The John T. Leigh House, Clinton, NJ

The John T. Leigh House, Clinton, NJ. 1860.

John T. Leigh was one of the major leaders of Clinton. He founded the towns major bank and helped it incorporate in 1865 along with Bosenbury. He also provided the land on which the town's major institutions were established. Leigh suitably built himself a grand Italianate house to reflect his influence (on the appropriately named Leigh street). The house suffered a fire in 1971 and then became the town municipal building with additions added to provide needed office space.

The house is a five bay, symmetrical plan block articulated in fine brick and brownstone. The first floor features five almost floor to ceiling windows with a grand porch that bears much in common with that at the town's Bosenbury house, including the chamfered columns, filleted flat arches and the central engaged pediment over the entrance. The columns of the porch are themselves interesting for their extremely exaggerated moldings, making them look a bit exotic. The cornice of the porch features a cut out fringe. On the side porches, only one of which survives, the columns are pierced with cut out designs. The second floor features a typical brownstone lintel design over the windows with a palladian window in the center with a corresponding hood molding on brackets. A projecting brick architrave molding sets off the third floor with its windows that correspond even to the proportions of the palladian window. The brackets are executed with a high degree of carpenter's elaboration with the main body being a large c scroll and then a rosette with a small s scroll below, rather layering on bracket type over bracket type. The whole is topped with a cute little cupola also with three windows. I suspect that there are some missing doo-dads like a finial.

Overall this is a beautifully preserved house with an imposing presence (standing in front of it, its proportions are very grand and it's rather tall). Design-wise, there is much to remind us of Samuel Sloan's work.

74 W Main St. Clinton, NJ

Just a few lots down from the Bosenbury house is this interesting gem, a symmetrical plan house which is oddly five bays on the first floor and three bays on the second floor. On the first, the house is surrounded by an oddly asymmetrical porch which wraps around one side but not the other leaving us with a four bay porch that does not present a symmetrical number of bays on each side. The front door has a Greek Revival eared molding surround. On the second floor, all the windows are segmental arched with a double window in the center with a pointed molding with a vegetal anthemion above. There is an engaged open pediment above with the typical Clinton wheel window, this time with eight spokes rather than four. Oddly, the pediment is deeply enclosed by the eaves. The design unfortunately suffers from a rather odd painting decision, with the bordering boards not painted to form a unity with the entablature, which if painted the same color would make the design much clearer. The house likely dates from the 1850s-60s.

The Eli Bosenbury House, Clinton, NJ

The Eli Bosenbury House, Clinton, NJ. 1853-60

Clinton, NJ is an amazingly well-preserved small New Jersey town. Coming into the town on Main Street you see this small three-bay side hall plan house, the Eli Bosenbury House, from 1850. Many examples of these side hall houses can be rather bland, but given that Bosenbury was a carpenter and home builder who heavily influenced the style of the town, he used his own house to showcase his abilities. The first floor has a fine preserved porch common in this area with thin paired, chamfered columns (amazingly the apparently metal grills under the porch are intact!). The house emphasizes the central thrust of the design by having a pediment in the central bay of the porch, a pedimented hood mold on the center window, and an engaged pediment in the center bay. The house has s scroll brackets that are particularly drippy and curvaceous with deep carving that suggests leaves. In the entablature there are two small windows with original Greek Revival metal grills and in the center a wheel window, a touch of Romanesque design that is a unique feature to the houses in Clinton, perhaps popularized by Bosenbury as a designer. It's one of the key town vernaculars. A further unexpected design element is the facade is framed by a filleted arch and paneled pilasters, giving it a much stronger frame for the whole facade. It's an amazingly preserved house with all its details intact.

A nearly identical house is a few houses down:

This one has a much grander porch that wraps around the house. There is still the vernacular wheel window in the engaged pediment. Its proximity and similarity suggest it was also by the same designer.

Samuel Sloan: Italianate Planner and Architectural Theorist

Woodland Terrace in Philadelphia (1861).

This is Sloan's most impressive surviving architectural ensemble and is

characteristic of his numerous works in West Philadelphia.

Perhaps no other architect worked as hard as Samuel Sloan (1815-1884) to popularize not only the Italianate Style in the US, but also to revolutionize construction, decorative, design, and technological practice for American architects. Sloan, as his writings show, saw himself as a person who could help American architecture develop an inventiveness, creativity, technological prowess, and stylistic vocabulary beyond the mere copying of European precedents and designs. From Sloan's perspective, his role was to help improve American architectural practice (which he did not have the greatest confidence in from his early training) and encourage the development of an intelligent, quality, and independent American architecture.

The best published work on Sloan is Harold N. Cooledge's Samuel Sloan: Architect of Philadelphia 1815-1884 (1986) which not only provides a thorough biography of Sloan's life and career, but also a catalogue of his works. Additionally, Sloan's own voluminous writings give us more insight into his thoughts and architectural ideas and practices than we have for almost any other mid-19th century architect. Born in 1815 in rural Beaver Dam, PA to a family of cabinet makers, Sloan was by 1833 an active builder in Philadelphia. His first recorded work was building some elements of Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary and he moved up the ranks working for well known architects like John Haviland and William Strickland. Soon after, Sloan began producing designs for the opinionated and visionary Thomas Kirkbride, a hospital and mental health theorist, giving Sloan an immense amount of training in institutional design and providing him with a patron who encouraged and transformed him from a carpenter into an architect and designer. Most of the early decade of his career was spent in the background, working on institutional and governmental public buildings, schools, court houses, and hospitals guided by the theories and ideas of powerful and opinionated clients.

Sloan's independent career properly begins in 1850, when he was given the commission to design a villa for Andrew Eastwick, a locomotive manufacturer. This building, which Sloan designed in the "Norman" style, combining Italianate features with north Italian medieval design would gain him architectural renown and introduce him as a unique architect. At exactly the moment Sloan appeared on Philadelphia's architectural stage, the city was expanding, and several developers aimed to construct a model suburban community in West Philadelphia. The selection of Sloan as the principle designer for many of these developments, mostly in Gothic and Italianate styles, meant that he would shape the entire architectural vocabulary of suburban Philadelphia. Even later architects who continued the project followed Sloan's design principles, giving this area of the city a distinctive architectural harmony, disrupted only in the later 19th century by scores of Jacobean, Colonial Revival, and Queen Anne rows. In 1855, Sloan even got to plan and design an enclave of fine villas in Riverton, NJ. Additionally, he became a designer for most pf Philadelphia's public schools, several major commercial buildings, and several speculative residential rows within central Philadelphia.

Sloan's design for the Eastwick House "Bartram Hall".

Between 1851-3, Sloan worked on and published his first major architectural work, The Model Architect. While plan books were plentiful in the 19th century, Sloan's contribution was different. Not only did he provide dozens of plans and elevations, but Sloan also offered several illustrated pages of details, in which he depicted up-close the doors, windows, cornices, brackets and sometimes interiors and furniture choices for architects. A few plans contained full landscape plans, complete with a series of fantastic gazebos, squirrel houses, bird houses, and conservatories, all carefully designed. But Sloan didn't stop as many other designers did, in just offering a superficial set of designs. This book also included theorizing on styles, advice on good joining and construction practices (including complete drawings of the framing of buildings), detailed discussions of heating and cooling mechanisms for homes, a frank discussion of comfort and practical designs, as well as detailed descriptions of cost, construction timelines, and architectural accounting. Sloan provided basically a full tutorial on architectural practice in America. The Model Architect was a revolutionary book and so central to American architecture that copies of it spread across the US. No other architect gained as much exposure as did Sloan, and it's thanks to this book that Sloan's designs ended up all over the US, with thousands of buildings based on his work. Thus, while Sloan had a confined set of commissions he personally worked on, his designs spread far beyond his personal reach, stamping his legacy on dozens of towns. The book was so popular it was reprinted every decade until the 1880s. Below are examples of Sloan's detail pages as well as his designs for non-architectural members, such as birdhouses (an Italianate birdhouse!).

From 1852-8, Sloan formed a partnership with builder John Stewart. In this period, Sloan came up with one of his most original designs, the Bennett & Co. building, a fantastic commercial edifice in the Norman/Gothic style. He also designed the Second Masonic Temple in Philadelphia, a fantasy of lacy Gothic, in 1855. Joseph Harrison as well in this period commissioned Sloan to design his planned communities in West Philadelphia as well as his palatial estate on Rittenhouse Square (1856). Unfortunately, this period of prosperity came to an end in 1857, when Sloan and Stewart dissolved their partnership after a major financial panic. In 1858, Sloan published his second work, City and Suburban Architecture, which offered a wider range of designs ranging from commercial, civic, religious, to residential. In it, Sloan focused on the difficulties of designing buildings appropriate to sites and for different functions. The book has numerous beautiful drawings, more polished than his earlier work, which the draftsman Addison Hutton contributed. As Sloan's career matured, so did his architectural approach, and in CSA, we can see a far more austere and sophisticated approach to European style Renaissance ornament.

In 1859, Sloan was to begin work on his most famous building, the octagonal oriental villa "Longwood" in Natchez MS. Based on one of his plans from The Model Architect, seen by Haller Nuttit, the owner of Longwood, it would consume many bodies from Sloan's office until 1860, when the outbreak of the Civil War convinced the northern workmen to return to Philadelphia. The house would remain, its exterior complete but its interiors unfinished. As work tapered off during the Civil War, Sloan published two more books. Sloan's Homestead Architecture and American Houses: A Variety of Designs for Rural Buildings (both 1861), both of which recycled material but also explored the concept of well-designed affordable housing. In this period as well, Sloan designed Woodland Terrace in Philadelphia, his most significant surviving ensemble. The contentious city hall competition in Philadelphia coupled with the war meant that Sloan's work slowed during the 1860s, when Sloan was partnered with Addison Hutton (1860-8), during which he focused on designing hospitals and courthouses. In one case, the increasingly cantankerous Sloan sued the town of Williamsport for stealing his plans for their courthouse. Additionally, he began publishing editorials criticizing the narrow stylistic stubbornness of architects whom Sloan saw as ignoring their client's wishes in favor of abstract devotion to European stylistic canons. For Sloan, American architecture did not need to be so prescriptive; it should revolve around practical requirements, convenience, comfort, and fitness, more than abstract theories about the moral and ethical implications of style.

"Longwood" Photo: Wikimedia.

Sloan joined the American Institute of Architects in 1868 and founded the periodical The Architectural Review and American Builder's Journal which served as a vehicle for his ideas and plans until it folded in 1870. In this periodical, Sloan took to task the architects (calling them in his first essay "mere constructors") with whom he disagreed, earning him many enemies and critics, but the periodical did allow architects from outside the east to display work and promoted the formation of the AIA. As Sloan alienated Philadelphia society and architects, his interests began to turn elsewhere outside of Pennsylvania. His involvement in the renovations to the NJ state capitol resulted in a very different appearance for the architecturally confused building. With little work coming in from Philadelphia, Sloan received commissions for public buildings in North Carolina, which encouraged him to move his office to Raleigh in 1877. In this period Sloan changed with the styles, and his design for the NC governor's mansion is an essay in fanciful Queen Anne. Sloan died in 1884 from "typhoid fever" according to several conflicting accounts, leaving behind not only hundreds of buildings he directly designed, but thousands based on his plans, as well as a robust and transformative philosophy that would help professionalize American architectural practice, even if Sloan often fell short of the strict standards he advocated.

Sloan on the "Italian Style"

Sloan worked in three principles styles, Italianate, Gothic, and Oriental/Italianate, but the majority of his works can be classified as Italianate in spirit and in principle. In Sloan's writings, he identified four different styles that I would classify within the realm of Italianate design, "Italian", the typical Italianate style we have explored; "Norman", a heavier castellated kind of Italianate based on Medieval Italian architecture and German Rundbogenstil; "Bracketed", a less formal form of design with larger brackets and eaves; and "Oriental", which is basically Italianate designs with applied Indian ornament (as I have discussed as Indian Italianate). Sloan's inventiveness, creativity, and focus on convenience, comfort, and fitness over rigorous stylistic canons, as well as the modifications many of his designs underwent in the hands of builders, means that his approach has a smaller degree of unity than many other architects.

For Sloan, the Italian style was primarily an appropriately suburban idiom. He explains in MA that the style is "so well adapted is it to the wants and tastes of our people, that it is likely to become, if it is not already, one of our most fashionable styles for country residences. It possesses very little of the rural character, and seems much more appropriate for the retired home of one accustomed to city life, than for one born and bred in the country. Its location, consequently, should not be in the depths of the forest, but within a few miles of the city." Sloan similarly wrote, like other architects, that while classical Greek and Roman ideas were suitable for public buildings, it was Italian design that suited domestic design. In defining the style, Sloan zeroed in on irregularity as its primary feature: "Most generally, Italian villas have an irregular outline from every point of view. The predominant figure is the rectangle, but many being introduced and so disposed as to break in upon each other, the irregular outline is formed without difficulty. The angular effect is relieved by the semi-circular arch which is freely used. Great license is also permitted in the ground plans, thus admitting almost every possible arrangement of apartments." He also noted the significance of towers, or "campaniles" as he terms them. Additionally:

"It has been stated that gables do not occur, but this is incorrect: we simply cite Raphael's villa, in the Borghese Gardens. Hip roofs are, however, common. In all cases the eaves are heavy and projecting, being supported by brackets and cantalivers of various patterns. The chimneys are prominent, and serve to give greater variety to the outline. The windows are made double, or treble, and, together with the doors, have either square or arched beads, according to the importance of their position. Bay-windows are frequent. All window and door dressings are made very heavy, and, indeed, throughout there is a tendency rather to boldness than minute decoration. Heavy arcades, porches with large square pillars, verandahs, balconies, anta?, pilasters, quoins, rustic work, and string courses, all often occur."

"The character of this style is far from being rural, but is genuinely picturesque. The irregularity of the ground plans and vertical outline, and the great freedom allowed in general design, give considerable room for the exercise of taste. In Italy, the surface of the country is greatly diversified by hills and valleys, and advantage is taken of this in erecting the villas so as to command landscapes."

For Sloan, Italianate was a style perfectly suited to his belief in function over form and in his suburban ideal, both his ideal for the concept of the suburb as rus in urbe as well as his ideal of the suburban inhabitant: "Country residences in the Italian style are becoming more and more popular, both here and in the old world. Its great pliability of design, its facile adaptation to our wants and habits, together with its finished, elegant, and picturesque appearance, give it precedence over every other. It speaks of the inhabitant as a man of wealth, who wishes in a quiet way to enjoy his wealth. It speaks of him as a person of educated and refined tastes, who can appreciate the beautiful both in art and nature ; who, accustomed to all the ease and luxury of a city life, is now enjoying the more pure and elevating pleasures of the country."

Norman architecture for Sloan was as much an ornamental style as a conceptual mode. He traced its origins to the barbarians who invaded Italy and adapted architecture for their own needs, creating the style we would now call Romanesque, upon which Italianate design was based. Sloan characterizes this style throughout as massive and suited primarily to public buildings. For residences, he advised caution and attention to scale: "For dwellings, this style is only adapted to those on a large scale. Its heavy, bold, and rich expression would be lost in a building of small size, but for an extensive villa it presents most admirable features."

As for the Oriental style, Sloan considered its application to housing to be a matter of decoration and not design. In essence, he created an Italianate plan and plastered on Oriental ornament: "It would be sheer folly to introduce the original pure style into this country, for no wise man will sacrifice his comfort in order to secure consistency in the appearance of his house with those which have been built in other countries, in other climates, and perhaps for other purposes by people with different customs. Our style of living is totally unlike that in the East, and were we to build just such houses as they have, we would certainly part with comfort. This last is of the first importance. Let every one arrange his dwelling so as to secure the greatest amount of convenience, and then exercise his judgment in decoration. We hold that, in a manner, each building is an independent being, and if it be consistent with itself both internally and externally, and as to its purpose, then no fault can be found with it on that score. Many buildings similar to the one here given have been erected in this country and command universal admiration. The best location would be on the banks of some of our noble streams, the Mississippi or the Hudson."

As for the Bracketed style, Sloan considered it a subset of Italianate design in which the eaves were oversized: "In sunny climes, it is highly desirable that the walls of dwellings, especially, should be protected, as much as possible, from direct rays. This fact has given rise, in Italy, to a style in which the eaves of the building project considerably. This projection is often so great, that unless there be some apparent support for the eaves, the eye is offended by a sense of insecurity. The defect is remedied by the use of cantilevers and brackets; whence the name bracketed style, in use among some authors. The style is growing among us, and deserves high commendation, for country residences especially, since, in addition to cooling shade, it gives many other pleasing effects."

Thus, for Sloan, Italianate remained the bedrock of planning. Most of his designs maintain the irregularity and convenience of the Italianate style which was suited for his ideological beliefs about residential and architectural design. The Norman and Oriental styles consisted mostly of an ornamental idiom applied to the convenience of Italianate design, and that idiom in his plans always remains an intriguing dress over the consistent Italianate features of irregular or convenient planning, brackets, towers, and large eaves.

In the next series of posts, I will look at all of Sloan's direct architectural work as well as provide a survey of all of his Italianate plans from his publications to give a full impression of his influence on the style. Additionally, where I have found them, I'll provide examples built from his plans to show how his theoretical work influenced designs throughout the US.

Like this post on an architect? Check out the posts on John Notman!

The Nathaniel Wilson House, East Millstone, NJ

The N. Wilson House, East Millstone, NJ. 1888 Photo: Wikimedia

This somewhat strange house was built by Nathaniel Wilson, a hardware store owner, in the small town of East Millstone in 1888, yet the elaborateness of the design makes this house far too sophisticated for such a rural area. No doubt that was Wilson's plan, to show off his own success in front of his neighbors with their more modest homes. Additionally, 1888 is a very late date for building an Italianate house, especially one like this which is fully invested in the design principles associated with the 1870s, yet here we are. Maybe Mr. Wilson just stopped evolving with the fashions after 1875. The house's plan is a little tricky, is it a side hall plan with a wing, or an irregular plan without a tower or fully projecting pavilion. I actually go with the latter primarily because of the brickwork. The facade of the house uses the brickwork to create a series of recessed planes with angled bricks that form a row of dentils at the top that mark the bays and frame architectural units. If you look carefully, the right two bays are marked by one plane as are the left two recessed bays. The central bay is marked by another, where the tower should be, indicating the designer was thinking in terms of the irregular plan, even if they didn't reproduce the volumes.

The details on this house are rather intriguing. The first floor windows are segmental arched, the second rectangular, a slight variation from the usual interplay of shapes. The subdued label stone moldings are spare with bulls eyes and carved keystones, echoing patterns one sees on late 19th century Eastlake interior woodwork. The two main carved features are the porch and cornice. The porch which wraps around the house is a rather clunky arrangement of disparate artistic forms. Fussy posts with too many molded sections support an entablature that consists of an open arch with drops on the first stage, a row of pierced circles on the second, and strange boards on the third which have blind quarter arches with keystones and incised Eastlake carving in the spandrels. It seems the designer, instead of relying on any precedents, decided to construct an entablature from various random sections from a catalogue, transforming classical design into a series of superimposed decorative bands. The cornice as well is very strange. It's elaborately paneled in its frieze, with a run of dentils, then another band of panels above. The brackets, which are s scroll type, are elongated. It is in their placement that we can see the influence of the irregular conception. Unlike most Italianates, this house has an uneven and irregular placement for the brackets, with different spacings between the groupings. Around the tower section, for instance, we have two tightly placed brackets in a pair to the left while to the right are three tightly placed brackets, behaving as they would if there really were a projecting tower. Similarly to the right of the projecting facade, we have one widely spaced bracket and then a tightly placed pair, basically filling the space on the cornice with as many brackets as possible. It's very strange. As you can see on the side facade, there is a bizarre projection over the box window which takes the form of a mansard roof in section with decorated barge boards. But stranger is that the architect decided instead of treating it as a mansard roof proper, to run the cornice design onto it, causing to to grow inorganically out of the facade.

Overall, the Wilson house is a great example of someone who let their desire to impress with carving and woodwork get in the way of adhering to harmonious principles. But despite awkwardness, the house achieves its purpose in appearing grand and expensive, and is overall a successful stylistic muddle.

The John G. Schenck House, Neshanic, NJ

The John G. Schenck House, Neshanic, NJ 1858 Photo: Wikimedia

The John G. Schenck house at 305 Maple Ave. in Neshanic was built in 1858 (finished 1865) for a wealthy farmer and was originally named "Shadow Lawn". The house is an exquisite, high style, example of Italianate design with plenty of bells and whistles. Like the Munro house yesterday and the Bartles house in Flemington, this seems to be another example of the central New Jersey vernacular, with large semi-circular open pediments centrally placed on each facade and a broad porch that crosses the width of the front. The house is a symmetrical plan villa without the typical projections emphasizing the central bay. This example is especially noteworthy for the finesse of its design. The facade, for instance is clapboard, but note the the entablature has flushboarding, a subtle but elegant choice to differentiate elements of the design.

The first story has simple molded paired windows and the expected porch, with very thin paired columns and a central rounded pediment, echoing the touchstone of the design, the segmental arch. The second story has paired arched tombstone windows in the side bays with elaborately eared moldings connecting the two windows (note the several ears). These are topped with keystones that become brackets supporting the hood molding. The central bay features a palladian window with a segmental arched central element and a conforming molding. The entablature construction is complex. The architrave molding here is a unique Greek key design, while a second molding is bead and reel, an expensive carved choice. The dramatic paired s scroll brackets terminating in acanthus leaves interrupting a run of elongated dentils divide bays with paired segmental arched windows in between. Round arched tombstone windows differentiate the central bay. Noteworthy is that the high level of decoration seems to continue on the sides. Finally, the cupola is magnificent. It's low with a run of five arched windows, brackets that run the length of the wall, a cornice that has an engaged rounded pediment (again the echoes of the arch), and a Moorish fringe forming the entablature decoration. This house uses its curves and echoes them in each element of the design to form harmony and a likeness of parts, drawing the house into a unified vehicle of design. It's definitely one of my favorites.

The William Munro House, Hillsborough, NJ

The William Munro House, Hillsborough, NJ. 1870

Built in a somewhat rural area of Hillsborough, NJ, the William Munro house is an impressive example of a symmetrical plan villa in wood and has been beautifully maintained. The house is a cube with the defining feature of engaged round pediments on three of the facades which is echoed in the cupola. The central bay of the front facade projects dramatically while the sides are flat. The first floor windows are long with simple molded surrounds, while those on the second floor are segmental arched with deep hood moldings. The simplicity of the first floor windows is warranted by the elaborate porch that encompasses the majority of the first floor. The porch itself is impressive for the contrast between its heavy cornice with brackets, panels, and central pediment, and its impossibly thin posts, which make the roof almost seem to hover. The central second floor window on the front is particularly elegant with paired segmental arched windows with a bracketed projection over the window; over this is a fancy jigsaw cut out that is a vernacular version of rococo designs. The house's entablature is tall, with pairs of c and s scroll brackets, that surround segmental arched windows. The engaged open pediments (pediments with an open molding in the bottom) have arched windows, dentils, and centrally placed bracket pairs (somewhat uncommon). The cupola is particularly fine with a strong architrave molding and brackets placed both at the top and bottom of the wall, easing the transition from roof to cupola. The repetition of shapes in this house is a model of harmonious design. Images of the richly decorated and finely preserved interior can be seen here.

John Notman: the Father of American Italianate Design

Having presented seven of John Notman's houses, it's now time to deal with the man himself. For being one of America's most important early architects, not a lot is known about Notman's personal life; there are no diaries, letters, and the usual ephemera that tell us about 19th century architects. Not only did Notman introduce Italianate to American design, but he also developed American Gothic and built one of the first academic Gothic churches in the country. His legacy is best found in his buildings, a surprising number of which survive. Beyond a selection of drawings (held in Princeton and Philadelphia) and some personal correspondence between him and his clients and friends, we don't have much. The main monograph on Notman is called John Notman, Architect (1810-1865) by Constance Greiff, whose series Lost America no doubt made her a "constant grief" to progressive minded architects in the 1960s. Greiff offers a conservative, scholarly estimate of his career and provides a full account of his buildings with accompanying plans and drawings.

John Notman was born in Scotland in 1810 and although his early life is little known, he ended up in Edinburgh in the 1820s and was an apprentice to one of the major architects there. Greiff suggests William Henry Playfair because of his Italianate and Gothic designs which could have influenced the young architect. Indeed, Playfair is one of the earliest English Italianate designers, though his works owe much more to traditional Regency plans than the freedom of Italianate asymmetry and massing that characterized the works of Charles Barry and Notman. Perhaps the young Notman was in the know about experiments in asymmetrical planning; he certainly seems more acquainted with Italian rustic architecture than his English predecessors who preferred high style Italian Renaissance urban idioms. In 1831 Notman immigrated to Philadelphia where he set himself up as a "carpenter", really the term for an architect at that time; in his early years he seems to have designed little of note. In Philadelphia he met John Jay Smith, the head of the Philadelphia Library Company who would introduce Notman to a host of rich clients in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for whom he would design his best villas. It was through Smith Notman was given the commission to design Laurel Hill Cemetery in 1835, both its landscaping and its architecture (including an odd sculptural tableau of Sir Walter Scott!). It was also through Smith that Notman met George Washington Doane, for whom he constructed 'Riverside', America's first Italianate building in 1837-9.

Laurel Hill Cemetery Photo: Wikimedia

After these commissions, Notman's fame grew. His first major work that stunned Philadelphia was the Athenaeum of 1842. Here, Notman abandoned the rustic Italian form for the traditional English Renaissance influences. When the building opened, apparently the public was more impressed with his use of brownstone, a rarity in that period, than the design itself. The use of stone rather than brick would characterize almost all of Notman's subsequent works, and he rarely designed in wood. Additionally, his fascination with lacy ironwork and multi striped tent roofs also manifested in the Athenaeum's design. The Athenaeum was hailed as a masterpiece and would influence generations of urban architects to use the Anglo-Italianate mode of design for everything from banks to warehouses to row houses.

The Athenaeum Photo: Wikimedia

Throughout the 1840s, Notman would be busy designing a series of houses, public buildings, churches, and villas for his ever expanding circle of wealthy mid-Atlantic clients and patrons. He was as much an accomplished landscape architect as builder, and after Laurel Hill he seems to have been in demand for vast landscape projects as well as buildings. He was particularly active in Princeton, where he worked on buildings for the Theological Seminary (chapel, library) and the university (the Italianatization of Nassau Hall). Additionally, he worked in Richmond, VA designing the Capitol Square. As we can see from the houses we have looked at, Notman's work became more and more bold as he gained confidence as a designer, and his plans grew ever more complex with new arrangements of volumes and massing. He never followed the trend of other architects who invested their energy into plan books, such as Alexander Jackson Davis. For Davis he did design one plan, Design IX in Cottage Residences. Notman's design is the genesis of what I have called the pavilion plan, a plan base he would use in many of his subsequent houses. Ironically, he seems to have never built a house that matched Design IX. In the façade of this house, we can see much that characterized 'Riverside' especially the fringe on the cornice, the broad tower with massive eaves and the bold porch. Echoes of this design can be seen in his later work, especially at Alverthorpe.

While he was designing Ellarslie in Trenton, Notman was also working on one of the seminal monuments of American Gothic design in Philadelphia, St. Marks church (1849). Getting in with the high church Anglican society was a tough nut for any architect to crack. Notoriously fussy with a host of nitpicky liturgical and denominational requirements, they made a hobby of sneering at architectural designs that were too low church for them. Notman's St. Marks is one of the first Gothic buildings in the US designed for this group, and he studiously sought to allay criticism by adhering to English Gothic precedents. Notman's care thus gave the US its first academic Gothic design that entirely departed from colonial preaching boxes and tried to communicate some of the asymmetry and spirit of Gothic. Church commissions poured in afterwards.

St. Mark's Philadelphia
Photo: Tom Ipri

As the 1850s dawned, Notman was a firmly established master architect for the mid-Atlantic. The beginning of the decade saw the construction of Prospect House in Princeton and Averthorpe in Jenkintown, PA. Notman had established his style and his remaining commissions until his death in 1865 continued in the same vein, working in both Italianate and Gothic modes. In this period belong Fern Hill (originally designed by Notman in a Gothic idiom) and Fieldwood in Princeton. After a fire at Princeton's colonial Nassau Hall in the 1850s, Notman added Italianate towers and a new cupola to the design, bringing the old Georgian building up to date (his additions have been mostly removed). Never one to shy away from innovation, Notman even finished the Second Empire 'Ogontz' in 1862. At his death in the year the Civil War ended, Notman could look back on a revolutionary career in shaping American architecture, and fortunately many of his buildings, especially those of a particularly style-making character survive so we can get a clear picture of his legacy not only through plans but through the buildings themselves.

Notman's Domestic Italianate Designs

As fascinating as his legacy in Gothic design is, here we are most concerned about Notman as an Italianate designer. Departing from English precedents, Notman offered an approach to design that introduced picturesqueness to America, a country he found filled with rectangular, symmetrical Georgian, Federal, and Greek Revival houses that looked inward. Essentially, the way that Notman conceived of a building was as a series of symmetrical blocks, each one filled with one or two rooms. In some senses, each of those blocks serves as its own design unit, sometimes harmonizing, sometimes conflicting with the dominant design. These blocks were grouped around a central focal point, usually a central hall. Like the monasteries and farmhouses of Italy, which were built for functionality more than aesthetics, the Italianate design reveals the interior organically, forcing the exterior to some extend to conform to the interior. Without having to worry about fitting rooms into a rigid rectangle with a set window plan, architects could freely combine different rooms and create vistas and flow in a more exciting way. Additionally, it brought the outdoors inside, since each block created a different viewpoint to the outside, one of the reasons Notman worked to landscape around his houses, in order to frame the outdoors for each of these varying rooms. It's no wonder people embraced Italianate design. Not only could you basically do what you wanted and infinitely add on large rooms and pretend like you were living in romantic Italy, but it was something new, something that did not look like the rows of neat but repetitive colonial houses.

The two basic building blocks of Notman's house designs are the rectangle (the block-based plan), often with symmetrical projections, and a group of two rectangles intersecting, the L-shaped plan that would grow into the irregular plan. The block-based plan is in essence a rectangle, while the L-shape has its eponymous profile. Onto these two basic shapes, Notman grafted all sorts of projections as needed for different rooms and vistas. Additionally, there is the tower block, which in Notman's designs is sort of a free agent, moving around the plans and never occurring in the same place. Unlike later designers, Notman located the tower to the side rather than situating it in the center. Thinking of his designs as rural villas, Notman didn't hang any façade out to dry. Because they would be viewed from every angle, most of his houses are finished on each side. This means that one can often seen several different sorts of plans and facades in each house. A back projection, for instance, automatically creates an L-shape, while a long side façade creates a rectangular block. Italianate houses have two conflicting thrusts, verticality and horizontality. For Notman, being a good designer, it was important that these harmonized well. Every time you raised a tower, creating vertical thrust, it had to be counter balanced by a horizontal thrust, which in his case usually took the form of low servant wings. Looking at a comparative drawing of the villas we have examined (Fern Hill excepted, as it follows Upjohn's double tower plan) we can see the block arrangement clearly. Below is a comparative drawing of six of Notman's designs.

It's not only Notman's plans which express his unique style. A look at any of his houses shows a pretty consistent grammar of ornament. Most Notman houses include these features:

-Stone façade, usually of colorful fieldstone with simple brownstone trim (and quoins)

-Large emphatic arches, often in porches

-Renaissance balustrades, harmonizing with high style expectations

-Triple windows and entrances; while this is characteristic of many Italianates, Notman takes it to an
 extreme

-Very thin ironwork porches with concave wooden awnings, historically painted with stripes

-Large overhanging eaves with simple beam brackets, sometimes in double rows

Basically, while Notman leaves the façade as simple as possible with little carving and ornamentation, porches and other elements are made as dramatic as possible. For instance having a heavy emphatic tent roof over a visually diminished porch support makes it seem like it is a real floating awning. Huge arches, broad eaves, and clunky brackets draw emphasis to the center and top of the house, directing the eye to focal points, since it isn't distracted by window ornament.

I hope you enjoyed this post. You should now be able to clearly spot a house by Notman or influenced by him. Make sure to visit the ones you can; many of them are open to the public. Leave a comment and vote for your favorite Notman villa!

'Fieldwood' the Richard Stockton Field House, Princeton, NJ

'Fieldwood', Princeton, NJ. 1853-5 All Photos: HABS

Perhaps John Notman's largest home (now) in Princeton is the house built for Richard Stockton Field, a descendant of a major colonial family in the town. After use and adaptation by Princeton University (as Guernsey Hall), it is currently condos. A unique feature of the plan for this Italinate house is its squarishness. When seen from above, it forms a massive cube (partly because of extensions when it was given to the university). Yet, although it was originally more rectangular, unlike the cube form of the symmetrical plan, Notman freely plays with each of the facades, forming a unique profile on each side. Each façade is distinctive enough, it's difficult to identify the house's main façade, which is more traditional in appearance than the others. As contrasted with the drawing above, the house has gone through some changes, especially the replacement of spindly iron porches by massive stone versions. The principal façade, as seen in the top two pictures, has the form of a typical irregular plan house in an L-shape, although, in line with other Notman plans, the tower is placed to the side rather than highlighted in the center of the design as we expect with the irregular plan. The ornamentation is spare and the walls are typical local stone in a variety of mottled colors with sandstone and plaster trim. The fine classical details, flared wooden awnings, and grand arched entry porch, and Renaissance balustrade are in harmony with his other designs. It seems that the iron porch, seen in the watercolor, was replaced in the early 20th century by a stone portico based on the entrance portico. The presence of a two story bay pavilion on the left hand façade gives the front a chamfered look, an appearance emphasized by the original iron porch.

Going clockwise, the façade to the left of the main façade has been drastically altered. As seen in the upper image, it originally had one projecting bay with a wrapping iron porch. Later, the house was extended to by a matching bay (though note the architects did not continue the brackets on the chimney cornices). The porch was removed and the central bay of each bay window was destroyed by chimneys. A new turn of the century sun porch was added.

The back façade of the house has likewise been altered. Originally, it was designed as  pavilion plan façade with calculated asymmetry in the presence of a be-awned bay window on the right side. The porch is a particularly interesting example of a rustic post and beam Italian design; I like it much more than the pompous stone porch that currently is on the façade.

The final side, lying to the right of the main entrance is the pedestrian service façade. It is cleverly hidden by Notman by the presence of the frontal tower. It's not particularly common to have a house so picturesquely finished in the round, but Fieldwood is a fine example of an architect playing with multiple façade formations. Each façade is asymmetrical; the front has its tower and right hand pavilion. The lefthand façade had a projecting bay on the right side. The back façade, despite its symmetrical composition again emphasizes the right with its bay window. The right hand façade from the front is weighted to the left with the tower. In each section, Notman creates a series of focal points that interlock and diminish the staid symmetrical possibilities of the design.

The house's most amazing feature (at this point I really wish it were not a private residence), is the octagonal stair hall with a wrapping staircase worthy of Mannerist Italy topped by a dome and decorated with neo-Classical plaster roundels. The walls are beautifully stuccoed that is scored like stone and the landing is supported by the odd fans seen in Prospect House. Clearly, this was a Notman thing. For its period, this staircase is one of the most beautiful and sophisticated interior designs. You can see it below in more HABS images.

'Prospect House' the Thomas F. Potter House, Princeton, NJ

'Prospect House', Princeton, NJ. 1851

Prospect House is probably Notman's greatest surviving masterpiece of residential design, and fortunately Princeton University has preserved it inside and out beautifully (if you happen to be in Princeton, just walk in and take a look, it's open). It was built in 1851 for Thomas F. Potter, a South Carolina merchant who relocated to Princeton. The university, which grew up around the house, acquired it in 1878 as the president's house; it is currently a faculty dining club, which occasioned a large modernist addition on the back. Designed the same year as Alverthorpe, one can see many of the same influences here, though Prospect House is far less elaborate. It follows the pavilion plan with a tower to the side (the opposite side from Alverthorpe) with a side wing to the left fronted by an iron porch with tent roof. The same materials, local stone with brownstone quoins and trim, feature on this house.

In Prospect House, Notman opted for a lower two story plan and banished the tall gables, removing much of the verticality and giving the house a strong horizontal focus. In many ways Notman inverts his decisions for Alverthorpe here. The front of the house is all about triple windows in both the side and central bays, rectangular on the first floor and arched on the second. The front entrance is surrounded by a weighty English-looking port cochere with rusticated stone, panels, double s scroll brackets, and a Renaissance balustrade. The original shutters have been unfortunately painted over, but were recessed in the deep window casings. Note the appropriate way the painted wooden details match the stone! In the primary cornice, Notman again used a double row of brackets, giving the house a top heavy weighting. The tower, deeply integrated into the plan without a strong projection, has interestingly only one rather than triple windows (inversion!) with balconies and a stronger entablature than the rest of the house. Note that the wooden awning on the bay window is supported by iron brackets. The porches on Prospect House follow what we have come to expect from Notman with lacy designs (gothic on the left and wing) and tent roofs. The left hand service wing is connected by a hyphen dramatized by the iron porch, making it look like a separate building only incidentally connected to the house.

The interiors are well worth a look for the fine preservation. Of note is the central hall with a circular oculus that reveals a (later) stained glass skylight. It was probably clear. The entrance hall has niches and etched glass windows. The finishes inside are very impressive, with delicate plaster moldings, fine gilded light fixtures, and strange plaster fans. The small room at the base of the tower has a full circular ceiling. Another room has a concave ceiling. The stairs have a barrel vault. Notman clearly was having fun. The finest treasure to the house is the restored faux graining on the dado, which simulates inlaid wood. Take a look at the plans below of the first floor.