Some house layouts have names. "Ranch" brings to mind a one story house with a front door on one side of the living room. "Colonial" suggests a two story house with a centered front door which opens into a hall with a room to the left and another to the right.
This house also has a familiar layout - gable to the street, two stories, entrance to the side to a hall with a stair and rooms to one side. Popular from before 1800 to World War I, and still widely used for duplexes and town houses, this layout seems to have no name. These houses are usually described by their decoration, from Greek Revival in 1830 to Queen Anne in 1890.
This particular house was built in about 1902, the first house on Maplewood Avenue. Charles Wilkerson, the man standing in the yard, was the owner, and his family still lives here today. If you drive up the street, you will see several other houses built soon after this one, in the same pattern, the one across the street being the closest copy. Although this house is now covered with vinyl siding, on the house across the street the dentils still run up the eaves and across the gable, a Colonial Revival detail that manages to look charmingly Victorian as it outlines the side, front and bay window of the house.
The owners have the 1902 contract for the house, a standard 12 page form with spaces filled in by the builder, Richardson Brothers. They add a note that the house is one foot larger in all directions than the plan specified. That's why this house looks ample and broad, not quite as up and down and snug as its mate across the street.
note: I was asked to write this column as a birthday present for the first owner's grand-daughter. I was happy to comply. It was fun to give her a surprise when she opened the newspaper that Sunday morning.
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