| Styles of Homes: The Victorian Period 1860–1900. Queen Anne 1880–1910. |
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| Style |
Material |
Orientations of structure |
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| Refined |
Wood |
Vertical |
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| Key features |
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Irregular roof; patterned shingles; full-width porch;
spindlework; windows often have large panes of glass
bounded by smaller square panes. (Because of the style’s
popularity, an abundance of patterns exist, many with
different window styles.)
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| Architectural Features |
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| Entrance Door |
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- Panel door
- Large panes of glass bounded by smaller square panes or decorative detailing
- Because of the style’s popularity, an abundance of patterns exist, many with different door styles
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| Shutters |
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- In the second half of the 19th century, louvered or Venetian exterior shutters became standard
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| Garage Door |
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- Orientation of surface material to complement the home
- A pattern of trim to complement the pattern on the home’s façade
- Window clusters to complement the home
- (Due to the wide variety of detail within this architectural style, specific recommendations are not possible without viewing the home)
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| Style Summary |
The style was named and popularized by a group of 19th
century English architects led by Richard Norman Shaw. The
name is rather inappropriate, for the historical precedents
used by Shaw and his followers had little to do with Queen
Anne or the formal Renaissance architecture that was dominant
during her reign (1702–1714). Instead, they borrowed most
heavily from late Medieval models of the preceding Elizabethan
and Jacobean eras. The half-timbered and patterned masonry
American subtypes are most closely related to this work of
Shaw and his colleagues in England. The spindlework and free
classic subtypes are indigenous interpretations.
The half-timbered Watts–Sherman house built at Newport,
Rhode Island in 1874 is generally considered to be the first
American example of the style. By 1880 the style was being
spread throughout the country by pattern books and the first
architectural magazine, the “American Architect and Building
News”. The expanding railroad network also helped popularize
the style by making pre-cut architectural details conveniently
available through much of the nation.
The earliest American examples followed Shaw’s early, half-timbered designs, but during the 1880s the inventive American spindlework interpretation became dominant. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, a relatively few high-style urban examples continued to imitate Shaw’s later English models, which were executed in masonry. In the decade of the 1890s, the free classical adaptation became widespread. It was but a short step from these to the early, asymmetrical Colonial Revival houses, which, along with other competing styles, fully supplanted the Queen Anne style after about 1910.
Excerpted from A Field Guide to American Houses, Virginia and
Lee McAlester, Alfred Knopf, New York, © 2000. |
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