The New Orleans Queen Anne

So, I know in the last post I said that shotguns are my fave, but I really think Queen Anne houses are my actual fave. I think there are varying degrees of what “fave” means to me and are mostly situational. Bear with me on that, I just really love old houses, OK?!

The Queen Anne houses are a part of the later Victorian period. They’re all over the U.S. and one of the most exciting to check out. The easy ones to spot are the extra frilly ones, but there are actually several different ways that people have built and designed them over the years, so some you can hardly tell are Queen Anne styles at all! Due to the timing of their construction, as they were coming around the same time as Eastlake and Bracket style, you will see that some of the houses have absorbed Eastlake features. Look at bands around tops of the wrap-around porches (open, fancy pieces- you will see on photos) and the balustrades (rails) along the bottom and you may notice it, too. Do some of these features look like furniture legs? That's an Eastlake characteristic.

Key Features:

• towers and turrets on the houses are a common feature, though many Queen Anne houses do not have towers. Could be round, octagonal, or square. I see a lot of square towers and large round towers in San Francisco and the octagonal and smaller round towers in New Orleans.
• wrap around porches
• highly detailed ornamentation on the exterior in multiple places,
• different sized dormers along the roofline
• TEXTURE! Everywhere! In the gables (area on front of house between where two roof peaks meet), on the side of the house, window glass (aka- lights), doors!
• also features stained glass, though they aren’t the only style house to sport this.
• COLOR! though, I think in the beginning, the darker shades and colors were the more popular back then. I see lots of pastels in New Orleans these days. Still very cute!

Something else that was interesting to me, was that different areas of the states vary in how they built the Queen Anne homes (which makes sense, but something I didn't really think about). I noticed on my last visit to San Francisco, that they have much larger towers. They are very round and big compared to our more fragile version. I also noticed that they call the Queen Annes "Victorian" Houses. Which, I think is incorrect in our city. Perhaps it is because we are much older, and we lived through both parts of the Victorian (High Victorian and Late Victorian) and we tend to consider it more of a time period than a style of housing. If anyone can clear up maybe why that is, I'd be grateful. Am still in the process of learning and reading and welcome any and all information!