With towers and turrets, gables and bays, lacy spindles and richly ornamented surfaces, Queen Anne houses can look like spun-sugar wedding cakes next to the more solid stuff that came before.
Popularized by English architect Richard Norman Shaw in the 1860s to 1870s, the style was oddly named, having nothing to do with the 18th Century reign of Queen Anne. The British middle class loved the Queen Anne style for its fanciful gaiety that flew in the face of rigid classicism and somber Gothic restraints.
Showcased at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in St. Louis, Queen Anne quickly caught on in America, becoming its dominant residential building style between 1880 and 1900.
In the Chicago area, Queen Anne homes can be found from Hyde Park to Kenwood, to Edgewater to Evanston and in suburbs such as Naperville, Oak Park and Wheaton. Some broad and brick, others narrow and clad in clapboard, local-architect interpretations of the style varied widely. No one architect led the pack, but there were several standouts:
– William Le Baron Jenney, best known for what he did to pioneer steel frame construction of skyscrapers, built many beautiful Queen Anne’s on the South Side and Riverside, where he lived.
– Joseph Lyman Silsbee, who was the first to hire (and mentor) Frank Lloyd Wright, showed an elegance and restraint with his Queen Anne shingle-style homes, which set a standard. Wright called Silsbee’s designs, “quietly domestic and gracefully picturesque” and built his own 1889 house in Oak Park with many Silsbee-esque Queen Anne attributes. (View Silsbee-built Victorian row houses at 2105-2115 N. Clark St.)
– Franklin Pierce Burnham, official architect for the Kenilworth Co., designed best-of-class Queen Annes, including Waverly, the former Joseph Sears house in Kenilworth, and Burnham’s own house.
“No Chicago architect surpassed Burnham’s skill at handling this picturesque style,” says Evanston architect and historian Stuart Cohen, co-author of the just-published “North Shore Chicago, Houses of the Lakefront Suburbs” (Acanthus Press, New York) (Burnham-built Victorian row houses, circa 1887 are at 2838-2848 W. Warren Blvd.)
