Friday, November 6, 2009

Another Greek Revival house

As I've made clear, I have a thing for Greek Revival architecture. It should come as no surprise that I'm working on a map to document every single Greek Revival residence within the city of Cleveland. I should caution you that this map is very much a work in progress and that some of the locations are purely speculative, based on Pictometry's data. I'm interested to hear about any houses that you may know about. I'm also interested in any other houses built before 1850 in the city, regardless of style.

I was browsing the local real estate listings today, searching for everything built before 1901, when I came across this house, at 11713 Kelton Avenue, in Cleveland. Something in the photo seemed not quite right - later I concluded it was the sizing of the three windows on the second floor of the house. I double checked the Hopkins 1858 map of Cleveland and the surrounding area - this house was not pictured, nor was it close to any of the roads. I assumed that this house must be more recent, and that this was simply a colonial revival house that happened to photograph like a Greek Revival. Still, I went out to photograph it on my lunch break.

Greek Revival house

There should be little doubt at this point that this is a real, honest-to-goodness Greek Revival house. It is not on the original foundation, which leads me to believe that it was moved at some point, probably in the early 20th century, judging from the age of the blocks it is sitting on.

Greek Revival house

The level of detail in the trim suggest to me that this house might have been originally built on a busier street.

Greek Revival house (detail)

Even the front door has a nice bit of trim, though the door itself is later, perhaps 1880s or 1890s.

Greek Revival house

It is unfortunate that virtually all of the windows have been replaced - the only older window is a two over two shown on this side of the house, and I suspect that this was added later.

I'm still puzzled by the windows as a whole - were they originally in different places? It just feels strange to see three windows across the second floor of a Greek Revival house, without any symmetry in the windows on the first floor.

2 comments:

  1. Christopher:

    I came across your blog by chance and I love what you're doing with the old (and sometimes unloved) houses up there in Cleveland.

    I grew up in Hudson, ground zero for Greek Revival (and the whitest of white bread south of Shaker Heights). I now live in Greensboro, NC where the oldest houses are generally venacular - not a trace of Greek or Gothic Revival or anything interesting.

    Keep up the terrific work!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Karen,

    Thank you for the kind words. Hopefully what I'm doing will help to save some of these houses.

    For what it's worth, I'm showing the best I can find. There are certainly some boring Greek Revival houses - take this one for example.

    ReplyDelete