The
Victorian house all started back when Queen Victoria ruled from 1837 to 1901.
An era in which great social and technological changes occurred, many of which
had tremendous effects on architectural development. The Industrial Revolution had been under way eighty years, making
a quite prosperous, property - owning middle class. The high middle – class
citizens wanted houses that proclaimed to the world their new status and social
position.
The expanding
networks and railways led people to start building in the suburbs. These people
wanted a house and garden of their own and had the wealth to do it. Thomas
Cubitt made building these houses possible. He established a permanent work
force of over a thousand men and made popular the idea of tendering a job. With
one form of being responsible for the entire project instead of each individual
being contracted to work on a particular part of it.
Houses
being built had no codes and permits to follow to be built until 1844, when the
Metropolitan Building Act came into affect.[1]
Then in 1848 the Public Health Act came into affect. In 1841 and 1845 taxes
levied on glass and glass windows were abolished. In 1850, tax on brick was also
abolished. This was a major reason for homes to be constructed larger and
having various features with different style windows and more brick.
William
Morris, who was a father figure of the Arts and Crafts Movement, became a
synonomous with the Victorian Style.1 Morris
revolutionized art with his designs for pictures, fabrics, stained glass,
carpets, furniture, and metal work. A house built by Philip Webb in 1859, The
Red House, characterized Morris’ architecture. It was built with red brick,
asymmetrical windows, steeply pitched roofs, with gables, and a turret. This
house was huge and looked like it should have been built for a king. It became
the prototype of the Queen Anne Revival Style in Great Britain.
Richard
Norman Shaw was an architect inspired by Morris, who had developed the Queen
Anne Style of warm red brick with contrasting white stone work, large bay
windows and narrow small windows, leaded panes, steep roofs, tall chimneys, and
Dutch gables.2 Norman incorporated his
designs for the London suburb of Bedfork Park.
It was widely copied and became the most popular form of housing until
well into the twentieth century.
The
only thing the American Queen Anne Style houses have in common with their
British counter part is the name.1 The Queen
Anne Style in America bears virtually no resemblance to the formal and balanced
Renaissance designs that dominated British architects during Queen Anne’s
reign. There were two fashions of architecture but the design by Shaw came over
to America. His design was the Old English Style whereas the style that
dominated Britain was the Gothic Revival Style.
The
Old English Style that found its way across the Atlantic became an inspiration
for American architects of the late nineteenth century.1
In the transition, Americans dubbed these buildings Queen Anne Style.
The
first early planned suburbs in the United States that featured Queen Anne
Victorian houses were in West Orange, New Jersey. The house that started this
section of the suburb was built in 1880 for Henry C. Pedder. It was not the
first Victorian house built in the United States, but it was the first house
built by Llewellny Park that started the suburb called Glenmont.1
The man responsible for designing Glenmont in New Jersey was Henry
Hudson Holly. Henry Holly wrote a pattern book called “Modern Dwelling”, in
1878 that became the dominant style of America’s houses built during the last
two decades of the century.
Excerpt
by permission from Joseph Zimmerman S01 Intro to the City