To get a closer look at the architectural style known as Queen Anne, we went to several different houses. My favorite one so far was the Kneeland Walker house in Wauwatosa. Built in 1890, the Kneeland house was the biggest house for miles around. What struck me most about the house was the use of different materials. There was brick, stone, wood, glass and copper. In comparison to the other house we have seen, this was a dramatic shift. According to Handlin, this shift in material usage was most likely brought on by the advancement of the transportation in America. Through the expansion of the shipping routes and railways, materials could now be brought in from other parts of the country at a cheaper price. As a home owner, you were no longer limited to the local materials. You could order stone from three states away and get it at fair price. The materials on the Kneeland house appeared to be divided based on the level of the house. Brick was the predominant material on the first level, but it does not make another appearance on any other level,
except for the chimney. The same could be said for the wooden siding. It is the material of choice for the upper levels but is not used on the lower level. The separation of materials, brick from wood, gives the house a very grounded feel. It makes it feel strong, sturdy, and almost temple like. The floor plan was centered around a grand stair case, which was typical for these types of houses. It appeared to be the prime location for addressing a large audience. An aspect that was not in the houses that we looked at prior to this was the idea of service. Besides the grand stair case, the floor plan was geared to hide the help from the family and there guests. There were several entrances and exits to the kitchen. Also, the third floor was well equipped to be the living quarter for the help. The house was built during the time of great financial prosperity for many Americans. People could now afford to have a staff. The key was keeping them out of sight from the guests.
Built in 1887 as a wedding gift, the George P Miller house is an example of a house that combines two prevalent architectural styles of the time. These styles would be Queen Anne and Richardson Romanesque. The first thing that I noticed about this house the rustication on the front facade. Another aspect was the visual weight of the house. This was portrayed predominately in the arches and lintels. They were enlarged and made of stone. They almost seemed to dominate the lower half of the front of the house. The use of an arch over the entry way was very common in Romanesque houses. The ornamentation that was used not only in the iron work but carved into the stone only added to my thinking that this house was Romanesque. It gave a sense of revival without coming out and being so obnoxious about it. On the front facade, the main building material used was sandstone. On the other levels, along with the rear of the house, cream city brick was used. It was my thinking that this was done for the same effect that Greek revival used columns, to showcase the status but still keep a fairly reasonable budget. While the use of stone and masonry point in the direction of Romanesque, the plan and elevation of the house suggest otherwise. While it may have seemed very grounded because of the use of stone, the elevation of the house gave a very tall, vertical feeling. The turret on the front corner of the house only added to that feeling. The long cylindrical shape helped the house from being crushed under its own visual weight. In plan, the house was very deep, from front to back. Romanesque houses were fairly wide. The addition of the turret was very Queen Anne in the way it pulled mass out of the main rectangular shape that made up the major parts of the house. On the interior, its centrally located grand stair case only added to my thinking that this house had some Queen Anne influence while it was being designed. The reason that I cannot definitively call this piece entirely Queen Anne is because of the heavy use of stone to create walls of the house. Typically, Queen Anne houses used wood as a dominate building material.
