The Neil Flattery House, Detroit, MI

The Neil Flattery House, Detroit, MI. 1859 Source: Scott Weir

The Neil Flattery house, built in 1859 for a city politician and merchant, is an interesting example of the pavilion plan treated asymmetrically. Typically, pavilion plan houses will enforce a somewhat rigid symmetry around the central bay, but here, asymmetricality is created by the varying window treatments, with a box window with paired tombstone windows above to the left and a two story bay window to the right, injecting a bit of the irregular plan spirit into the design. The pavilions themselves feature little engaged gables that jut out from the eave, encasing small pointed windows (note the miniature balcony attached to the one on the right, a particularly precious Victorian touch). The more recent image shows the house in its later conversion to stores, but the woodcut shows it in its prime with original details intact. The house featured a plain brick façade onto which a series of decorative details were added around openings which drew the eye to them, such as the rococo piles of foliage above the window moldings, the heavy brackets on the bay windows, and the triple arched palladian porch around the main entrance. The cornice featured an architrave molding with a run of double s scroll brackets paired at the accent points at corners and around windows. The engaged gables find their way into the elaborate cupola, creating a continuity with the main façade. Note that the brackets on the cupola actually run all the way down the sides and drip onto the roof, giving it an almost Jacobean sculptural appearance and serving as bracket surrounds for the windows.