Q&A
May 24, 2005
Q&A: Lockwood's Favorite Townhouse Style?
Question: Do you have a favorite townhouse architectural style?
Answer: People often ask me that question, and it’s a tougher one that you might realize. To me, it’s similar to asking a parent which one of their children they love the most.
I like all the townhouse architectural styles, but often for different reasons. Take the Federal style of the 1820s and early 1830s, which you find in Brooklyn Heights and in Greenwich Village and a few scattered downtown locations south of Houston Street. I admire the elegant simplicity of these red brick houses with their doorways set off by leaded glass sidelights and toplights, and their pitched roofs with dormer windows. Nos. 155, 157, and 159 Willow Street (shown at left) are exquisite examples in red brick, while No. 24 Middagh Street is a frame Federal style townhouse ca. 1824. I think that one reason I love these houses so much is that they have survived nearly two centuries in fast-growing, often-tumultuous New York. Only a relative handful survive today.
I really like the Italianate style of the 1850s, 1860s, and early 1870s. These classically-inspired red brick or brownstone-front houses, which survive in most of Brooklyn’s brownstone neighborhoods: all over Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, to name some of the obvious locations.
These Italianate townhouses reflect New York’s rise as America’s richest, showiest, most powerful city. Just look at the richly embellished facades with their grandly scaled doorways and bold roofline cornices, or the parlor floors with their richly carved white marble fireplace mantels and flamboyant plaster ceiling moldings and rosettes.
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