Pyramidal cottage

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A pyramidal cottage at the Mulga Community, Birmingham, Alabama. Mulga Mine & Camp Birmingham Industrial District.png
A pyramidal cottage at the Mulga Community, Birmingham, Alabama.

A pyramidal cottage is a roughly square, one-story, house with a hip roof. The hip roof over a square structure forms the characteristic pyramidal shape.

Contents

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These are modest Folk Victorian homes built in the United States from the late 19th into the first half of the 20th Century. [1] [2] Classification of American architecture does not include a rigorous definition of pyramidal cottage; there are unmistakable examples, but there are variants which fit the description to degrees. [3]

Alternative names include pyramidal house, pyramid cottage, and miner's cottage.

Description

A concrete block cottage with a truncated hip roof, Lancaster House, Stevensville, Montana. Lancaster House NRHP 91000748 Ravalli County, MT.jpg
A concrete block cottage with a truncated hip roof, Lancaster House, Stevensville, Montana.

Pyramidal cottages are commonly (not exclusively) wooden frame structures. [1] The roof may come to a pyramidal point, or it may come up to a central chimney. Over a less than truly square house, the roof may peak with a short ridge. [3] Like some larger hip-roofed Victorian houses, some roofs are truncated by a flat cut-off at the top, sometimes crested with decorative millwork. [3]

An engaged porch under the main roof, Washburne Historic District, Springfield, Oregon. Pyramid Cottage.jpg
An engaged porch under the main roof, Washburne Historic District, Springfield, Oregon.

Roofed porches, original or added, may be attached to the front and/or back of the square main house. Full width front porches, or nearly full-width, are common. [3] Alternatively, a front porch may be engaged into the square footprint under the main pyramidal roof.

The floor plan consists typically of four large rooms (a "four-box plan" [4] ) one on each corner with a window on each outside wall. The rooms are generally connected directly to each other with no connecting hallways. Sometimes a small bathroom is included as a fifth room, but many pyramidal cottages were built before the advent of indoor plumbing. [3] The efficient four-box floor plan resembles that in the two-story American Foursquare. [1]

History

Miner's cottages at the Dawson coal mine in Dawson, New Mexico. Dawson Mine, Dawson New Mexico - miner's cottages.png
Miner's cottages at the Dawson coal mine in Dawson, New Mexico.

Pyramidal cottages were economical and efficient housing emerging during the rapid expansion of railroads and industrialization following the American Civil War, mostly but far from exclusively, in the Southern United States. [1] [3]

With their initial small size, their location often in now inner-city neighborhoods, and decades of modification such as extensions and porch enclosures, extant pyramidal cottages are often inconspicuous. [3]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Cassity, Micheal. "Pyramidal House | The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture". Oklahoma Historical Society. Retrieved 31 December 2025.
  2. ↑ McAlester, Virginia; McAlester, A. Lee (1984). A field guide to American houses. New York: Knopf. ISBN   0-394-51032-1.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Hubka, Thomas (2 March 2017). "Hardly noticed, Pyramids recall Portland's housing history". oregonlive. Retrieved 31 December 2025.
  4. ↑ Hubka, Thomas C. (2013). Houses without names: architectural nomenclature and the classification of America's common houses. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. ISBN   978-1-57233-947-7.
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