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WHY DO WE LOVE VICTORIAN HOUSES?

Like me, you're probably among that handful of people who just love old houses. When I was a kid, I fell in love with floor plans. I looked at house floor plans constantly, analyzing the efficiency of the traffic patterns, imagining myself walking through the houses, touching the woodwork and just generally taking in the imaginary interior vistas. The Victorian House.
floor plans that I create today are much better looking than any architectural design software can produce, but of course it takes me much longer to create them, and since architects usually handle this part of a house design anyway, I have yet to find a way to market this talent. But I receive tons of enjoyment creating them, and that's what's important.

When most people think of old houses, the American Victorian styles come to mind, perhaps a colorful Queen Anne with a white picket fence if they're thinking of a happy house or maybe a very stern Second Empire with a big rusty wrought iron fence if they're thinking of an evil haunted house. The abundant and diverse design elements characteristic of the American Victorian style exhibit a lushness of form and detail unlike any other American building type, providing for endless variations in both exterior treatments and floor plan designs. It is this profusion of architectural accoutrements---the imaginative window dressings, brackets, railings, cresting ironwork, decorative chimney treatments, delicate spindle work and adventurous roof lines---which affords these dramatic buildings a somewhat warm and whimsical place in our minds, conveying the fanciful charm of an idyllic life.

In contrast, when viewed in a state of disrepair or under uncomplimentary conditions of lighting, these flamboyant facades can mutate into sinister and foreboding architectural monstrosities, unearthly edifices, ominous melancholy hulks, associated most often in our culture with evil spirits, hauntings and gloomy goings-on. It is perhaps this later impression, coupled with changing economic times, which has led to the sad neglect and demise of so many of these magnificent structures over the past half century.

Perhaps these contrasting notions of Victorian Houses
serve as unconscious metaphors in the minds of their builders and admirers, representing both the light and the darkness---each contained within the other---in our own psyches. But whatever roll these picturesque 19th century icons play in today's world, and whether we view these buildings as the dazzling jewels of a Gilded Age cradled in the trappings of a simpler life, or as images of forgotten grandeur, once elegant retreats ravaged by neglect and decay, sinister specters of an opulent past inhabited now only by the ghosts of their once-proud builders, there can be no doubt as to the indelible imprint they have left on our architectural heritage.

An old house has seen things within its walls that will forever remain secret. And it seems to know exactly how you feel about it as soon as you step onto the porch, in the same way that a cat or dog can immediately sense either your affinity with it or your fear of it. The energy from everyone involved with the design and construction of that house is somehow woven into the fabric of the framing and the wallpaper. Every old house expresses its own unique personality, arising partly from the human drama that has unfolded within its walls over the years, and partly through the presence of its own inanimate form, which, once completed, somehow begins to take on a life of its own.

Old houses speak to us in numerous ways, whether it be through a creaking floorboard on a hot humid day, a chandelier flickering in response to an offhand comment, a drainpipe moaning as it adjusts to fluctuating water pressure, a loose shutter gently banging against a wall in acquiescence to a soft summer breeze, a doorknob that either resists or gives way ever so slightly under our grip, or the way the sunlight streams through a window, illuminating some object of interest in the room. Yes, old houses speak to those of us who have learned to listen and have made the effort to understand the language of the inanimate. They speak to us in ways that sometimes elude our conscious thoughts. But for those of us who have learned to listen, their messages are very clear. And for those of us who love old houses, the listening never ends.

Copyright David Spellman 2008

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David Spellman is an architectural illustrator and the author of "Victorian Houses---A Treasury of 100 Original Designs." www.hillhousepublishing.com/book.html

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