Dave's Victorian House Site - Evanston Gallery

Gallery for Evanston, IL

EV01	I live about three blocks from this classic brick Italianate. The entrance foyer and concrete steps, which mark where the original front porch used to be, look pretty out-of-place architecturally, but I think this is the fault of previous owners. The current owners have essentially turned them into a bay window. The cornice is in excellent condition (albeit hard to see in this photo), I just wish it wasn't painted such a uniform black. But these are quibbles. The brickwork and the stone window decoration are in beautiful condition, and architecturally, this house stands out against the rather pedestrial suburban fare on the rest of its street like a diamond in a coal bin.
EV02	This large yellow-brick Queen Anne is is now a day-care center. It "anchors" the far north end of Asbury Street, a section of Evanston which has many surviving Victorian mansions, including houses EV21, EV24, and EV30 in this gallery.
EV03	This small house has most of the classic features of the Italianate style: beautiful cornice bracketing, arched windows and elaborate three-sided window bays, and small and highly decorative porches. (Notice in particular that the side porch is purely decorative: it has no door or steps!) The only departures from the typical Italianate are the peaked Gothic-style roof, and the use of two windows across the front facade rather than three. I am informed by people who live in this neighborhood that the house used to be a rather plain folk Victorian, until the current owners added all the Italianate features and gingerbread. So, OK. It's a semi-reproduction rather than the real thing - but it's a good semi-reproduction. A tip of the hat to its owners, past and present.
EV04	This is the Frances Willard House, an Evanston landmark and a National Historic Preservation Site. The house was built in 1865 by the father of reformer Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard (1839-1898), who founded the National Women's Christian Temperance Union in 1874. Willard was an extremely well-known lecturer and organizer in her time: she was an early leader in the women's sufferage movement and in women's education, and she headed a college for women in Evanston, which later merged with Northwestern University. (Her portrait, hanging in the hall where oil portraits of all the past presidents of Northwestern hang, is the only one of a woman.) Her house is still owned by the WCTU, which is undoubtedly why the house still exists. The Willard house is now in the middle of a heavily commercialized district, and without the WCTU, it likely would have been razed years ago to make room for condos. The house itself is an excellent example of the Gothic Revival style. Notice the vertical siding, the characteristic drooping-leaf eave moldings, and the ecclesiastic-looking finials. The drab-olive and brown paint scheme is historically accurate. The Frances Willard House is open to the public on the first Sunday of most months.
EV05	This house is nicely painted in historically correct colors. It is a rather plain folk Victorian except for the extraordinary bay window, which is the primary reason I photographed it. The house is so hemmed in by trees and bushes that this view, taken from directly across the street, is literally all you can see of it. But the house goes well with all that greenery. The lush, bucolic look of this scene makes it hard to believe that you are looking at a house in the center of a crowded urban area.
EV06	This house falls into the category of what is called "free classic Queen Anne". Notice that the normal Queen Anne elements are all there: the complicated roof line, the hodge-podge placement and sizes of the windows, the change in surface texture from brick to shingles as you go up, etc. But in addition there is a certain classic feel to the house, provided by the smooth Doric columns on the porch and around the tower windows, and by the relative lack of decorative clutter. The decorative treatment at the upper left (the massive third-floor eave with the Palladian windows deeply set behind an arched overhang, braced by classic columns) must have been a favorite motif for some turn-of-the-century Evanston architect, because there are a lot of Queen Annes in Evanston which have it. The house next door to this one is also a nice Queen Anne. You can just see part of it at the far right.
EV07	This fabulously preserved, classic Italianate house is one of a pair (see house EV08) of brick Italianate houses which set on a hill overlooking Ridge Avenue in Evanston. They make quite a spectacular sight. Both houses are narrow but very long, with two full stories plus third-floor attic rooms - reflecting the days when lots along fashionable avenues in Victorian America were sold by the amount of linear frontage on the street, thus encouraging buildings that were narrow and long.
EV08	This glistening brick Italianate is next door to an even more authentically restored Italianate, the side of which can be seen at the left (see house EV07). Both houses set on a hill overlooking Ridge Avenue, so called because it runs along a ridge which happens to divide the upper Midwest into two water tables. Rain falling on the west side of the Avenue runs into the Mississippi and on to the Gulf of Mexico, whereas rain falling on the east side runs into Lake Michigan and on up the St. Lawrence seaway.
EV10	This is my idea of a Victorian house! Massive, brooding, almost fortress-like: add in the masses of vines clinging to it, and the picture is complete. There are no hanging pots of bright flowers or lavender-and-pink paint schemes to spoil this one. The house itself is an architectural mish-mash. It doesn't have the large rough-cut stones or heavy rounded arches which best characterize the Romanesque Revival style. Except for its size, it is not what I would call Chateauesque: it resembles a French chateau about as much as a Doberman Pincer resembles a toy poodle. "Monumental" is probably the best adjective for it. One thing is certain: you don't find houses like this sitting on every street corner, not even in towns renowned for their Victorian houses.
EV12	The decorator who restored this Queen Anne was apparently throwing an open house on the day I happened by. (Note the ASID banner hanging from the porch - American Society of Interior Decorators.) I did not go inside. My fascination with Victorian houses lies primarily in their exteriors, not their interiors. The exterior of this quintessential Queen Anne is beautifully done, and represents just about as much of a Painted Lady as you are going to find on the rather stodgy North Shore of Chicago...but I had to take this photo of it while lying on the ground and slanting the camera between the branches of a tree, because this is the only clear view that exists of this house. If you can call it "clear". You will note that a lot of the house is still obscured by those two huge bushes directly in front of the porch, and by the small tree set hard against the driveway. Sigh.
EV12	Close-up of the upper part of house EV12.
EV14	These houses form an interesting pair. The one on the left is actually rather small, but it looks bigger than it is due to the interesting dome-topped tower. The house on the right is Queen Anne in terms of its overall massing, but it is covered with stucco rather than the more usual multi-textured siding. The house appears to have been built in the early 20th century, so it is hard to say whether it was originally covered with stucco, or was stuccoed later.
EV15	This house is beautifully restored (the varying colors and textures of the siding are especially well-done), and it is considerably larger than it looks in this photo. But you can't get a good photo of it from its longer side due to (of course) too many trees and bushes.
EV16	This classic brick Italianate was built in 1871. It is located about one block from where I live, which is to say, far from central Evanston. That would have put it on a farm in 1871, but I am told that originally it was situated on fashionable Asbury Street and then moved to its present location in the late 1920's. The house was put on the market a few years back, and I blatantly took advantage of the real-estate open house to have a look inside - and alas. Except for the floors, it would appear that they completely gutted the interior when they moved it. It has been completely stripped of any Victorian decoration. The unsympathetic 1920's-era cabinets and doors were a real let-down.
EV17	I am including a photo of this uninteresting 1896 house because the camera angle provides a glimpse of the Italianate house next door, and it isn't often you can get two Victorians in the same shot. The brown house is considered to be "significant" architecturally, because it was designed by Myron Hunt, an architect who was influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright. (The two were using the same office space at the time this house was built.) It is said to represent an early type of Prairie Style architecture, although it is clearly much more of a Shingle Style house than a Prairie Style. In any case, and with all due respect, yawn. The house looks about as exciting as a lump of mud. There are any number of late Victorian houses in Evanston that look more-or-less like this one, but this photograph will have to represent them all, because frankly, they do not much interest me.
EV18	Here is another house that is almost impossible to photograph, due to the surrounding walls of trees. But this shot straight up the front sidewalk is enough to show the extraordinary condition of the window surrounds, the porch, and the cornice. The symmetric double-bay arrangement is unusual for Evanston, and reminds me of the more flashy Italianates that one sees in San Francisco.
EV20	This home is an excellent example of the quirky eccentricity one loves about Victorian houses. It is mostly Italianate, with its heavy cornice bracketing, flat roof, and tall, narrow windows with their arched tops and elaborate surrounds. But it is also very unsymmetric. One can only wonder whether the house was built this way, or later became that way from additions. The external woodwork on the house is in remarkable condition, which may mean that it has been reproduced.
EV21	I am not normally much excited by "Gone With The Wind" houses, otherwise known as Greek Revival. But this particular one has an unusually romantic look as it sets back among the trees, and I suppose my gallery should contain one example of the genre. The North Shore of Chicago is where the money lives, and it is chock-a-block with all kinds of tastelessly monumental ersatz Greek temples that are much larger than this one. But none of those can touch this one for pedigree, which I would guess dates to the Civil War or before, judging from the brickwork.
EV24	This house truly has to be seen to be believed. It is an enormous Second Empire house, three stories tall (and I bet each story has 12-foot ceilings), topped off by one of the most massive mansard roofs I have ever seen. It also has a huge, completely incongruous, two-story-high Greek-revival double-porch. The combination is so ludicrously pretentious, it could scare small animals. Which means I simply had to have it in my gallery, of course. Naturally, it is so heavily surrounded by trees that there is almost no way to clearly photograph it. This view is the best I could manage. It is clear that the porch was added well after the main part of the house was built. I can only suppose that some 1920's businessman (possessed of much money and the artistic sense of an avocado) decided that he could easily make his old-fashioned Second Empire house look just as ostentatious as any other phony-Roman temple in town. All he had to do was slap on the one thing they had and he didn't: a monstrous portico. For an even sadder example of a classic Victorian mangled by an inappropriate portico, check out the Ravenswood House.
EV25	This Victorian castle is rendered in massive, bleak-looking, grey stone. It sets on a slight hill, and is completely surrounded by a solid wall of jungle-like bushes and briars. (I took the photo from across the street, by standing on the trunk of my car.) Its roof line looms against the sky like something from a Victorian dime novel. You can almost hear the crackle of lightning and the screams of damsels in distress. If you look closely, you will see that the house was in rough shape when I shot it. There is a lot of rotted woodwork around the tops of both towers, and there is peeling paint and rusty ironwork everywhere. A "For Sale" sign had been standing in front of the house for a least a year when I took the photo, and it is not hard to understand why. In Evanston, something of this size would go for seven digits even if it needed repairs so badly that the cockroaches were deserting it in favor of someplace habitable. Add to that a horrendous renovation bill, and there aren't many who can afford a place like this, not even on the North Shore of Chicago. Happily, the "For Sale" sign finally came down, and the new owners have fixed the place up a bit. They won't be winning any restoration awards, but its looks as though the house is going to be with us a while longer, which is what counts.
EV26	The photograph does not do this house justice. The spectacularly carved eave is the high point, of course, but the house also has a complex front facade, a large window oriel on the second floor, and an octagonal corner tower. This is the type of Victorian which makes you gawk in such amazement the first time you see it, that you just run right through that little 'ol stop sign there at the corner, yes you do. (Not to worry. The other guy saw me.) The house is much bigger than it looks here, as it is built long and narrow, like many Victorians. The house is now cut up into condominiums, which probably accounts for some of the cheaper touches such as the aluminum window frames. But it's still standing, and looking good.
EV27	This house is a beautiful example of a late Queen Anne. As the 19th century drew to a close, the very extravagantly (sometimes almost bizarrely) elaborate Queen Anne houses of the 1880's began to give way to houses like this one, which maintained the mass and asymmetry of the classic Queen Anne but were not so cluttered. These in turn eventually gave way to the Colonial Revival styles of the turn of the century, and the radically rectilinear styles of the Prairie School.
EV28	This house is a a very fine example of a classic Queen Anne, a style which is surprisingly not very common in the Evanston area. There are many houses (such as the previous one in this gallery) which are very late Queen Annes, or Queen Anne hybrids, or semi-Queen Anne/historical pastiches of some sort - but your straight-forward mid-1880's Queen Anne is not nearly as common, for some reason. I can only surmize that there was a local lull in the housing market around that time.
EV29	This is an exceptionally handsome Italianate even by the standards of Evanston, which has more than its fair share of handsome Italianates. This particular house deviates from the more-usual narrow front with three-window symmetry (see houses EV01, EV07, and EV08 in this gallery) by presenting a broad front with an off-set central part and a dramatic two-story window bay, just visible on the left in this view. I would normally rail against the all-white paint scheme, but the unusual formality of this house makes me hesitate in this case. I think a little color high-lighting could be quite spectacular, if done subtlely — but turning this house into a Painted Lady would be a travesty. It is far too formal for that.
EV29	A closer view of the elegant detailing on house EV29.
EV30	I would call this late Victorian house a Tudor Style, because that seems to be the label closest to whatever style this house is, which is a sort of Stick - Shingle - Queen Anne hybrid. Whatever you call it, the house is in fabulous condition, and is very unusual. It is located along a stretch of Asbury Street which contains many Victorian mansions (houses EV02, EV21, and EV24 are close neighbors), but I consider this house to be the cream of the lot. It simply radiates the kind of architectural taste and high style that only a lot of Victorian money could buy.
EV32	This is the Charles Dawes house, an Evanston landmark and now home to the Evanston Historical Society. The house was built in 1895 by Robert Sheppard, the Treasurer of Northwestern University, who evidently expected that he would soon come into money by becoming Northwestern's Chancellor. Sheppard bankrupted himself building the house, and even then the third floor was never finished. Alas, the expected promotion never materialized, and in 1909 Sheppard sold the house to Dawes. Dawes came from an old-money family that had been prominent in banking and politics since before the American Revolution. Charles continued the family tradition by serving in numerous capacities for the government during World War I, the results of which won him the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in organizing aid to refugees and war victims. After a failed attempt at the U.S. senate, Dawes ran for Vice President in 1924 with Calvin Coolidge and served until 1928. Herbert Hoover later appointed him Ambassador to England. Dawes died childless, and his widow left the house to the Evanston Historical Society in 1957.
EV34	There is some debate as to whether Colonial Revival houses are Victorian or not, and I think: it depends. If they have a stern, almost Federal-style facade, then no. If they have a more whimsical facade with classical, Federal, Greek revival, and Italianate features thrown in, then yes. This house qualifies as Victorian as far as I'm concerned.
EV36	I probably walked past this house a dozen times without giving it a second glance, because to my tastes it was just another boring, all-white, Colonial Revival box. Then some new owners took possession, and shazam! Color erupted! I cannot imagine that the house ever looked like this when it was new, because the Edwardians just weren't into color - which is rather sad. You can see for yourself what they missed.

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