Greater Chicagoland Home Inspection's new blog, "Life at the OLD Homestead" is meant as a primer for those interested in intricacies of old homes. I love old homes...I love inspecting them, I love restoring them, I love living in them. This is dedicated to that passion, and hopefully will shed some light on some of the finer points of these time capsules.
Determining the Age of your Home: Popular Home Styles
Another method to dating your home is to determine when the popular styles were constructed. One the style is determined, typically it is possible to find similar homes in the area that may have construction dates recorded with the township. In the next few blogs, I will develop a historical timeline and other information associated with specific details of each style of home.
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The Queen Anne, 1880-1910 |
The Queen Anne was introduced at the 1876 Exposition in Philadelphia. Similar to the Georgian’s homage to King George, the Queen Anne was named after the an 18th century British Monarch, Queen Anne.
The Queen Anne is elaborate. In fact, the more elaborate, the better. It is a very complex house to build, due to its many parts. The Queen Anne includes towers, dormers, bay windows, and corbelled chimneys. The wall surfaces include coursed shingles, inset panels of wooden ornaments and irregular roofline and highly decorative wrap around porches. The windows may be square or diamond paned and are typically double hung sash.
Similar to the Americanization of other house styles, the Queen Anne Farmhouse, is a basic version of the Vernacular Farmhouse (which is the topic of Greater Chicagoland Home Inspection’s next blog), but with simplified Queen Anne Elements. The home is typically built as a 1 ½ story structure with muted, less detailed ornaments. Often times, the home is void of the decorative woodwork altogether. Instead, the wrap-around porches still use a combination of shingles and clapboard, and turned woodwork.
Determining the Age of your Home is written by Greater Chicagoland Home Inspection, a St Charles, Illlinois Home Inspection Company. If you are in the market to purchase a home in the Kane, Cook , DuPage, or Dekalb counties of Illinois, contact us for your inspection needs.
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