The William and Frederick Vanderheyden House, Ionia, MI

The William and Frederick Vanderheyden House, Ionia, MI. 1879 Photo: Wikimedia

The Vanderheyden house in Ionia is one of the last houses I'll deal with in this town for a bit. The house is truly unique. It was built in 1879 for a father and a son, William and Frederick Vanderheyden and their separate families. The house is a double house, and everything is repeated symmetrically on each side, but the two houses share a front hall and front and back stairs. That is an oddity since even most family compound double houses feature separate stairs. With such a cozy shared space, one would hope father and son and their families got along well! When the father (William) died in 1910, his son used his half of the house as a library and office space.

The house follows the pavilioned plan, two symmetrical bays joined with a central porch. These bays are much shallower than those seen in typical pavilion plan houses. The yellow brick was made at the Vanderheyden's own brickyards, which shipped brick to many sites in the area and around Michigan. This type of yellow or ivory brick is a particularly upper Midwestern material and can be found in buildings in Wisconsin, upper Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, as well as other states. The Vanderheyden's thus advertised their own trade in the facing of their home. The house is relatively simple for its time. All the windows are arched with the expected thick stone hood moldings, although the depth of the arch varies. The basement is local rusticated sandstone, while the cornice is a simple affair of particularly long brackets, seen in other Ionia homes, and intervening runs of smaller brackets. The long brackets are used to define the façade sections. The house once featured an upper balustrade on the peak of the hip roof that has been removed. The porch is a particularly nice feature, echoing the polygonal shape of the bay windows and continuing the rhythm of the building. Note the delicate lattice work under the porch. The only asymmetrical aspects of the house seem to be the presence on the left of a side porch and of a bay window on the right. Perhaps father and son wanted some variation in their respective living wings. Although the color scheme may strike us as drab, it is probably appropriate to the period. The Victorians often chose the colors of stone, browns, tans, and grays, to simulate actual stone construction. The Vanderheyden house remains an interesting monument to the way generations of a family expressed themselves in a unified home.

The Frederick Hall House, Ionia, MI

The Frederick Hall House, Ionia, MI. 1869-70 Photo by Teegan Baiocchi.

Photo: HABS

The Hall house in Ionia is a particularly exuberant symmetrical plan house. The house was built in 1869-70 for Frederick Hall, a banker and public official in Ionia in the 1840s and 50s; it is currently used as a library. The builder was Capt. Lucius Mills. This house, like the Blanchard house in the same town, is built out of the unique sandstone quarried nearby in Lyons, MI, giving it the same colorful effect. The selection of the stone is less emphatic in its use of dark veins. The cornice frieze and corner quoins are also made of sandstone. Evidently in Ionia, this type of sandstone was a prestige building material that attracted local notables.

Again, features of the 1860s and 70s abound. The hood moldings over the side segmented arched windows are thick as is that over the central round arched window. The center window employs the Venetian or Florentine (both descriptors are found) tracery, suggestive of elegant urban Renaissance architecture. This tracery is repeated in the left side porch design where it is curvier and more Gothic looking. The glazed right side porch also has the Venetian tracery. The back porch has yet another type of decoration, flat top trefoil arches pierced by a horizontal band. The by now familiar trefoil arch shape is found in the front porch and in the gable window that is pointed to match the gable's outline in a way similar to the Kellogg house. The cornice has a band of horizontal molding, forming an empty frieze and is pierced by long icicle-like brackets, also like the Blanchard house. Instead of s-curves, the brackets feature square pierced designs. The brackets in the gable are shallower and less ornamented. There are such similarities, that the Blanchards seem to have been influenced by this house's design. The cupola of the house is of a unique octagonal shape with each bay pierced by tombstone windows and a shallow hip roof crowning the whole. The following photos show other facades of the house and interiors, all from HABS.

This photo shows the side porch with its odd Gothic rendition of Venetian tracery.

 

The interiors of the house remain surprisingly intact given its adaptation as a public library. The staircase includes original lincrusta beneath the chair rail. The photos show that much of the original interior finish, especially the wallpaper, even on the ceilings, is intact. The last picture seems to depict the room at the center of the second story.

 

La Palistina: The John C. Blanchard House, Ionia, MI

The John C. Blanchard House, Ionia, MI. 1880 Photo: Wikimedia. 

Although I have never been to Ionia, MI, I came across its National Register listings and was impressed by some of its Italianate architecture, so I am featuring a few buildings from this town. The John C. Blanchard house was built in 1880, one of the latest Italianates I have posted. Blanchard was an important attorney and politician in Ionia, who owned a sandstone quarry, and built this house as he and his wife's retirement home according to the house's website (it is now a museum and rental space). That website also has several interior views. The house was named La Palistina, a Spanish name that means 'delightful'. The style of the house was already going out of fashion in the 1880s to be replaced by Queen Anne and Colonial Revival. Considering the couple was in their 50s however, the conservativism of the design is understandable.

Although built late in the career of Italianate architecture, the house has a strong link with the style of the 1870s, which was no doubt when it was designed. The house follows the irregular plan. There is no tower or tower projection, an often found alternative to the traditional plan. The projecting pavilion is mostly consumed by a two story bay window. The alternation between single windows on the projection and double windows on the recessed section provide a pleasant alteration of forms. The filleted windows and elaborate hood moldings with their broken arch design, as we have seen, are typical of the period. The cornice is undulating and is along with the porch one of the few house features made of wood. The brackets moreover, are complex comprising two s-scrolls, long bases, and turned finials that give the appearance of hanging icicles. Dramatically, the house and exterior decorations, from basement to cornice, are primarily crafted out of a unique local sandstone, giving the house a colorful, variegated appearance that is particularly appealing. Since Blanchard owned the sandstone quarry, he must have had a personal stake in the stone's selection and finish. This more than anything makes the house a special specimen. Also typical of the period is the more steeply pitched hip roof and the iron cresting that tops the composition. The stairway has a particularly grand treatment with sandstone balusters and newel posts that have attached lights. Below is a closer view of the cornice and window treatments.