The Brewster-Burke House, Rochester, NY and the William H. Glenny House, Buffalo, NY

The Brewster-Burke House, Rochester, NY. 1849 Photo: Bill Badzo

Photo: Wikimedia

These two houses in upstate New York, miles away from Henry Austin and New Haven, are shockingly similar to the Willis Bristol house and are examples of the Indian Italianate that Austin introduced. In the case of the first house pictured, the Brewster-Burke house in Rochester, the architect is thought to be Merwin Austin, the brother of Henry Austin. Thus, family connections allowed Indian Italianate to spread to upstate New York to Rochester, a city with many ties to Connecticut. It is likely that Merwin saw what Henry was doing with the Bristol house and decided to emulate the design for Henry R. Brewster, a real estate speculator, banker, and grocer, in 1849, four years after the Bristol house was built. It was constructed in the Corn Hill neighborhood in Rochester, an affluent district which, although somewhat damaged by time, is one of the earliest success stories in preservation history. The second house, the William H. Glenny house I am less sure about. The image comes from A Picture Book of Earlier Buffalo (1912) but not much more is said about the house. Given it's proximity to Rochester, it is possible that Merwin Austin or perhaps a follower might have copied the design of the Brewster or Willis house likely around the same time in the early 1850s. Glenny was a prominent merchant. 

Both houses are much alike. They are both symmetrical plan houses that have a very similar massing finished with scored stucco. The cornices have paired brackets but no entablature, as in the Bristol house. They each borrow different things from the Bristol house's design and add their own elements. The Brewster-Burke house has a chhattri porch with a scalloped ogee arch and quatrefoils cut out in the spandrels. The brackets are oversized and are an s and c scroll shape with interesting spirals cut out. Candelabra columns are also included, but these are far more angular and have deep fluting that make them look like grass bundles. The windows have lintels with simple triangles. A monitor caps the roof and a long wing to the side has a porch that mimics the central porch. The house ends in a structure with three pointed Gothic arches, that served as a summer kitchen and carriage house according to the plans, demonstrating the stylistic link some theorists of the period found between Indian and Gothic architecture. Throughout the house has ironwork balconies on the windows, while the main porch has a fantastic wooden balcony with exotic finials on the posts. The side seems to have had a porch that was as fantastic as the main porch with carved ornament, but this has disappeared along with an exceptional fence, pictured below from HABS. The house was threatened many times with demolition but has been saved mostly intact, despite some losses. 

The Glenny house in Buffalo has been demolished, though I do not know when. Unfortunately, the porch in the image is completely obscured by foliage, but I imagine it is a chhattri porch similar to the other examples of this type that looks like it might have a goofy tent roof. The house appears to be stucco and have a monitor. What this house does that the Brewster-Burke house does not is emulate the exterior lambrequins and tracery of the Bristol house, a quirky but lovely quality. It seems much less expansive than the Brewster-Burke house, lacking side porches and additions. Both these houses are great examples of the westward diffusion of architectural styles from the eastern US and they represent fascinating examples of Indian Italianate. The following pictures from various sources illustrate the Brewster-Burke house, which remains a National Register landmark.

The back of the Brewster-Burke house. Photo: Wikimedia

Photo: Bill Badzo

The following photos are selected from HABS which has many more images.

The Wing-Williams House, Albany, NY

The Wing-Williams House at 284 State Street in Albany was built in 1860 according to this site. The plaque on the house may read differently though. That teaches me for not taking a better photo of the plaque although it was hot, and I had already spent close to four hours tooling around the Albany Rural Cemetery, a must visit when going through the Capital Region. Albany has one of the most intact neighborhoods of Italianate row homes, the Center Square district, I've seen outside of Cincinnati. The Italianate seen in Albany is characterized by incredibly ornate and complex cornices and sculptured hood moldings with generous amounts of incised Eastlake decoration and trim. Also characteristic are large box windows overhanging entrances. This house, however, does not display these features.

This house instead tries to create a sense of grandeur that separates it from the more elaborate styling of the typical Albany row house, looking more toward Anglo-Italianate Renaissance precedents which formed the basis of many of the great brownstone mansions appearing on New York's Fifth Avenue than the vernacular American precedents of other nearby homes. Still the house has features that separate it from the strict Anglo-Italianate style of the Athenaeum in Philadelphia. The house, like the Albert house in Baltimore is a five bay row house and has a recessed bay in the center. Starting at the base, the rusticated stonework of the basement follows the segmented arch curve of the basement windows with paneled carved keystones. Thus the basement story has an undulating effect as its line curves along with the windows; a traditional Renaissance design doesn't employ such variations on the straight horizontal divisions between floors. The window treatments are also odd; the hood moldings don't conform to traditional curved or pointed pediments but instead have an raised vertical projection in the molding that interrupts its flow over the first floor's segmented arched and the second floor's round headed windows. This is the flat-topped trefoil arch so characteristic of the 1860s and 70s. The little finials on the sill flanking the window, suggesting a continuous surround, are also strange. These variations on the Renaissance scheme are influences from the Albany vernacular.

Similarly the cornice, like the hood moldings, has variations from the norm. The brackets and molding mostly follow Anglo-Italianate ideas, however, pairs of brackets at the corners of the side bays descend lower than the other brackets, creating a variation that defines the facades sections, but also departs from Renaissance form. The frieze is paneled in a vernacular way, and beneath the frieze are small guttae (or drops) running the length of the entablature and softening the line. Many Albany row houses use drops to enliven an entablature's line. The door is a fanciful creation, with cable molding, a centered cartouche and the segmented arch breaking the horizontal cornice line. The central window is divided in two, almost in the Venetian manner, but where the round window should be between the two arched windows is a dense swag of foliage. Below I have a detail shot of the door.