The Victorian Era

How to Identify Italianate Victorian Homes?

Article · Architecture & Design · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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The Italianate was one of the most popular architectural styles of the Victorian period, and it shaped domestic architecture throughout the United Kingdom, the British Empire, and the wider world from the 1840s to the 1870s. The Italianate villa, with its low-pitched roof, wide bracketed eaves, symmetrical façade, central portico, and balustraded parapet, was the dominant house type of the mid-Victorian period, and it remains one of the most recognisable building types of the era. The history of the style is examined in Victorian Architectural Styles, and the broader context is set out in Victorian Architecture and Interior Design.

The Origins of the Italianate

The Italianate had its origins in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and it was based on the Italian Renaissance villa of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, particularly the villas of Palladio, Scamozzi, and their English followers. The early Italianate of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was largely a matter of country houses, ornamental buildings, garden buildings, and picturesque ruins, and it was associated with architects including John Nash, Sir John Soane, Humphry Repton, and John Claudius Loudon. Nash’s Cronkhill in Shropshire (1802) and his Regent’s Park terraces (1811–30) are the prototypes of the English Italianate villa.

The Italianate of the Victorian period was a more thorough, more scholarly, and more archaeologically accurate movement than the earlier Italianate. It was promoted by a number of architects and theorists, the most important of whom were Charles Barry (1795–1860), the architect of the Houses of Parliament, the Reform Club, and the Trafalgar Square improvements; William Burn (1789–1870), the architect of John Watson’s Hospital in Edinburgh, the New Club in Edinburgh, and many country houses; Anthony Salvin (1799–1881), the architect of Alnwick Castle, the Tower of London, and many country houses; and Edward Blore (1787–1879), the architect of the north wing of Buckingham Palace and many country houses. The great country houses of the period, including Cliveden and Trentham Hall, both rebuilt by Barry for the Dukes of Sutherland, and Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, designed for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, are the most ambitious examples of the style. The history of these architects is examined in Famous Victorian Buildings and Landmarks.

The Characteristics of the Italianate House

The Italianate house has a number of distinctive features, and these features are useful for identifying the style. The most important are the low-pitched, often hipped roof; the wide, bracketed eaves; the symmetrical façade; the central portico, generally of a Composite or Corinthian order; the balustraded parapet; the tall, round-headed windows with moulded surrounds; and, in the larger examples, a cupola or belvedere, a bay window, a balcony, a veranda or loggia, and a porte-cochère. The walls are generally of brick faced with stucco or render, sometimes of stone, and the roofs are generally of slate. The most characteristic details are the rusticated stonework, the quoined corners, the bracketed cornices, the moulded window and door surrounds, the panelled doors, and the louvred shutters.

The plan of the Italianate house was generally symmetrical, with the principal rooms arranged on either side of a central hall, and the staircase and the service rooms set at the back. The garden front was often more elaborate than the entrance front, and the side elevations were often the plainest, since the house was designed to be seen in three-quarter view from the drive, the lawn, and the park. The interior was generally arranged on a central axis, with a sequence of reception rooms leading from the entrance hall to the garden, and a service wing at one end.

The Italianate Villa

The Italianate villa was the most popular form of the Italianate, and it was the dominant house type of the mid-Victorian period. The Italianate villa was generally a large, detached, symmetrical house, with a low-pitched roof, a wide eave, a symmetrical façade, a central portico, flanking wings, and a balustraded parapet. It was generally built of brick or stone faced with stucco, and it was decorated with rusticated stonework, quoined corners, bracketed cornices, and moulded window and door surrounds.

The Italianate villa was generally set in its own grounds, surrounded by a garden and often a small park, with ancillary buildings such as a stable, a coach house, and a service wing. The composition of the house and its grounds was intended to evoke the villas of the Italian countryside, as filtered through the picturesque tradition of the early nineteenth century. The most ambitious examples, such as Cliveden, Trentham, and Osborne, were among the grandest country houses of the period.

The Italianate Terrace

The Italianate terrace was a common form of the style in the suburbs, towns, and cities of the period. The terrace was generally a row of houses of two to five storeys, with a low-pitched roof, a stuccoed and symmetrical façade, bracketed cornices, tall round-headed windows, and a porticoed entrance. Terraces of this kind were built in great numbers in the expanding suburbs of London and the other cities in the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, and they remain a familiar feature of districts such as Belgravia, Pimlico, and Bayswater, and of the seaside towns of Brighton, Bournemouth, and Torquay.

The Italianate terrace was generally built in terraces of six to twenty houses, with a uniform façade and a uniform treatment of the windows, doors, and balconies. The ground floor was generally rusticated, the first floor generally the most richly decorated, and the upper floors generally the simplest, in keeping with the Italianate principles of hierarchy and symmetry. The interiors of the terraces were generally plainer than the façades, with a hall, a staircase, a drawing room, a dining room, a study, and a kitchen on the principal floors, and a series of bedrooms on the upper floors.

Identifying Italianate Details

Several small details are useful in distinguishing the Italianate from the other styles of the period. The brackets under the eaves, generally paired or closely spaced, are a sure sign of the Italianate; they are derived from the modillions of the Classical entablature, and they are usually a few inches deep, with a simple cyma or ogee profile. The tall, round-headed windows, with moulded surrounds and often with a small keystone at the crown of the arch, are another. The low-pitched, hipped roof, often with a balustraded parapet at the eaves, is another, and it is a useful distinguishing feature from the Gothic Revival, which generally has steeply pitched gabled roofs, and from the Queen Anne, which generally has visible chimney stacks and tiled gables.

The Italianate also uses a number of small Classical details — the cornice, the pilaster, the pediment, the swag, the urn, the balustrade, and the rusticated stonework — that distinguish it from the more freely composed and the more frankly medieval styles. The interior of an Italianate house, when it survives, will generally have a sequence of well-proportioned reception rooms with high ceilings, marble fireplaces, moulded cornices, panelled doors, and chimneypieces in the Classical manner, in contrast to the more freely composed rooms of the Gothic Revival and the more comfortable, more informal rooms of the Queen Anne.