The Hamilton-Richardson House, Janesville, WI

Hamilton Richardson House, Janesville, WI. 1871. Photo: Wikimedia

Photo: Wikimedia

This irregular plan house was built in 1871 for Hamilton Richardson, a very wealthy and successful businessman in Janesville. The house has been well restored and is currently the Guardian Angel Bed and Breakfast. It lacks the defining tower of the irregular plan houses, giving it a horizonta emphasis. The house is aggressively simple, with a facade of Wisconsin cream brick, arched windows with no surrounds but a ring of projecting bricks with stone keystones. Even the cornice is bracketless and simple. However, the house has its zany elements invested in its woodwork. First, the entrance portico features a bracket surround, where brackets define the doorway. In this case they are enormous c scrolls with strapwork and some exciting swoops on the ends. The porch as well (pictured below) has massive arches with delicate lattice supports. Overall, the house is very dignified.

Photo: Wikimedia

The William Tallman House, Janesville, WI

The Wm. Tallman House, Janesville, WI. 1857 Photo: Wikimedia

Photo: Cliff

Janesville, WI is a nice historic town with a great collection of Italianate homes. The most famous of these is the William Tallman house, currently a museum. Constructed in 1857 for William Tallman, a lawyer, and once had Abraham Lincoln as a guest. The house is imposing, partially because of its tall third floor divided between the wall and the cornice; it follows the symmetrical plan. The house, like many in Wisconsin, is faced with yellow/cream brick which is augmented by sandstone quoins at the corners. An interesting feature of this house is the work on the windows and details. The first floor has flat windows with deep, cast-iron brackets and moldings with vegetal fluff on top. The second floor has arched windows with Venetian tracery and iron drip moldings enlivened by leaf garlands. Additionally, the deep porch is beautifully carved with rococo foliage and rests on impossibly slender Corinthian/Indian candelabra columns; it also retains its balcony railing. The front door itself is interesting. It uses a traditional Federal design with a fanlight, but the fan is articulated with Goth trefoil tracery with further carving on the spandrels and moldings.

Especially impressive is the box window/conservatory on the left facade. The windows on this have a particularly Moorish flavor, with Venetian tracery that is further divided into a nine-foil design set inside horseshoe arches with elaborate Arabesque strapwork. We have looked at some houses with Moorish designs confined mostly to the Northeast; this is the most western house that displays this stylistic syncretism. The house is finished in the round; even the back porch is decorated with Greek palmettes. The cornice is paneled with chamfered panels and paired octagonal windows. The brackets are of the s and c scroll type and the whole is topped by a cupola with narrow grouped arched windows and a fantastic bulbous finial. This house is an exercise in eclecticism. In looking at its combination of Moorish, Gothic, Greek, and Rococo, it's apparent that the designer was interested in using the Tallman's money to express wealth through stylistic exuberance. Some views of the interior can be seen here. The photos below show more details and were taken by Cliff.

This photo: Wikimedia

The John Hart Whorton House, Appleton, WI

The John Hart Whorton House, Appleton, WI. 1875 Photo: bigcityal

This house was built in 1875 by John Hart Whorton, an important banker. It is an interesting example of the side tower plan, in that unlike other examples, the central recessed section is extremely short and the tower is unusually large. The tower is emphasized by the slightly projecting roof at the base of the top stage. Odd as well is the porch that runs across the entire front of the house, since in other examples the porch can only be found in the central facade section. The porch is also interesting for its long spans which are emphasized by the simple gingerbread. The facade is faced in yellow/cream brick which is a common feature in Wisconsin with brownstone highlights, creating a highly polychromatic effect. The windows are all arched, and the hood moldings consist of slightly projecting brick with brownstone keystones and finials. The style of this house, with its prevalence of arched windows, brick, and polychrome is sometimes called Lombardic, because it has a close affinity with the Romanesque architecture of the Lombards in Italy which was being publicized in the 19th century. So-called Lombardic ornament is of course just one of the many subsets of Italianate design.

The cornice on this house with its panels and s-curve brackets is particularly large, in keeping with the exaggerations in the plan and scale of other elements. Interestingly, the brackets do not continue around the base of the top stage of the tower, making it appear disconnected from the main house. Perhaps the best thing about the house, in my opinion, is how sensitively it is painted. The trim colors emphasize and harmonize with the colors of the stone and bricks of the facade, making the whole look like a consistent architectural unit. It is a testament to how a well painted Italianate can look.

The William and Frederick Vanderheyden House, Ionia, MI

The William and Frederick Vanderheyden House, Ionia, MI. 1879 Photo: Wikimedia

The Vanderheyden house in Ionia is one of the last houses I'll deal with in this town for a bit. The house is truly unique. It was built in 1879 for a father and a son, William and Frederick Vanderheyden and their separate families. The house is a double house, and everything is repeated symmetrically on each side, but the two houses share a front hall and front and back stairs. That is an oddity since even most family compound double houses feature separate stairs. With such a cozy shared space, one would hope father and son and their families got along well! When the father (William) died in 1910, his son used his half of the house as a library and office space.

The house follows the pavilioned plan, two symmetrical bays joined with a central porch. These bays are much shallower than those seen in typical pavilion plan houses. The yellow brick was made at the Vanderheyden's own brickyards, which shipped brick to many sites in the area and around Michigan. This type of yellow or ivory brick is a particularly upper Midwestern material and can be found in buildings in Wisconsin, upper Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, as well as other states. The Vanderheyden's thus advertised their own trade in the facing of their home. The house is relatively simple for its time. All the windows are arched with the expected thick stone hood moldings, although the depth of the arch varies. The basement is local rusticated sandstone, while the cornice is a simple affair of particularly long brackets, seen in other Ionia homes, and intervening runs of smaller brackets. The long brackets are used to define the façade sections. The house once featured an upper balustrade on the peak of the hip roof that has been removed. The porch is a particularly nice feature, echoing the polygonal shape of the bay windows and continuing the rhythm of the building. Note the delicate lattice work under the porch. The only asymmetrical aspects of the house seem to be the presence on the left of a side porch and of a bay window on the right. Perhaps father and son wanted some variation in their respective living wings. Although the color scheme may strike us as drab, it is probably appropriate to the period. The Victorians often chose the colors of stone, browns, tans, and grays, to simulate actual stone construction. The Vanderheyden house remains an interesting monument to the way generations of a family expressed themselves in a unified home.