'Alverthorpe' the Joshua F. Fisher House, Jenkintown, PA

 

'Alverthorpe' Jenkintown, PA. 1851
All Photos unless otherwise credited: HABS



Photo: Diary Sidney George Fisher

The Joshua Fisher house, known as Alverthorpe (frustratingly misspelled as Alvethorpe in HABS) was built in 1851 for a prominent Philadelphia merchant and general rich guy. He was well traveled (Grand Tour 1832) and gathered an impressive historical and art collection at his home. Drawings indicate Notman designed the house and the formal gardens, and it remains one of his most impressive designs. Fortunately HABS documented the house before it was unfortunately demolished in 1937. Notman went all out for this commission, choosing the pavilion plan as his base and adding a tower to the side as well as an extension wing with a gabled pavilion and a particularly fine wrought iron porch, one of the most impressive pieces of wrought iron I've seen from this period. As we expect, Notman never puts a tower where one expects. Resisting the urge to play with polygons here, Notman constructed a cube that is three stories rather than the typical two, making the house far taller than usual. This height is balanced by the service wing, which corrects the vertical with horizontal balance. The façade is they expected fieldstone with brownstone quoins and trim.

 

The detailing on this house is ambitious to say the least. On the principal façade, Notman has turned the first floor into a colonnade with pilasters between the triple windows on the first floor and a large semicircular portico with a full entablature and large brackets. The whole is topped with a Renaissance balustrade. The main entrance continued the glass wall of the first floor with large windows surrounding the main entrance (the first glass curtain?). While the window surrounds are simple on the second and third floors (triple windows in the center bay, single on the sides), each window has a balcony that gives it extra weight. The cornice features not one but two sets of beam brackets superimposed, making for  heavy cornice line. The tower is a sculptural masterpiece, with simple detailing on the lower floors that expands into rectangular triple windows with a heavy bracketed balcony above. The upper stage has triple arched windows with interesting brackets that curve out from the façade in a large c scroll, making it look like they almost organically grow from the masonry. Other interesting details are the porch on the right hand façade, which is an adaptation of a rustic Italian motif we will see at Fieldwood. The service wing with its gabled pavilion that has a triple arched window is especially charming, looking like a small monastery chapel. The wrought iron is amazing, as I already gushed. From the few interior views, one can see the house had an impressive amount of classical detailing. Coupled with the fine formal gardens, patios, urns, and sculptures, this house is the picture of a wealthy wonderland. All I can say is its a shame we can't enjoy this today.

 



'Hollybush' the Thomas Whitney House, Glassboro, NJ

'Hollybush', Glassboro, NJ. 1849 Photo: JasonW72

Photo: Wikimedia

The Thomas Whitney house, built in 1849 for Thomas Whitney, the owner of one of the most profitable glass companies in South Jersey (Glassboro!), cannot be perfectly identified with John Notman, but its early date coupled with its Notman-esque stylistic features means that if he didn't design it, he surely influenced it very heavily. I'm minded to say it is a Notman product. Whitney commissioned the house after a Grand Trip tour that included Italy; what better souvenir than a rustic Italian farmhouse? Unlike Notman's other houses, this follows a more straightforward, irregular plan. Perhaps the publication of Downing's Cottage Residences in 1842 with a similar plan encouraged Notman to use it. The use of local stone, probably at one point plastered, is a big Notman feature as well as gives the house the desired rustic Italian effect. The spare use of decoration is a typical characteristic of Notman and early Italianates. Here decoration is confined to the use of spindly ironwork for the porches with particularly oversized concave tent roofs and wooden awnings on iron brackets. Additionally, laciness is seen on the balconies. The overhang over the front door is a particularly beautiful and Notman feature. A highly elongated shallow gable is supported on three beams with interlacing arches; the whole rests on, you guessed it, spindly iron brackets, a rarity. The strangest feature of the house is the eave, which is far wider than any in a typical Italianate, and the eave inclines upward, as can be seen on the tower. This construction has the effect of reducing the visual impact of the beam brackets, making them almost invisible underneath the huge overhang.

The house was sold by the Whitneys in 1915 and promptly bought by what would become Rowan University as the president's house. It's well-known primarily because it hosted a Soviet-American summit in 1967 over the Six Day War. Interiors can be seen here.

Photo: Wikimedia

'Ellarslie', the Henry McCall House, Trenton, NJ

'Ellarslie' the Henry McCall House, Trenton, NJ. 1848

 

 

'Ellarslie' was built by John Notman in 1848 for Henry McCall, a military commander at the Battle of New Orleans and later a successful merchant. The house has gone through a variety of trials; in the 1880s, McCall's son sold the house and lands to Trenton to become Cadwalader Park. As the central building it the park, it became an ice-cream stand and later was stripped of its ornament to serve as a "monkey house" for a zoo exhibition. Restored in the 1970s, it is now the Trenton City Museum with an excellent collection of Trenton pottery products. As one of Notman's first Italianate residential designs that is relatively unaltered, it represents a significant example of his early work. The front of the house is typical of Notman's work, with a relatively flat façade of three broad bays. The entrance is in the center, surrounded by a huge arched porch, something few Notman houses are without, with simple panels and an interesting balustrade with circular piercing. The house is faced with stucco and has simple window surrounds. It lacks an entablature, but has typical early wide eaves and simple beam brackets. The roof is red painted lead, a design which suggests the style of Italian terracotta roofs.

The right façade and the back have more interesting volumes. On the right, we have a projecting gabled bay, a recessed central bay, and a large projecting chamfered bay. Most of this façade is covered by a spindly iron porch (beautifully restored) with a curving tent roof (painted here appropriately with stripes!). The back of the house resembles the irregular plan, although the tower is not placed as a focal point in the center but to the side. The projecting pavilion features an elaborate balcony, supported on oversized brackets like those at Riverside, that echoes the details on the front of the house. The tower has usual triple arched windows, but is enclosed in a simple and utilitarian service wing with several porches. Clearly this is not meant to be one of the house's vistas. It's rather interesting that Notman chooses not to use the tower as a frontal design element but hides it in an inconspicuous spot. This is a picturesque approach in that the tower always sticks out from the building, its base is unseen, floating over any façade you see.

The interiors of the house have been greatly altered by the removal of fireplaces and some walls, yet enough remains, including the staircase with an impressive convex ceiling, to give an idea of Notman's décor and design.

 

 

 

 

The First Italianate-'Riverside' the Bishop George Doane House, Burlington, NJ

'Riverside', Bishop Doane House, Burlington, NJ. 1839 All Photos: HABS

 

In thinking about the sources for the double tower plan by Richard Upjohn, a house that is often hailed as the country's "first Italianate" came to mind. Indeed, although I think the distillation of Italianate into the US was far from a simple process with any clear "first", it cannot be disputed that this house is one of the first. Built for an Episcopal bishop in 1839 who founded one of the US' first all girls boarding schools, it was designed to be the bishop's residence in Burlington, and was kept by the diocese until it was demolished in the 1950s tragically. Apparently, no one cared about saving a key monument in the history of 19th century architecture; the house is a major casualty of the low esteem for Victorian architecture in the mid-20th century. It was designed by John Notman, one of early America's greatest architects who constructed both some of the first Italianates as well as some of the first major academic Gothic buildings in the US. With building started in 1837, it does come first in the history of Italianate design.

The house does not follow exactly any of the plans that shape Italianate design throughout the 19th century. Notman was breaking new ground here and thus had less standard examples or published plan books to work from. Nonetheless, one can see elements of several different plans in the house and can trace the contours of more familiar shapes. If we look at the house head on and cover up the back, tall tower, we can see the root of the irregular plan with its deeply projecting pavilion, set back tower, and recessed wing. On the other hand, if we cut off the projecting pavilion and the recessed wing, we can see the outline of the double tower plan. Looking at the side of the house, to the left (lower elevation) we can see the general shape of the side tower plan. In effect, many of the familiar plans are all present in this house. The Italianate plan is like putting together a set of blocks, blocks which are symmetrical in form. If one takes the tower block, the pavilion block, the recessed wing block, one can make dozens of possible and stylistically appropriate shapes. Judging by the dictum "form follows function", the Italianate house offers all the possibilities for any kind of protuberance or room to be added as needed without violating the requirements of the style. The focus on the picturesque and asymmetrical allows the house's interior to be perfectly comprehensible from the exterior. Thus, it's able to balance both form and function effectively without picking one or the other. Looking at the plan, it seems that Notman started with a central block and then added wings as rooms were necessary, balancing all of his blocks to form a picturesque and varied whole.

Looking at the house as its own entity, without reading other designs in, there is a central long wing with a tall tower tower to the left side. In front of this block, there is a dramatic projecting pavilion, a shorter tower/wing (it appears as a tower from the front view but as a wing off the central block from the sides) where the entrance is located, and a low, one story wing to the right of the lower tower. The wings of the house give it a Greek cross shape. Decoration is spare on the house, appropriate to its early date. The walls are stuccoed and almost all rectangular with the exception of the triple arched windows in the tower. These triple arched windows are intimately associated with the upper stage of Italianate towers from this example. A triple window sits above the excessively wide, heavily molded arched door with an incredibly thick Renaissance style balcony with massive brackets. The projecting pavilion is enlivened by a full story bay window with a tent roof and Gothic diamond paned panels while the cornice has a wooden fringe running around it. The only other bit of decoration is the projecting wing on the back façade which features a bay window and Greek Revival pilasters. The simple cornice without any entablature has rafter brackets, simulating the rafters of Italian houses that project beneath the eave. Interestingly, despite being a country house, the house lacks the usual multiple windows with broad swaths of blank wall.

HABS has a few pictures of the interior with a simple staircase with iron spindles and a lotus shaped newel post, an impressive Gothic paneled room, and Greek Revival interior window surrounds.

The Jonathan Newton Harris House, New London, CT

The Jonathan Harris House, New London. 1859 CT Photo: Wikimedia

The Jonathan Newton Harris house in New London (130 Broad St.) was constructed in 1859-60 for a businessman and mayor of New London. After serving as a school in the 1890s, it became a church, which it functions as today. The house is clearly an example of Upjohn's double tower plan, as shown by the fenestration and the treatment of the entrance; however, it departs from the plan in the type of windows it employs, the height of the lower tower, and the detailing it uses. Perhaps more so than other examples of this plan, this house differs most in its details. Like the King house, it has the same distributions of windows, large windows on the first floor, on the second, double windows on the left hand tower, three windows on the right (here they are segmental arched), and on the third, triple arched windows. The central bay has two stacked recessed porches, the lower with a triple arched palladian form, the upper an arcade of three arches. The house lacks all of the wooden awnings and balconies of the King house. The façade is brick and the trim is extremely fine cut brownstone. The windows have engaged columns flanking the windows with Gothic arches over the round arched windows. Even the porch has its columns and balustrades in brownstone, a very expensive detail.

In general, this house is a unique combination of Gothic detailing on an Italianate form. While the first floor windows are pretty typically Italianate, the other windows on the house are divided in the manner of Venetian tracery with Gothic tracery forms throughout. Additionally, the gothic arches and columns, the front door, and the impressive three story bay window on the side continue with strong Gothic detailing. Other unique features are the low placement of the triple arched windows on the tower for the insertion of a small round window on the side and the extremely uncommon triangular window on the left façade. No doubt in the remodeling for the church, the Gothic details were seen as a sign that the house might serve an ecclesiastical function. The cornice as well is intriguing. Even though it is extremely narrow with closely spaced brackets, small windows repeat every other pair of brackets. Some of these are arched, other square, but they must be no taller than a foot. This makes their functionality rather dubious. Probably one of the finest examples of the plan with some of the most unique details, the house's impressive siting on a hill with a huge front yard gives it a suitably commanding presence on Broad Street.

The George Henry Corliss House, Providence, RI

The Corliss House, Providence, RI. 1875 Photo: Wikimedia

                                                                         Photos: HABS

The George Henry Corliss house in Providence was built in 1875 for a steam inventor and is an interesting example of the double tower plan. It's currently part of Brown University and houses two of the school's departments. This house shows the same tower variation as the King house, although the right hand tower does not project above the roofline. Nonetheless, the massing, square design, and verticality of the house make it a part of this plan with slightly projecting side masses and two tower like ends. The right hand facade, like the King house, has a projecting bay. In the Corliss house, this is represented by a three story bay window. The back of the house features a wing that really could be its own house and continues the design of the main body. Like the other houses I have noted in Providence, this one has the same Anglo-Italianate austerity, with a brick facing, and simple brownstone Renaissance details. The rectangular windows have simple eared moldings with hood moldings on the first two floors, while the third floor features segmental arched windows. The fourth floor of the tower has simple rectangular windows with fine Renaissance balconies. The entrance has a correct classical brownstone porch with paired Tuscan columns. The cornice has closely spaced Renaissance style brackets that surmount a simple cornice with dentils. A fine balustrade surrounds the entire top of the house, rounding out the building's European pretensions. Of all the houses on this blog, this is certainly one of the tallest and it's massive bulk really anchors this block, like the keep of a castle.

Photo: Wikimedia

The interior of the house was well documented in the following photos from HABS. Apparently, the Victorian decor was almost entirely intact when these photos were taken, and the house seems to be a particularly interesting example of interior trompe l'oeil decoration.