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.

The James F. Baldwin and Barzellai N. Spahr House, Columbus, Ohio

The James F. Baldwin House, Columbus, OH. 1853

The Barzellai N. Spahr House, Columbus, OH. 1873.

Built 20 years apart and standing at opposite edges of the East Town Street Historic District, these two five bay plan houses make an interesting pair. The Baldwin house, above, is the earlier and more elaborate of the two. It features a brick façade with exceptional moldings over the windows that consist of a segmental arch, blind, with foliate carvings and panels under an engaged triangular pediment. The cornice has a heavy architrave molding with paired brackets separating windows under a run of dentils. These brackets are rather unique, since most of their surface is flat with a rope molding, and only toward the top of the bracket do they curve out into a very sharp s curve with a finial at the end. The porch might be a later addition; the ironwork balcony over the front door, on the other hand, looks original, and the door may have featured a balcony resting on brackets. Finally, we have the low monitor/cupola with much bolder brackets. But a unique feature here is that the square windows feature wooden, pierced cut outs that give the windows the appearance of having concave corners. I actually really like the paint scheme on this house. It's very similar to those I see in my article on paint schemes illustrated in a book of the period.

The Spahr house, built for a reverend, is 20 years later, but not drastically different. Unfortunately, this house has suffered from some remodeling in the 1920s, with a new porch and very odd windows (18 over 18!). It looks to me that what once might have been more elaborate hood moldings have been cut down to flat forms, something that was all the rage in the early 20th century, perhaps as a way of reducing ornament. But the house does retain its paneled cornice with double s scroll brackets.

A third house of note is at 124 S Washington Street, a little ways from E Town. It is currently the Replenish Spa Co-op. One of the few houses we have seen that has its original porch, the delicacy of the details sets it apart. The house is also five bays, but the central bay sticks out from the façade and has a gable. The windows have engaged pediment moldings with Eastlake designs, resting on sculptural brackets. The central window in the gable is rounded with an eared surround. The cornice type is fringed, as it features a very fine trefoil fringe running as the architrave underneath the rotated s scroll brackets. This fringe is repeated on the gothic arch gingerbread in the gable, surrounded by fine jigsaw work of stars and rinceaux. The porch repeats these same decorative features, a fringe, which looks more Moorish than Gothic below, which runs under the gable and atop the posts. The brackets here have francy rinceauz on the sides and are elongated. Although I do not know anything about the house, it is definitely a product of the late 1860s or early 1870s.

The Millar-Wheeler House, Utica, NY

The Millar-Wheeler House, Utica, NY. 1866

Photo: Wikimedia

The Millar-Wheeler house is a spectacular Italianate on Genesee Street in Utica built in 1866. Following the increasing trend for elaboration found in the 1860s and 1870s, the house displays an interesting combination of complex ornament and simplicity in wall treatment. The house is a symmetrical plan Italianate, but it verges on the central tower plan because the cupola has been pushed to the front of the house and simulates a tower because the central bay slightly projects. The treatment of the windows is simple, with plain window molding surrounds topped by pediments.

The real treat on this house is the carpentry. The porch construction is particularly eye-catching. The porch itself around the arched door features not only paneled columns, but an elaborate dentilled and bracketed cornice, and an interesting open arch spanning the interior of the porch arches. Above is a five bay, half octagonal, sengmental arched window that shows the same elaborate ornament. In all cases, the design features turnings and cut out designs (fleur de lys, cartouches, quatrefoils) that create the built-up, carved look seen on a lot of houses in the 60s. The cupola itself continues the elaborate design with tombstone windows, Corinthian pilasters, and thick brackets. Small embedded pediments are on each side of the tower cornice. The main cornice of the house, which has s curve brackets, is of the horizontal type but there is an interesting feature where the third floor windows that are in the entablature are flanked by brackets and have a free floating fringe hanging over them, like a truncated wooden awning. There is also a simple side porch on the left hand facade. The house is currently a bed and breakfast called Rosemont Inn, and pictures of some of the interior can be found here.

The James Dwight Dana House, New Haven, CT

The James Dwight Dana House, New Haven, CT. 1849

The James Dwight Dana house on New Haven's Hillhouse Avenue, represents another important example of Indian Italianate by Henry Austin that does not follow the Bristol house plan. Built in 1849 for Dana, a celebrated natural history professor, the house breaks with what we have seen by following the side hall plan. The house is finished in stucco scored to look like stone, and has no window surrounds to speak of. The real pleasure in this house is the exotic detail. Starting from the porch, we can see the candelabra columns that are the most often encountered, with an 'urn', lotus bus, fluted shaft, and dripping echinus. The plinths of the columns are elaborate on the Dana house, with chamfered corners and spiked tops, adding an even greater touch of variety. The porch balustrade is also interesting with hardly describable balusters that almost look Art Nouveau. The tops of the columns are repeated inside the porch and look like stange inciples hanging down. Note the odd window tracery (almost Queen Ann) and the etched glass on the door. The tracery particularly reflects the designs at the Bristol house.

The cornice is also delightful. Although the house lacks brackets, this is made up for by the fringe design that runs around the house. The fring has free-form horshoe arches with balls at the end, simulating tassels. There are steps in the brick to suggest an architrave and frieze. A wing juts out to the north, which is enlivened by a shallow bay window and an odd decorated oriel in the corner. On both window protrustions, there is a similar fringe and trefoil motif. The back of the house has an very strange corner bay with fish scale shingles or tiles that is pierced by windows. I'm not really sure what to say about that except that its cool. The cupola on the roof, which is very hard to see from the street, is of a unique type that is almost entirely glass. It has dozens of small closely spaced windows in it without strong divisions and has scrolled supports. Looking at its spare design, it almost looks modernist and recalls the Metripolitan Opera in New York. A comparison with Austin's drawing from Yale University, shows many variations. There is no cresting on the porch roof, and the north wing is not included. The following pictures illustrate some of the aspects up close and include interior shots and plans from HABS.

Austin's original plan above.

 The HABS plan.

The Interior:



The interior is rather simple. The s-curve newel post can be found on several of Austin's houses. There appears to be etched glass in some of the windows.

The Charles Brearley House, Trenton, NJ

The Charles Brearley House, Trenton, NJ. 1855 Photo: Wikimedia

Photo: National Parks Service

The Brearley house is a fine Italianate in Trenton, NJ, a city with many architectural treasures that are in need of upkeep. Fortunately this house is well taken care of. It was built in 1855 for Charles Brearley, the president of Greenwood Pottery. His widow later sold the house to the Catholic diocese, and today it serves as the headquarters of the Mt. Carmel Guild, a charitable organization who maintains the property. The house is also fortunate to be well recorded photographically by the National Parks Service.

The house is a three story symmetrical plan villa with a very shallow hip roof. Interestingly, the full third story is unusual for this type of home, and the house appears much taller than other symmetrical homes. The house is cube like, with simple porches featuring trefoil arches on both sides of the house. The façade is stuccoed but not scored. The front of the house features paired windows on the first two stories; the first floor has flat top windows with a common pediment joining them, while the second story has paired tombstone windows that have eared surrounding moldings. The third story is differentiated from the other two by a belt course with fringed drops and triple arched windows. This gives the house a Romanesque appearance, a style which is often alluded to in Italianate houses, especially earlier ones. The triple windows simulate the arcades of Romanesque, and the fringe recalls the drops seen on Romanesque buildings. The cornice mimics the belt course, being part of the fringe type with longer defining brackets clustered at the corners and around the third story windows. The central pedimented section projects and sparsely decorated pilasters define the corners of the central projection and the bays. The door is particularly fine; it is surrounded by a thick arch with brownstone carved panels inset into the frame. The panels and the capitals of the pilasters all feature the same floral motifs.

The picture above from NPS shows that the sides carry the same decorative treatment although the bay windows over the porch in the rear look like additions from the 1880s or 90s. The interiors as well seem to have been redecorated around this time, featuring aesthetic movement and Renaissance revival trim and designs. The pictures below, from the NPS, show the interior and some details.