Creole architecture in the United States is present in buildings in Louisiana and elsewhere in the South, and also in the U.S. associated territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A variant is Ponce Creole style.
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In the U.S. south, a creole cottage is a type of vernacular architecture indigenous to the Gulf Coast of the United States. The style was a dominant house type along the central Gulf Coast from about 1790 to 1840 in the former settlements of French Louisiana in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The style is popularly thought to have evolved from French and Spanish colonial house forms, although historians are uncertain about its origins.
Creole architecture in Louisiana is documented by numerous listings in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. [1]
The "Creole cottage" type of house was common along the Gulf Coast and associated rivers in the 19th century with a few scattered examples found as far west as Houston, Texas, and as far east as northern Florida, although the majority of structures are found in southern Louisiana eastward to Mobile, Alabama. [2] In Kentucky, a few scattered cottages still stand in the state's far western Jackson Purchase region, where they continued to be built into the early twentieth century. [3]
Two features of this style of house are thought to be influences from other places in France's former colonial empire. The full front porch is believed to originate from the Caribbean islands, while the high gabled roof, the ridge of which is parallel to the street, accommodating the porch as well as the mass of the house, is thought to be of French-Canadian origin. [4] In the earlier or more fundamental examples one or two main rooms may open directly onto the porch. They often feature an interior chimney that pierces the ridge line of the roof, with back-to-back fireplaces serving two rooms. Two common secondary characteristics of this style are a raised basement and the frequent situating of the front of the buildings at the property line. [4]
In the city of New Orleans, the term Creole cottage tends to be more narrowly defined as a 1+1⁄2-story house with a gabled roof, the ridge of which is parallel to the street. The house normally has four squarish rooms with no hallways and is built up to the front property line. The primary difference between these cottages and those elsewhere is the lack of a full front porch. [5]
A similar house type that some architectural scholars believe is related to the Creole cottage is the Gulf Coast cottage. However, it is not clear if this type is derived from the Creole cottage or if it is a Deep South adaptation of a Tidewater-type cottage. They both display some of the general characteristics of a Creole cottage. In the more formal and later examples, a central hall is almost always present. These more formal examples began to appear in the 1820s and 1830s. They are typically larger with Federal or Greek Revival architectural influences not present in the simpler version. If a central hall is present, then usually it is entered via a central entrance. End-gable chimneys are often present rather than a central one. [4]
Ponce Creole, centered in Ponce in southern Puerto Rico, is a distinctive high style reflected in many standing buildings.
An earlier, less formal style, with perhaps less surviving presence, is a "Spanish-Creole" style of which the Juana Rodríguez Morales House in Cayey is an example.
American colonial architecture includes several building design styles associated with the colonial period of the United States, including First Period English (late-medieval), Spanish Colonial, French Colonial, Dutch Colonial, and Georgian. These styles are associated with the houses, churches and government buildings of the period from about 1600 through the 19th century.
A plantation house is the main house of a plantation, often a substantial farmhouse, which often serves as a symbol for the plantation as a whole. Plantation houses in the Southern United States and in other areas are known as quite grand and expensive architectural works today, though most were more utilitarian, working farmhouses.
Bride's Hill, known also as Sunnybrook, is a historic plantation house near Wheeler, Alabama. It is significant as an example of a Tidewater-type cottage. It was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on April 16, 1985, and to the National Register of Historic Places on July 9, 1986.
The I-house is a vernacular house type, popular in the United States from the colonial period onward. The I-house was so named in the 1930s by Fred Kniffen, a cultural geographer at Louisiana State University who was a specialist in folk architecture. He identified and analyzed the type in his 1936 study of Louisiana house types.
French colonial architecture includes several styles of architecture used by the French during colonization. Many former French colonies, especially those in Southeast Asia, have previously been reluctant to promote their colonial architecture as an asset for tourism; however, in recent times, the new generation of local authorities has somewhat "embraced" the architecture and has begun to advertise it. French Colonial architecture has a long history, beginning in North America in 1604 and being most active in the Western Hemisphere until the 19th century, when the French turned their attention more to Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.
The buildings and architecture of New Orleans reflect its history and multicultural heritage, from Creole cottages to historic mansions on St. Charles Avenue, from the balconies of the French Quarter to an Egyptian Revival U.S. Customs building and a rare example of a Moorish revival church.
Frenchmen Street is in the 7th Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana. It is best known for the three-block section in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood which since the 1980s has developed as the center of many popular live-music venues, including Cafe Negril, Favela Chic, Vaso, Apple Barrel, Blue Nile, Snug Harbor, the Spotted Cat, and the Maison. In addition the street has numerous restaurants, bars, a premier bicycle shop, a record store, a book shop, and other local businesses.
Ashe Cottage, also known as the Ely House, is a historic Carpenter Gothic house in Demopolis, Alabama. It was built in 1832 and expanded and remodeled in the Gothic Revival style in 1858 by William Cincinnatus Ashe, a physician from North Carolina. The cottage is a 1+1⁄2-story wood-frame building, the front elevation features two semi-octagonal gabled front bays with a one-story porch inset between them. The gables and porch are trimmed with bargeboards in a design taken from Samuel Sloan's plan for "An Old English Cottage" in his 1852 publication, The Model Architect. The house is one of only about twenty remaining residential examples of Gothic Revival architecture remaining in the state. Other historic Gothic Revival residences in the area include Waldwic in Gallion and Fairhope Plantation in Uniontown. Ashe Cottage was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on August 22, 1975, and to the National Register of Historic Places on 19 October 1978.
The dogtrot, also known as a breezeway house, dog-run, or possum-trot, is a style of house that was common throughout the Southeastern United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some theories place its origins in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Some scholars believe the style developed in the post-Revolution frontiers of Kentucky and Tennessee. Others note its presence in the South Carolina Lowcountry from an early period. The main style point was a large breezeway through the center of the house to cool occupants in the hot southern climate.
This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Mobile, Alabama.
Queen Anne style architecture was one of a number of popular Victorian architectural styles that emerged in the United States during the period from roughly 1880 to 1910. Popular there during this time, it followed the Second Empire and Stick styles and preceded the Richardsonian Romanesque and Shingle styles. Sub-movements of Queen Anne include the Eastlake movement.
Ponce Creole is an architectural style created in Ponce, Puerto Rico, in the late 19th and early 20th century. This style of Puerto Rican buildings is found predominantly in residential homes in Ponce that developed between 1895 and 1920. Ponce Creole architecture borrows heavily from the traditions of the French, the Spaniards, and the Caribbean to create houses that were especially built to withstand the hot and dry climate of the region, and to take advantage of the sun and sea breezes characteristic of the southern Puerto Rico's Caribbean Sea coast. It is a blend of wood and masonry, incorporating architectural elements of other styles, from Spanish Revival to Victorian.
Spring Villa is a historic Carpenter Gothic plantation house on the outskirts of Opelika, Alabama. Inspired by designs published by Andrew Jackson Downing, the house is one of only about twenty remaining residential examples of Gothic Revival architecture remaining in the state. It was built by William Penn Yonge in 1850 next to a 30-acre (12 ha) spring-fed lake, from which it takes its name.
The central-passage house, also known variously as central hall plan house, center-hall house, hall-passage-parlor house, Williamsburg cottage, and Tidewater-type cottage, was a vernacular, or folk form, house type from the colonial period onward into the 19th century in the United States.
Aduston Hall is a historic antebellum plantation house in the riverside town of Gainesville, Alabama. Although the raised cottage displays the strict symmetry and precise detailing of the Greek Revival style, it is very unusual in its massing. The house is low and spread out over one-story with a fluid floor-plan more reminiscent of a 20th-century California ranch house than the typically boxy neoclassical houses of its own era.
Umbria Plantation, also known as the Samuel Pickens Plantation, was a historic cotton plantation and Greek Revival-style plantation house near what is now Sawyerville, Alabama. The plantation was established by Samuel Pickens, the younger brother of Alabama's third governor, Israel Pickens. The house was an unusual example of a raised basement plantation house built on a U-shaped plan. It was recorded by the Historic American Buildings Survey during the 1930s. It was destroyed in a fire in the early 1970s.
The Creole House is a historic residence in the village of Prairie du Rocher, an old French settlement in present-day Randolph County, Illinois, United States. Built at the end of the eighteenth century and later expanded, the Creole House is the last survivor in Illinois of its type of vernacular architecture, and it forms an important part of the built environment of a portion of the Upper Mississippi Valley that possesses an unparalleled connection to the French settlement period.
The Nelson House, also known as the Reynolds House, is a historic house located in Latham, Alabama. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its 1988 NRHP nomination asserted it is locally significant as the "purest example" of the Creole Cottage style of architecture in Baldwin County.
In the New World, Queen Anne Revival was a historicist architectural style of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was popular in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries. In Australia, it is also called Federation architecture.
The Helton Cottage is an early 19th century dwelling located in Greensboro, Alabama. The house is one story with a modified pitched roof and circa 1840s lattice porch. The house began as a single room, possibly an outbuilding of the nearby Johnston-Torbet House. The house was on a parcel belonging to Thomas Johnston in the 1830s. The property was subdivided and given to his daughter Caroline and her husband Dr. William Jones. The Jones's children sold the house to Caleb Jones, a British immigrant who ran a jewelry store and was an amateur astronomer. In 1905, the house was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. John Helton. Their tenure in the house led the community to call the house by its current name.
Creole architecture is a distinctive building tradition associated with American tropical and subtropical environments. For our purposes, the typical Creole house can be described as follows. Its most important features include 1) generous galleries or verandas, 2) a broad spreading roofline, 3) gallery roofs supported by lightweight wooden colonnettes, 4) placement of the principal rooms well above grade, (sometimes a full story above the ground), 5) the use of a form of construction utilizing a heavy timber frame combined with an infill made of brick (briquette entre poteaux) or a mixture of mud and moss called bousillage, 6) multiple French doors, and 7) French wraparound mantels. Creole architecture is also characterized by certain geometric conventions. These include the characteristic system of establishing the floorplan, which consists of a central core of a few rooms and various optional ancillary spaces which encircle the central core. This gives the Creole house a tradition of expanding outward in all directions.