Summit Ave.

Summit Ave. Reflection

The first house we visited was the James J. Hill house, and that's also where we started the tour.  There was very intricate detail on this old home, and we learned lots of information about James J. Hill, and his family from our tour guide.  This picture is a side view of the house, pointing out the Gable Dormer on the roof.

Luckily on our tour, one of the guides let us into the Stuart-Driscoll House.  I got to snap some pictures of the living room, dining room, and staircase.  

There were also many other homes I snapped pictures of, that show features of what we've been learning about the past couple weeks in Interior Design.

This home was to the right of the James J. Hill house if you're standing on Summit Ave.  It shows a Gambrel roof towards the back.

I liked this house because it had beautiful columns surrounding the front door.

Lastly I chose this photo because of the turret, that sits on the top left corner of this Queen Anne style home.  There was a portico as the front of the homes entrance style with a pediment on top.  This house also has a dormer on the top left part of it, and bay windows under the turret.

The tour of Summit Avenue was a great way to learn about the owners and history of these historic homes.  it was fun to see how much of the features we discussed in class were actually incorporated in these homes.  Many people including myself, have gone up and down Summit Ave. countless times, but have never taken the time to stop and admire how detailed and beautiful the architecture of these homes are.  It was very nice that our Interior Design class got the chance to.      

Cass Gilbert vs. Clarence Johnston

Cass Gilbert vs. Clarence Johnston

Cass Gilbert:

Gilbert was one of the first celebrity architects in America, designing skyscrapers in New York City and Cincinnati, campus buildings at Oberlin College and the University of Texas at Austin, state capitols in Minnesota and West Virginia, the support towers of the George Washington Bridge, various railroad stations, and the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington D.C.  His reputation declined among some professionals during the age of modernism, but Gilbert was on the design committee that guided and eventually approved the modernist design of Manhattan's Rockefeller Center.  Gilbert's two buildings on the University of Texas at Austin campus, (Sutton Hall-1918 and Battle Hall-1911) are widely recognized by architectural historians as some of the finest works of architecture in the state.  Designed in a Spanish-Mediterranean revival style, the two buildings became the stylists for the later expansion of the campus.  It also helped popularize the style throughout the state.

Clarence Johnston:

Johnston designed scores of mansions and stately houses, mostly in St. Paul, as well as dozens of academic buildings, churches, schools, sports arenas, prisons, hospitals, and asylums. He is best known for his houses, but he specialized in another area also.  In his long tenure as state architect and in commissions for institutional clients, he designed for multitudes.  Even at the start of his career Johnston knew how to think big, just like Gilbert and his ideas of skyscrapers.  There was no such thing as the "Clarence Johnston style" he composed in great variety.  He designed many homes on and around Summit Ave. also, so I would say comparing Johnston to Gilbert, Gilbert designed a lot more of the larger scale buildings and Johnston designed a lot more homes and features out and around these homes.  In the end, Johnston's works have touched the full spectrum of Minnesotans and continue to do so in the twenty fifth century.

Cass Gilbert  

Clarence Johnston

A. G. Manson House

Summit Ave. St. Paul

A. G. Manson House 

               The first owner of the A. G. Manson House, was real-estate agent and investor Albert George Manson.  This home started out as a French Second Empire-style residence.  He wanted an imposing structure on a hill, and the architect of this house is unknown.  Which is unfortunate because he created an amazing fashionable house of creamy white brick, three dormers, corner tower, decorative brackets, and wrought-iron cresting at the roofline.
                   
                After a succession of owners, funeral directors John Kessler and Thomas Maguire acquired the house in 1919, and built a circular driveway to accommodate the funeral home they planned to open there.  The neighbors were not big fans of this idea, and they took their case all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court.  The court agreed that the Summit Ave A. G. Manson home and surrounding area should stay for just the living.  Following those owners, former U.S. Senator David Durenburger and his wife, Susan Foote, a retired university professor, bought the property in 1999.  Susan states, "Already growing up in San Francisco, I had a weakness for Victorian houses."  Although, they did hire architects Stuart MacDonald (MacDonald and Mack Architects) to build a side entrance and small terrace overlooking the large, new, side garden they installed.
                 
               After enjoying the home for five years, they sold it in 2004 to another professional couple, Jessica Stoltenberg, a corporate communications consultant, and her husband, physician Phillip Stoltenberg.  The best part is that this is the only surviving French Second Empire-style house on Summit Ave.
                                                                 

James J. Hill House

James J. Hill House

                In 1864, young shipping clerk James J. Hill met a waitress working at the Merchants Hotel in St. Paul, where he often took his meals.  This woman's name was Mary Theresa Mehegan, and she was born in New York City.  She was the child of Irish Immigrants who settled in the frontier town of St. Paul in 1850.  Mary attended finishing school in Milwaukee, and then married Hill in 1867.  The James J. Hill House architect was Peabody and Stearns, and the architectural style was Richardsonian Romanesque.  Over the next eighteen years they had 10 children.  Children grew up in the house, and four daughters had their weddings in the large drawing room.  Newlyweds often stayed in the house until their own homes were finished, many of which were close by on Summit Ave.  It's also said that the grandchildren come back and visit the house often. The Minnesota Historical Society states that "James J. Hill built a house that symbolized success, but one that also suited him and his family."  

Housing Styles

Housing Styles

Taylor Boraas hr-6

There are many different types of roofs that many people don't really notice when looking at a house.  The roof can contribute lots to your home, and can also add value when buying or selling the home.

Roof Styles:

1. Gable Roof- A Gable Roof is a roof with two sloping sides, forming a triangle at one or both ends.

2. Gambrel Roof- A roof with two angles of slope on each of two sides, the lower slope steeper than the upper slope.

3. Hip Roof- A Hipped Roof has all four sides sloping inward to meet at a peak, as here, or a ridge.

4. Saltbox Roof-A variation of the gable roof, originally created when a low lean-to addition was built onto the back wall of a house.

5. Mansard Roof- All four sides of this roof have two slopes, the lower four steeper than the upper four.

6. Shed roof- A simple, one-slope roof; also called a lean-to roof.

Housing Characteristics:

1. Bay Window- A set of two or more windows that protrude our from a wall.  The window is moved away from the wall to provide more light and wider views.

2. Casement Window- A window that opens by swinging inward or outward much like a door.  Casement windows are usually vertical in shape but are often grouped in bands.

3. Clapboard- Also known as weatherboard or siding.  Long, narrow boards overlapped to cover outer walls.  Used in Colonial style frame houses.

4. Dormer- The setting for a vertical window in the roof.  Called a gable dormer if it has its own gable or a shed dormer if a flat roof.  Most often found in upstairs bedrooms.

5. Eaves- That portion of the roof that projects beyond the wall.

6. Fanlight- A semicircular or arched window above a door.

7. Palladian Window- A three part window featuring a large arched center and flanking rectangular sidelights. 

8. Pediment- A triangular crown used over doors, windows, or porches.  A classical style.

9. Portico- A large porch usually with a pedimented roof supported by classical columns or pillars.

10. Rafter- A roof beam sloping from the ridge to the wall.  In most houses, rafters are visible only from the attic.  In styles such as craftsman bungalows and some "rustic" contemporaries, they are exposed.

11. Sidelights- Windows on either side of a door.

12. Turret- A small tower, often at the corner of a building.  Common in Queen Anne styles among others.  A turret is a small structure while a tower begins at ground level.

There are so many different features that can add a little history, or style to your home, and these are just a few!