The George Reuling House, Baltimore, MD

The George Reuling House, Baltimore, MD. 1860

I thought this house would provide a good foil for the Schumacher house with which it shares some characteristics. It is directly next door to the Albert house at 103 West Monument Street. According to this site, the architect was Louis Long, the designer of the neighboring Albert house, and the client was Dr. George Reuling, a German immigrant who was an eye and ear doctor (1896 directory). The house was also the home of a Mrs. William Reed (1902) and the Mt. Vernon Club (1920s). Long must have been inspired by the Schumacher house a few blocks away, since he adopted the same odd second floor balcony and bay window over a rusticated basement, though the Reuling house has a central entrance, windows on the sides of the bay, and a fourth full floor, making it a variant on the row house plan. The house starts with a rusticated first floor with a central door, whose placement helps integrate the bay window into the design better. The bay window itself seems to have been damaged, and is based on that of the Schumacher house is having a frame and light projection around the center bay. On closer view, there are panels on the left side above the cable molded surround which are missing on the right. No doubt, the stone base, which is probably brownstone, delaminated. The balustrade running into the wall without a post at the edge is also uncommon. The second story has a smaller bay window than the Schumacher house and a wider facade, which allows it to keep up the triple bay scheme of the facade.

The other floors proceed as expected. The facade might be stuccoed or painted; it is hard to tell. The window surrounds of the house are very spare, with plain moldings, brackets, and cornices, as is the main entablature and cornice. Considering it is next door to a rather exuberant house, it might be that Dr. Reuling preferred to create a contrast with restrained ornament. The door has an interesting vestibule, as it is arched and inset into the facade like many Baltimore doors. This image shows that there is a small saucer dome, pendantives, and arched panels in the entryway, a particularly elaborate feature. The glass also seems to be etched. I found an image on Flickr of the house's staircase and hallway that shows many of the architectural details may be intact. Again, Baltimore does not disappoint with a good example of Anglo-Italianate design, so significant to that city.

The Albert Schumacher (Asbury) House, Baltimore, MD

The A. Schumacher House, Baltimore, MD. 1855

Adjoining one of Baltimore's most impressive churches, the Mount Vernon Place Methodist Church, is the Schumacher/Asbury house. It is called the Asbury house because it is owned by the church and is named after the first American Methodist bishop, but it was originally built for Albert Schumacher, a merchant in 1855. It was designed by Niernsee and Neilson, a significant Baltimore architectural firm in the mid 19th century responsible for many homes in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood. The house, which follows the row house plan, was one of the most sumptuous constructed in the city. The Architecture of Baltimore: an Illustrated History (130) quotes a contemporary description of the house as of the 'Roman style' and 'costly'. The description discusses the impressive library on the front of the second floor, the mosaic finishes, octagonal parlors, and third floor dome. Another blogger relates how impressed he was on a tour of the home. The house is indeed a grand and eccentric specimen.

The house's first floor is entirely rusticated, resembling a traditional treatment of the first floors of Italian Renaissance palazzos, and is pierced by arches. It looks to me like the house is stuccoed and scored to resemble stone. The second floor is where things get strange. There is a large balcony separating the first and second floors resting on large brackets with a balustrade of ironwork set in a stone frame, a costly and uncommon treatment. Instead of having the usual three windows, there is only a central bay window intersecting the balcony, with arched windows, a paneled frieze, and a crowning balustrade. This is where the impressive library is. Flanking the arch are stone panels set into the facade with curved, chamfered corners. An almost awkwardly large belt course separates the second and third floors; on the third, there is a return to the three bay scheme. The surrounds are rich, featuring segmental arches, thick eared moldings with panels in the spandrels, and keystones. Above the windows, is again, an awkwardly large space before the cornice, which is of the expected Anglo-Italianate type, horizontal, dentiled, thickly bracketed. Small circular windows pierce the frieze of the cornice, which is in some ways a throwback to Greek Revival designs in which circular windows with wreaths are often found in the frieze. The whole features tall blank pilasters that frame the composition.

It is an odd house. The architects, although some of their spacing is a bit strange looking, accomplished a beautiful and eye-catching design. From the description, I would really like to see some plans and interiors; it sounds as if there are a lot of complex shapes at play inside.

And I thought I would include a picture of the adjoining church (photo by Wally Gobetz).

The William H. Graham House, Baltimore, MD

The William H. Graham House, Baltimore, MD. 1850
Photo: Marc Szarkowski

These next week of posts will focus on Anglo-Italianate houses in Baltimore! In its Mount Vernon neighborhood, Baltimore developed a surprising collection of high style row houses in a sober and elegant Anglo-Italianate style. Partly, this might have been the influence of European-born architects on the city, partly the city's cosmopolitan nature, and partly the interest of its newly wealthy class and their relationship with Europe. The neighborhood, Mount Vernon, is one of the finest examples of aesthetic urban planning. It is marked by a series of four squares that radiate in a cross out from the central square containing a column that honors George Washington (1829). There was a building boom on the squares in 1850 that transformed a neighborhood of detached houses into a dense enclave of stately rows. At any rate, it is an important set of examples of highly European influenced design in the US.

The Graham house is a landmark at 704 Cathedral Avenue in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood. It was built in 1850. I did not know for whom it was constructed, but fortunately Oleg Panczenko filled me in, which I very much appreciate. He notes in the comments:

"The Graham House was constructed in the 1850s for William Hamilton Graham (1823-1885), director of Alexander Brown and Co. and son-in-law of George Brown (important names in Baltimore’s banking history). Mr Mencken occupied a third-floor apartment with his wife, Sara Haardt (1898-1935), from about August 1930 to March 1936.

After Sarah’s death on May 31, 1935, Mencken wrote to Joseph Hergesheimer (March 19, 1936): “It turned out to be completely unendurable, living in this apartment. It was too full of reminders, and too dreadfully empty and lonely. I am going back to Hollins street with my brother August, and taking Hester [Denby, cook and housekeeper] and Emma [Ball, cook and general domestic] along.”

I won’t recite the tedious chain of title but will make three notes: (1) The Monument Place Apartment Company owned the building from 1918 to 1937. (2) Lawrence d’A.M. Glass purchased the building in 1976. (3) In November 2011, Baltimore City took title to building by condemnation so that it could be used used as an annex to the School for the Arts."

Thank you, Oleg, for the correction!

The house bears a great deal of similarity to the Augustus H. Albert house not far away. Both follow the five bay plan, both are constructed of brownstone, and both draw from the Anglo-Italianate vocabulary for their ornamentation. One interesting thing I notice about both houses is that the central bay is slightly recessed. I have seen this in other row houses, such as the Wing-Williams house; however, it seems to be particularly popular in Baltimore's houses and is found in its Greek Revival architecture, such as that of the Mount Vernon Club (1842) as well as the early Italianate Thomas-Jencks-Gladding house (1851). The recessing of the central façade might have been a particularly popular method of handling a five bay façade in Baltimore. It definitely tries to present a pavilion effect.

The house is not as complex as the Albert house in its variations. Starting from the basement, we have a rusticated base with semi-circular windows covered by grills. These are topped by thick, heavily carved brackets and cornices that probably supported iron balconies, now gone. The window treatment is the same for all the windows; the sides of each molded surround feature inset panels with carved cable decoration, topped by foliated brackets and a cornice with dentil molding. The windows gradually decrease in height with each story, a common feature of row house design. The entablature is horizontal and follows Renaissance precedents in its accurate simplicity, its small thickly spaced brackets, and its deployment of dentils and egg and dart molding. One notable feature is that unlike the Albert house, the entablature on the Graham house does not recess with the façade but runs in an unbroken line. The central bay has doubled windows. The door of the house is particularly fine, copying the window surrounds with an arch in the center with elaborate carved foliage in the spandrels. Baltimore seems to have liked elaborate carving as demonstrated in the Backus house. The door is recessed and the portal has niches on either side. The following enlargements highlight some of the details.

The Swann-Daingerfield House, Alexandria, VA

The Swann-Daingerfield House, Alexandria, VA. 1802/1833-99
Photo: Wikimedia.

Photo: Wikimedia.

The Swann-Daingerfield house is the third house I am exploring in Alexandria. The house has gone through many interesting changes over the years. It was built in 1802 as a Federal style house by Thomas Swann. In 1833, it was purchased by Henry Daingerfield, who proceeded to remodel the house to suit changing fashions until it was purchased in 1899 by a Catholic School. The house is currently a private home after a stint as student housing for medical students. Although it has a shallow mansard roof, like the Kellogg house, it was probably remodeled as an Italianate before it recieved any Second Empire notions. One way to tell whether a cornice was designed for a mansard roof is to look at its depth. A very deep overhanging cornice is more characteristic of Italianate design that a mansard has been added to; a shallower cornice was probably added at the same time as a mansard. This cornice is certainly too wide for it to have been added with the mansard. Daingerfield owned the house from 1833 to 1899, a long span in which he probably made changes to suit prevailing tastes and to allow him extra space. The house is beautifully detailed. It follows the five-bay plan and is faced with brick that has been painted a bluish green.

The cornice is of particular interest. Although the brackets, horizontal moldings, and dentils are common enough, the architrave molding, instead of being broken by the brackets into horizontal segments, curves sinuously around them, creating an interesting, almost Spanish Baroque, pattern. The window surrounds are also a treat. They are jigsawed so that their rectangular shape is enlivened by suggestions of brackets and ears; they are topped with a dentiled cornice, which is curved on the central window. These seem to be characteristic of Alexandria; another house nearby also has similar cut-out window surrounds. The porch is interestingly designed on this house. Instead of just surrounding the central door, it covers the central three bays. Additionally, the posts are spaced and the stairs are built so that there are wider openings in front of the windows flanking the door where one walks up the steps. The central section is divided into two smaller bays without stairs. This diffusion of the porch ascent from the center to the sides can be seen in some fancier examples of Italianate, and it seems to me this suggests grandeur. The design of the porch is simple, consisting of arches and panels in the spandrels with carved cartouches serving as the keystone; the porch looks similar to that on the Marshall house. Although I am not sure about when the stylistic changes were made, I would guess they occurred sometime in the 1860s. I believe this partly because of the elaborate nature of the forms, which are, however, not as complex as one might expect from an 1870s remodel. The roundness of the porch arches also is a more 1850s/60s design; in the 1870s segmental arches and filleted rectangles were more popular.

The John Marshall House, Alexandria, VA

The John Marshall House, Alexandria, VA. c.1850 Photo: Wikimedia.

The John Marshall house was formerly the neighbor of the Vowell-Smith house on Wolfe Street in Alexandria. It was built around 1850, was used as a hospital during the Civil War, and was, in 1927, made a synagogue (certainly a bizarre sanctuary choice!). Unfortunately, the house was demolished in 1961 for the construction of several smaller houses, depriving the Vowell-Smith house of an important contextual element. I only have this single photograph of the house from Wikimedia. It is an interesting example; following the irregular plan, the house appears to be faced with brick with stone and wood detailing. The tower on this house breaks through the cornice line, giving the house a great deal of vertical thrust; this verticality is softened a bit by the projecting balconies on the third stage of the tower. The use of double rectangular windows in the tower (the cornice-bracket combination looks almost identical to some of the windows on the Vowell-Smith house) and a fourth stage with tombstone windows is odd. The tower is much taller than the usual three and a half stages found on most towered Italianates, and the finial at the top increases the sense of height. Many Italianate towers and cupolas were originally topped with wooden or metal finials. These, as one might expect, tended to rot or decay, so they remain somewhat rare today. This one looks particularly interesting because the pointed finial is seemingly supported by four curving s-scrolls at its corners.

The house has an interesting mix of ornamental schemes. While the arched windows in the tower and gable and simple arched porch are securely Italianate features, the window hood moldings appear to be in the Gothic idiom. The hood moldings are pointed and extend slightly at the ends, which is a Gothic feature. I suppose the architect or the client simply couldn't decide on one style or the other. Another interesting feature is the way the door surround at the base of the tower projects slightly and has a blind balcony on top. Visually this provides continuity with the decoration of the particularly large porch without actually having the porch wrap around the tower. Oddly, the porch seems not to have had a balustrade on top, a feature one might have expected in a house like this. The hip roof is also strange; it seems to be steeply sloped near the cornice line but flat on top, making it almost a proto-mansard. One other odd thing is that, although I cannot see the other side of the house, there appear to be no bay or box windows, which is almost expected in any Italianate, especially one of this size. The house is an interesting specimen, particularly for its Gothic features. It was certainly a grand Italianate with its tall tower and luxurious trimmings, and it's unfortunate for its surviving neighbor that it didn't last. There is a carriage house visible in the image that I provide a close-up of below.

The Vowell-Smith House, Alexandria, VA

The Vowell-Smith House, Alexandria, VA. 1854

Alexandria is a city famous for its impressive Colonial and Federal architecture, but the city also has some excellent examples of Italianate that can be overlooked when exploring George Washington's town. One of the houses I posted in Springfield, 383 Union Street, reminded me of this house in Alexandria, VA because of its entrance with a surround of oversized brackets. The Vowell-Smith house also has a resemblance to the Brearley house and Henderson Hall type in that it is a three story symmetrical plan house with a projecting center bay and a pediment. This house was built in 1854 by Francis L. Smith, a lawyer, on a quarter of a block he inherited. The house was built on Wolfe Street, which by the 1850s had been so improved that several people built impressive mansions on the street, and the Smith house was one of the most impressive. The ornament on the house is grand without being bombastic. The cornice is made of simple stepped brackets and large dentils, which interestingly are not hanging from a molding but are simply flush with the board above them. The brackets are paired in the same way as the Brearley house; doubled brackets accentuate the corners while single brackets mark the placement of the windows. The windows are doubled on the front facade topped by two brackets and a cornice; on the third floor, the tombstone windows are arched with Venetian tracey and eared molding surrounds.

This treatment only applies to the front facade; the side facade looks almost Greek Revival with its simple windows, plain lintels and shutters. The house was obviously designed to impress from the front angle, but economy was employed on the sides. In the simpler sides, one can see the influence of Alexandria's Federal architecture, since, except for the cornice, the design is reminiscent of late 18th and early 19th century designs. The door surround has doubled s-curve brackets and finials like those at 383 Union St., but these are much simpler in the carving and shape with only raised swirls for decoration. The flat roof and the length of the windows above the overhang suggest there was originally a balustrade making this a balcony. Two notable features are the balustrade on top of the hip roof where a cupola might be expected, and the survival of the elaborate iron fencing around the property and the iron balconies on the first floor. The posts of the fence are even topped with what seem to be original urns. The following images by me illustrate a couple of the details.

The Charles F. Loomis House, Suffield, CT

The Charles F. Loomis House, Suffield, CT. 1862

The Charles F. Loomis house is the last house I will examine in this set. Again it was built by one of the Loomises in 1862, but instead of following his relative's symmetrical and almost Moorish designs, Charles chose to build in the irregular plan. The house doesn't appear irregular from a frontal viewing from the street; the expected façade is turned toward the left on the lot, and the entrance has been altered so that it faces the street rather than the left side as the plan dictates. Also odd is that the recessed façade is incredibly short, only one bay wide, instead of extending further than the projecting façade. Because it is so short, the porch wraps around the tower rather than extending along the recessed façade. Thus the house has a very strong vertical thrust. The façade is clapboarded, but the tower façade includes elaborate strapwork, or boards applied to a façade in a pattern, which resembles Medieval half timbering. This type of Medieval decoration was characteristic of the contemporary Gothic Revival and Swiss Chalet styles. The gables also reflect a Gothic or Swiss influence in their use of barge boards, or boards that are applied to a gable and extend it.

Besides these features much of the main body of the house is simply decorated. The window treatments are varied between segmental arched windows (including a tripartite segmental arched window on the street façade), round, tombstone, bay, and round headed windows. The street façade is given some importance by the wooden awning and balcony on the first floor. The door features a glass surround that we have seen on several houses with etched panels that seem to be intact. The tower is interestingly composed. Each stage is carefully defined; the second and third floors have a small roof that leads to a slenderer second stage. The third floor is topped with an eave with dentils, and the fourth floor has a wide eave with a steep tent roof topped by an iron cresting. This tower has a very pagoda like effect with the defined floors and tapering shape. The strapwork is employed to articulate each façade separately while providing a decorative continuity. Although it lacks the grand siting of the George Loomis House, the Charles Loomis house definitely makes a dramatic statement.

Looking at these three houses built by the same family in a relatively short period of time, we can see what it took to express wealth around 1860 in Suffield. Grand exotic touches, imposing siting and massing, and individuality of style allowed this family to both express itself in a similarly exotic idiom while maintaining an independence from each other. Some families built identical houses as their other relatives or even connected houses, but the Loomises insisted on each one doing their own thing with their design. It has certainly given Suffield a grand architectural legacy.