This house was built as a modest example of Tudor Revival, probably in the late 1920’s or early 1930’s. If it weren’t for the few surviving identifying characteristics typical of the style (projecting gabled brick entry with arched door and first story diamond-paned sash) it would be impossible to tell that the house had ever been styled at all. Wrapped in vinyl siding, the house has assumed a generic “Victorian” appearance with components such as scalloped vinyl shingles of graduated hues in the main gable, a piece of spindled fretwork wedged into the gable peak above the door, lathe-turned newels and spindles at the entry stoop, a balustrade of turned spindles across the adjacent porch, and diamond paned sash in the gable windows (note that the new windows have a horizontal orientation to the panes as opposed to the vertical orientation of the original windows below them). A new addition to the rear is also wrapped in vinyl; the new windows lack the frame width of the originals below them.
OK. This just hurt my eyes!
And brain!
Ouch indeed!
I guess architectural features are just interchangeable accessories to some, with no consideration to the overall composition. That’s pretty much the founding principle of the McMansion asthetic, right?
The art of composition is seemingly lost these days. And you’re right about the McMansion aesthetic… a term I much prefer to the politically correct variant of “neo-eclectic”!