The Italianate Plan

The plan of an Italianate house is one of the central features of the style and one of its greatest contributions to the architecture of the 19th century. Many of these (indicated by roman numerals that correspond to their numbers in Downing and Davis) were published and designed by Davis. Davis was usually the architect and planner behind the scheme of these two designers; Downing tended to focus on color and landscaping. The drawing above was done by me with the intention of pinpointing all the varieties of plan that exist in Downing and Davis and establishing a clear terminology for my entries. Of course, this is not an exhaustive schematic; Italianate plans can take literally any shape. In describing the Italianate style, Davis talks about two types of clients, those who appreciate regularity and those who admire picturesque but balanced irregularity. The symmetrical plan is the height of regularity since it is symmetrical. The irregular and side-tower plans are the height of balanced irregularity. Both remained popular throughout the life of Italianate architecture and were adapted for other styles, particularly Second Empire. You may notice that towers are optional additions for many plans. Italianate designers loved their campaniles, and they employed them when the client's taste and funds allowed. Any of these forms may potentially have a tower. A house with a tower, however, almost never includes a central cupola. Some of the plans, the five-bay and the gable front did not originate with Davis but hearken back to colonial and Greek Revival precedents. Nonetheless, they remain a part of the Italianate vocabulary despite their inherited nature. I will go through each plan to clarify how they function:

Irregular

The irregular plan is one of the most common, and expresses Davis' love of irregularly balanced forms. It hearkens back to the irregular, pragmatic clusters of wings and additions found in Italian monasteries and farm houses. The plan consists of a projecting pavilion that features often a bay or box window, at the left in this image (plans can always be reversed), a central tower that is slightly recessed from the projecting pavilion where the main entrance is commonly located, and a recessed section at right that tends to be longer than the projecting pavilion with a porch running across it. Thus the plan starting from the left gradually recedes. Sometimes it is called the L-shape plan or the Tuscan villa plan, but Davis used 'irregular' in his own description so I have adopted it as its name.

Symmetrical

The symmetrical plan is, as it is called, symmetrical, and is perhaps the most common form of Italianate you will see. It features a central entrance flanked on both sides by one bay, making it a three bay composition. The center very often features a gable or pediment in the cornice and the central second story window is usually differentiated from the others. The center bay in many examples projects from the façade. The house is almost always hip roofed and may have a cupola in the center of the roof.

Side-Tower

This towered plan is less common than the irregular plan. It features a projecting pavilion on the left and a projecting tower on the right. The central section is recessed and usually has a porch and is the location of the main entrance. The central recessed section is usually longer than the projecting pavilion and is often two or three bays wide. The base of the tower has commonly a window. As with the irregular plan, the projecting pavilion often features box or bay windows. Like the irregular plan, its inspiration is the farm houses and monasteries of Italy.

Pavilioned

Davis says that the pavilioned plan was designed and sent to him by the Philadelphia architect John Notman, It is symmetrical, featuring two projecting pavilions with a recessed central section. The central section features a porch and the main entrance. The published plan shows a large central tower topping the central section, but it is an extremely uncommon feature. The plan itself is not particularly common, but can occasionally be found or discerned under later changes.

Five-Bay

Having finished with Davis' plans, the five-bay is an inherited form from colonial architecture, where the symmetrical five-bay house with central entrance was dominant. This type may feature roof with end gables or a hip roof that may include a cupola. Sometimes the center of the house will have a gable over the door facing the front and even dormer windows. This house may include a tower to one side.

Central Tower

This plan, an adaptation of the symmetrical or five-bay plan features, as I call it, a central tower where the main entrance is located. The tower projects from the side wings, which may be one or two bays long. Thus the house could be a three or five-bay composition. There are often porches running along the sides from the tower.

Side-Hall and Gable-Front

These two plans, which I group together, are inheritances from Greek Revival. They differ primarily in their roof shapes. Each is a three-bay composition with a door placed to one side rather than in the center of the façade. These may include towers to the sides, and when they do I call them towered side-halls or towered gable-fronts. The side hall plan features a hip roof that may include a central cupola. The gable front has the gable end facing the front of the house. In the gable-front, there are often tombstone windows in the third story. These plans are both very common and represent the majority of middle-class Italianate designs. It is also a plan suited to urban construction.

Row-House

The row-house plan is probably one of the most commonly encountered types for those living in Northeastern urban centers. It is also an inheritance from Greek Revival row-homes developed in England. Though designed to be part of a long row of attached houses, a house can use this plan without being attached. The typical row-house is three stories, although two stories also occurs. It is three-bays wide with an off center entrance. Sometimes they may stand on a high basement with a long staircase leading to the entrance called a stoop. This elongated basement is known as an English basement. The roof is usually not hip, but sloped in some way or even flat. This type can but rarely includes a cupola or tower.

 

These then are the Italianate plans. Remember that Italianate can come in all shapes and sizes and a plan's social connotations, frequency, and ornamentation depend on varying vernacular and architectural criteria.

The George B. Sloan House, Oswego, NY

 

The George Sloan House in Oswego, 1866-1870. Principal façade (south).

The east façade.

 The west façade.

 

Today I am featuring the George B. Sloan House in Oswego. The house sits on a large piece of property and was built by one of Oswego's most notable citizens between 1866 and 1870. The pictures above display the three principal facades of the house, although trees, the bugbear of architectural photography, obscure some elements (argh!). The house's main street façade is the southern façade, which gives the impression that it follows the gable plan with an attached tower, but if you look at the eastern façade, you can see it is actually employing the side tower façade as we saw in the Norton house in New Haven. Unlike the Norton house, the orientation of the Sloan house does not feature the side tower façade as its principal entrance but focuses on the left side as the principal one. The center section is also not highly recessed as we saw in the Norton house, but who doesn't alter a plan a bit when building their own house? The massive projecting section attached to the right hand of the side tower plan also is a significant alteration. This historic photograph from a 1906 publication, Oswego Yesterday and Today, depicts the Sloan house as it looked at the beginning of the 20th century.

The house for being a creation of the 1860s and 70s is far more sedate than the Richardson-Bates house. The use of Ithaca limestone as the facing particularly gives it a powerful and monolithic appearance and the windows are deemphasized by a lack of dramatic surrounds or moldings. The brackets and cornice are spare, although the wood strips give the impression of a plain entablature. The deployment of brackets on the house is as spare as the cornice, only placing them in pairs at long intervals and for the support of the horizontal eaves beneath the gables. Still, the house has some interesting features that liven up the façade. The porch, not overly dramatic, employs the broken arch form of the 1870s that we saw in the Richardson-Bates house's balcony, and the door on the eastern façade has a delicate wooden awning with a tent roof. The Juliette balconies in the tower are a notable feature that add some horizontal emphasis on the top level. The west façade features a particularly large, glassed in conservatory. The stone laying itself is of interest as large blocks alternate with two thin blocks that cover the same space as a larger block; this gives the stonework the feel of being irregular fieldstone. The eastern façade features an elaborate two story bay window with deeply recessed panels. The principal entrance is in the tower's base. The following pictures show a few of the details.

 

The entrance on the eastern façade with awning. You might wonder why the roofs are painted red. Although I am not sure about this house's original coloration, Italianates often did not just employ grey slate as their finish, but used red tiles, blue slate, or even green slate. Tent roofs were particularly painted interesting colors. Historically, many were painted to look like striped canvas awnings.

A better view of the west façade showing the rear porch which is simpler in composition than the principal porch.

The house has much of its garden art and iron fencing intact, including its monogrammed posts.

The house also features an exuberant stick style carriage house/barn.

All in all the Sloan house is a fine example of Italianate, even with its quirky arrangement and conservative detailing.

The John P. Norton House, New Haven, CT



The John Pitkin Norton House, 1848/49.

Continuing with Hillhouse Avenue, we come to the John P. Norton house, one of the celebrated architectural pieces of its day and one of the best documented. The architect was a personal favorite of mine, Henry Austin (1804-1891) one of New Haven's most famous architects and one of the best known architects of Italianate architecture. He was also one of the most versatile architects of the 19th century. Austin proclaimed in his advertisements that he could design "in every variety of architectural style" and that he did. We have pieces by him in Gothic, Egyptian, Stick style, Federal, Greek Revival, and Second Empire, but it is his Italianate designs that were his specialty. Needless to say, you will be encountering him again on this blog.

The John P. Norton house follows one of the less popular of Davis and Downing's plans, the side towered plan and was constructed early in Austin's career in 1848/1849. The use of Davis' plan is particularly interesting because the house was built between two Davis houses. Thus, Davis own plans were being interpreted by Austin in a setting of his own designs. The original design has been altered, as have many of the houses on the avenue. The left-hand wing (south) is a later addition which attempts to harmonize with the architecture; it probably dates from the late 19th century. The center section has had a third story added to it, which alters entirely the drama of the tower. The wooden awnings, Juliette balconies, and window surrounds were all removed in the 20th century, but have been restored by Yale, which owns the building today. Still Austin's design is readily apparent despite these changes. Below are pictured Austin's original watercolors for the house from three sides from his papers kept at Yale University. He chose to depict the principal façade in a romantically rural setting, although the house was to be constructed on a densely built street.

The house has many significant features of Italianate design and is a uniquely finished specimen of the side tower plan. The brackets are thick and closely spaced, giving the impression of projecting roof beams found in Italian monasteries. The large eaves and dense brackets cast a strong shadow over the composition. The open loggia between the tower and the projecting pavilion conjures up images of medieval Italian cloisters. The stone capitals of the loggia pillars are noteworthy, projecting half a foot from the pillar. The whole surface is stuccoed pink and scored to simulate stone blocks. Perhaps most typically Austin are the window treatments and variations. In the Norton house one can see arched windows, triple windows, bay windows, and box windows. The tower itself is lively in its variation; the first floor might have once contained tripartite windows while the second features windows with small Juliette balconies surmounted by overhanging wooden awnings that are energized by dripping wood cutouts, giving the impression of a hanging circus awning. This curved roof on the awnings is called a tent roof, symbolizing in wood fabric draped over a frame. Above that on the third floor, two blind arches surrounding two arched windows simulates Romanesque blind loggias, while the final story of the tower has two paired arched windows, which a friend of mine labels 'tombstone windows'. These paired windows are especially common on Italianate houses, where, particularly in a tower, they represent open spaces where bells were hung. One the right hand pavilion, a box window is surmounted by triple arched windows with a small semi-circular lunette in the pediment, perhaps a throwback to Federal designs. The windows are finally surrounded with Austin's favorite type of molding, and several of the first floor windows have balconies. The images below illustrate some of the points I bring up.

Note the window variety on the tower alone. The projecting and retiring portions give the façade both a balanced rhythm and a balanced irregularity.

The Juliette balconies and awnings with jigsawed balconies.

A typical Austin window surround.

The north façade box window. Note the way the window rests on brackets.



The connection between the tower and the central portion.

 

A real surprise of the Norton house can be found on the inside. The entrance hall has a unique interior treatment of raised plasterwork that covers every surface in the room with raised Moorish designs which beg to be polychromed (at present they are painted several shades of green). The staircase features an elaborate and unique newel post that is from the original design and might have been carved by one of New Haven's leading woodcarvers at the time. The parlor to the right of the entrance, though divided into offices, retains a plastered ceiling with cartouches and flowers, while to the right, the later addition to the south houses a handsome parlor of the late 19th century.

 

The interior of the entrance hall and the Moorish wall treatment.

 The parlor ceilings with cartouches of triple fleur-de-lys.

 

The carved newel post and a later (probably late 19th early 20th century) stained glass window at the top of the stairwell.

The parlor housed in the addition, which reflects the Renaissance style of the late 19th century, probably the 1880s.

The Norton house remains a stunning example of Austin's work, despite the changes that time has taken on it and a significant example of an uncommonly seen plan.

The Pelitiah Perit House, New Haven, CT

A side and front view of the Perit House in New Haven.

As my inaugural house, I picked one of my favorites, the Perit House on New Haven's Hillhouse Avenue. Hillhouse Avenue is a street in New Haven that was developed by James Hillhouse at the opening of the 19th century and was conceived of as a showplace of architecture for the city's wealthy. Although it only really came into its own from the 1820s onward, the street attracted some of the city's wealthiest families of the mid 19th century who built houses that exemplified the architectural styles of the day, most notably the Italianate style. Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis (one of the co-authors of Cottage Residences) had a hand in designing some of the street's homes (Town actually lived on Hillhouse), as did Henry Austin. In each decade new homes were added to the stretch so that it is possible to see in a microcosm the evolution of American architectural styles of the 19th century on one street. The dominant styles on Hillhouse are Greek Revival and Italianate, although it includes examples of Federal, Gothic Revival, Beaux Arts Classicism, and German Renaissance.

Now to the Perit House. It was built in 1859/1860 and was designed by Sidney Mason Stone, a local New Haven architect. The house has gone through a few changes since it was built; a third story was added in the 1860s and in the 1880s, a large rear addition was added to accommodate a Jacobean/Tudor library, however, the additions were designed in sympathy with the main house. As we can see, the house is of the symmetrical plan with a small cupola, which resembles more a monitor (a low cupola) in the center of the hip roof. The detailing is classical in concept. In fact, the decoration on the house is slightly more classicizing and Renaissance-inspired than many Italianates you will encounter.

As you can see, the porch is a heavy classical composition with paired Corinthian columns, a classically correct frieze, and smaller brackets than are usual on Italianates. The windows as well have heavily carved brackets supporting thick moldings, and on the second floor the hood moldings alternate pointed and curved pediments, a feature found in Renaissance and Palladian architecture. The façade, like many Italianates, is covered in stucco which is scored (scraped) to looked like blocks of stone a treatment which was common on Italianate houses made of brick. The front door pictured below with its rope moldings and large windows completely framing the door is an interesting feature that this house shares with a few others in New Haven.

The main cornice as well is understated in its bracketing and Renaissance characteristics with an implied frieze because of the band of molding. The placement of windows in the frieze is a feature that can be traced to Greek Revival design but was continued throughout much of the 19th century.

The house could be cited as an example of Anglo Italianate detailing. Anglo Italianate is a subset of Italianate architecture, although it was not recognized as such in its day, that conforms more closely than most vernacular examples to the Italianate architecture current in England. Anglo-Italianate is characterized by detailing and massing that conforms more to a Renaissance palazzo and attempts to follow classical precedents closely. Probably the best known and possibly the earliest example of Anglo Italianate architecture in the US is the Philadelphia Athenaeum, designed by John Notman (1810-1865) in 1845. Notman was trained in Scotland; thus he was more acquainted with European Italianate precedents than other architects practicing in America. Below is an image of the Athenaeum from Wikipedia.

Although the Perit House is a bit less 'correct' than the Athenaeum's following of Renaissance prototypes, it nonetheless draws from the Anglo Italianate decorative vocabulary for its ornamentation.

A few more remarks about the Perit House. First if you look at the images at the top of the article and the following image, you can see that despite the symmetry of the front façade in the symmetrical plan, the side elevations of an Italianate are rarely symmetrical. They are often characterized by the protuberance of bay windows and small projecting sections of façade. Queen Anne is often cited as a style which makes its interior plan visible from the exterior; however, Italianate is just as likely to display the function of the house in preference to a symmetrical exterior. Italianate houses also often extend back very far on their property with subordinate ells and wings in the back. Sometimes this is simply how they were designed, but often it is the result of later additions. In the image below, the back two bays of the house constitute the addition of the 1880s.

Because I have been inside this house (it is now owned by Yale University), I thought I would include a few pictures of the Jacobean library and other interesting features of the house, although they may not strictly fall under Italianate interior aesthetics.

 The Jacobean Library of the 1880s.

 A small office, probably also from the later 19th century.

The staircase may be original to the house.

The inlaid floor in the main hallway.

The interior doors; note the etched glass, a common feature of Italianate doors.

The next few posts for this week will focus on some other Italianate mansions on Hillhouse Avenue.