1840 - 1885: Italianate

Picture Dictionary of House Styles in North America and Beyond

Italiante became the most popular housing style in Victorian America. Italianate is also known as the Tuscan, the Lombard, or simply, the bracketed style.

Photo © 2005 Jupiterimages Corporation

Old World ideals are transplated to the United States in this Italianate style home, located in Cape May, New Jersey.

Italianate houses have many of these features:

• Low-pitched or flat roof
• Balanced, symmetrical rectangular shape
• Tall appearance, with 2, 3, or 4 stories
• Wide, overhanging eaves with brackets and cornices
• Square cupola
• Porch topped with balustraded balconies
• Tall, narrow, double-paned windows with hood moldings
• Side bay window
• Heavily molded double doors
• Roman or segmented arches above windows and doors

About the Italianate Style

The Italianate style began in England with the picturesque movement of the 1840s. For the previous 200 years, English homes tended to be formal and classical in style. With the picturesque, movement, however, builders began to design fanciful recreations of Italian Renaissance villas. When the Italianate style moved to the United States, it was reinterpreted again to create a uniquely American style.

By the late 1860s, Italianate was the most popular house style in the United States. Historians say that Italianate became the favored style for two reasons:

• Italianate homes could be constructed with many different building materials, and the style could be adapted to modest budgets.
• New technologies of the Victorian era made it possible to quickly and affordably produce cast-iron and press-metal decorations.

Italianate remained the most popular house style in the USA until the 1870s. Italianate was also a common style for barns, town halls, and libraries. You will find Italianate buildings in nearly every part of the United States except for the deep South. There are fewer Italianate buildings in the southern states because the style reached its peak during the Civil War, a time when the south was economically devastated.

After the 1870s, architectural fashion turned toward late Victorian styles such as Queen Anne.

Learn More

• Renaissance Revival: This Italian-inspired style is often confused with the Victorian Italianate style.
• Victorian Architecture: A review of the most important styles from the Victorian era
• Victorian House Plans
• Andrea Palladio: The Renaissance architect who designed the first Italian Villas