I am trying to describe how someone would see this for the first time - from the outside. Anyone know what style architecture this is ? I know it was built around 1840 - 1850 and there are several buildings with a similar style in town. I want to describe how my MC is seeing it for the first time.
Yeah, that's immediately what I thought when I saw that. 1840-50s is the right era for Victorian, too.
besides Victorian style, how would you describe it to someone who can't see a picture of it? Give me some ideas on how to word the description.
North Oxford Gothic Revival. My, oh my. Homesickness in all its hideous beauty. https://www.google.com/search?q=North+Oxford+Gothic+Revival&rlz=1C1SAVS_enUS549US549&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=879&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwirxqu9j-jNAhVMVT4KHU3KCFIQ_AUIBigB#imgrc=ABaEjGUI2fs5aM:
Haunted, worn-down, rickety, dusty, and eerie. Those came to my mind after lookin' at that photo. It'd be even better if there were eerie clouds surrounding it; or is that cliche?
Like something an elderly reclusive widow, often accused of being a witch by the local kids, would live in.
I am so with you. The house is actually located inside a cemetery, it was originally owned by the family that carved headstones and they lived across the street. The house was moved inside the cemetery sometime in the last 100 years. Moving it into the cemetery makes it that much more creepy.
Definitely Gothic Revival; The brickwork was somehow blackened, throwing the dirty cream window frames and the ornate doorway into stark contrast. Topped with an unusually steep roof, it had the look of an Alsatian castle about it. The grandeur of its design belonged to a larger structure, leaving the house looking like a segment of something far greater.
Looks like a school. I could do a lot with a house like that: a jacuzzi on the roof, my bicycle upon the first floor, views out the window of little people. Probably cycle naked in a house that size. Cook naked even, slip into my twin coffins. Not really, I would wear a silk gown, pipe, slippers, eat steak regularly. Definitely more LP than MP3. How I miss the '40s.
@matwoolf Well at least you have interesting tastes, and a little class with house like that. Of course one must cycle in the nude about their expansive house while listening to old 45's.
That house is stoutly pragmatic and resolute. It is a dowager Lady, last of her line, last of an era, perhaps beautiful in her youth, now aged into handsomeness.
Those clouds don't look too sinister but certainly more so than the blue sky. It is a shame that so many saw only the bad aspects of the house, cleaned up with a power washer I bet those walls would glisten, some scraping on the wood work with the peeling paint then some fresh paint, that home would be very nice in many ways. It has architectural beauty that you seldom see in new homes, too costly to duplicate all that fine wood work and no longer appreciated. Is that a clock in the gable? Also I picture it with a multitude of balloons floating it away on an adventure, matwoolf rocking on the front porch.
Victorian Gothic - perfect for the Addams family, Norman Bates, Edgar Allen Poe. A house where their should be a crow on the roof, a dead tree in the yard, and a walled up area in the basement. One has a feeling looking at it that it will smell like a funeral parlor.
