Folk Victorian

Pale green in color, with gleaming white gingerbread trim, and surrounded by velvety grass and masses and masses of flowers, the house we were visiting was another impressive Victorian confection, such as I envisioned Aunt Inga’s house might one day look like. The doorbell rang with a somber, tolling sound that reverberated in the recesses of the house. A few seconds later the heavy door opened.


Waterfield’s doctor was a good-looking older man, with graying hair cut short, and a friendly, open face with round glasses. He was casually dressed, in wrinkled khakis and a faded blue golf shirt with a crocodile on the pocket. A napkin tucked under his collar was stained with yellow. He had a fork in one hand, and when he saw us, his brows crawled up his high forehead like caterpillars. “Derek. Good morning, son. What’s going on?”

“Morning, sir,” Derek said, not waiting for an invitation, but walking right in. “This is Avery Baker. I’m helping her renovate her Aunt Inga’s house over on Bayberry. I found her looking like this when I came to work this morning.”

“Oh, dear.” The doctor looked around for somewhere to deposit his fork, and ended up putting it on what was either an outstanding reproduction or a genuine mahogany veneered Hepplewhite sideboard standing in the hallway. Philippe would have been drooling. “You’d better put her in the parlor.”

He stepped out of the way. Derek headed into a room on the left with the doctor following. “On the couch, please.”

The ‘couch’ was a pristine example of a 1770s Federal style straight-back sofa upholstered in yellow damask. It might even have been a Sheraton. Again, Philippe’s mouth would have watered, and he would surely not have approved of the way Derek unceremoniously dropped me onto the old seat. The doctor, whose sofa it was, didn’t turn a hair.

# # #

That's Avery's first meeting with Dr. Ben Ellis, Derek's dad, and his Folk Victorian cottage.

The Folk Victorian has a much simpler design than the ornate Second Empire Victorian or the Queen Anne. The classic Victorian styles (Gothic Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Stick Style, Romanesque Revival, and Shingle Style) were created by professional architects, and were built mostly by the well-to-do. But the lower reaches of the middle class shared the same Victorian urge to live in a fashionable house, and if they couldn't afford a professional architect, they could design the house themselves, or have a local carpenter do it. The design was likely to be an unprofessional but possibly still charming pastiche, including elements of styles that were still currently fashionable among the upper crust, and elements of styles that definitely were not. Also, the house would naturally tend to be smaller and plainer than what the wealthy could afford.

Many Folk Victorian houses were adorned with flat, jigsaw cut trim in a variety of patterns, or with spindles and gingerbread trim borrowed from the Carpenter Gothic. Some Folk Victorian homes may suggest Queen Anne architecture.

The exact division between Queen Anne and Folk Victorian is fuzzy, considering how many of the smaller Queen Annes were hodge-podged together by local carpenters, rather than designed by architects. But Folk Victorians were being built long before the Queen Anne style appeared on the scene, and in any case, it is still useful to make a rough distinction between the more expensive, very elaborate, architect-designed Victorians (Queen Anne) and their less-expensive, plainer, carpenter-designed cousins (Folk Victorian).

So there you have it, folks. Folk Victorian 101.

Till next time. Cheers!

Houses, Hunks, and Whodunit

In keeping with the new log line on my blog - courtesy of Lyda Phillips, whose review of A Cutthroat Business in the Nashville Scene last year included the sentence "...a frothy girl drink of houses, hunks and whodunit," - I thought I'd say a few words about houses.

More specifically, one house: Aunt Inga's house in Fatal Fixer-Upper. There's a chance that not everyone might have seen a Second Empire Victorian, and I thought I might remedy that.

Here are Avery's words on her first visit to Waterfield:

Graham Rodgers had told me it was in bad shape. I had been prepared for the fact that it would need some work. Aunt Inga had been old, childless, and not well off, so there had been things – probably a lot of things – she hadn’t been able to keep up with. I expected an overgrown yard, a few loose roof shingles, missing gutters, and maybe some rotted boards. The reality was so much worse than anything I could have imagined, that for a second, I just stared, appalled.

Oh, don’t get me wrong: the house must have been beautiful once. Like mother had said, it was a fairytale Victorian cottage with a tower and arched windows. Unless my mandatory architecture classes betrayed me, I was looking at a Second Empire Victorian. Basically an Italianate style, identified by a square tower, mansard roof, and tall, narrow windows, arched or rounded on top. Named for the reign of Napoleon III (1852-1870), Second Empire was the first true style of the Victorian era in the US.

Above is another, more manicured example. Note the tall, narrow windows on the first floor, the arched windows on the top level, and the mansard roof... all hallmarks of the Second Empire style. 

In the United States, the style usually combined a rectangular tower with a steep, short, mansard roof; the roof being the most noteworthy link to the style’s French roots. The tower could be of equal height to the top floor - such as in example 2 - or it could exceed the height of the rest of the structure by a story or two, like in picture 1 and 3.

The mansard roof crest was often topped with iron trim, called “cresting”. There's plenty of cresting on this house: both on top of the tower and on the lower roofs. In some cases, lightning rods were integrated into the cresting design, making the feature useful as well as decorative.

So there you have it. A basic description of the Second Empire Victorian, i.e. Aunt Inga's house. Next time I think I'll hunt up some pictures of Dr. Ben's Folk Victorian Cottage. After I post about hunks and whodunit, of course. In the meantime it's Friday, and time for a frothy drink. Until next time. Cheers!