Category: Friday Photos

Just a few new photos have been added to Flickr this week of buildings along Cork and Boscawen Streets. Enjoy!

This week, PHW added the following images of individual buildings and closeup architectural details to Flickr. Catch up with all the newest additions at PHW’s Flickr Photostream, or view individual albums:

Handley Library (38 images)
Amherst Street (11 images)
Braddock Street (20 images)
Cameron Street (4 photos)
Court Square (1 image)
CSX (formerly B&O) Train Station (1 image)
George Washington Office Museum (1 image)

All new photos are at the end of their respective albums. As a number of photos were details, some are duplicated in the Architectural Details album as well.

Just when you think all the photos have been found, a few more turn up in unexpected places! For your browsing pleasure this week, new items have been added to:

Cameron Street (23 photos)
Sharp Street (8 photos)
Kent Street (1 photo)
Baker Street (1 photo)

and a new album has been created for:

East Lane (2 photos)

The photographs this week were largely provided by E.E. Bayliss, Jr. (Sharp Street, East Lane) and John G. Lewis (renovation of the Henkel House at 27-29 S. Cameron St.).

Happy Friday! This week for Friday Photos, check the PHW Photostream on Flickr for an assortment of photos, including:

• Guided walking tours in the 1980s-early 2000s
• A Civil War battlefield bus tour with Joe Whitehorne
• Candids from PHW lectures, conferences, board meetings, Annual Meetings, Memberfests, and Holiday House Tours, including a photo of the last time Eloise Strader opened her home for PHW
• And finally, fresh additions to the architectural details collection, taken around the Hiram Masonic Lodge No. 21 and Court House Square yesterday afternoon.

Revisit the memories of the Potato Hill Street Festival, held during PHW’s 25th anniversary in 1989 between the 400 and 600 blocks of South Loudoun Street. The event had kid-friendly activities, open houses and antique displays, plants for sale, and special guests Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head.

This week, we bring you an assortment of views around Winchester, with a special emphasis on late Victorian era architectural details. If you like looking at cornices, you will love the Italianate style details and buildings album.

New additions have also been made to the following albums:

Holiday House Tour 2009: Aglow on Clifford Street

Clifford Street

Amherst Street

Cecil Street

Following the presentation on Saturday, May 16, Sandra Bosley received a question about the exuberant Queen Anne style house on the corner of Washington and Boscawen Streets. It, along with the other late Victorian homes on that block, was owned by the Baker family, of Baker & Co. wholesale grocery fame. The so-called “palatial” residence was built by William H. Baker, the chocolate magnate of the family.

The house on the corner, known as The Gables, is not only one of Winchester’s most visibly ostentatious dwellings, but one of the designs produced by Knoxville, Tennessee-based architect George F. Barber.

Barber was a self-taught architect, learning from books like George Palliser’s American Cottage Homes and technical books published by A.J. Bicknell and Company. Barber published his first catalog consisting of fourteen designs in 1887 or 1888. The second edition featuring 59 designs was published in 1890, and his mail order architecture business boomed. Most of his plans were late Victorian confections with distinctive tower, porch, and chimney flourishes, but toward the end of his career, he produced a handful of Colonial Revival and transitional Queen Anne/Colonial Revival style designs as well.(1)

Although Barber phased out his catalog business in 1908, his work had become so widespread as to have representative buildings in all 50 states. Winchester can boast of at least five extant Barber designed houses and two known demolished designs. The Gables is the most famous example, but the known Winchester Barber designed houses are:

• 312-314 Amherst Street
• 316 Amherst Street, Bessie McCann House
• 133 North Cameron Street, Scott A. Affleck House (demolished)
• 105-107 Lee Street
• 411 Tennyson Avenue, Courtfield
• 12 North Washington Street, Judge William Atkinson House (demolished)
• 5 South Washington Street, The Gables

As noted by Michael Alcorn during his research trip to Winchester in 1998, it seems likely one person would order a George F. Barber catalog and then pass it on to a friend, so that multiple Barber houses appear in a “cluster.” As Queen Anne houses are not typically thought of when considering potential mail order houses, Barber designs are easily overlooked by enthusiasts of other mail order homes, like Sears, Aladdin, Montgomery Ward, and many more. Peruse more Barber designs at the Knox County Public Library. You just might recognize the design of another local Barber house!

This week, PHW has digitized its collection of slides pertaining to the Kurtz Building. Most slides date from 1988-1990, when the bulk of the exterior work was completed. Refresh your memory on the transformation of this “ugly warehouse” in the Kurtz Cultural Center album on Flickr. The new photos are at the end of the album.