The Queen Anne Style

Though its name indicates a borrowing from England, American Queen Anne style architecture owes very little to an earlier British style. Rather, it is a celebration of the ornamental excess made possible by power tools and mass produced decorative trim work.

Queen Anne buildings usually have an unbalanced or asymmetrical arrangement of building parts. Roof lines are steeply pitched and alive with many gables, tall decorative chimneys, dormers and towers. The surfaces are never flat. Clapboard siding is interrupted by fishscale wooden trim. Buildings feature bays, and bay windows. Porches with turned posts and many turned spindles fill in corners and wrap around houses. Balconies and turrets are often found. Above is the Henry Hoch house of 1903.

In the Douglas Lesh house (ABOVE), built in 1898, roof lines and roof surfaces came into decorative play. Note the use of slates of contrasting shapes and colors to create a design in the roof. The roof line is highlighted by decorative metal "cresting" and each gable is topped by a finial.

We find mass-produced spindle trimwork on this Queen Anne porch (ABOVE). Mass production made profuse ornamentation affordable for people of average means. This house, in Markle, dates from about 1895. Note the steeply pitched tower roof and the use of fishscale trim in the gables. The gable in the porch roof features a mass produced sunburst seen on many Queen Anne houses in Huntington County.

The Summers house (ABOVE) from 1912 is a late example of Queen Anne incorporating a tile roof, brick, stucco, decorative concrete and fieldstone. Note the covered drive-through for a carriage or automobile called a "porte cochere".

Queen Anne commercial buildings are primarily recognized by their bay windows on the second story. This Huntington example (ABOVE) was built about 1900.

Above is another Queen Anne commercial building from about 1890. The false tower roof line and top row of windows are backed by a parapet wall and are purely ornamental. Note the use of "embossed" sheet metal decoration on the underside of the bay window.

SUMMARY

When most of us think of a "Victorian" building, we picture a Queen Anne house in our minds. The whimsical use of mass produced wooden ornaments, and the profusion of gables, towers and balconies combine to create the most fanciful style of the late 1800's.

Proceed to the Jacobethan Revival Exhibit.