angles together. The porch has rectangular openings but features the shouldered arch running inside these openings with jigsaw cut-outs, similar to the porch down the street at the Shoecraft house. The same shape unifies the triple arched windows at the top of the tower and is repeated again in the base of the tower cornice. Commendable in this house as well is the retention of both the concave roofs on the porch, bay windows, and tower along with the delicate crestings. Hopefully the house will have a nice long life.

'Ridgewood' the Edwin Litchfield House, Brooklyn, NY

'Ridgewood' Brooklyn, NY. 1854-57 Photo: Wikimedia

Photo: Kim

'Ridgewood' also known as 'Litchfield Villa' is perhaps Alexander Jackson Davis' most important and lavish Italianate mansion and bears the distinction of nearly duplicating a house we have looked at before, the Munn house in Utica, NY. Currently surrounded by Prospect Park in Brooklyn, it was built in 1854-57 by Davis for Edwin Litchfield, an extremely important figure in the development of Brooklyn's Park Slope, the Gowanus Canal, and railways. When Propsect Park was laid out, the Litchfields were allowed to keep their home until their deaths in the 1880s, after which the park service occupied the house as offices. After a long period of neglect, the house is in the process of being restored.

The house strongly resembles the Munn house in plan, and Davis seems to have simply expanded the already impressive design he had constructed in Utica a couple years before. A comparison of the facades of these irregular plan houses reveals a variety of differences. First, the placement of the tower and the chamfered projecting pavilion are reversed between the two houses. Unlike the Munn house, there is no recessed archway around the front door. The left hand wing, which once had a similar porch to that on the right, terminates in a surprising round tower with a conical roof. Round towers are exceedingly rare in Italianate houses. The disposition and treatment of windows is mostly the same, except the triple windows of the Munn house on the pavilion are paired arched windows here, and a balcony has been added to the third floor of the pavilion.

Decoratively, the Litchfield house is far more elaborate and more Anglo-Italianate, than the Munn house. The house has rotated s curve brackets typical of Anglo designs, as well as a highly refined acanthus leaf frieze and full classical entablature on the porches and windows. Most startling is the use of corn and wheat capitals instead of the traditional acanthus Corinthian capital, a very uncommon stylistic quirk that was part of the attempt to Americanize classical forms. Although the facade appears to be brick, it was intended to be stuccoed white (the stucco was removed in the 1930s and never restored). Overall, the Litchfields seem to have outdone Davis' earlier designs and created a more sophisticated and playful version that sought to convey a more European sensibility.

The house's interiors are quite stunning. A series of interior pictures can be seen here as well as a period image below. The floors feature beautiful Minton tilework, elaborately carved Rococo Revival fireplaces, pilasters, columns, and an interior rotunda. Finally, the house's interiors are being carefully restored, and one can only hope that someday the stucco may actually be replaced to allow the house its full effect.

Photo: Frank Sinks

Photo: Wikimedia

Parlor.

The John Kendrick House, Waterbury, CT

The John Kendrick House, Waterbury, CT. 1866 Photo: Wikimedia

The John Kendrick house in Waterbury, CT is an impressive Italianate villa in an unfortunate urban setting. Hemmed in by taller, modern buildings, it is one of the only Victorian buildings facing the Green that has survived the fires, floods, and renewals that have taken their toll on Waterbury. Surprisingly, it has maintained many of its features. The house is a symmetrical villa of plain brick (perhaps once stuccoed) with fine brownstone details and iron balconies on the first floor. The porch of the house is noteworthy, with its triple arches and elaborate detailing.The porch columns themselves have very strange capitals that are loosely Ionic in design and seem to be almost gothic in inspiration. The simple s and c curve brackets are regularly spaced and given definition by an architrave board that defines the cornice. Perhaps most noteworthy is the recess on the second floor created by pilasters that create a depression in the center that is decorated by an unusual brownstone arch and brackets that looks more like it fits the parlor of the house rather than the exterior. The whole is crowned by a pediment that reinforces the central thrust of the plan. Though the house, as I write this appears neglected and abandoned, it nonetheless provides an attractive possibility for renovation.

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 Dodson-McKenny House, Petersburg, VA

The Dodson-McKenny House, Petersburg, VA. 1859 Photo: Among the Ruin

Photo: Wikimedia

This house, across the street from the Ragland house, is another fine example of Italianate architecture in Poplar Lawn, a neighborhood named after a green park around which some wealthy Petersburg families grouped their homes in the late 19th century. The house was built in 1859 for John Dodson, a mayor of Petersburg. It was later owned by William McKenney, who donated it as a public library in the 1920s, a function it still serves today, although a new library is planned. The house is a five bay house that is particularly severe in its decoration. The design has some Anglo-Italianate influences in the closely spaced brackets, the classically detailed porch, and the simple surrounds. The cornice as well is very plain with some dentil molding and a strip serving as the architrave. The house is stuccoed without belt courses or other dividers between floors; the lack of definition in the basement (no rustication or belt course or anything) is surprising. The basement windows and those on the third floor are segmental arched, while the first floor has tall round headed windows. Each window is topped by a simple cast iron hood molding; the first and second floors include a keystone.

One thing I like about this house and have seen only in a few others (an example in Savannah comes to mind) is the tripartite window over the entrance that has flat sidelights and a segmental arched center. In essence, this is a sort of watered down Palladian. It is an uncommon window format, but an attractive one to me. Another thing to notice is the paired arched windows on the side. I've noticed that the Ragland house as well as some others have only two round headed windows in the center on the side. Perhaps this is another element of the Petersburg style. The house includes some servant outbuildings. Petersburg should be proud that many of its homes retain their original outbuildings. The current use as a library seems to have left the interior intact. One writer talks about the romance of wandering through the maze of shelves crammed in this house and about the experience of being surrounded by Victorian bric-a-brac as an enhancement to their library experience. One hopes that even if a new library is constructed, this house will remain a public building. There are a couple interior views here and here.