The Brendel Building is located on
the north side of Main Street in Hamburg's central business district.
The building is bordered on all public sides by a narrow lawn and a
street or driveway.
This asymmetrical, brick, hip-roof, Italianate incorporates a
three-and-one-half-story commercial block with a two-and-one-half-story
side wing housing a residence.
Features of the building:
- The stone foundation is capped with a cut-stone watertable.
- At the upper floors of the building fenestration consists of tall,
narrow, half-round, one-over-one, double-hung windows with limestone
window sills.
- Both sections of the building have a gently pitched hip roof with
broad projecting eaves
supported by paired scroll brackets.
- Cupola: The
roof of the main block is surmounted by a four-sided cupola.
- Cupola: Paired
half-round double-hung windows are located at each side of the
cupola.
- Cupola: The
cupola is embellished by modillions
and brackets at its cornice
and a decorative metal finial
which rises from the peak of its hipped roof
Storefront: At the ground floor of the main block, a
storefront spans the width of the street facade. The current
mansard-roof storefront dates from about 1875. It follows the basic
layout of the original storefront including a recessed center entry
flanked by display windows. The outline of the original storefront
cornice is visible at the edges of the present one.
Residence wing: At the front facade of the residence wing is a
two-bay entrance porch which has been enclosed with large nine light
fixed sashes. Both the porch and the adjacent three-sided bay have a
hip roof and a bracketed cornice.
Significance of the Brendel Building
- The building is the oldest of the Village of Hamburg's
remaining large nineteenth century buildings and is the best example of
the Italianate style remaining within the central business district.
- Its large size and sophisticated design make it an important
visual landmark of the village of Hamburg.
- This building reflects the common mixed use neighborhood
prevalent during the nineteenth century where business and residence
occupied one building.
- Despite some loss of integrity due to alterations, the large
size, early construction date, and the association with a prominent
Hamburg family make this building a unique historic resource
- Source: Office of Parks, Recreation
and Historic Preservation
Italianate
style 1850-1885
The first Italianate houses in the
United States were built in the late 1830s; the style was popularized
by influential Andrew
Jackson Downing, a widely respected American landscape gardener who
also published house pattern books in the 1840s and '50s.
Downing's one-year partner (Downing died in a fire) was Calvert Vaux who himself
published a fairly influential pattern book entitled "Villas and Cottages."
Six years later, Vaux moved to New York City and soon partnered with
the superintendent of a new park that was being created. The park was
Central Park and the superintendent was Frederick Law Olmsted. They
went on to win the design competition for Central Park and also the
design for the parks
system in Buffalo. Vaux also designed structures for some of the
Buffalo parks.
Downing's building designs were mostly for single family rural houses
built in the Picturesque Gothic and Italianate
styles. Believing that every American deserved a good home, he designed
homes for three classes: villas for the wealthy, cottages for working
men, and farmhouses for farmers. He intended for every family to be
able to afford one of these homes, but of course this did not occur.
Downing believed that architecture and the fine arts could affect the
morals of the owners, and that improvement of the external appearance
of a home would help "better" all those who had contact with the home.
The general good of America was benefited by good taste and beautiful
architecture, he felt. Others in the 1840s believed that the proper
home environment could assure eternal comforts in heaven. The private
home was becoming the place for moral education and the focus of middle
class America's search for the meaning of life.
By the 1860s the style had completely overshadowed its earlier
companion, the Gothic
Revival.
Identifying Features
