THE HISTORY OF QUEEN ANNE ARCHITECTURE

The Hutchinson House 1903 (rear view) Ypsilanti, MI

I love the "Queen Anne" style homes and one of my friends on facebook loves the "Victorians". I thought Queen Anne homes were Victorians and indeed they are from Queen Victoria's time. But they have much more history and I thought I'd share some of that with you today..

The Hutchinson House is in Ypsilanti Michigan and has quite a story behind that building as well. I once worked there and I actually held a candle party in it! The party was quite successful as the invitees bought candles just so they could visit the home. Good idea.

1899 Queen Anne Asheville NC

What is the Difference between Queen Anne and Victorian houses?

A Queen Anne home -- one of many styles classified under the broad heading of Victorian -- was built primarily during the latter part of Queen Victoria's reign from 1870 to 1910.

As the last Presbyterian Stuart who held the throne, Queen Anne reigned 135 years before Queen Victoria. Even though a well-known furniture style that developed during her reign has her name, it would be more than 150 years before she had an architectural style named after her. The decor style is specifically known for its complex, ornamental curvilinear turrets and towers, and steeply pitched roofs.

Eureka California

The home most people think of when they imagine or see a Victorian home is actually a Queen Anne home. Typically outfitted with a turret or tower, the home often has wrap-around porches and is made from brick, wood or stone, many with clapboard siding.

The Queen Anne style is known for its graceful curves and paneled insets. Look for angled bay windows, steeply pitched roofs with finials, stained glass, and handcrafted chimneys.

Asymmetry. Towers, turrets, bays, porches, and roofline break the box. Roofs and massing are often complex.

Texture. Surfaces are broken by a switch from stone or clapboard to shingles, often with fancy-cut butts. Belt courses, gable ornament, turnings, brackets, balustrades, and sawn-wood “gingerbread” keep it interesting. (Polychrome painting plays up surface texture even more.)

Wood trim. Sawn, chamfered, carved, lathe-turned, and applied ornament is used on porches, gables, cornices, and story breaks.

Other features include patterned shingles, decorative trim, and intricate spindles, banisters and staircases. Queen Anne homes have a storybook quality to them.

Choosing Queen Anne/Victorian paint colors

The History of Queen Anne, Victorian-Architecture Style

Despite roots in the English “Queen Anne Movement”—a return to early, vernacular architecture—it is here a peculiarly American style in its mass-produced ornamentation (including “gingerbread”) and lavish use of wood.

The Northeast, already heavily populated in the 1880s, has comparatively fewer examples that you might expect. Go south and west, however, and the style becomes more popular and more fanciful. The West Coast and resurgent areas of the New South have the most dizzying examples.

THE CHILTERN ESTATE HILLSBOROUGH CALIFORNIA

Completed in 1992, Chiltern reflects the spirit of English Tudor & Elizabethan Country estates. Situated on 6.7 secluded acres, the main house is 36,000 square feet with museum quality artifacts throughout. Indoor pool & raquetball court, pool house, outdoor pool, tennis ct. Also featured are spectacular grounds with waterfalls, koi pond, English rose & zen gardens.

For 835 Chiltern Road is all that and more. So much more! The property, billed by Christie’s International as “one of the West Coast’s largest private residences,” includes a 5 bedroom main house nearly 36,000 square feet.

Not satisfied? You will also find three separate apartments?. and a guest house, all of it resting peacefully on more than six acres of private park land. Built in 1992, the estate manages to straddle the atmosphere of an Elizabethan castle—yes, those are actual 15th century Gothic doorways you’re drooling over-- with all (and we do mean all) mods con: indoor and outdoor pool; gym; racquetball, squash and tennis courts; library; home theater; master suite with his and her dressing rooms; 13 fireplaces, offices and an art gallery. 

Outside find fruit orchards, English gardens with a maze(!), waterfalls, koi ponds and bay views. All that splendor will only cost you $48,888,000. Don’t have the cash on hand? Finance it for a mere $258,050 a month. So yes, you could pay the mortgage here or buy a new house every month or two somewhere else; but something tells us those houses won’t look quite like The Chiltern.

THE JAMES COUZENS HOME: BOSTON EDISON AREA OF DETROIT

The Boston-Edison District in Detroit, MI is a forty-five block area of large homes and mansions, the majority of which were built from 1905-25. A number of famous and influential Detroiters resided in this area, including Henry Ford. The neighborhood consists of hundreds of homes in an impressive array of styles including Tudor, Greek Revival, Georgian, Dutch Colonial, Arts and Crafts, Italian Renaissance and Prairie-Style.

This mansion (610 Longfellow St) is known as the James Couzens home, for whom the place was designed. Couzens was at the time a major shareholder in the Ford Motor Company who became mayor of Detroit and later a U. S. Senator. The 9,800 square foot home  was designed by Albert Kahn.

On December 5, 1922, James Couzens resigned as Mayor of Detroit to accept his appointment to the U.S. Senate. Couzens was appointed by Governor Alexander Groesbeck to fill the Michigan senate seat that was vacated by the resignation of Truman H. Newberry in the wake of election campaign irregularities. Couzens went on to be elected in his own right for two additional terms before his death in 1936.

TOUR INFORMATION FOR BOSTON EDISON IS HERE

BRUSH PARK DETROIT: LITTLE PARIS OF THE MIDWEST RESTORATIONS

Restored 1880s home in Brush Park 291 Erskine of Detroit Michigan USA

Brush Park is a 22-block neighborhood located within Midtown Detroit, Michigan and designated by the city. It is bounded by Mack Avenue on the north, Woodward Avenue on the west, Beaubien Street on the east, and the Fisher Freeway on the south. The neighborhood is experiencing restorations of its historic Gilded Age mansions and luring new residents.

Native Scotsman, John Harvey had the one-family, 11,000 square foot mansion built in 1876. It is a classic example of 19th century Victorian architecture, combining elements of Queen Anne and Mansard. 

At the time, it was located in Detroit's most prestigious area, where department store founder, J.L. Hudson, lumber baron, David Whitney, and architect, Albert Kahn lived, along with other members of Detroit's elite society.

The area was called Little Paris, now known as Brush Park.

Beginning in the 1850s, entrepreneur Edmund Brush, son of Elijah Brush, the city's second mayor from its first incorporation, began developing his family's property, located conveniently close to downtown, into a neighborhood for Detroit's elite citizens.

Restoration in 2006 of the Lucien Moore House

C. W. Moore 134 Alexandrine W. Just north of Brush Park, deep in the heart of Paris of the Midwest, Detroit.

Other early residents of Brush Park included lumber baron David Whitney Jr.; his daughter Grace Whitney Evans; Joseph L. Hudson, founder of the eponymous department store;[9] lumber baron Lucien Moore; banker Frederick Butler; merchant John P. Fiske; Dime Savings Bank president William Livingstone Jr.;[10] and dry goods manufacturer Ransom Gillis. In the late 19th century, the Brush Park neighborhood became known as the "Little Paris of the Midwest"

Frost House in Brush Park, Detroit