Going "Dutch": On the Origins of the Ubiquitous Gambrel Roof "Colonial" House

Syracuse, NY. 700 Allen Street (corner of Clarke St). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016

Syracuse, NY. 122 & 120 Concord Place. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016

Syracuse, NY. 250 Cambridge . Photo: Samuel D. Gruber

Syracuse, NY. 100 block of Fellows Ave. two versions of the gambrel roof "Dutch Colonial" house, one showing its gable to the street; the pother its shed dormer. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016

Going "Dutch": On the Origins of the Ubiquitous Gambrel Roof "Colonial" House
by Samuel D. Gruber

In my Westcott Neighborhood in Syracuse, and in many other areas of the city and inner suburbs developed in the early 20th century, one of the most notable house types is the so-called Dutch Colonial Revival House, with its distinctive gambrel roof.  I'm often asked the origins of this house type, with the interlocutor hopeful of some telling historical anecdote. Alas, the history and popularity of the form has less to do with early American history than more modern American marketing. 

There is nothing Dutch about the house and it has nothing to do with Dutch heritage. As Daniel Rieff, in his Houses from Books: Treatises, Pattern Books, and Catalogs in American Architecture, 1738-1950: A History and Guide (University Park, PA, Penn State university Press, 2000) has pointed out: "Although the house type was recognized as not found in Holland—while common enough in England —for better or for worse, this house type must be called “Dutch Colonial,” as it has been for more than ninety years."

Architects had been playing with the gambrel roof for houses since the 1880s, when they were common elements in shingle style houses. There were also some examples beginning around 1900 of the gambrel roof associated with "Colonial" elements  In 1907, the type with a long shed dormer (rather than several discrete dormers) was defined as "Dutch" and presented by architect Aymar Embury II in a house he designed for a Garden City competition. The next year he popularized the house type in an article in International Studio (August 1908), “Modern Adaptations of the Dutch Colonial,” and in 1913 he published a book, The Dutch Colonial House: Its Origin, Design, Modern Plan, and Construction (1913), which forever established both type and  name. It became  popular throughout the United States but it is possible that after Embury's designation it had a special appeal in New York State because of local (but not in Syracuse) Dutch history. 

Syracuse, NY. 122 Concord Place. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016

Dutch Colonial House as described and illustrated in Loizeaux, Classic Houses of the Twenties, "Which Style of Home?"

Design 5-A071. Robert T. Jones, ed. Small Homes of Architectural Distinction (1929).. Photo: from Rieff, p. 211

In plan, however, the house differed little from the even more common gable roof house, popularly dubbed Colonial, though in many of the Dutch designs the construction of the second floor (bedrooms) and attic were conflated. The gambrel roof - where each roof slope is broken into two jointed parts, allowed for more head room on the topmost story, in what otherwise might have been an attic.  In the larger versions, where the  house had two full stories and then a gambrel roof, the third story became more usable space - with high ceilings and more light.

In the Westcott neighborhood, the Dutch style is especially evident on the one-block long Concord Place which was mostly developed in the years between 1900 and 1914. A big house at 116 Concord has a gambrel cross-gable, and there is a similar house at 120 Concord.   At the east end of the street even Arts and Crafts architect Ward Wellington Ward adapted the Dutch style in 1910 for the main wing of the Tuck House, at 126 Concord Place, one of his early houses in the neighborhood. 

Syracuse, NY. 116 Concord Pl. (c. 1900). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016

Syracuse, NY. 120 Concord Place. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016

Syracuse, NY. 126 Concord Pl. Ward Wellington Ward, architect (1910). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016

Even in the teens, the gambrel roof was also being employed in more modest designs such as the New Eden and Tucson house models in the Aladdin Built in a Day House catalog of 1917. These houses derive from the simple gable-front "homestead" house that was come on small farms and more rural lots, but also was an easy-to-built starter home for a family of modest means living on a city street. Slightly more robust versions of these homes can be found throughout the Westcott Neighborhood, including 712 Lancaster Ave. and 115 Clarke Street. 

The New Eden Aladdin Built in a Day House Catalog, 1917

The Tucson. Aladdin Built in a Day House Catalog, 1917
 

Syracuse, NY. 712 Lancaster Ave.  Built after 1908. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

Syracuse, NY 115 Clarke St. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2011

In the 1920s the Dutch Colonial design was a very popular variant of new Colonial Revival architecture, especially in the expanding urban and suburban development area where single family homes were promoted. The two-story version was favored by proponents of well-design small homes, and many examples were featured in widely circulated manuals and books of house designs during the 1920s. In the first three decades of the 20th century  the so-called Dutch design was a popular one in various building catalogues.

According to Daniel  Rieff 

Soon versions of it could be found in mail-order-house company offerings. Aladdin’s attractively designed “The Lancaster,” “a Dutch Colonial type and one of the most truly artistic Aladdin homes,” is depicted in its 1915 catalog. Perhaps reflecting its relative newness as a type, the copy notes that “The Lancaster [is] an original design from the Aladdin architects.” It immediately became a popular type. “The Verona,” a gambrel-roofed house of this type available from Sears between 1918 and 1926, was another attractive version, with a surprisingly sumptuous living room twenty-seven feet long, made all the more appealing in the 1918 catalog by the rich color plates used to illustrate it. 

...Fourteen [Dutch Colonial Homes] were included in the 1929 compendium Small Homes of Architectural Distinction: A Book of Suggested Plans Designed by The Architects' Small House Service Bureau, Inc., edited by Robert T. Jones, “technical director” of the Bureau. ...Sears offered thirteen or fourteen models of so-called Dutch Colonial houses between 1918 and 1937.

The Verona. Sears Built Modern Homes (1918 catalog), 32. Photo: From Rieff color plate IX

In The Books of A Thousand Homes (Vol. 1), compiled by Henry Atterbury Smith and first published in 1923 by the home Owners Service institute, there are many examples of Dutch Colonial designs. Vol 1 is reprinted as a Dover edition with the new title 500 Small Houses of the Twenties (Dover, 1990). 

For further reading:

Reiff, Daniel D. Houses from Books: Treatises, Pattern Books, and Catalogs in American Architecture, 1738-1950: A History and Guide (University Park, PA, Penn State University Press, 2000. 
 

Smeins, Linda, 1999. Building an American Identity: Pattern Book Homes & Communities (Altamira Press, 1999).

 

The Most Beautiful Houses: North McBride Street

Syracuse. NY. 306 North McBride Street. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Syracuse. NY. 306 North McBride Street. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Syracuse. NY. 304 North McBride Street. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Syracuse. NY. 306 North McBride Street. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

The Most Beautiful Houses: North McBride Street
by Samuel D. Gruber

Syracuse. NY. 306 North McBride Street. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Few would disagree that the late 19th-century Queen Anne style is the most intricate and ornamental of all the popular residential architectural styles that came and went during the 19th-century. We call that period the Victorian era - though why I am not sure - since we are in America, not the UK.  Perhaps it is better to think of the decades after the Civil War as the Gilded Age, a name that refers to the ostentatious display of wealth of the elite - the one percent of the day. The term was first applied by historians in the 1920s (another period of rampant materialism), inspired by Mark Twain's satiric tale The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, first published in 1873. But the term also aptly refers to the delicate decoration (more cake icing than gold leaf)  that adorned so many houses built from the 1870s until the Depression of  the 1890s, after which there was a widespread embrace of Renaissance and Classical motifs in architecture and throughout the visual arts.

Syracuse was once filled with houses in the Queen Anne style with a full display of ornate wrap-around porches, turrets and towers, and all sorts of decorated doorways, windows, dormers and every shape of roof.  Variations of these elements are sometimes called "stick style" or "Eastlake-inspired," due to the abundance use of machine-turned wooden deocrative spindled, raisl, brackets and other elements. It was all part of the same fashion; one that also filled these house interiors with alcoves and niches, chock-a-block with the plentiful ornamental nick-knacks that delighted the consumer world of the 1870s and 1880s, and left that era's heirs awash in bric-a-brac.  

Plentiful examples of the style once lined West Onondaga Street, Danforth Street, the Walnut Park area, the Westcott Neighborhood, and elsewhere. To my mind, some the prettiest and best preserved (restored) Queen Anne houses are a surviving pair of houses on the east side of the 300 block of North McBride Street, on the western edge of the Hawley-Green National Register Historic District (designated 1979). There were built in the early 1880s and renovated in 1981-82. Their restoration, soon after the designation of the District, helped spark renewed interest in the history and architecture of the area. 

 Syracuse, NY. 300 block of N. McBride Street (middle left). Detail from

Atlas of the city of Syracuse, Onondaga County, New York  (New York : J.W. Vose & co., 1892).

Both houses are especially noteworthy for their applied decoration - the wooden porches and window frames that give the otherwise boxy buildings expansive and visually stimulating appearances. They were restored with the woodwork painted in bright colors. The two houses were sold in 2015 and I see that some work is taking place on 306 now, and I hope this will not mar the house's appearance.

Number 304, built for real estate agent Edward Townsend, is a wood-frame clapboard-covered house with much stick style ornament and a noteworthy sunburst design in the roof gable. Next door, the brick #306 was built for Alfred E. Lewis, an executive at the Syracuse Saving Bank. The building houses the feminist bookstore My Sister's Words from 1987 until 2003. 

Both houses are fronted with porches with gazebos. A former carriage house which may have belong to one of these houses or another now demolished structure, is situated in the back, at 306 ½ North McBride Street, and has been renovated with two residential units. The noted architect Archimedes Russell has been suggested as the designer of both houses, but there is no confirming evidence. A third house at the north end of the row has been demolished, as well as two other large houses across the street. 

 

Syracuse. NY. 304 North McBride Street. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Syracuse. NY. 306 North McBride Street. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

Other fine and well-preserved examples of the Queen Anne style can be found at 405 Hawley Avenue and 701 Lodi Street, but in addition to those on North McBride, the most impressive houses in the style are along the 200 block of Green Street. On the other side of James Street 500 and 714 North McBride are note worthy houses of the 1890s. More on these in another post.
 

Variety of form and especially building profile as well as the use of vivid color were hallmarks of the Queen Anne style. Sadly, most reminders of the gaiety of time are in sepia or black and white and it it often hard to imagine the that despite the sometimes haze of coal smoke, the 19th-century was a color-mad time. What Lewis Mumford dubbed the "Brown Decades" were not, in fact, always so brown.  

Syracuse. NY. 306 1/2 North McBride Street. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

It Pays to Look Up: Typical House Gables in Syracuse

It Pays to Look Up: Typical House Gables in Syracuse

One of the best arguments for the creation and protection of neighborhood conservation and preservation districts in cities such as Syracuse is to maintain something of the variety in texture, shape and form that creates a visually rich and stimulating environment for walking and living. In modest neighborhoods like the late 19th and early 20th century "streetcar suburbs" around where I live on the Eastside (similar neighborhoods can be found in other parts of the city) visual variety was obtained - and has been maintained - in a few ways. For those that could afford it there were individualized houses, and in Syracuse these include the many Arts & Crafts styles houses building in the teens and 20s of the last century.



Most people, however, built or bought pattern-made houses with ready made parts available from the many building supply companies that produced house catalogs from which patrons and builders could chose. The result was that on a given street and in a given neighborhood there was a limited number of basic forms for houses built at a particular time, but almost infinite detail in the selection and arrangement of details including windows size, type and placement; siding materials and size; location of bays, doors and other openings; and the detailing of rooflines, eaves, dormers and gables.

In a city like Syracuse, where snow and rain are always an issue, pitched roofs and good gables are essential (and those modern and contemporary architects how have opted for flat roofs have caused much anguish in the last half-century to building owners). High pitched roofs also provide ample attics, and these attics often get decorative windows.

The result is a visually rich experience for any neighborhood walker who bothers to look. Changes in houses over almost a century have created additional variations - some good, but unfortunately in recent years - mostly bad. Details have been stripped off, vinyl siding has often covered the original varied patterns of clapboards and shingles, and standardized windows have replaced more detailed originals. Still, there is much to see.

Yesterday was a sunny winter day and I decided to walk from my house on Clarke Street off Westcott Street down to the new Center of Excellence, which was hosting tours and an open house. I had my camera and along the way I photographed many of the house gables I passed on the east side of Westcott Street and Columbus Avenue, and the north side of East Fayette and East Genesee Streets.

None of these streets are in historic districts and none benefit from protective design overlays. These neighborhoods would be described as mostly poor or lower middle class, and not all the houses are well maintained. But many are, and others have been rehabbed in recent years by housing not-for-profits. Some of these projects have maintained original buildings features, others have stripped them away with gusto.

My message is that when the ice and snow on the pavements are shoveled and you to look up instead of where you are walking - do so. The gables around Syracuse are one of the many features that contribute to our livable neighborhoods. My neighborhood is celebrated for its economic, racial and ethnic diversity. It is also an attractive place for its visual diversity - and that is something we must maintain. Its usually not an issue of cost - but of awareness and sensitivity. Typically people homeowners who live in the neighborhood do their best to keep them looking nice and to protect the building details. But its the absentee landlords - of whom there are many - that strip away the beauty and variety of our neighborhoods - and our city. The big urban good can come from paying attention to little urban details.