Sloan's "City and Suburban Architecture"

City and Suburban architecture was published in 1858 and represented a very different side of Sloan from his Model Architect. While previous publications had focused on primarily residential and garden designs, CS offered plans for churches, houses, commercial, institutional, and industrial buildings. All these idioms were practiced by Sloan (recall he was most prolific in his schoolhouse designs). Sloan's residential designs in CS were primarily for row houses of stone, rather than the expansive and imaginative rural villas in MA. CS includes as well far more detail renderings of doors, windows, and architectural do-dads.

There are a series of shared characteristics to this volume. It reflects the more urban work that Sloan did for Joseph Harrison in connection to his house on Rittenhouse Square (featured as the final design in the volume) and his work in designing Harrison's developments both in the city and in West Philadelphia. These designs were far more Anglo-Italianate in inspiration, mostly designed as rowhouses in stone. The depressed arched windows with Venetian tracery are ubiquitous as well as the presence of rusticated first floors, all features from Harrison's house. They feature heavy window moldings and an interesting eclecticism with a mixture of classical Renaissance, rococo, and Rundbogenstil Romanesque decorative elements. The idiom expressed in this can be found all over Philadelphia, for instance in the Deaconess Training School.

Design 2:

This is a design of impressive variation for the typical three bay rowhouse. Each floor is carefully differentiated with the third and fourth floors varying the window placements and groupings to give a greater illusion of pavilions and varied volumes. The detailing is eclectic with rococo revival carved foliage and Romanesque details and drops under the bracketed entablature.

Design 5:

This is a rather fanciful rowhouse design for the end of a block with a tower. There are several correspondences with the Harrison house, including the use of depressed arches with Venetian tracery. The detailing here as well is eclectic, blending Rundbogenstil Romanesque designs with Anglo-Italianate classical detailing. Note the false wall in the rear.

Design 10

This is a more stylistically consistent design, with rococo forms, a rusticated basement, and only a small Romanesque fringe.

Design 11:

A particularly lavish basement with both rustication and pilasters and Sloan's signature depressed arch windows and Venetian tracery. The paired windows on the top story are a signature Sloan design.

Design 15:

Similar to Design 10 but with a fancier basement and balconies.

Design 16:

A variation on Design 15 but with heavier classical detailing and a simpler basement.

Design 17:

A plan for an entire row of 10 houses. This was likely the row that Sloan built for Joseph Harrison behind his house at Locust Street. It very closely matches the style of Harrison's house, especially in the treatment of the attic and window designs.

Design 19:

A high style symmetrical plan house with thick classical details.

Design 27:

One of Sloan's suburban detached designs. The house at Pine Street may have been designed based on this, though the triple window in the gable is far larger in the example. These designs are likely reflective of his work for Harrison in West Philadelphia.

Design 28:

Design 30:

The James Bishop House, New Brunswick, NJ

The James Bishop House, New Brunswick, NJ. 1852 Photos: Wikimedia

Black and White photos: HABS

The James Bishop house is a uniquely eclectic Italianate home in New Brunswick, NJ, a city which has been robbed of most of its history because of a vast and poorly considered plan of urban renewal. Thus, the Bishop house is a lucky survivor thanks to Rutgers University, which uses it as classroom space currently. It was built in 1852 by architect Isaiah Rolfe for James Bishop, an important congressman from New Jersey,in a fascinating mixture of Italianate and Gothic Revival elements.The house is broadly an example of the side tower plan with a projecting pavilion and tower anchoring a central section (which is truncated here) although to the right there is a wing with a porch that terminates in an octagonal Gothic tower. The whole is stuccoed and finished in a very spare style typical of the 1850s.

Italianate elements of the design include Venetian windows on the first floor of the front of the house and a variety of paired tombstone windows on the upper floors. The triple arched Palladian window in the tower is also very Italianate. The tent roof on the tower is an uncommon but not unprecedented element. Here it is pierced by eyebrow dormer windows. The blind arches in the tower as well can be seen in other examples.

Gothic elements are limited mostly to the decoration. The toothed string-course moldings and the setback in the facade on the pavilion contribute to the castellated feeling the house aims for. The front door is Romanesque in style, with small columns surrounding it, a design found in Romanesque church portals. Particularly important is the function of crenelations. Not only does the octagonal tower have a crenelated parapet, but the brackets one might expect are expressed as a crenelated pattern in the facade. Even the simple porch with its octagonal Gothic columns is crenelated as are the bay windows. A final zany element is the chimneys, the three of which have different patterns and must have been copied from a published image of Medieval design.

The interiors, which have been mostly preserved, are extravagant. A few images seen below show an impressive divides staircase, a library with Italianate shelves and a bizarre inlaid floor, and expensive marble mantlepieces. Although Gothic did not frequently cross over with Italianate design, nonetheless the Bishop house is an important early example of the eclectic experimentation found in early Italianates.

The rear.

The William H. Ross House, Seaford, DE

The William H. Ross House, Seaford, DE. 1859 Photos: Lee Cannon

 

The William H. Ross house is a truly monumental Italianate in the middle of nowhere; in southern Delaware near the Maryland border, the house is a sophisticated example of stucco Italianates associated with the 1850s in a rural setting. A southern sympathizer, like many in neighboring Maryland during the Civil War, Ross was a wealthy investor, governor, and slaveholder in Delaware. His house no doubt reflects his experience of the elaborate Italianates found in cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia. The house follows a side tower plan with some modifications. We would expect the front facade on the left to end with the tower, however, the architect added an extra gabled pavilion, which somewhat melds the house's side tower plan with the pavilion plan or irregular plan. The house, faced in brick, is full of arches. All the windows and shutters are arched as are the porch and main door. The monotony of arched windows, however, is broken by the variations in their deployment. On the left pavilion, we have paired broad tombstone windows, while the right pavilion has thin triple arched windows. On the tower, there are widely spaced tombstone windows, but only one window in the top stage that has Venetian tracery. Some of the windows have very simple drip moldings. The door is recessed in the base of the tower, which is uncommon in the side tower plan and resembles more the irregular plan. The door is a simple affair with a glass surround. The brackets as well are pretty simple. The simplicity of design and clean lines make this house a particularly lovely example, and the very appropriate paint job, which could have been pulled right from Downing, makes the house seem like a perfectly preserved example. The interior images are from HABS.