Period Revival Houses: French
By Michael Bridgeman
The O. J. and Bessie Bogard House
For some time, a house at the corner of Spooner Street and Keyes Avenue has caught my eye when taking the back way to Trader Joe’s on the west side. It fits my notion of a “French Provincial” house, a style that doesn’t get much attention relative to competing period revivals—Colonial, Tudor, Georgian, Mediterranean—that blossomed in the early twentieth century. The house at 1802 Keyes Ave. (1928) got me to thinking about French-style houses in our area.
Many historic house guides don’t touch on period revival styles* at all or clump them together with other “traditional “or “picturesque” styles. French-influenced houses from the last century are sometimes called Norman given their antecedents in rural Normandy and Brittany in northwestern France. For me, Virginia Savage McAlester’s A Field Guide to American Houses has the most succinct and useful summary of what she terms French Eclectic houses, which she dates from 1915 to 1945.
The Bogard House (1928) is a good example of what McAlester designates the asymmetrical subtype, the most common variant among French Eclectic houses. It’s a two-story house clad in masonry, with a very steep hipped roof and a tall chimney. The second-story windows rise through the cornice to create dormer-like projections with segmental arched hoods; the door and the window to its left have arched openings in brick. The eyebrow dormer high up on the roof is another common French Revival touch.
The John W. and Margaret Conklin House
The Conklin House at 1101 Lincoln St. (1925) is called the finest example of a French Provincial house in the city by Kitty Rankin and Tim Heggland in the 2006 Madison Intensive Survey. It was designed by Frank Riley, a master of revival styles. It’s a large residence near Vilas Park and shows the characteristic steep roof of French Period Revival houses, here with a small round dormer high above the main entry. The bay to the left has a long French window on the first floor; decorative metal grilles appear at this window and below the two shorter windows to the right of the doorway.
The Carl and Jennie Wehrwein House
Another local architectural firm that mastered period revival styles was Law, Law & Potter as seen by the house at 4170 Manitou Way (1937), designed for the Wehrweins. The asymmetrical plan is faced in stone with brickwork at the belt course and under the shallow eaves. Here the second-story windows are topped by triangular pediments rather than arched hoods. A catslide roof swoops down over the garage.
The James L. and Leone Broder House
Twentieth century period revival houses in French or Tudor styles have much in common. “Informal domestic building in northwestern France (particularly Normandy and Brittany) shares much with Medieval English tradition,” including half-timbering, McAlester writes. That is evident at the Broder House at 3409 Crestwood Drive in Shorewood Hills (1925). Architect Carl Ahl gave the house a very steep hipped roof, second-story windows that rise through the cornice, and a triangular hood over the entry door which are all typical of French period revival design. The extensive false half-timbering shows the kinship to Tudor Revival.
It's worth remembering that most American architects, builders, and homeowners came to the popular period revival styles thorough second- or third-hand sources in classes, photographs, books, catalogs, magazine, and movies. French Revival houses in our area are not academic reproductions; they mix informal and picturesque notions of “Frenchness” to communicate stability and status.
The Judson and Harriet Holcomb House
The William Goddard House
French Period Revival houses shared something else with their Tudor Revival cousins: they could be easily scaled to different sizes and situations. Truly grand period revival houses with French styling are not found our area, but small examples are. The Holcomb House at 2021 Rutledge St. (1931) speaks with a hint of a French accent thanks to the two French doors to the left of the entry and the two dormers with segmental arched hoods. The Goddard House (1940), with its smooth stucco walls and porthole window, shows the influence of Moderne design, while the steep hipped roofs, clipped dormer to the left, and tall chimney connect it to French Period Revival.
The Carl E. and Doris Baldwin Mohs House
Some of the most distinctive French Eclectic houses have towers with conical roofs. The towers are often placed where two wings intersect and typically house the main entry. The Mohs House at 3525 Lake Mendota Drive in Shorewood Hills (1926) illustrates this subtype. Designed by Doris Baldwin Mohs for her family, the octagonal tower has a copper roof and diamond-pane windows. The house is sheathed with rough-faced stone with clapboards at the top of a Tudoresque front-facing gable.
Frank Riley designed the three-story towered building at 636 Langdon St. (1928) for Alpha Omicron Sorority, which occupied the building until the 1940s. It has French Period Revival elements with a touch of Tudor, notably the arch over the entry door. Next year the 23-room building will become the new home of Zoe Bayliss Co-op.
Alpha Pi Omicron Sorority House
The John F. Moon House
Architect Frank Riley used French Revival style not only for the sorority house and the Conklin House above, and for a simple, symmetrical house at 1917 Kendall Ave. (1925). The Moon House is clad in wood shingles, not masonry as we usually expect of the style. Yet, it is unmistakably French thanks to the windows with arched hoods that rise through the cornice and the small gabled dormer barely visible on the left slope of the roof. The steeply pitched hip roof of the house is mimicked on the garage where it rises to a point to make a pyramid.
House on Blue Aster Trail
American tastes shifted after World War II and French Period Revival styles faded, though they never completely disappeared. The house at 1015 Blue Aster Trail (2006) is large but restrained in its take on French Revival precedents. The main body of the stucco-clad house is symmetrical with a high hipped roof. There are three long French windows, each fronted with grille work; the cornice line is broken only by a parapet above the French window on the second story.
The last 30 years or so have seen a return to traditional styles in new residential construction. French Period Revival houses are uncommon in the Madison area, and those I find are mostly in well-to-do neighborhoods. I was recently in the north shore suburbs of Chicago, where large French-influenced houses were plentiful, either in quasi-historical designs or in the kind of stylistic mash-ups disparagingly called McMansions. Either way, it is a reminder that period revival styles are never very far away in time or place.
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Note
* “The term ‘Period Revival’ is often used to describe a wide range of past motifs and styles that architects borrowed during the first four decades of the twentieth century…” (Cultural Resource Management in Wisconsin) Other American styles influenced by French architecture, some of which overlapped with Period Revivals, include Second Empire or Mansard style, Chateauesque, and Beaux Arts.
Sources
Architecture and History Inventory (AHI). Wisconsin Historical Society. https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS15309
Massey, James C. and Shirley Maxwell. “The French Revival in Suburban America.” Old-House Journal, May-June 1991.
McAlester, Virginia Savage. A Field Guide to American Houses (revised). Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 2015. 484-494.
Rankin, Katherine H. and Timothy Heggland. Madison Intensive Survey (draft). City of Madison, 2006.
Wyatt, Barbara (ed.). Cultural Resource Management in Wisconsin: Vols. 1-3, A Manual for Historic Properties. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1987. Vol. 2, (Architecture), p. 2-28.
Image Credits
William Goddard House, 236 Westmoreland Ave.: WHS Architecture & History Inventory 222106.
All other photos: Michael Bridgeman.