Architecture
The varied architectural style of the house has been described as Queen Anne, Eastlake, Carpenter Gothic, "picturesque eclectic," and "a capricious old gingerbread." Jack Smith overheard a neighbor say of the house, "What architecture! This old house? It's a mishmuch." Smith agreed but called it "a wonderful old mishmuch." Whatever the precise style, the house is an impeccable example of Victorian craftsmanship and design, with ornate brick chimneys, stained-glass windows, wood carvings, and a "corner turret" crowned with giant copper fleur-de-lis.
In a 1966 report to the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission, Raymond Girvigian, the chairman of the historic buildings committee of the Southern California chapter of the American Institute of Architects said:
This residence, purchased by James and Bessie Hale about 1901, is a wood frame structure having exterior clapboard siding accented with fish scale shingles and cast plaster ornament around the main, east facade windows and pediments. Other notable features include a veranda at the northeast corner having turned wood posts with curved wood bracket caps and milled ballusters and an ornamental iron rail on its roof. It has brick chimneys with incised geometric detail and corbelled projections at top and a second floor turret window at the southeast corner, also curved wood brackets at the second floor cornice.
Noting the eclectic style, Givigian wrote that the house has "exuberance in ornamentation and detailing without academic rules, based on borrowed styles and forms of the past but mixed in unrestrained though often inventive and charming ways and fine craftsmanship." In announcing its designation of Hale House as a historic monument, the Cultural Heritage Commission gave the following reasons:
This picturesque structure is an outstanding example of the late Victorian period in Los Angeles. Its prime significance is that it perhaps best embodies the essence of, or the most typical features of, this historical style in one given example. The building incorporates the ornate carving of wood, both inside and out, that is fast disappearing. The chimney is characteristic of the high Victorian 'town house' of the period, and the workmanship compares with that of the best built mansions on the old Bunker Hill.
During the renovation of the house, chips of the original colors were found on the house. The exterior was painted to match the colors from the old chips. The interior has been restored to recreate the appearance that it is believed to have had in the 1890s. The Hale House and other old Los Angeles landmark structures are open for public tours, for a fee, at the Heritage Square Museum.
Read more about this topic: Hale House
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In short, the building becomes a theatrical demonstration of its functional ideal. In this romanticism, High-Tech architecture is, of course, no different in spirit—if totally different in form—from all the romantic architecture of the past.”
—Dan Cruickshank (b. 1949)
“It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)