Farmhouse moved but remained the same
In 1905, George Franklin Sargent Webster - at the plow in the photograph - and his wife - on the far right - posed on their lawn for this photograph which was made into a postcard.
The house behind them had been built 2 years earlier in honor of their marriage. The original farm house, a cape, was moved up the street to 1121 Broadway. The style of the house, Colonial Revival, contrasts with the barn, built about 1800. Both use the same boxy forms but put them together in very different ways. The facade of the barn is a flat surface with windows and doors placed in patterns determined by use and proportion - the door is square, large enough for loaded wagons, while the windows are centered on their spaces. The only hint of style is in the roof overhang and the return of the eaves.
The end wall of the new house repeats the lines of the barn. But the front of the house exuberantly breaks the flat plane with bay windows and columns. The roof is broken by the front facing gable whose steep overhang returns at the eaves to become the cornice for pilasters with elaborate capitals. Compare that to the barn's simple eaves and corner boards.
At the front door the flat pilasters become the background for round columns and their architrave - the band with its cornice above the front door. Again the flat two dimensional wall is pulled into three dimensions.
The house was originally yellow with white trim. Today it is dark brown. and those bits of trees in the photograph have grown to tower over the house.
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