Victorian Queen Anne House Styles

History

• The Queen Anne was the favorite residential architectural style from the end of the nineteenth century through the first decade of the twentieth century. Wealthy homeowners built large and fanciful examples of the style but middle class families too built more modest versions of the Queen Anne. In a time when the equally romantic Beaux Arts style was seen in many public buildings with its friezes of hyper-beautiful classical subjects and flowery stonework, Queen Anne was used to make homes look like fairy tale settings.

Features

• Details were everywhere in Queen Anne homes, from the roof to the porch rails. The look of Queen Anne was random and asymmetrical. Architects could lay on scallops and swirls in the facings and roofing, add wings and towers, turrets and gables, or several of each. Often there was a circular tower that was the dominant feature. It may have been topped with another smaller turret and on top of that an iron rail and weathervane. The facing could be part stone or brick and part shingle, or all wood.

Porches and Gingerbread

• Many Queen Annes had a wide porch that wrapped around the house on the first or first and second floors. These were wide and the steps that approached them were wide. Overhanging the porch, fringing the window casements and emerging from under the eaves was "gingerbread," the wooden cut outs that are the builder's equivalent of bric-a-brac. This was used so lavishly in Queen Anne houses that they are sometimes called gingerbread houses.

Windows, Roof and Chimney

• Chimneys were elaborate and decorated with iron cirlicues or chimney hats. Roofs were steep. Shingle patterns overlapped like scales on a fish. The windows were a mixture of sizes and shapes including one-over-one double hung sash, bay, stained glass, and round arched. The Queen Anne window was also common--it was a large pane of glass surrounded by smaller panes, often of colored glass.

Color

• Queen Anne houses when new were often painted with many colors at the same time. The tones were dark, sienna, ochre, hunter green and earthy browns. Trim was painted one color, the siding another color. Gingerbread cut-outs could be a shade darker or lighter than the feature it decorated. The total effect may be comprised of five or six different colors.