Eye-Catching Queen Anne–Style Homes

Towers, Shingles, Cresting, and Details Galore

519 Brinkerhoff Avenue | Credit: Betsy J. Green

These are often the type of homes that you can’t help noticing as you walk along our streets — streets such as Bath or Laguna. Sometimes, it seems like people piled on all the exterior details they could afford to show off their wealth. These Queen Anne–style homes are often called “Victorian homes,” but technically, a Victorian home is any home that was built during Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901). Queen Anne–style homes were popular from 1880 to 1910, and somehow, they are not at all related to Queen Anne, who reigned from 1702 to 1714.

This sketch appeared in the ‘San Diego Union & Daily Bee’ on June 26, 1887. | Credit: ‘San Diego Union and Daily Bee’

Here in Santa Barbara, our city’s list of Designated Structures of Merit indicates that Queen Anne–style homes were built here from 1873 to 1910. Many of these homes have two stories. One-story Queen Anne–style homes are usually called Queen Anne cottages or Folk Victorian. The roofs of Queen Anne–style homes are usually steeply pitched, and some have decorative roof cresting along the top. (Cresting looks like a fancy metal fence along the roof ridge.) Many of these metallic details have not survived the years — sometimes lightning or rust was the culprit, and sometimes it was because homeowners removed the metalwork during World War I or World War II when people were encouraged to contribute metal to be recycled for military use. Roof cresting that remained on your home during the war years was a very visible symbol that you were not “doing your bit.”

Some Queen Anne–style homes also had towers (round, square, octagonal) to further draw your eye upward, as well as decorative details under a gable on the front façade. On a modest version of a Queen Anne–style home, sometimes the only decoration is tucked up underneath the gable. I’ve noticed that a number of homes in Santa Barbara have a wooden ornament under the gable that resembles a rising sun.

Very often the exterior walls are covered with one or more types of decorative shingles. Sometimes there will be one style on the second floor, and another style on the first floor. Occasionally, the very decorative “fish-scale shingles” are used. These have a bottom edge shaped like a semicircle. Windows can be noticeable as well. Bay windows are common, as well as the use of stained glass in interesting patterns.

901 Bath Street | Credit: Betsy J. Green

501 Chapala Street | Credit: Betsy J. Green
324 North Soledad Street | Credit: Betsy J. Green

Moving down to the front porch, decorative spindles, railings, brackets, and spandrels were common means of adding details. Although Queen Anne–style homes often had plenty of “look at me” ornamentation, they were often painted somber colors: tan, brown, dark green, or maroon. Definitely not the fluorescent colors that hippies painted Queen Anne–style homes in the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco in the 1960s. The William Carson Mansion in Eureka, California, is probably the most famous Queen Anne–style home in the U.S. It is painted in historically appropriate quiet colors.

Some Queen Anne–style homes in Santa Barbara that you may have noticed are at 501 Chapala Street and 901 Bath Street. I wrote about a couple of Queen Anne–style cottages at 519 Brinkerhoff Street and 324 North Soledad Street in this column in recent years, and I’d love to write about more. Contact me if you have one that you’d like me to include in a future column through my website below.

Please do not disturb the residents of these homes.

Betsy J. Green is a Santa Barbara historian, and author of Discovering the History of Your House and Your Neighborhood, Santa Monica Press, 2002. Her website is betsyjgreen.com.