Architectural Styles
Seven Oaks Historic District
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Orange's houses, churches, stores, and public buildings represent more than a chronology of architectural styles. They embody three centuries of creating home and community in Orange. Understanding building styles is the foundation for appreciating Orange's historic character. Awareness of what gives a building or landscape its historic character allows us to take these features into account and treat them with sensitivity when we undertake repairs, additions or new construction.
What follows is an overview of the major building styles found in Orange, beginning with the earliest remaining buildings from the late 18th century and ending with the mid-20th century structures. This is intended as a guide for identifying the prevalent building forms and fashions in Orange, indicating when they were popular and their significant identifying features. Remember, though, that buildings can reflect combinations of styles rather than pure textbook examples. Also, later alterations and additions can make it difficult to neatly label a building's style.
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Excellent guidebooks on American architecture are available for the general public, but a comprehensive book on New Jersey's building traditions has not yet been written. (See reference books on architectural history in Helpful Information.) In addition, the Orange Room of the Orange Public Library and the Historical Society of Orange have strong local history collections of books, documents, and photographs that can help you understand the history and design of your building and your community.
Early Vernacular
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The building history of Orange begins with the Scottish and English settlers who used and adapted their European traditions to construct their own houses, barns, shops, and churches. These buildings were the work of local carpenters, and are called "vernacular" because, like a dialect, they are the product of local people in a particular region.
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Local Characteristics:
1-1/2 or 2 stories, of modest scale, with gable roofs and clapboard or wood shingle siding.
Hand-hewn heavy timber frames with mortise and tenon ("pegged") joinery.
Several plan types exist. The so-called English cottage is a 1-1/2 story one-room-deep dwelling with either a one room or two room (hall and parlor) plan. It often has a central door flanked by two windows, and the chimney is on the interior gable end. The I-house is a 2-story dwelling, one room deep and two or more rooms wide, with internal gable end chimneys.
Double-hung wood sash windows, usually 6/6 or 9/9 panes; knee wall windows often appear on early 19th century examples.
Some early vernacular houses have numerous, sometimes puzzling, additions and alterations that make them difficult to date with certainty. Later wings, porch additions, and dormers are common.
Greek Revival
The Greek Revival Style was the most dominant building style between 1830 and 1860, rising out of the new republic's nationalistic spirit and popular fashion for all things related to classical antiquity. Assisted by the builder's guides that popularized the style, carpenters constructed low-pitched gable or hip roofed dwellings with classical ornament based on the Greek and Roman orders. Columns, capitals, friezes, and moldings were adapted freely from classical precedent, and building facades often emulated the form of a Greek temple, with a pediment front-facing gable and a columned portico.
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Local Characteristics:
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Clapboard siding.
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Side-gabled roof with chimneys on the interior end gables; pronounced roof cornice may have returns at the eaves, paneled frieze and dentils.
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Symmetrically arranged double-hung wood sash windows, usually 6 panes per sash; may have attic windows in the frieze below the eaves.
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Doorway framed with pilasters and sidelights
Gothic Revival
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The Gothic Revival style was popular between 1830 and 1870 for houses, but lasted well into the 20th century for church architecture. Gothic Revival churches adapted Gothic forms and elements in a variety of ways; some churches were wholly original designs while others were closely modeled after medieval churches in Europe. A later phase of the style, known as High Victorian Gothic, was mainly employed in churches and public buildings. Complex pinnacled plans and polychromatic exterior treatments (using contrasting bands of color and textures) are identifying features of the High Victorian Gothic.
With a few notable exceptions, most of Orange's Gothic Revival houses are later examples of the style, dating from the 1870s and early 1880s. These houses are identified by their heavy turned and carved trim on the gables, eaves and porches, in contrast to the lighter "gingerbread" of the earlier Gothic Revival.
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Local Characteristics:
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Brick, stuccoed, or clapboard sided exteriors (only a few early examples have board and batten siding).
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Steep-pitched cross gable roof, with wide overhanging eaves and decorative verge boards and trusses in the gable peaks.
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Tall and narrow windows, often paired. 2/2 sash most common. Use of pointed arch "Gothic" window. Paneled doors, often double-leafed, some with Gothic-arched panels.
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Heavy Gothic-influenced carved trim on gables, eaves and porches.
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Flattened Gothic arches often used on porch trim.
Italiante
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Italianate is a broad term for a popular 19th-century residential and commercial style inspired by the villas and palazzos of rural Italy. Built in great numbers in Orange from the 1860's through the 1880's, Italianate houses have low-pitched hipped or gable roofs with wide overhanging eaves, often with a rooftop cupola or a square tower. The commercial counterpart, called Commercial Italianate, is chiefly a storefront design characterized by ornate bracketed cornices and a variety of arched window treatments.
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Local Characteristics:
2-1/2 or 3 stories.
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Plan variants include a rectangular box shape with a low-hipped roof; a front-gabled rectangular or L-shaped plan; or a center-gabled rectangular plan.
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Porches occur almost universally, either as small entry porches or across the full width of the façade. Stuccoed brick walls or clapboard siding.
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Heavy decorative wood brackets under the roof eaves and over windows and doors
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Tall and narrow wood sash windows, often paired, with straight, round, or curved arches. 1/1 and 2/2 panes are most common; extensive use of bay windows.
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Heavy paneled doors, often double-leafed. Arched doorframes and transom lights are common.
French Second Empire
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The Second Empire Style was fashionable in this country during the 1860s and 1870s. Along with the Italianate style, it was the most prevalent residential building style in Orange during the building boom of the 1870s. The hallmark of the Second Empire Style house is its mansard roof, which has a double slope, the lower slope usually longer and steeper than the upper slope. The mansard roof was named for the 17th-century architect Francois Mansard, who developed the roof type in France. Beneath the distinctive mansard roof, Second Empire houses share similar characteristics with the Italianate Style.
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Local Characteristics:
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Mansard roofs with either a straight, concave or convex profile. Typically features dormers, slate roof tiles, molded cornices and decorative brackets.
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2-1/2 or 3 stories. Most have symmetrical rectangular plans, with a centered gable or central square tower. T-shaped plans also occur.
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Usually clapboard-sided; a few brick and stuccoed examples.
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Windows, doors, and trim similar to the Italianate Style, with ornate moldings, brackets, and bay windows.
Queen Anne
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The 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition helped to create a taste in America for rural medieval English houses, on which the early Queen Anne style was based. From the 1880s and until about 1910, the Queen Anne style introduced elaborate combinations of materials, shapes and textures to American houses. Towers, turrets, balconies and projecting bays further characterize this style. The later phase of Queen Anne, known as "Free Classic," acquired a less medieval appearance and emphasized classical details.
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Local Characteristics:
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2-1/2 stories. Irregular plans and complex massing, often with a front-facing gable and extensive porches.
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Combinations of brick, stone, stucco, clapboard, and patterned shingles on exterior walls.
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Roofs often a combination of multiple gables and hipped roofs, with round or polygonal towers.
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Variety of window shapes and sizes. Double-hung wood sash windows with multi-panes above and clear glass below are common, as are stained glass feature windows and projecting bay windows.
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Doors are often elaborately detailed, many with glazed upper portions.
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Extensive use of brackets, decorative moldings, sawn and turned porch posts and balustrades, spindle work on porches, and decorative half-timbering in gables
Shingle Style
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The Shingle Style, a suburban and resort style of building that is unique to this country, developed from the Queen Anne style and drew inspiration from the traditional shingled houses of New England. Shingle Style houses, which date from the 1880s to about 1915 in Orange, are typified by a uniform sheathing of unpainted or dark stained wood shingles. The roof is a dominant element, and may sweep down over a large porch.
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Local Characteristics:
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2 or 2-1/2 stories. Complex plan and asymmetrical façade, but overall composition is less "busy" than the Queen Anne style.
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Wall cladding and roofing of continuous wood shingles; stone and brick used as accent materials.
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Large gambrel and gable roofs.
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Double-hung sash windows, often with small panes above and clear glass below; grouped windows in two's and three's; Palladian windows and bay windows.
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Decorative detailing on cornices, porches, windows and doors is usually restrained and classical; simple classical columns are common on porches.
Colonial Revival
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The term Colonial Revival refers to the national rebirth of interest in American colonial building traditions. The Colonial Revival was the most dominant building style from the 1890s through the first half of the 20th century. Colonial Revival designs drew upon Georgian, Federal, and traditional regional buildings such as Dutch Colonial. Most Colonial Revival structures were free interpretations inspired by colonial prototypes, while others were carefully researched copies of original 17th and 18th-century buildings with historically correct proportions and details. The Colonial Revival was the favored style for Orange's public buildings in the early 20th century, as seen in Orange City Hall and many of the city's schools of the era. Typical features include colonial-derived materials and design elements, but larger in scale than colonial buildings.
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Local Characteristics:
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Symmetrical balanced plans and massing are typical, but buildings are larger in scale than colonial precedents.
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Houses usually sided with clapboard or wood shingles; public buildings are brick and stone.
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Prominent gable, hipped, or gambrel roofs; boxed classical cornices with modillions and dentils are common.
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Double-hung wood sash windows, usually with multiple panes in the upper or lower sash; windows are often arranged in pairs, and Palladian windows are used as feature windows.
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Accentuated front doors, paneled or glazed; typically with pediment, fanlight, sidelights, and/or pilasters.
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Ample porches are common, trimmed with classical porch columns and balustrades
Tudor Revival
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The Tudor Revival was part of a larger revival of historic period architecture during the early 20th century. Period Revival buildings, popular between 1900 and 1940, were patterned after such diverse historical sources as English Tudor manor houses, rural English cottages, Mediterranean villas, provincial French dwellings, and Spanish colonial missions. Quotations from the historical past were employed freely to produce houses that were modern in plan and composition.
Tudor Revival buildings, loosely based on English Tudor or medieval English building traditions, are the most numerous among Orange's Period Revival buildings.
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Local Characteristics:
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High-pitched gable roofs, often with cross gables; large elaborated chimneys.
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Stuccoed and brick walls, often with decorative half-timbering.
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Tall, narrow windows, frequently grouped in two's and three's; wood or metal casements, some with diamond panes and leaded glass.
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Simple round-arch or Tudor-arch doorways with heavy vertical paneled doors are prevalent.
Craftsman
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Craftsman houses are part of the American Arts and Crafts movement of the 1900-1930 period. Craftsman houses exhibit the use of natural materials, rustic simplicity, and craftsmanship as publicized extensively by the magazines and building pattern books of the craftsman movement.
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Local Characteristics:
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Include both 1-story bungalows and 2-story houses.
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Low-pitched gabled roofs on bungalows; gable or pyramidal roofs on 2-story examples. Wide overhanging eaves, large dormers, and exposed roof rafters are common.
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Wall cladding may be clapboard, wood shingles, stucco, or brick. Fieldstone or cobblestone often used on chimneys and porch bases.
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Truss work in the gables.
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Front porches supported by square tapered porch posts.
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Double-hung wood sash windows; upper sashes often have various geometric patterns