Queen Anne Style - Table of Contents........ Styles of Architecture

Queen Anne Style in Buffalo, NY - EXTERIORS
1880-1910

On this page below:

Features

Other examples of online sites

History

Other examples in Buffalo:

• H. H. Little House
  
  
• George L. Lewis House
  
  
• 533 Auburn Avenue
  
  
• 277 Pennsylvania Ave.
  
  
• George Roos House
  
  
• 216 Metcalfe Street
  
  
• 34 North Pearl Street
  
  
• 58 North Pearl Street
  
  
• Foster House, 3 St. John's Place
  
  
• Bay - 1 North Pearl Street
  
  
• Porch - Philip Becker House
  
  
• Ellicott Street - ##1093, 1097, 1101, 1123
  
  
• 123 Lexington Ave. - photo
  
  
• Capital -  Old Editions Book Shop and Café - photo
  
  
• Albert J. Wright House, 483 Delaware Ave. - photo
  
  
• Herman Hayd House - photo
  

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History

The Queen Anne style was the quintessential American Victorian house with "bric-a-brac" and "gingerbread." It was the dominant style of domestic building during the period from about 1880 until 1900; it persisted with decreasing popularity through the first decade of the 20th century.

The style is varied and decoratively rich. Queen Anne houses often often employed elaborate woodwork of the Eastlake type. At the time of construction it was not uncommon for the houses to be painted with as many as six or seven different colors to bring out all the different textures and trim. The fashion was fairly dark colors, along the lines of what we call today "earth tones" -- sienna red, hunter green, burnt yellow, muddy brown, etc.

Roots in England - Richard Norman Shaw

The style was named and popularized by a group of 19th-century English architects led by Richard Norman Shaw (1831-1912. PHOTO).

The name is rather inappropriate, for the historical precedents used by Shaw and his followers had little to do with Queen Anne who reigned 1702-14 or the formal Renaissance architecture that was dominant during her reign.

The sources were a combination of 17th and 18th century English and Flemish domestic architecture but incorporated eclectic motifs drawn from many sources. These included the following:

• rubbed-brick arches and dressings over and around openings
• terra cotta embellishments
• open-bed and broken pediments
• monumental chimneys
• shaped and Dutch gables
• tile-hung gabled walls
• white painted balustrades
• balconies
• bay-windows
• overhanging eaves
• horizontal bands of leaded windows.

Basements were abolished, and front gardens had wooden fences rather than iron railings.

Shaw designed several small villas in the late 1870s for a new "artistic" suburb of west London called Bedford Park. The basic elements of red brick, white woodwork and features such as porches and oriel windows were rapidly adopted by commercial developers and used into the 1920s.

In America

The Queen Anne proved enormously influential in the United States, where it dominated architectural debate and practice from the 1870s. Shaw's style was given two very distinctive American features: an extensive use of wood, for shingle, cladding, verandahs and decorative facade details, and novel, informal planning.

Queen Anne Style - Table of Contents

One of the most interested American architects was H. H. Richardson. Having studied and worked in France, and from his travels around Europe during the early 1860s, Richardson was keenly aware of the various historical precedents around Europe. Richardson was to do in America what Shaw was doing in England. With the Watts-Sherman house of 1875 in Newport, Rhode Island (PHOTO), Richardson paid homage to some of Shaw's buildings. The Watts-Sherman house was the first American building to be called "Queen Anne." Richardson's growing fame in the second half of the 1870s probably influenced other architects to learn of Shaw's work.

The Queen Anne received its first major exposure in America at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where the British government constructed several buildings in the style. It caught on quickly and replaced Second Empire and Gothic Revival styles as the most popular of the times..

American architects came to know and admire Shaw's ideas from a book of sketches he published in 1858, and, especially, pen and ink drawings from 1874 in periodicals, including the first architectural magazine, The American Architect and Building News, which were widely distributed in England and in America. Numerous architectural pattern books provided the designs.

This architectural style is considered a Victorian era style because, like the British Victorians, reaction to the Industrial Revolution led to reexamination of the pre-Industrial Revolution past. A revival of Gothic style architecture was the first manifestation of this romantic portrayal of the past.

Queen Anne became an architectural fashion in the 1880s and 1890s, when the industrial revolution was building up steam.  North America was caught up in the excitement of new technologies. Factory-made, precut architectural parts were shuttled across the country on a rapidly expanding train network. Exuberant builders combined these pieces to create innovative, and sometimes excessive, homes.

Some of the best known Queen Anne houses are the "painted ladies" of San Francisco.

Balloon Framing / Technological developments

One of the most important technological developments during the second half of the 19th century was the advent of balloon framing, whereby the framework of a house could be made out of uniform lumber; this was becoming increasingly available from commercial mills. The framing system comprised inexpensive two-by-four-inch boards, combined as upright studs and cross-members and held together by cheap, mass-produced nails.

Eventually, by the turn of the century, balloon framing replaced traditional hewn timber construction and simplified the making of more complex architectural features, such as overhangs, bay windows and towers.

Advanced manufacturing techniques were also employed to mass-produce finished windows, doors, brackets and decorative turnings, often more elaborate and sometimes less expensive than their handmade counterparts. Along with plentiful building materials,there was also access to an increasing variety of publications on house building: trade catalogues, pattern books and architectural periodicals.

Sources:

• "A Field Guide to American Houses," by Virginia & Lee McAlester. New York: Knopf, 2000
  
  
• "Identifying American Architecture," by John J.-G. Blumenson. New York: Norton. 1981
  
  
• "American Homes," by Lester Walker. Black Dog and Leventhal Pub., 1981
  
  
• Architectural Style: Queen Anne (Fred J. Baker)
  
  
• Queen Anne Architecture (Jackie Craven)
  
  
• Housing Styles: Queen Anne 1880-1910 (Old house Web)

See also:

• Two portraits of Richard Norman Shaw
  
  
• Bedford Park (Great Buildings) London garden suburb designed by Richard Norman Shaw, et. al
  
  
• The Bedford Park Society
  
  
• Richard Norman Shaw (EASA) - photo and drawing of houses
  
  
• W. Watts Sherman House (Great Buildings Online)
  
  
• Highlights of Buffalo's History, 1880-1910