Anglo-American Townhouse

Anglo-American Townhouse.
This house type, which is most often found in the Central Business District and the French Quarter, is the first example of Anglo-American influence upon the architecture of New Orleans. Although these houses began appearing in the city before 1820, the period between 1830 and 1850 produced most of the remaining local examples. These townhouses were organized around the side hall which served as the main entry to the house, as well as the chief means of internal circulation. On the ground floor, the hall was flanked by the formal rooms, the parlors and dining room, although in some cases the dining room was placed at the end of the hall in the rear wing of the house. Ascending the staircase to the second floor, one would find an abbreviated hall that led to the bedrooms. The rear wing of the house contained the kitchen and service rooms on the first floor and small bedrooms on the second. It is generally significantly narrower than the main house and contains no internal hallways.

External Features and Characteristics.
Anglo-American townhouses are set on relatively narrow lots with the facade wall on the front property line. In many cases, these structures were built in rows of as many as thirteen identical common wall residences with no separation between individual units. The exterior walls are without exception of brick, sometimes covered with stucco or painted. If a good quality brick was used, it was most often left uncovered as a means of highlighting the expensive material. Stucco finished townhouses often were painted so that the stucco finish resembled stone, with the stucco marked off with vertical and horizontal joint marks to imitate large blocks of cut stone.

The street fronts of these townhouses are asymmetrical, almost always with the front door set to one side and two window openings forming the other two bays. The first floor of these houses is set at ground level or is raised up off of the earth slightly, with a short set of steps providing access to the front door. The door frame is often the most ornate element of the entire facade. The door itself is surrounded by sidelights and a transom, and further surrounded by a series of wood moldings designed to imitate some form of classical details usually borrowed from the architecture of ancient Greece. The second floor of the house would most often feature a balcony which could be reached through full length window openings on that floor. On earlier townhouses, the second floor was the only location for balconies which were usually fitted with simple wrought-iron railings.

With the advent of the large scale production of cast-iron decorative elements in the 1850's, it became fashionable to install more monumental verandah systems. Often these extended out from the front walls of the house to the curb line, where they were supported on cast-iron columns. On these later houses, the third floor windows were full length like those on the second floor. Generally facade window openings were fitted with louvered shutters.

The top-most element of these townhouses was the classically derived entablature, often executed in wood as well as brick. This feature often contains small ventilator openings which served to allow air to enter and exit the attic space. The roofs of these townhouses were either side-gabled, or very low-pitched, hipped roofs, neither of which were readily visible from a head-on view of the facade of the house. Dormer windows occur very rarely on these houses, largely due to the small size of the attic and the emphasis upon the formal classical character of the street fronts of the houses.