The Flat-front Italianate
The flat-fronted Italianate was simple and often the style of building used for row-houses and Western frontier structures. To make them seem taller and more imposing, there would often be a "false front": the face of the structure would extend quite a bit higher than the rest of the building.
It is a rectangular, two or three story building with wide eaves supported by large brackets.The roof is low-pitched, almost flat. It is often accentuated by pronounced moldings and details such as quoins, conrnices, and window hoods.
This style was popular quite early in the Victorian era - lasting from about the 1830s-through the 1870s.
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Plattsmouth, Nebraska Went to Omaha to visit my grandma this summer (July 2004) and decided to take a road trip 20 miles south to the small town of Plattsmouth. I had ancestors that lived there at the turn of the century. Their downtown main street is VERY Victorian and though a lot of the buildings had their beautiful long windows blocked up and replaced by small sideways -sliding ones, here's a block that still looks pretty decent, built in 1884. See a movie of downtown here! |
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Lots of big
brick houses here. I love brick. Even some of the streets are still
paved in brick! Don't know if it's original or they just did some of
the streets that way to guide the way from one historic house to the
next, which is what it looked liked it did.
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Wonder if
this one had some kind of roof over the bottom story? Look how the bottom
part of the house is lighter than the top, like it had been protected
from the elements for a long time. More Plattsmouth on other pages!
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Cincinnati,
Ohio
This town was a treat for
me to visit...tons of great houses, many of them flat-fronts because
it's such an old town!!
Here's a great row house. |
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I loved this row of buildings for some reason! The arched windows and doorways on the two left ones are just so amazing. We were driving by on our way to somewhere and I had to jump out and capture them. The neighborhood was quite slummy, I always wonder what people in run-down areas think when a weird girl like me takes pictures of what they must think are hovels that they want to escape from! |
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San Francisco,
California
When I lived in San Francisco in the mid-90s, I lived in an area just south of downtown called Portrero Hill. This was the house just across from one of the bus stops in the area that I'd wait at.
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According to my notes, this one is in the Lower Haight, although I can't really remember taking it!
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Took a road trip down to L.A. this summer (2007) so I finally got to take some new photos for this site! Couldn't stay long in San Francisco, though, since it wasn't a planned stop and we were just rushing through. I couldn't NOT take SOME photos, though! So as we whizzed by I snapped what I could out the window. Here's a couple of plain ones that still have an authentic charm to them. I can't explain just what those weird structures to the right of them are though! These were on a VERY busy street - the traffic noise must drive the residents crazy! |
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Sacramento, California They have a very old "Old Town" area with elaborate Victorian buildings, but they are occupied with ultra-touristy shops filled with the typical expensive junk I never need or want. At the welcome center, though, a nice lady told us where the Victorian houses were. We found them not far away, roughly bordered by streets E, J, 12th and 15th. Here's a cozy looking one. More on the other pages... (Trip taken in 2003) |
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Red Bluff, California A girl I know, upon finding out I was obsessed with Victorian houses, told me that I should check out her old home town of Red Bluff, because there were a lot there. Done! Our 2007 road trip had it as a scheduled stop! There are two faces to this town - the adorable old part with its nice historic downtown and homey neighborhoods of old houses, and then the outlying areas taken over by chainstores and bland streets filled with nondescript places where you feel sorry for the kids who have to grow up there. What a contrast! More on the other pages! |
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Coupeville,
Washington
Coupeville is the most adorable little town on Whidbey Island, one of the areas we drove through when we were looking to buy a house. Not many for sale, but a lot of bed and breakfasts are here. Don't know if this one is one or not.
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Astoria,
Oregon
We fell in love with the town of Astoria in 1999 and decided to live here. It's a real working town, not all cutesy and touristy. Here's a nice example of flat-front Italianate from here.
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The walking tour booklet for Astoria says that this one was built in 1870! It was the home of the Charles Heilborn family, a furniture dealer and county treasurer. Be sure to pick up one of those handy Walking Tour booklets at Astoria's "Welcome Center" when you visit, so you can take fun self-guided tours of the town!
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Jacksonville, Oregon Jacksonville is an old gold mining town in southern Oregon which dates back to the early 1850s. There is a cute little downtown main street area which appears to have all its 19th century buildings intact. The houses on the residential streets surrounding it are old, but perhaps a bit too old to have a lot of the ornamentation on them that appeared later on in the century. Here's a really cool brick Italianate I came across, though! Heading out of the main part of town I found a couple other Victorians that I put on the other pages on this site. |
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New Orleans,
Louisiana
Not sure what style this
is! Not even sure if it's from the Victorian age- since houses here can
date back to the 1700s! I loved the architecture in this city, it's all
so very different than what I'm used to. |
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This
is the "Fountain Elms" museum, at 318 Genesee St. It dates back
to 1850. It has been restored as a showcase for the finest in Victorian-era
decorative arts. Galleries offer changing exhibitions of nineteenth-century
furniture, silver, ceramics, glass, textiles, and the renowned Proctor
watch collection.
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Aren't these interesting? Sort of a combination between the flat-front type and the slanted-bay type of Italianate. I wonder if there was a basic floor plan for these kind of houses, since there seems to be a lot of them. Or, did it suddenly become fashionable to tack on a slanted-bay extention to an existing, simple Italianate? The first is on Genesee Street, which seems to be the main street in the town's historic district. The second is on Cottage Street, the third is on Henry Street, and the fourth is off Eagle and Kemble. Not sure about the fiftth. |
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The Court Street Children's Center. I guess maybe that means it's a preschool? What an awesome place to work (I used to be a preschool teacher)!!! Take the shortcut to more Utica homes HERE |
