Porches, Piazzas, and Verandas

 It’s been a while since we last posted on the elements of Lambertville’s Victorian architecture, so with summer in full swing why not take a closer look at the part of the house where Victorians spent much of their summers. 

 We’ve looked at porches before from soaring verandas to elegant loggias, but no one experimented with this architectural feature with more gusto than the Victorians. 

 Perhaps it’s because each of the individual parts of the structure, columns, balustrades, brackets, corbels, and roofs, each allow for endless opportunities for decoration and ornamentation. 

 This was after all an era obsessed with adding as much carved wooden gingerbread trim as their houses could hold, and the porch provided the perfect place to hold it. 

 Even a small entrance porch was an opportunity for ornamentation.

 Take this neighboring pair of tiny twin porches, one in white the other full color, likely added onto the earlier townhouses at a later date.

 All of that intricate trim made for endless surfaces to paint and the color schemes around town run the gamut. 

 Painted all in white the gingerbread looks something more akin to a wedding cake frosting. 

 The architectural styles are as varied as the color schemes including everything from this angular Eastlake.

 To this eclectic Queen Anne featuring an unusual slate roofline.

 But not every porch was awash in lacy trim work as the classically elegant fluted columns here show.

 Here clustered trios of simple slender columns rest atop heavy rusticated stone supports illustrating the later influence of Craftsman ideals over ornate Victoriana.

 This example of simple columns on masonry bases is adorned with classical dentil moldings giving a hint of the Colonial Revival.

 The advent of air conditioning along with the rise of the backyard as the main outdoor family space would spell the end of the golden age of front porches, but what better place to sip an iced tea on a summer afternoon than the porch of this classic American Four Square decorated with flowers and wicker furniture and shaded from the sun by cheerful stripped awnings.

Photos by KS&D.