Reminds me of this sublime Victorian shell built for the movie Practical Magic. I'd watch it 100 times just for the scenes that include the house :).

This is Victorian style house with some changes.

I have a Victorian two storey with original wood siding and plaster walls inside. I recently put on an addition. Was lucky enough to get the wood siding from someone who was going vinyl :-) contractor cut it down to the size of the old part. Looks great! Insulation in attic and basement seems to keep it warm (I live in a cold part of Canada). I'm sure it might be improved if I took out the plaster and re-insulated, but would never do this. If I have to replace a wall for some reason, I would re-insulate that. Of course, addition is fully insulated.

I see Queen Anne Victorian with influences of Carpenter Gothic - also called American Gothic

Unique Home Designs

I would agree that the style is a "Queen Anne Victorian" This style can be somewhat simple as in this example or certainly a lot more ornate. I feel that it leans more toward Queen Anne. than Farmhouse. Looks to be a very nice home.

This is Queen Anne and is quite common in the Northern Neck of Virginia (USA).

Queen Anne Victorian, beautiful in the simplicity of its details. Restoring the original porch is a great idea!

Look up the Sloan architectural pattern books, and you might find floor plans for your house.

Stella. I think you house may be a variation of the "shotgun" style house with rooms on one side with long hallway. Does that ring a bell?

Actually No hallways :) You come in to small foyer and can go forward into Dining or Left into Living. Go through dining to kitchen which is quite large for age of house at 12x17. Stairwell is in middle of house off of dining and there is another room on the other side of that you can get to from either living or kitchen.

Is there a Historical Society in the area? They have a wealth of information. Also the local library has archives. Old real estate transactions at the county courthouse are another source of information.

This is a bit off topic but we live in a farmhouse built in 1900 and I am dying to put a metal roof on. I LOVE your home's exterior. What is like living with a metal roof. We have a one story with an enormous attic which may become a second story and a long (think shoebox) very pitched roof. Any feedback to sound, temperature, etc.... Thanks!

queen anne victorian. the assymetric tower is a giveaway.

Is that a horse tied up to your front porch in the original photo??

Of course you will have to restore the porch now, where else would you tie up your ponies??

Seriously though, super house, so nice that it ended up in the hands of people who care for it so well.

We call it a split level house. I grew up in a house similar and there are usually 3 or 4 levels, but there might just me 2 or 3 rooms on a level. There are a lot of houses with this style floorplan in New Orleans .

Shannon, the original colors are not hard to determine. When you remove the siding, sand through the paint on the original boards. The original colors are still there unless the woodwork has been replaced. Good idea to wear a respirator mask, never know what's in old paint.

i think that , in san fran. she'd be a painted lady. and she should be now.

You may want to buy or get from the library a book called "a field guide to American houses second edition" - it has a ton of information about how to identify the architecture of your home including windows, roof lines, porches, etc.
I live in a queen Ann Victorian. I do see some elements but it might be fun to check the book out and see the other styles. Lots of real life photos as well.

Just flipping thorough the book quickly I see queen ann as well as folk elements. (I know that's already been mentioned).

It looks like a Victorian Gothic that they closed the porch on.

Wow!! Great story about former owners and the letter and AWESOME picture. You really need to display the picture prominently. So cold that it includes a beautiful horse in it as well. Where in New Brunswick are you? I have many relatives in NB.

So cool. Not cold. Haha

Cape May NJ has the largest collection of Victorian Homes in the US because of a fire that destroyed the city in the Victorian era which spanned most of the 19th century. The city was rebuilt in the style of the era. I am sure you would find a wealth of info if you contact their historical society.

This is a farm house.

coby0042 We live in Fredericton, NB :)

From all the comments I would say you have a Queen Ann Victorian Gothic country split farm house! More commonly known as adorable!

Looks like a house

Looks like a "Sears" house. They where ordered from the Sears & Roebuck, and deliver by train and truck to you lot . All the lumber was numbered and cut to fit. A build-it-yourself kit !

Love your house! I also have a Queen Anne Victorian (1890) that we are remodeling while trying to maintain the historic elements and style. One challenge is the wood frame, double hung windows, as there is a lot of heat loss and poor insulation around them. Does anyone know what options there are with replacing windows to keep them historic, while improving the R value? (Also need to have screens added to all windows.)

We live in an 1885 folk Victorian in Southwestern Ontario. It is clapboard and the last people who lived here stripped off the many layers of paint and painted it white. Our local historical newspaper had tidbits about the house throughout the early years. We found at one time that it was white with black trim and green window sashes, a "most comodious combination of colours" was reported in the paper. If you have such a newspaper archive for your area, a little research may be all you need to restore your home to it's former glory. We found old photos and when additions and updates were made throughout the years, including the installation of a bathroom in 1906. Another resource would be fire insurance maps sometimes kept by the town. Putting the house back to clapboard allows you to replace many rotted boards, as we did, mostly below windows. Wood is so much easier to replace than a damaged section of siding.

Above is a fire insurance map. Our house is on the bottom left. You can see the porch additions and which parts were one storey and which were 2. Yellow would indicate clapboard, blue was block, red was stone or brick. Spending some time at your local archives could yield a wealth of information. You might be able to pinpoint the builder, year built, other homes built in the area, and the occupation and geneology of the original owners.

kalsti-there are some window manufacturers that make historical reproductions with today's energy efficiency. You will probably need to go to a local lumbar/building company as opposed to home depot or Lowes. Look on line I am sure you can find some information.

Queen Anne, no question. I'm betting it was built by the local lumber yard from a plan book. Looks exactly like my grandad's house built in 1905. In North Texas, not New Brunswick. The house had no closets, because they were extra.

@Shannon Browne: I LOVE the 1904 photo of your home....with the horse tied to the porch railing out front....so neat!! I would have said it was a Farmhouse, but the original porch was too small, so you can rule out Farmhouse. Definitely a Victorian of some kind. Beautiful home whatever style name you put on it!

The Queen Anne Victorian's that I am familiar with have turrets, one or more, so I am not seeing your (absolutely beautiful) home as falling under that description. I would vote for strictly a Victorian home. Must be truly wonderful on the inside!

It is a farmhouse...through and through...My grandparents moved into their Victorian with turrets etc the same time this home was built...Do not look anything alike.

There is a house near my husband's work (in Vermont) that looks similar to yours. (It's a bike shop I think.) I've always liked the gingerbread detailing.

I see some Victorian elements with some reMUDeling = front porch (should be open),I think the windows were replace. Queen Anne.(1890),NC.

It would completely change the charm and look of the house but if you wanted to get rid of the siding and go with masonry, there is a product out now called Enduramax High Performance wall system. It will solve your insulation issues and the masonry all in one system...........but it would be a shame to completely change the style of something that's been on the ground so long.

It's a Victorian......I had a very similar one in Chicago that was built in 1885.

You have a beautiful, well maintained home. I congratulate you on owning it. To me, it is too small to be considered Queen Anne. Remember that these styles are named for monarchs who reigned in their respective lifetimes. Many people confuse the two styles. Queen Annes look more like Shingle Style but with a Victorian flair. This home design was built multiple times from the late 1880s to just before World War 1. My research concludes that it is a vernacular farmhouse with Victorian details. Many copies and variations can be seen in the US Midwest landscape as well as upstate New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. Other areas had a smattering of similar homes based on plans sold through plan books available at the time. I wish I could get my hands on one of those plan books. They answer a lot of questions about common period styles and their derivations. Yours just happens to be one of the most copied and successful. Some were built in urban areas on small infill lots, while larger versions were built in more rural areas. You don't see them in today's suburban communities except where Victorian revival is up and coming, especially because suburban communities were virtually nonexistent between 1890 and 1910. Congratulations on owning a very nice home. I love it. Attached is an urban Victorian that I designed about ten years ago.

Practical Home Remodeling what is the general size requirement for a house to be considered Queen Anne Victorian? Very interesting comments-- and I love your designs!

Hello Kalsti. I don't think that there is a general size requirement for a home to considered for any style. For example, we generally think of castles as being enormous just because of their history and our expectation that should be so large. However, I designed a castle that was not so large many years ago. It was never built due to the economic situation brewing and I am currently waiting for the client to call me when he's ready to make some requested changes to the design based on a new lot that he purchased. And there have been many small castles. My point is that a Queen Anne, although having many Victorian details is usually larger and has more features that make it feel larger. They are usually on larger lots with a lot of space around them to show off their ornate exterior detailing. Ceilings are usually higher and more ornate. There is usually a turret (or tower) at one corner as a focal point and a wrap-around porch. They also tend to have Shingle Style characteristics, another common style prevalent along the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S.

I am attaching a link to some photos of primarily Queen Anne style homes. However, there are some small Non-Queen Anne homes mixed in, probably because of the similarities and the subtle differences. Two of my favorite Queen Anne homes are Hale House in Los Angeles and the Carson Mansion in Eureka, CA. The Carter House Inn, very close to the Carson Mansion is a large Victorian, but not Queen Anne. There is another Queen Anne very near Carson Mansion, commonly called "The Pink House." It would be considered a small Queen Anne compared to Carson Mansion. The link has pictures of Carson and Pink.

Photos of Queen Anne Homes

Victorian homes, however, in the strict sense of the term, tend to be smaller, on smaller urban sites, with no towers or turrets, a smaller front porch and not as lavish inside, although very nicely detailed and ornamented. San Francisco is the best place to see Victorian homes of so many designs that your head will swim with everything there. They range from the simplest to the most ornate. The most famous are the "Painted Ladies of Alamo Square." Again, I have attached a link to some photos of San Francisco's Victorian homes, but there are some Queen Annes mixed in because of their similarities.

Victorian Houses of San Francisco

I hope I have answered your questions satisfactorily. Thank you for the compliment on my designs. If I can be of further assistance, please let me know. Here is the side corner view of the Victorian home I designed ten years ago.

Its an "I house" commonly found in rural Iowa, Indiana and Illinois. Hence the name.

It is a front gable folk victorian, L-shape floorplan, kind of queen anne contemporary-ish.. there is a bay window instead of a turret and there is a dormer on the roof, which is on the more elaborate side of "folk" victorian :)

"Carpenter's Gothic" was a low-budget version of the "Queen Anne" style. The difference is that the gingerbread trim was made from flat pieces of wood, cut out with a scroll saw or just a regular hand saw, like the pickets on your porch railing in the old photo. The trim on a Queen Anne house included expensive carved bits and wood turned on a lathe. On a Queen Anne house, you might find round porch columns, but square ones on a Carpenter's Gothic house. A Queen Anne house might also have fancy patterns in the roof shingles and siding, like fish-scales. A carpenter's gothic is more likely to have plain, straight boards used as siding. So, your house is Carpenter's Gothic. In both styles, the trim was always painted a different colour from the siding, often several different colours. I would love to live in a real Victorian house!

Your house has so much charm. I grew up in neighborhoods with homes much like yours, built lovingly by hand. Back in the day, people like my grandfather did it all. Foundation, framing, exterior and interior trim, and the homes carry that great skill and energy forward, as yours does. Thanks for the memories.

As you can see, architectural classification is not an exact science. Not all Queen Anne style houses are huge or have towers and wrap around porches. The term Queen Anne style covers a very diverse range of architecture, loosely corresponding to the late Victorian era. Queen Anne houses were built until around 1910, although rather simplified variations on the basic house forms, similar to your house, were built well into the 1920s, and some call these houses transitional style homes.

I would agree that your house is a vernacular variation on the gable and wing style house (also called Folk Victorian or Carpenter Gothic or National Style, depending on characteristics others noted above) incorporating a dormer. and a two-story cut-out bay window that was very popular when it was built c. 1890. The simplicity of the roof form and massing and the lack of variation in the wall siding except for the gables make it more a vernacular or Folk Victorian than a Queen Anne, but it can be difficult to say exactly where the dividing line is. With a bit more complexity, it could cross the line into Queen Anne. I would say it is a bit too tall in the second floor to be considered a Queen Anne cottage, but it is similar.

Lots of houses something like this were built, often by local carpenters inspired by pattern books. Dover publications has lots of reprints of these pattern books, and Archive.org also has quite a few. The millwork was often done locally or could be ordered and shipped by train. Yes, Sears did offer kit houses something like this starting around the turn of the century as did Radburn and others. AntiqueHomeStyle.com has lots of pictures of kit houses from somewhat later than your house, but traditional forms were offered for some time even after they became old fashioned. These pattern books typically offered elevations of the exterior and floor plans of the interior, and you might find something similar to your home.

It is definitely not an I-house, which is a narrow one-room deep, usually two rooms wide, two stories high house found mostly in the Midwest built in the mid-1800s, and may have more than one front door. I lived in one once when I was a college student that was built in the 1840s --the original house on the street, now sadly long gone.

Victorian farm kitchens could be a good size, since a lot of work to process and preserve food took place there, and the other room could have been the keeping room, which was where folks could sit around the woodstove in the evening. Or it could have been a bedroom. The kitchen typically opened onto a small back porch, stairs to the cellar and had a larder, which may have been torn out in a previous remodel. The front room was the parlor, typically reserved for visitors and funerals and such, and not used on a daily basis.

When you can afford it, I would really consider restoring the wood siding and repairing the windows. Old wood windows can be repaired and with a storm are as nearly as efficient as a new window, and a whole lot more durable. John Leeke and Bob Yapp are two experts with lots of advice online for old houses, and The Craftsman Blog is a good DIY source for most things, including window repair and weatherstripping, although I disagree with his insulating advice. He lives in Florida, so the insulation issues are different than in a cold climate. Old House Journal archives have good info too. I recommend John Schneider of Historic House Colors website for house color ideas and consulting. Old House Guy (website and here on Houzz) is a good resource for old house design considerations, especially porches and window casing, and also does color consulting.

Insulating an old house is a complex matter. I have spent a lot of time on Green Building Advisor, the Department of Energy and so forth and I'm not convinced that insulating sidewalls is worth the risk of creating moisture problems later on. Old houses can endure a lot of abuse because they are made with good old growth lumber, which is strong and resists rot, tend to be somewhat overbuilt, and because they are leaky--all that ventilation prevents mold and rot. The best thing and by far the most cost efficient thing to do is to insulate the sill/rim joist just above the foundation, and to ventilate and insulate the attic, and make sure the chimney and other roof openings are sealed and flashed properly. Pouring cellulous into the balloon frame house is a big no-no--it is likely to trap moisture and invite bugs. Doing something to keep air from circulating under the second floor, like inserting some mineral wool insulation between the joists around the perimeter of the house, is a possibility as well.

The University of Maine on YouTube has a nice series on inexpensive DIY ways to weatherize your house, and we have gotten by with a combination of bubble wrap (spray the windows with water and it will stick on and double the R-value of the glass itself) on some of our windows, espec. the ones in the bedrooms, combined with removable caulk (inexpensive, but only for one season) and rope caulk (bit harder to use but not as messy and lasts indefinitely and is reusable and is good for areas around hardware and such) and window film.

Inexpensive DIY interior storm windows made with two layers of window film wrapped around a wood frame has been tested by the Window Preservation Standards Collaborative to be as effective as a storm window, and is a whole lot cheaper. Interior storms and caulking will make even modern windows more efficient. If you search John Leeke's forum at Historic Homeworks for Interior Storm Windows, you will find directions to make your own. You can also make a fancier version with magnetic kits bought online and acrylic panels fabricated by your local glass shop.

Classic Queen Anne

Folk Victorian in vernacular style. I have one, too.

We were also fortunate enough to receive an old photo of our home; it is wonderful to have.

Aka Folk Victorian