Syracuse, NY. 623
Euclid Ave. (NW corner of Lancaster). Loomis
House, c. 1890. Photo: Samuel Gruber
Queen Anne (and Stick Style) Survivors on Syracuse's East Side
by Samuel D. Gruber
Not too long ago I posted about Italianate houses on the East Side, and mentioned that stylistically they lost popularity to the nascent Queen Anne Style in the 1870s, and to the related Shingle and Stick Style variations that continued to be built until the end of the 19th centuries as popular so-called Victorian houses. This styles, toward the end of their run in the 1890s, often combined with the Colonial Revival style to include Palladian windows, Ionic or Tuscan columnar porches and other classical elements mixed in with their still variegated roof lines, stairway stained glass, and vestigial corner towers.
Syracuse, NY. 106 Victoria Place. One of the four oldest houses on Victoria Place, built before 1892. It combines elements of several Late Victorian styles. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2011.
The Queen Anne style became fashionable
in the United States in the late 1870s. The style is often called
“Victorian” since it is the most recognizable and most visually
exciting of all the many 19th-century variations of 19th-century
domestic architecture – many of which are equally “Victorian”.
Queen Anne, refers specifically to houses that have all or some of
these characteristics: an irregular plan, asymmetrical form, hip,
multi-gabled roofs or a combination of roof types, towers, dormer
windows, stained glass windows, bay windows, turrets (small towers at
the corners of buildings), encircling porches, and tall chimneys with
decorative brick and shingle patterns are typical.
Part of the popularity of the Queen
Anne style was due to technological innovations that allowed
plentiful and relatively cheap lumber from the Upper Mid-West and
elsewhere to be mechanically cut into standard size and shapes, and
shipped by railroad across the country. Power saws, lathes and
drills allowed an almost limitless choice of decorative details.
These could be ordered out of an assortment of builder catalogs and
even general mail order retail catalogs. Queen Anne houses and
contemporary late Victorian styles were also the first houses to be
fully designed with healthful ventilation, as well as internal heat
and plumbing, and even gas for lighting.
Queen Anne is the style that represents
"Victorian" to many people. It is visually the liveliest of
the styles of the Victorian era and was popular in Syracuse and
throughout the United States. Queen Anne houses were often quite
large and date from the last decades when the professional middle
class was likely to have live-in domestic help and childcare. For
later generations, these houses have been too big (and expensive to
maintain) and so have been transformed for apartments, offices or
other new uses.
The former Babcock-Shattack house, built ca. 1895 and being restored for condominium use, is a good case in point. By the 1930s is was used as a political clubhouse, and after World War II as a meeting place for the Jewish War Veteran's.
Syracuse, NY. Walnut Place (Walnut Park). It is not clear which direction we are looking here, and what intersection this is, but on the right you can see a typical house of the time with a wrap-around Queen Anne style porch.
Syracuse, NY. 1540 E. Genesee St. One of the most intact Queen Anne houses, but it probably once had a porch and slate roofs. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2009
Scattered across the Eastside are several Queen Anne and stick style
houses, but not so many as their once were, since much of territory for
Queen Anne houses, often designed by notable architects, were the new
residential districts north of the newly founded Syracuse University
laid out in the 1870s. Alas, this prime part of the "Hill" has been
mostly ravaged in recent years, as part of the institutional zoning
district that has encouraged widespread demolition along University
Avenue and adjacent streets.
Many fine old houses have been demolished, especially a large number
between Ostrom and Comstock taken down to build the Science Center in
the 1980s. Others have been leveled for parking lots and parking
garages. Some survive, but have been seriously "remuddled" by large
scale landlord to turn them into student housing. Mostly, what we find
surviving are the either the "bone" of Queen Anne houses, now stripped
of much of their original ornament and trim, or more simple houses -
sometimes a single gable-fronted upright house, that has been enlivened
with small corner turret, or a Stick Style porch, or some other
intricate detail.
Perhaps the best preserved Queen Anne house in the area (at least on the outside) is the large green towered structure at 623
Euclid Avenue at the NW corner of Lancaster (photo above). This
house was already standing in 1892, and
belonged to E. L. and Emma Loomis. In 1901 Loomis was
secretary and manager of the Bankers Mortgage Company of Syracuse and also was one those who incorporated the new
Eastwood Manufacturing Company. In 1910 he was Deputy Superintendent
of Poor, a post he held for many years.
He had been involved in real estate development with his father
Henry H. Loomis, and the two were active in developing the
Westminster Tract in which it is centrally located, and many parcels in the sixteenth and seventeenth
wards. This
is one of the oldest houses in the neighborhood and rivaled
contemporary houses on West Onondaga in size and decoration. The present green color is not representative of what would
been an original polychromatic paint job that emphasized the many
different shapes, angles, and types of siding, especially the
decorative shingle patters, some of which still survive. The house's
impressive qualities recall the short period of neighborhood
development before the streetcar and subsequent congestion on Euclid
Avenue discouraged grand houses.
Syracuse, NY. 400 block of Clarendon Street, 1890s. Photo: Samuel Gruber (2011)
Many other houses in the neighborhoods have smaller towers which were only vestiges of the castle-like corner tower. Some of these, like the one perched atop the hill at 4?? Clarendon, are simple late Victorian boxes - with one or more projecting from bays. The addition of the corner turret, however, adds a bit of spectacle to this house.
Syracuse, NY. 737 Comstock Ave., ca. 1895. Photo Samuel Gruber (2012)
Another large towered house at 737 Comstock Avenue, now a SU fraternity, also has a large rounded corner tower. This much-altered building, when it had a porch and before it was painted white, probably more closely resembled the late Queen Anne style of the 1890s. But like the Babcock-Shattuck (to which it seems related), it already also include Colonial Revival elements.
Syracuse, NY., 612 South Beech Street. Photo: Samuel Gruber (2013)
Syracuse, NY., 612 South Beech Street. This house, probably built in the 1880s, preserves one of the best Stick Style porches on the East Side. Photo: Samuel Gruber (2011)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.JPG)
_Mulberry_now_State_St_founded_1870_built_1878-1.jpg)
.JPG)
.jpg)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.jpg)
.JPG)
.JPG)
Posts
.JPG)
