Queen Anne Style architecture Totally Explained

Everything about The Queen Anne Style totally explained

The Queen Anne Style is an architectural style that reached its greatest popularity in the last quarter of the 19th century, manifesting itself in a number of different ways in different countries. It consisted largely of influences that harked back to "Old English" or even Tudor styles and characteristics.
This Queen Anne style derived from the influence of Richard Norman Shaw, an influential British architect of the late Victorian era. Seen from the 1870s onwards, this style revived features of English architecture from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including, initially, elements from the historical reign of Queen Anne (1702-14).

19th Century Queen Anne

The Queen Anne Style of British architecture in the 1870s (the industrial age) was popularized by George Devey and the better-known Richard Norman Shaw (1831-1912). Norman Shaw published a book of architectural sketches as early as 1858, and his evocative pen-and-ink drawings began to appear in trade journals and artistic magazines in the 1870s. American commercial builders were quick to pick up the style.
   Shaw's eclectic designs often included Tudor elements, and this "Old English" style became popular in the United States, where it became known as the Queen Anne style (although this wasn't historically accurate). (Confusion between buildings constructed during the reign of Queen Anne and the "Queen Anne" Style still persists, especially in England. The well known architectural commentator and author Marcus Binney, writing in the London Times in 2006, describes "Poulton House" built in 1706, during the reign of Queen Anne, as "...Queen Anne at its most delightful". Binney lists what he describes as the typical features of the style: a sweep of steps leading to a carved stone door-case; rows of painted sash windows in boxes set flush with the brickwork; stone quoins emphasising corners; a central triangular pediment set against a hipped roof with dormers; typically box-like "double pile" plans, two rooms deep.)
   In the late 1850s, the name "Queen Anne" was in the air, following publication in 1852 of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel, The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., A Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Queen Anne.
   One minor side effect of Thackeray's novel and Norman Shaw's freehand picturesque vernacular Renaissance survives to this day. When, in the early 1870s, Chinese-inspired Early Georgian furniture on cabriole legs, featuring smooth expanses of walnut, and chairs with flowing lines and slat backs began to be looked for in out-of-the-way curio shops (Macquoid 1904), the style was misattributed to the reign of Queen Anne, and the "Queen Anne" misnomer has stuck to this day, in American as well as English furniture style designations. (Even the most stylish and up-to-date furnishings of the historical reign of Queen Anne, as inventories reveal, was in a style that would be immediately identified now as "William and Mary.")
   The British Victorian version of the style is closer in empathy to the arts and crafts movement than its American counterpart. Its historic precedents were broad: it combined fine brickwork, often in a warmer, softer finish than the Victorians were characteristically using, varied with terra-cotta panels, or tile-hung upper stories, with crisply painted white woodwork, or blond limestone detailing: oriel windows, often stacked one above another, corner towers, asymmetrical fronts and picturesque massing, Flemish mannerist sunken panels of strapwork, deeply shadowed entrances, broad porches, in a domesticated free Renaissance style.
   When an open architectural competition was announced in 1892, for a County Hall (see photo, right) to be built in Wakefield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the instructions to competitors noted that "the style of architecture will be left to the competitors but the Queen Anne or Renaissance School of Architecture appears suited to an old town like Wakefield" (ref. Wakefield). The executed design, by James Gibson and Samuel Russell, architects of London, combines a corner turret, grandly domed and with gargoyles at the angles, freely combined with Flemish Renaissance stepped gables.

American Queen Anne style

Queen Anne Style buildings in America came into vogue in the 1880s, replacing the French-derived Second Empire as the "style of the moment." The popularity of high Queen Anne Style waned in the early 1900s, but some elements, such as the wraparound front porch, continued to be found on buildings into the 1920s.
In America, Queen Anne generally refers to an era of style, rather than a specific formulaic style in its own right. Unlike its British counterpart's use of "crisp white trim" (see the example from Lebanon, Illinois), Queen Anne in America eschewed white for bold color resulting in Polychrome paint schemes on exteriors, often referred to as painted ladies, a term that rose in popularity in the 1970s. E. Francis Baldwin's stations for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, built variously of brick and wood, are also familiar examples of the style.
The most famous American Queen Anne residence (see photo left) is the William M. Carson Mansion of Eureka, California. Newsom and Newsom, notable builder-architects of 19th Century California homes and public buildings, designed and constructed (1884-1886) this 18-room home for one of California's first lumber barons. All styles described below as well as others are present in this example of American Queen Anne Style.
Within the American Queen Anne Style, there are also the broad Stick, Eastlake, and Shingle Styles:

Stick Style

The Stick style sought to bring a translation of the balloon framing used in houses in the era by alluding to them through plain trim boards, soffits, aprons and other decorative features, while eliminating overtly ornate features such as rounded towers and gingerbread trim. Maximum picturesque value could be achieved within the means of a house-carpenter equipped with a woodturning lathe. Recognizably "Queen Anne" details: interpenetrating roof planes with bold panelled brick chimneys, the embedded corner tower (rendered as an octagon) with its conical roof, the wrap-around porch, spindle detailing, the "panelled" sectioning of blank wall, crown detailing along the roof peaks, radiating spindle details at the gable peaks.
The home of President Warren G. Harding (not illustrated) in Marion, Ohio is another example of stick style architecture; however the porch (which is best known as the home of the Front Porch Campaign of 1920) designed by architect Frank Packard and built onto the house is neo-classical in style, while influenced by the Queen Anne era in that it wraps around the house. Highly stylized and decorative versions of the Stick style are often referred to as Eastlake.

Eastlake Style

The Eastlake Style is named for Charles Eastlake (1836-1906), an Englishman whose Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery, and Other Details (1868) was highly influential in American design, by translating John Ruskin and William Morris' ideas into a decorative vocabulary for the carpenter and builder. The Eastlake style's importance is delineated by the use of geometric shapes made possible by modern machine techniques of the era. By making these intricate shapes with machines, it was possible to duplicate the exact complex patterns repeatedly, and in unusual places, such as the inside plates of a hinge. It's important to realize, however, that Eastlake always emphasized "simple, elegant motifs" rather than the florid decorative excesses of high Victorian style, and the majority of the items labeled "Eastlake" appalled him, as he frequently wrote during his lifetime. This is particularly evident in the United States, where basic Eastlake motifs were usually multiplied into a dizzying geometric mandala of Victorian intricacy.
   As the 20th century approached, there was then a revival of old forms in furniture under the name of the Queen Anne, although frequently spoken of by dealers, with absurd anachronism, as the Early English. While the articles made according to Mr. Eastlake's instructions may be considered a reform, and the Neo-Jacobean a fashion, the revival of the Queen Anne seems to have sufficiently positive features to be regarded as a style. This revival is said to be the work of that knot of poets and artists and connoisseurs of bric-a-brac at whose head stand Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris, and the traces of Italian fancy and English quaintness combined in it declare that it might have been their work if it's not. Its introduction was associated with a revival of Queen Anne forms in architecture, such as the somewhat Dutch character of country house with red brick trimmings and curved gables, to be found in the latter years of William and Mary, qualified by new invention and modern taste. Of course it met with opposition and criticism; for it seemed to have sprung into notice full grown, not like a growth answering a need, but like a surprise. Animated discussions concerning its merits and demerits, displaying equal acrimony and ignorance, took place in the meetings of the architects and others interested in such things, various voices declaring that nobody would credit Queen Anne's epoch with any style at all, and that if the epoch had a style, it wasn't this; that this was a mongrel, violating classic rules while pretending to be a form of classic, and yet really not unsuited to Gothic surroundings; and that, being an attempt to unite the truthfulness, variety, and picturesqueness of the Gothic with the common sense of the Italian, it should be called the Free Classic, for it was in reality only a Renaissance, less strict and refined that the old Renaissance. A writer in The Builder said: "We are now offered in some quarters the revival of the furniture of the Queen Anne and Georgina Period, of which Chippendale and Sheraton were the leading makers. This type of furniture revels in curved lines and surfaces really unsuitable, as we've before said, to wood construction and which, in fact, seem designed to create difficulties of execution in order to overcome them." But it isn't all this bombe furniture referred to, with its curved lines and surfaces, that was chosen for the archetype of the new Queen Anne. It is true that Chippendale and Sheraton produced such designs, but they also, as we've seen, produced others more characteristic of themselves and of the period. The first portion of Chippendale's One Hundred and Sixty Plates has examples of the rolling abominations of the Rococo, but the rest is a collection of simple and rather elegant shapes; and what resemblance there's between the Chippendale furniture and the Queen Anne is confined to the latter portion of his illustrations and the articles manufactured from those designs. The style often utilised Tudor-style woodwork and elaborate fretwork that replaced the Victorian taste for wrought iron. Verandahs were usually a feature, as were the image of the rising sun and Australian wildlife; plus circular windows, turrets and towers with conical or pyramid-shaped roofs.
   The first Queen Anne home in Australia was Caerleon, in the suburb of Bellevue Hill, New South Wales. Caerleon was designed initially by a Sydney architect, Harry Chambers Kent, but was then substantially reworked in London by Maurice Adams. This led to some controversy over who deserved the credit. The house was built in 1885 and was the precursor for the Federation Queen Anne homes that were to become so popular.
   Caerleon was followed soon after by West Maling, in the suburb of Penshurst, New South Wales, and Annesbury, in the suburb of Ashfield, New South Wales, both built circa 1888. These houses, although built around the same time, had distinct styles, West Maling displaying a strong Tudor influence that wasn't present in Annesbury. The style soon became increasingly popular, appealing predominantly to reasonably well-off people with an "Establishment" leaning.
   The style as it developed in Australia was highly eclectic, blending Queen Anne elements with various Australian influences. Old English characteristics like ribbed chimneys and gabled roofs were combined with Australian elements like encircling verandahs, designed to keep the sun out. One outstanding example of this eclectic approach is Urrbrae House, Adelaide, South Australia, part of the Waite Institute. Another variation with connections to the Federation Queen Anne style was the Federation Bungalow, featuring prominent verandahs. This style generally incorporated familiar Queen Anne elements, but usually in simplified form.
   Some prominent examples are:

West Maling, Penshurst Avenue, Penshurst, Sydney
Homes, Appian way, Burwood, Sydney
Caerleon, Bellevue Hill, Sydney (sold for $22 million in January 2008)
Annesbury, Alt Street, Ashfield
Weld Club, Barrack Street, Perth
ANZ Bank, Queens Parade, Fitzroy North, Melbourne
Campion College, Studley Park Road, Kew, Melbourne

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