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3 Examples of Queen Anne Style Architecture in America

Amy Hayden

Despite numerous variations, American Queen Anne style houses share characteristics that should be preserved, if possible. These include bay windows, turrets, wrap-around porches, classic columns, spindle work, and slate roofs. But each American style also includes specific design characteristics that are important to consider before starting any sort of restoration project, particularly on turrets and bay windows (both of which may be integral to the design). The three main American styles are Stick, Eastlake, and Shingle.

Stick-Style Queen Anne Homes

Timm HouseTrue to their name, Stick-Style Queen Anne homes are characterized by simple design details, leaving behind such ornate features as rounded turrets or towers and gingerbread trim. Typical Queen Anne details in a Stick home include bold paneled brick chimneys, octagonal turrets with conical roofs, wrap-around porches, spindle details, and interpenetrating roof planes. Specific features of the Stick Style include:

  • Wood construction
  • Angularity, verticality, and asymmetry
  • Purely decorative vertical, horizontal, diagonal and crisscross boards applied over horizontal clapboards most often found on gable ends and upper stories
  • Steeply pitched gable roof, cross gables
  • Projecting or trussed gables, often with sunbursts
  • Overhanging eaves
  • Square or geometrical turrets
  • Pointed dormers
  • Large porches, often decorated with simple diagonal braces
  • Bright, contrasting paint colors
  • Colored shingles

Queen Anne, Eastlake-Style

The Eastlake style of Queen Anne architecture was named after Charles Eastlake, an English author whose ideas about design influenced American home builders. Eastlake Queen Anne homes are generally smaller in size than Stick or Shingle Queen Annes, and they traditionally have more ornamentation and detail, specifically:

  • Porch posts, railings, braces, and pendants characterized by massive, oversized, and robust lathe-shaped wooden forms
  • Large curved brackets, scrolls, and other stylized elements placed at corners, turns, and projections along the home's facade
  • Perforated gables and pediments
  • Beaded spindles
  • Lattice work along porches

In the Eastlake style, turrets and bay windows may be simple and angular (as in the Stick style) or more ornate and curved, as in more traditional Queen Anne styles, such as the Shingle.

The Shingle-Style Queen Anne

Owl's Nest, Washington DC (Shingle Queen Anne)Perhaps the most striking characteristic of the Shingle Style of Queen Anne homes are, of course, the shingles covering the home. In fact, this style is the same as the other Queen Annes, except for the shingle wrapping. As with the other two styles, Shingle homes have wide porches, asymmetrical forms, turrets, and bay windows, but also possess unique design characteristics:

  • Low to the ground with a heavy stone foundation
  • Typically between two and three stories tall
  • Dark and rough masonry
  • Indian red, olive green, and deep yellow shingles
  • Entryways with typically low arches and short, stubby columns
  • Rounded turrets
  • Bay windows are generally smaller, made up of groups of two to three windows

Regardless of which Queen Anne style you own or are looking to restore, it is important to know their differences and to choose your materials accordingly to maintain the historical integrity of the home.


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