Victorian Architecture 101 ––

A Walk Back In Time With The Town Historian

By Dottie Evans

Area residents who wanted to learn more about the Victorian architecture in Newtown’s historic Main Street houses gathered outside the Matthew Curtiss house on a recent Sunday afternoon.

They planned to follow town historian Dan Cruson as he delivered a walking art history lecture up and down the wide, tree-lined street. His purpose was to point out certain architectural features of Victorian era houses, and if he chose to throw in a few colorful anecdotes about their 19th Century owners, his audience would be all more delighted.

 The hour-long walking tour held June 9 was sponsored by the Newtown Historical Society.

“Walking this street is like taking a survey course in Victorian architecture,” said Mr Cruson, referring to that long period from 1837 to 1901 that was marked by Queen Victoria’s rule in England.

At the same time, Mr Cruson could not resist reaching a bit farther back in time and commenting upon the colonial gem right in front of him –– the Matthew Curtiss House built around 1750.

“This is the oldest of the old,” he said of the barn red saltbox at 44 Main Street that is now owned by the Newtown Historical Society.

“It is a nice example of mid-18th Century construction and it was restored in 1970 when the front porch was taken off,” he added.

“Does that mean the early colonial houses didn’t have porches?” one visitor asked.

Well, that would be mostly true, Mr Cruson explained, except that several buildings dating from the early 1800s did employ certain classical elements in their design such as rectangular, symmetrical shapes and peak-roofed, temple-like front porches, or porticos supported by columns.

Italianate Villa Style

Shortly after the Revolutionary War, Mr Cruson explained, when the newly formed nation was becoming established, residents wanted their homes to look properly substantial, to reflect the Jeffersonian ideals of democracy.

So, during the years 1820 to 1825 they built structures that resembled small Greek temples. The small entry front porches were supported by columns that might have reminded them of the Parthenon, he suggested, “and the gable ends faced front. There were wide pilasters down the side,” Mr Cruson added.

But it was not long before “the independent spirit of Victorian times” led builders to break away from classical constraints and use decorative elements that were drawn from Renaissance times.

 This trend led to the early Victorian style known as Italianate, which appeared between 1840 and 1860. It featured square towers with flat roofs that jutted out from the basic square of the structure. These Italianate homes were reminiscent of Tuscan villas one might see in the Italian hill towns.

As Mr Cruson headed north on Main Street, he pointed to an elegant but aging white building standing next to the Matthew Curtiss house.

“This is one of the finest examples of Victorian architecture on the street, a combination of Victorian and Renaissance styles,” Mr Cruson said.

“You can see it has three stories, including an upper story, a half story, and a pyramid-type roof embellishment on top. It was built in 1869 by Frederick Johnson, who ran the General Store across the street and it has had only three [families of] owners in all these years,” he said.

“Notice the details of Victorian decoration,” he added, “the brackets under the eaves and the dentils under the pediments. This is typical of the Victorian American bracketed style. The front porch has slender columns and an arched lintel. The bay window is also typical of the period. It indicates that [Victorian era builders] wanted not only to decorate their houses but to push the house out into nature.”

The remnant of cast-iron fencing that stands in front of the Johnson house is typical of the period, Mr Cruson said. Then he remarked that the house could have served as a model for New Yorker magazine cartoonist Charles Addams, who drew spooky Victorian Gothic mansions as the background for his jokes. Indeed, one could imagine a ghoulish face shrouded by long hair, peeking out from an upper story window.

A Second Empire Beauty

Moving right along from the Italianate to the High Victorian, Mr Cruson and his audience walked up to 50 Main Street, which was the Henry Beers Glover house, also known as the Budd house. It sits directly across the street from Edmond Town Hall. He called this home “a superb example of the Second Empire Style, one of the true gems on Main Street by anyone’s estimation.”

“The Glover house was built in 1869 –– this was a great year for new construction in Newtown –– by one of the first presidents of the Newtown Savings Bank. He bought two lots on this side. There were two colonial houses already existing on this spot in 1855: one was the Keeler Tavern and it was in very bad shape so he demolished it; the other one he moved across the street just north of Edmond Town Hall.

“One of the things you’ll find here on Main Street is that a lot of these houses have [been] moved,” Mr Cruson interjected.

Looking again at the Glover House, he pointed out the decorative mansard roof with full windows.

“The verandah is integral to the house and there are magnificent Corinthian columns decorating the porch,” Mr Cruson said.

Bracketing under the eaves was another fanciful feature popular to the Victorian era, as was the use of curves and arcs where there had been straight lines, as in the lintels for windows and doorways.

In fact, by 1870, it became fashionable to replace the usual Gothic, pointed windows with the newer curved versions. It was also the rage to add decorative slate shingles to the roof and a façade that featured a two-story tower pushing out toward the street.

One can see other examples of these “new” Victorian windows with their curved lintels up and down Main Street, Mr Cruson said, including over the Village Store.

“About six people have claimed there was a very persuasive and forceful window salesman who made the rounds here,” Mr Cruson said, adding this was no doubt an apocryphal story having no basis in fact. “But it’s quite typical of how folklore operates here.

“Most of these Victorian embellishments were put on in 1869 after the Civil War, when there was a period of tremendous wealth and expansion. A lot of refurbishing went on at that time,” Mr Cruson said.

As older, colonial era homes were remodeled to look Victorian, their entrances were changed or re-oriented to face a different direction. The houses might even have been picked up and moved, either next door to a vacant lot or across the street.

Another example of high Victorian architectural style is the Honan Funeral Home, acquired by Bill Honan, Sr, in 1913.

“He was one of the first funeral directors in the state to practice the service of embalming, having got his license in 1903,” Mr Cruson said.

“Embalming came into practice at the Civil War. What with having to ship bodies by train back home over long distances, it became necessary to prepare and preserve them in some way. Bill’s father was one of the first to provide this service in Newtown.”

Muddy Streets And The North End

As Mr Cruson prepared to lead his little flock of architecture students across busy Main Street, he paused to comment upon its unusual width.

“Main Street is 130 feet wide and was first laid out in 1709. They made it extra wide because during mud season, in March and April, it became very difficult to run wagons and horses up and down the middle. So people used the sides where there was more vegetation.”

Later in the tour, Mr Cruson pointed out a short stretch of old sidewalk on the west side of Main Street where the rectangular paving stones measured only 18 inches wide and were laid side by side.

“These blocks were ordered in 1803, and we have a record of that, a copy of a bill of contract to bring them down from Roxbury. Now they are laid crosswise. But they were originally laid end to end, lengthwise, all the way up and down Main Street on both sides. The reason, again, was to get out of that bloody mud,” he said.

Although Mr Cruson did not lead the group further north up Main Street all the way to Currituck Road, he did mention that peculiar triangular area that is bounded by Currituck, Mt Pleasant Road and Academy Lane.

“This was the place where several free black families lived during the 19th Century. The houses in that triangle were small and modest,” he added.

“Then, further up Mt. Pleasant Road you got into the red-light district called Slut’s Hill,” he said, adding there were two infamous establishments in that district, one high class and one not-so-high class.

After crossing Main Street and heading south toward the flagpole, the group followed Mr Cruson past several houses that had been built in colonial times but were later altered to reflect Victorian architectural taste.

One of these was the Peter Hubble colonial that was built in 1711. It had served as a tavern in the early part of the 19th Century and showed a quarter-round fan-shaped window on the gable end, typical of that time.

Palladian Windows:

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Mr Cruson stopped opposite the magnificent gray and white Federal style home that sits opposite Flagpole Realty on the corner of Church Hill Road at 38 Main Street. Clearly, he felt this house was worthy of extra time and comment.

“This house was built in 1792 and shows classical detailing on the front. You can see that the plane moves out slightly to resemble a Greek temple on top of a Georgian-style building.

“But look at the [second story] Palladian window. It’s really a gem. It was modeled after Palladio who was a Renaissance artist and its proportions are absolutely perfect because they follow established rules for height and width.

“Now, as you wander about town, look at all the examples you’ll see of builders using this Palladian style window in the newer houses of today. They look absolutely hideous and the elements are rarely in the right proportion.

“Of course, since the Palladian window is usually over the front door in the second story, it allows passersby to see inside to admire the chandelier and to know that there is a two-story front hall, both of which mean that you have arrived and this is a mansion. There might be only two acres but still it’s mansion,” he remarked with some amusement.

Getting Romantic

Finally, as Mr Cruson led the group past the flagpole and stood in front of the Inn at Newtown, he pointed across the street to a much later structure he called a “marvelous little Queen Anne-style house.”

It was the Farrell home at 20 Main Street, built in the 1880s or 1890s, during the late Victorian era. This was a much more relaxed looking façade that featured a gambrel roof and identical front windows that flanked the wide front door. But a wraparound porch had broken the frontal symmetry by extending around the southern corner of the house.

“By now, Newtown residents in the late Victorian times were somewhat conflicted,” Mr Cruson said. There were the old curmudgeons who hated change and wanted to keep things classically symmetrical. Then there were the “moderns” who wanted to break the rules and go for asymmetry and include lots more decoration.

“Notice the chevron pattern in the shingles and that gambrel roof,” Mr Cruson said.

“Late Victorians loved to play with roof lines.”

At the very end of the 19th Century, architecture had turned romantic and the Victorians used elements from a wide variety of European architectural styles to embellish their dwellings. Some of these late Victorian homes looked like pretend castles, ruined grottoes, or rustic cottages. The porch railings employed a fantastic variety of gingerbread designs and it seemed the forms were more fanciful than ever before.

Finally, the bungalow style appeared in the early 1900s and it was perhaps the last gasp of Victorian whimsy. In Newtown, the bungalow era is exemplified by the old town library building at 64 Main Street, which is now a private dwelling.

The roofline of this cottage-style house is a wavy horizontal that extends out over windows featuring diamond-shaped panes. Looking at this friendly, smallish size house, Mr Cruson’s group could well understand that the late Victorians had come a long way, architecturally, from pseudo Greek temples or the elegant, Gothic style mansions of earlier times.

Now they wanted to recreate the sense of a pastoral retreat and the comforts of home in an English country-style cottage. The romantic notion of a flock of sheep grazing in the front yard did not seem too far-fetched.

When the hour-long lecture tour was over, Mr Cruson’s audience knew a lot more than they had an hour earlier about Victorian architecture in Newtown. After following Mr Cruson back into the 19th Century, they could probably distinguish a pediment from a pilaster and a bracket from a finial.

More importantly, they could appreciate that Victorian architecture was all about exuberance and innovation. About using elements of the past to redefine the present.

It was about making rules and then breaking them, using all manner of decorative elements to embellish the exteriors. And, like today, owners wanted their houses to reflect both the expansive spirit of the times and their own values as well.