1836 Pendleton Ave
Kansas City, MO, USA

National Register of Historic Places - Philip E. Chappell House

Statement of Significant:

The Philip E. Chappell House, 1836 Pendleton, Kansas City, Jackson County, is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion C and is significant as an intact, representative Kansas City example of the Queen Anne style of architecture. Designed in 1888 by Harry Kemp, the residence embodies the characteristic Queen Anne elements of an irregular plan, complex massing, varied textured surfaces, a multitude of intersecting gable and hip roofs, and undulating wall planes pierced by bays and classically inspired ornament. The residence survives with minimal alterations to both the exterior and the interior.

ELABORATION:
The "Queen Anne" Revival was a mid-19th century English movement that merged vernacular building traditions, classical styles not bound by the laws of proportion, and an interior plan that expressed free flowing space. In England, Richard Norman Shaw, the chief practitioner, designed brick and stone residences with tile hangings or half-timber effect in gable ends and leaded casements in banks that projected "Picturesque" qualities.

By the 1870's, Shaw's sketches, which promulgated principles of light and shadow which were integral to the Queen Anne style, appeared in the pages of Building News. Shaw's Queen Anne renderings of red brick, gables, white trim and bayed casements fused all elements around an interior plan, dominated by freely placed spatial volume that contained entrance, fireplace, and stairs. This spatial core communicated with the rooms grouped around it and established more fluid spatial connections through the wide door openings of adjacent rooms. Additionally, the space of individual rooms was extended by articulating the perimeter walls with oriels, bays and window seats. The functional result of such interior planning not only achieved greater circulation and "open" qualities, but increased the natural light entering a house. Shaw's residences achieved a horizontal flow that spread the massing across the site. This horizontal extension would not immediately be employed by Shaw's American contemporaries; rather, exterior elements would demonstrate Queen Anne derivation.

Although architects such as Henry Hobson Richardson began to experiment with Shaw's forms and massing, it was the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia that brought the Queen Anne examples to the United States. In addition to the physical Queen Anne forms present at the Centennial Exposition, examples of Japanese domestic architecture's interior spatial organization and exterior wood treatment were also displayed. These forces combined with a growing nostalgia to recall America's own 17th and 18th century precedents. The interest in revivalism fused the English Queen Anne to the American Colonial, and subsequent discussions of the resulting amalgam were common features in professional publications such as the American Architect and Building News and The American Builder.

As the theoretical basis for domestic architecture was explored and synthesized, the popular press propelled "Queen Anne" residences into the forefront through the period's pattern books. In 1878, the American Architect commented upon Henry Hudson Holly's Modern Dwellings in Town and Country as laudable for the fusion of "Queen Anne" and colonial sources:

"Our methods of wooden construction, our verandas, our smooth, workmanlike roofs are all retained...and with them are combined the galleries, the great chimneys, the blustered porches, the paneling’s and the conventional sun-flowers attributed to the earlier Georgian era... Large habitable hall wells opened into the adjoining living rooms, stairs almost always very carefully contrived with embayed and oriel led landings, dining rooms in every case connected to the kitchens by a direct passage through the butler's pantry." (American Architect, 3, 1878, p. 198-199.)

By the 1880's numerous pattern books published by Palliser’s and Bicknell contained a multitude of "Queen Anne" renderings, lavished with varied surface textures, projecting bays, and layers of ornamentation. The spatial qualities which related the hall to the adjacent rooms were not the focus of these designs, nor was the theoretical basis for this spatial communication. instances, the popular press contained the Queen Anne flow of space within the earlier vertical massing of residences and produced designs with little horizontal extension. Certainly, the "hall" and inglenooks received renewed interest and pattern books authors provided elaborate drawings of these interior features, but in isolation.

The Chappell House is a succinct statement of the Queen Anne style of architecture in Kansas City. The complex web of sources that evoked the Queen Anne style had different regional expressions throughout the United States. Kansas City, the Queen Anne did not achieve full expression through wood, but rather employed brick as the primary construction material. The ability to define Queen Anne characteristics in masonry required the expression of additional textural qualities on the wall surfaces. The building's brick elevations acted like a skin as the masonry interpreted curves around towers and bays. Tall rectangular windows pierced this skin and followed the bay's surface with their curved glass.
Contrasting texture was introduced by the massive rock-faced lintels that conform to the undulating bays as well as the straight wall planes. The textural qualities were further enhanced with the lighter and more delicate detailing executed in pressed tin and wood. These materials announced the Queen Anne's free Classical influences that were employed for the dwelling's dentils, egg and dart molding, and the Corinthian and Doric columns supporting the porches and face boards. In addition, other elements alluded to free Classical interpretations, such as the three-part windows in the gable ends that replicated a Palladian format. Although the Queen Anne called for complexity of massing and contrast in surface materials, it also dictated flowing space that was expressed on the exterior by the building's horizontal line.

The Chappell House presents an exuberant profusion of jagged rooflines that shelter the irregular massing. The complex silhouette created by intersecting gable and hip roofs, projecting bays and porches was inherent in the style's directive to create a "Picturesque" image and to display a blend of light and shadow. While the Chappell House's roofline struggles to establish a vertical emphasis, the horizontal elements of the deep paneled frieze, the rock-faced lintels and the wraparound porch maintain the balance in the composition. The wraparound porch clearly demonstrates the horizontal spread of the residence, echoed within the interior's floor plan.

The stylistic tendency to create a hall, as both a living space and as a special volume that communicates with all rooms, is demonstrated in the Chappell House. The grand proportions presented by the hall and its coffered features, established the plan's attempt to open the interior space. The 'hall' acted as an anchor by which to filter circulation through the wide pocket door openings and to the second floor. Although the 'hall' did not totally express a living space by incorporating a fireplace inglenook, it adequately directed movement and represented a significant physical volume.