The Bonnet and Bauer Houses, Columbus, OH

The Frank F. Bonnet House, Columbus, OH. 1870s

The Herman Bauer House, Columbus, OH. 1870s

These three houses, all built in the late 1860s/1870s, are associated with later residents. Their plan is nearly identical, being a side hall design. On the east side of the street, the Bonnet house is the more elaborate of the two, with curved lintels and moldings with, while the Bauer house has simpler lintels. Both have Eastlake incised designs cut into the stone. The first floor windows on both houses are very long, indicating they may once have had iron balconies. Both have entablatures that are very similar, with an architrave molding, entablature windows (octagonal on the Bonnet house), and s curve brackets. On the opposite side is a house in a better state of preservation.

More elaborate than either, 565 E Town St. is the best example on the street of this typical type common to Columbus (and much Italianate architecture). In this example, all the key details are intact, with filleted windows and doors with conforming stone lintels with incised Eastlake designs. The cornice features an architrave molding, double c scroll brackets, dentils, and entablature windows. Even the bay window to the side preserves an iron crest. In a sense, though not especially thrilling, it is the houses like these, nice but not spectacular, that work as a group to create a visual effect and serve to emphasize the more dramatic stylistic examples.

The Francis Crum House, Columbus, OH

The Francis Crum House, Columbus, OH. 1850

The Francis Crum house stands next to the Snowden house on the east side of E Town Street. It was started in 1844 by another builder, but finished after a long delay by Francis Crum in 1850. The house is a three bay, side entrance plan house, with an additionally two bays added later, slightly recessed. This is a common form of extension for houses of this plan. The house shares some of the design features of the Snowden house, with round arched windows on the first floor and three point arched windows on the second. The surrounds are more abbreviated than the Snowden house, with hood moldings ending in foliate Gothic stops with a rococo cartouche in the center. The windows feature Venetian tracery. The cornice and entablature follow the bull's eye form, as next door, except here the windows are elliptical intersecting the panels. The brackets are especially elaborate, being a s scroll form attached to a rotated s curve design. Deeply carved acanthus leaves and finer carving on the brackets distinguish it from Snowden's. The cupola is very low, with strong brackets echoing the cornice, and rectangular windows with arched ends. Note how the cupola is centered on the original three bays rather than taking account of the addition. Unfortunately, the house has experienced some mutilation, with the front door replaced by a colonial revival form and the first floor of the side wing obliterated with a columned, glass picture window. Both these changes are probably from the 1910s-20s. 

The Philip T. Snowden House, Columbus OH

The Philip Snowden House, Columbus, OH. 1850

The Philip Snowden house is one of the premier homes left in Columbus' East Town Street district, an area of the city which was the wealthy district in the early 19th century. Snowden was a textile importer and built this house in 1850, though he only held onto it for a decade before he went bankrupt. The house is currently owned by the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. It follows a pavilion style plan, with shallow projective pavilions connected by a recessed pavilion with porch. It is the detailing of the house which is exceptional. All the windows of the house are round arched, with heavy stone surrounds. Each surround begins at the base with a curved ear in a Renaissance style, arising from stylized foliage. This transforms as one ascends to an engaged column supporting a capital of Gothic style foliage. The arch has a thick exterior molding with a toothed/arched design (very Romanesque); the keystone is established by a rococo cartouche. This juggling of styles in the 19th century is especially emphatic here. On the first floor, each window has a paneled apron. The porch is made of three arches and is an exceptionally lacy piece of ironwork resting on thin, stylized Corinthian columns with classical rinceaux in the spandrels. An image from the late 19th century shows a different porch, one which is far less delicate and much clunkier. To me, that certainly looks like a later development as well as it seems to ignore the entire rhythm of the façade and the paired windows.

From History of Columbus.

The door has a pilastered surround. The whole is topped by a cornice structure of the bulls eye type with the bulls eye window inset between rather elaborate panels beneath a row of dentils. The brackets alternate between smaller s scroll brackets and longer double s scroll brackets at emphatic points. Each pavilion is topped by an engaged round pediment (also bracketed) with a rococo foliage and shell element at the apex. The crowning touch to the house is its fine cupola, one of the most attractive of which I know, with a run of four arched windows, and paired brackets (from the picture once also repeated on the lower half) and a dramatic curved tent roof with a thick finial. One of the most impressive houses of its kind, I must say that its degree of finish and preservation make it one of my favorites.

The John Crouse House, Syracuse, NY

This is a rather interesting design, demolished, from Syracuse, NY. It was built by John R. Crouse, a major banker in Syracuse, in the 1850s, and in 1904 became the law school at Syracuse University. Fronting on Fayette Park, one of the city's early planning and mansion districts, it would have had a rather over-landscaped Victorian park as its front yard. It was demolished in the 1920s. The house bears a striking similarity to the design of Henry Austin for the Willis Bristol house is New Haven, CT, particularly in its proportions. There it was a simple form with Indian architectural elements grafter on; here the same sort of design is interpreted in a Gothic mode. Following the symmetrical plan, like Austin's house, it featured a spare stuccoed facade, with a generous third story and long s scroll brackets, paired and without an entablature. The gothicism is restricted to the windows, as the porch is a rather typical design. Above each window is a simple Gothic molding with carved stops; each window is inset with a unique gothic tracery overlay, with intersecting pointed arches and foils in the tracery. The bay window to the side receives a similar treatment, with more traditional pointed arches. A low cupola, another Austin feature, topped the whole with large brackets. Note how the ironwork similarly matches the Austin formula. Though I could not produce an exact chain of influence, it is clear that Austin's plans, perhaps published or seen in person influenced this house. Other images can be seen here, here, and here.

'Woodlawn' the Henry Howard Owings House, Columbia, MD

The Henry Howard Owings House, Columbia, MD. 1840 Photo: Wikimedia

Starting out life as an 18th century wooden farmhouse, the Owings house (he bought it in 1858), aka 'Woodlawn' was extensively remodeled in 1840 in the Italianate style, a rather early manifestation of it by the looks of the design. It follows the symmetrical plan, with a central gabled projecting bay. Like most of these earlier designs, the decoration is pretty sparse, consisting of a tight cornice with no entablature, featuring the early style beam brackets. An odd feature is that these beam brackets are attached to the moldings above the windows, and not typically just at the corners but in a full run. This provides an odd bit of shadow and movement on an otherwise simple house. The porch is similarly simple, with thin chamfered posts and diminutive cut out designs. It's finished in appropriate stucco, and the painting of the house is quite appropriate to the Davis and Downing principles that underline its planning. Unfortunately, once surrounded by woods, the house is now surrounding by parking lots! Talk about some unpleasant rezoning. At least they left the house, even though its context is gone.