"Painted ladies" is a term used for Victorian and Edwardian houses and buildings painted in three or more colors that embellish or enhance their architectural details. The term was first used for San Francisco Victorian houses by writers Elizabeth Pomada and Michael Larsen in their 1978 book Painted Ladies - San Francisco's Resplendent Victorians. Since then the term has also been used to describe groups of colorful Victorian houses in other American cities, such as the Charles Village neighborhood in Baltimore, Lafayette Square in St. Louis, Missouri, the greater San Francisco and New Orleans areas, Columbia-Tusculum in Cincinnati and the city of Cape May, New Jersey.
Some preservationists use the term polychrome for the style.
Read more about Painted Ladies: San Francisco's Painted Ladies
Famous quotes containing the words painted and/or ladies:
“Come gather round me players all:
Come praise Nineteen-Sixteen,
Those from the pit and gallery
Or from the painted scene
That fought in the Post Office
Or round the City Hall....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“No—is a term very frequently employed by the fair, when they mean everything else but a negative. Their yes is always yes; but their no is not always no.”
—Anonymous, U.S. women’s magazine contributor. M, Weekly Visitor or Ladies Miscellany, p. 203 (April 1803)