The Stephen H. Farnam House, Oneida, NY

The Stephen Farnam House, Oneida, NY. 1862 Photo: Doug Kerr

Photo: Carol

The Stephen Farnam house is well documented and perhaps one of the most impressive homes on Oneida's Main Street. The builder (1862), Stephen Farnam was a hardware store owner, bank president, and axe manufacturer. Subsequent owners included a suffragette and a botanist. The house seems to currently be a Dark Shadows themed bed-and-breakfast called Collinwood Inn, a fine use for a house like this. It seems the alleged haunting of the house has helped it as a business. As an architectural specimen, though, the house doesn't need any ghosts to make it worth exploring. The house follows the irregular plan, one of the fancier designs, though unlike other examples, the tower juts forth to be almost flush with the left hand projecting pavilion, which has a very shallow roof slope. The house has brick walls and excellent Oneida woodwork. The windows are mostly rectangular, though it looks like they were all segmental arched once, with simple open triangular pediments and keystones with Eastlake incised carving. The simple paneled cornice features s scroll brackets.

It's the dominance of the shouldered, pointed arch that makes this house interesting, as if the builder fetishized that shape and fit in in to give the composition unity. A shouldered arch is an arch where the curve of the arch is interrupted by a vertical projection; in this case that projection is pointed. It's a fascinating shape since it combines curves and straight angles together. The porch has rectangular openings but features the shouldered arch running inside these openings with jigsaw cut-outs, similar to the porch down the street at the Shoecraft house. The same shape unifies the triple arched windows at the top of the tower and is repeated again in the base of the tower cornice. Commendable in this house as well is the retention of both the concave roofs on the porch, bay windows, and tower along with the delicate crestings. Hopefully the house will have a nice long life.

The Walrath House, Oneida, NY

The Walrath House, Oneida, NY. 1866 Photo: Doug Kerr

Photo: Carol

The Walrath house, 1866, at 410 Main St. seems to have been a generational home for the Walrath clan, a family that includes civil servants and businessmen. This home is next to the Berry House posted previously. The house is a symmetrical plan villa with a brick facade and displays the fine woodwork that seems to be a vernacular characteristic of mid-19th century Oneida. I might say though, people in this town could try other colors besides white; there are so many more possibilities! The central bay projects (Oneida architects love the centralized emphasis) and features rectangular windows with stately pedimented and flat molding window surrounds. The central bay, however, contains some surprises. First off, on the second story there is a pair of tombstone windows, but surprisingly, they are segmental arched rather than round headed, causing the hood molded to intersect a little oddly. The porch itself is a tour de force of design with three arched bays that follow the triple arched palladian design, yet the central bay is unsupported by anything, with the arches terminating in rich finials. The lack of supports no doubt explains some of the sagging going on. The porch brackets themselves are a unique shape with a large c scroll with a smaller c scroll inside, making them look like claws. The cornice itself is paneled with inset windows that have an overlay with a very cool shouldered square (a shape where the corners of a square are rounded and there are rectangular protuberances at each long angle of the square). The brackets are of the s and c scroll type with strapwork. Perhaps what I like the most is the octagonal cupola, always an exciting change of pace. Here it has paired tombstone windows with a full cornice and brackets to match. Interior views can be seen here.

The George Berry House, Oneida, NY

The George Berry House, Oneida, NY. 1860 Photo: Carol

From: History of Chenango and Madison Counties

Built by George Berry, a significant legislator and businessman in Oneida, around 1860 and later home of Manford J. Dewey businessman, this house remains a grand addition to Oneida at 416 Main Street. Looking at the older illustration below, it seems the house has been shorn of its grand tent-roof cupola as well as the anthemion over the pediment, but for the most part it remains intact although in some disrepair. The house is a five bay plan and includes a strong projection in the center that forms a central emphasis. This house displays some high quality woodwork throughout. Over the windows, there are engaged, arched pediments (engaged means they don't go to the edge of the flat molding) resting on brackets. Beneath the hood molding is a series of wooden fringes that hang down providing some fun detail. The porch is typical Italianate with filleted corners, but above there is a charmingly small bay window with arched windows that is bracketed, pilastered, and topped by a tent roof. The cornice as well is of the bull's eye type with panels centered on circular windows and filled with cut-out strapwork. Along the base of the string molding is a series of leaves that form a little fringe. The brackets are of the double s scroll type with larger and smaller members. It seems unfortunately from this real estate listing that the missing decoration of the left hand cornice was never restored and merely boarded up rather callously. At least they didn't remove it all, I have to give them that. In the right hands, with the cupola back, this could look like new!

The Matthew J. Shoecraft House, Oneida, NY

The Shoecraft House, Oneida, NY. 1850. Photo: Onasil

Photo: Doug Kerr

This villa was built for Matthew J. Shoecraft, congressman and district attorney, at 260 Main St. in 1850 and makes up part of the Main-Grove-Broad Streets Historic District. The house is currently a funeral home. The house follows the symmetrical plan with paired windows and is white painted brick. The central pair of windows are tombstone windows, which distinguishes the bays central importance. The windows have flat hood moldings with little tufts of vegetation at the center. Additionally, the impressive entrance porch, which I personally like a great deal, adds to the house's central thrust. The porch has the usual complex "Renaissance" (at least they might have believed so) design with a filleted opening. However, inserted into this filleted opening is a broad arch resting on brackets that includes fantastic openwork jigsaw cut-outs in the spandrels. The house has s curve brackets that define the bays and pierce the run of elongated dentils in the cornice. Additionally, the cornice is a filleted, paneled type with interesting Greek Revival designs at the ends of each panel. Finally is one of my favorite features, the cupola with its central arched Venetian tracery window, flanked by two arched windows, that intrudes into the roofline.

Photo: Onasil

Photo: Onasil