Miller House
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.
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.
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