I am new to the city.  Although I am fascinated by the amazing architecture in San Francisco I have no idea what I am looking at.  What are the descriptions of each of the different home styles?  A Queen Anne property vs. Marina?

Ian Berke has done a great job with defining each of the different styles.  Each week I will feature a new definition.  Which do you dream to own or do own?

Since Danielle is in Italy this week we will define Italianate: Bay-windowed and Flat-fronted.

Italianate Signature Elements

• Originally romantic country villas in 1840’s 
• 1860’s Italianate row houses built in middle classes across America
• California lacked cut stone so wood was used and included applied architectural elements; quoins at the corners of the house, over-sized brackets at the eaves. 
• Bold brackets and entablatures
• False parapet roofs (to conceal the gable roof)
• Narrow vertically proportioned window and doors with projecting bracket hoods.

Flat-fronted Italianate Elements

• Found in neighborhoods such as the Western Addition and the eastern parts of Pacific Heights.
• Usually on larger lots, flat-fronted Italianate homes often have setbacks surrounding.  Although typically two story single-family homes or 2–unit buildings, there are a number of single-story homes built. 
• These “cottages” are found in outlying Victorian-era neighborhoods such as Noe Valley and parts of Potrero Hill.
• Typically two-stories
• Three bays in width
• Clad in rustic wood channel siding
• Embellished with a modicum of redwood ornament, often disguised to resemble a stone
• Most eye catching: bold bracketed cornices
• Windows typically surmounted by flat window hoods or squeezed pediments
• Recessed and capped entries by a bracketed portice hood

Bay-windows Italianate Elements

• Supplanted the flat-fronted Italianted in the late 1870’s as increased cost shrunk lot sizes
• Two bays in width
• The bay window arose in order to increase the square footage of each floor and increase the amount of available light
• So popular and widespread contemporary observers called San Francisco the “City of Bay Windows.”
• Feature ornate columned porticos surmounted by turned balustrades.
• Projecting window hoods
• Large brackets and embellished with incised spandrel panels, pipe colonnetts and dentil course moldings