Where Romanesque Revival Meets Queen Anne
We’ve had a crush on this trio of houses on St. James Place between Gates and Fulton ever since we moved to the neighborhood. They were designed by architect William Tubby, who also built the Pratt Mansion at 241 Clinton Avenue and the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture among others. In the Clinton Hill Historic…
We’ve had a crush on this trio of houses on St. James Place between Gates and Fulton ever since we moved to the neighborhood. They were designed by architect William Tubby, who also built the Pratt Mansion at 241 Clinton Avenue and the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture among others. In the Clinton Hill Historic District Designation Report, LPC notes that the Flemish gables of the central house and the stepped gables of the party walls at the sides are Queen Anne all the way but that the round arches and stone transom bars of the third-floor windows are pure Romanesque. The report also makes note of the symbol on the gable of the middle house, calling it a “blind oeil-de-boeuf.” Hopefully someone with far more architectural knowledge than ourselves can shed a little light on its significance. GMAP
Wasn’t the house on the right on the Clinton Hill house tour a few years back? I remember seeing an adorable house with central stairs and it might have been this one.
Hi Brownstoners! Thanks for the attention. We’ve owned the middle house at 181 for just over ten years. The blind bulls eye at the top includes four terra cotta elongated triangles, an imortant shape in Tubby’s design vocabulary. You’ll see this triangle on other houses he did on Cambridge Place, Vanderbilt Ave and Grand Ave. I’ve seen period reference to Tubby’s style as “Jacobethan” a term that never really caught on. We usually say Flemish Revival with Richardson Romanesque elements. William Tubby did a great job designing the inside as well. The house, although small, functions really well for us. We’ve described the interior as “Early Modern”: wide, low forms with oak tile and stained glass, rather than high narrow forms with plaster and marble.
Considered buying the left hand one a couple of years ago, but it had a problem relative of the owner on the top floor tenant who was refusing to move without some incentive, and it needed an almost gut reno, new electric, probably plumbing etc. A couple has since bought it and fixed it up from what I see, which makes me happy. It was disgusting inside before with giant piles of dirty clothes, cockroaches, trash etc. (all the while the owner and relatives lived in it.) Love those places and glad to see them being taken care of.
call me crazy–and who am i to argue with the LPC–but i don’t see anything very queen anne-ish on this house. where’s the turret? where’s the asymetry?
Oeil-de boeuf means bulls eye. And a bulls eye window is a small circular window. I assume that calling it “blind” means that you can’t see out of it. It’s a bit hard to tell from the photo, but it appears there’s a small cicle at the center of the cross. That would be the oeil-de boeuf. It is a component of the Flemish style, and hence Queen Anne.