Sep 05, 2007
William H. Hatch House - National Register of Historic Places
Statement of Significance: The William H. Hatch House at 306 Keystone Avenue (formerly 145 Grove Avenue) in River Forest is locally significant under Criterion C for architecture. Completed in 1882—just two years after River Forest was incorporated—it was built for the family of William Hatch, who worked in the grain commission business. The picturesque two-and-a-half story Hatch residence is an excellent example of the Queen Anne Style, featuring an irregular and steeply pitched roofline, varying cladding materials, asymmetrical massing, spindle work porches, and corbelled chimneys. It also features important hallmarks of Queen Anne interiors: a formal entrance hall with grand oak staircase, stone fireplaces with incised ornamentation, and the extensive use of wood trim and paneling. One of the few high-style Queen Anne homes south of Lake Street in River Forest, the Hatch House is also a rare, and possibly the oldest, example of the spindle work subtype that was popular in this area. The Queen Anne was the dominant style of domestic building in the United States from about 1880 until 1910. An eclectic and picturesque style, it was used for urban, suburban and rural residences and less frequently for small commercial buildings. The style was named and popularized by a group of nineteenth-century English architects led by Richard Norman Shaw (1831-1912). From the early 1870s on, Shaw's sprawling manor houses were published in the architectural press and thus came be known, admired, and imitated by American architects. The name is rather inappropriate, for the historical precedents used by Shaw and his followers had little to do with Queen Anne or the formal Renaissance architecture that was dominant during her reign (1702-14). Instead, they borrowed most heavily from late medieval rural models of the preceding Elizabethan and Jacobean Eras. H.H. Richardson's Watts-Sherman House in Newport, Rhode Island (1874) is generally considered to be the first American example of the style. Richardson followed Shaw very closely in the design for this half-timbered house, while providing a degree of American character by substituting shingles for tiles to sheath the upper walls, and stone for brick as cladding for the ground story. A few high-style examples followed in the 1870s, and by 1880 the style was being spread throughout the country by widely circulated pattern books and the first architectural magazine. The American Architect and Building News. The expanding railroad network also helped popularize the style by making pre-cut architectural details conveniently available through much of the nation. Industrialization and advanced manufacturing techniques allowed for the mass production of millwork and extravagant architectural detailing that was previously restricted to expensive, landmark houses. Queen Anne houses feature asymmetrical facades with an emphasis on verticality. Irregularities in ground plan were facilitated by the widespread adoption of balloon framing techniques in the late nineteenth-century. Wall surfaces typically feature a mixture of cladding materials and textures, such as brick or stone on the ground level and upper floors covered with horizontal boards, stucco, or shingles shaped in varying designs. In masonry houses, texture is created through differing patterns of brick courses or the insertion of terra cotta panels. Half-timbering, when used, is typically seen in the gables, which also may feature patterned shingles or more elaborate motifs, such as appliques of stylized sunbursts or sunflower motifs. The use of comer turrets or towers of different shapes, including round, polygonal and sometimes square, are characteristic of the Queen Anne Style and were intended to further break up the wall planes. They are typically placed in the front fa9ade comer and rise from the ground level or extend out from the second floor. Houses in the style feature irregular rooflines, typically steeply pitched hipped roofs with one or more lower cross gables. Others may have cross-gabled or front-gabled roofs. Rooflines and towers are often broken by gabled dormers and may be topped with decorative detailing, such as cresting and finials. Chimneys are treated as important design elements, often featuring molded or patterned brickwork or corbelled chimney caps. Porches are also hallmarks of the Queen Anne Style. They may cover part or all of the front facade and commonly extend along one or both sides of the house. Recessed porches sometimes occur on upper floors within the main structure of the house or within towers. The front fa9ade's paneled entrance door is typically situated off-center and may have a large pane of glass set into its upper portion. Queen Anne houses also display a variety of windows types, such as casements, double-hung, Palladian, and oriels. Casement windows are often arranged in groups, and double-hung windows may have upper sashes outlined with small glass squares. In their book, A Field Guide to American Houses, Virginia and Lee McAlester identify two decorative detailing subtypes that comprise the vast majority of Queen Anne Style houses: the spindle work and the free classic types. The American spindle work interpretation became dominant during the 1880s and featured wood detailing that was turned on a lathe and typically displayed on porches. About half of Queen Anne Style houses have delicate turned porch supports and spindle work ornamentation, which most commonly occurs in porch balustrades or as a frieze suspended from the porch ceiling. Spindle work detailing is also used in gables and under the wall overhangs left by cutaway bay windows. Lacy, decorative spandrels and knoblike beads are also common ornamental elements of this subtype. Spindle work detailing is sometimes referred to as gingerbread ornamentation, or as Eastlake detailing (after English designer and critic Charles Eastlake, whose taste in ornament was adopted by Americans for exteriors) The free classic adaptation became widespread during the decade of the 1890s. This decorative subtype features the use of classical columns, rather than delicate turned posts with spindle work detailing, as porch supports. These columns may be either the full height of the porch or raised on a pedestal to the level of the porch railing; the railings normally lack the delicate, turneded balusters of the spindlework type of detailing. Porch-support columns are commonly grouped together in units or two or three. Palladian windows, comice-line dentils, and other classical details are frequent, such as swags and garland applique. The fully developed Queen Anne floor plan moved away from classical symmetry and became much more open, allowing light and air into the rooms from all directions. Sliding pocket doors opened up the rooms to each other, creating one large space, or smaller, private rooms. The dominant interior feature was a large entrance hall, featuring a central circulation space with both fireplace and grand staircase. Walls often featured paneled wainscoting with wallpaper above and fully paneled walls were popular among the well-to-do in the late-nineteenth century. Built-in furniture was common and almost every room had baseboard molding. Door and window surrounds—both exterior and interior—tend to be simple in Queen Anne Style houses. Fireplaces were important decorative features and the stylish types were Rococo Revival models in marble and Renaissance Revival designs with incised decoration on marble or wood. From the mid-nineteenth century onward softwood pine boards were increasingly treated as subfloors for decorative coverings, such as parquet or "wood carpet" floors in oak that could be purchased by the yard. Tiles were often used for entrance halls while pile carpets were kept for the best rooms of the house. The 1882 William H. Hatch House at 306 Keystone in River Forest is an excellent example of the Queen Anne Style, featuring the earlier spindle work subtype that was popular in the 1880s. The two-and-a-half story house is prominently sited on an expansive comer lot and its asymmetrical composition features a variety of forms, materials and colors. The basement level features masticated limestone, the upper stories are clad with wood clapboard, and the two pedimented gables at the attic level feature patterned shingles. The wall planes are broken by two off-center pavilions topped by pedimented attic gables (east and north elevations), one hipped-roof pavilion (west elevation), and a polygonal tower (south elevation), the roofline of which is broken by a pedimented dormer. Three asymmetrically placed spindle work porches— two along the front elevation (on the first and second floors) and one at the southwest comer of the home—contribute to the home's picturesque appearance. They feature slender turned supports as well as spindled railings and friezes. Tall one-over-one wood-sash windows flood the interior with light. Verticality is emphasized by the home's steeply-pitched hipped roof with cross gables—a type used on half of all Queen Anne houses—and its short ridgeline runs parallel to the sides of the house. The two corbelled chimneys serve as important design elements. The interior of the Hatch House exemplifies the Queen Anne Style in terms of its plan and decorative elements. The residence is arranged on either side of a formal entrance hall that leads to a grand oak reverse-flight staircase featuring square newel posts with turned knobs, spindled balustrades, and a large landing at the mezzanine level. The Queen Anne staircase with stained glass in the landing window was a typical formula. The stair landing of the Hatch House is well lighted by a strip of unusually tall double-hung windows, each of which is topped by a colorful stained-glass transom. The modest pine floor of the staircase was almost certainly carpeted by its original owners, as that was the preferred covering of Queen Anne staircases. The second floor of the Hatch House features a pine subfloor covered by "wood carpeting" in oak, which could be purchased in strips by the yard and was commonly used in the late nineteenth-century. The use of wood trim and paneling were important elements of Queen Anne interiors, and the Hatch House features baseboard molding as well as simple door and window casings throughout. Its formal dining room is surrounded by oak beadboard wainscoting topped with a cap featuring a continuous ribbon motif A colorful stained glass casement window is set within a tall, narrow niche above the fireplace in the southwest comer of this room. Wood paneled doors are used throughout the house, including two sets of pocket doors—a must for every grand Queen Anne Style house—separating the entrance hall from the front parlor and dining room. The Hatch House is also graced by five stone fireplaces which serve as decorative focal points of their rooms. The front and rear parlors are separated by a narrow, centrally located wall featuring a richly veined brown marble fireplace with mantels of different designs on either side and a tall, pass-through niche above. The Renaissance Revival style mantel facing the front parlor is more elaborate and features baseboard molding, vertical fluted paneling, and engaged Corinthian columns with ivory-colored shafts on pedestals. The rear parlor mantel has baseboard molding, delicate incised ornamentation with foliate designs, and decorative brackets. The fireplaces in the dining room and two south bedrooms all feature delicate incised ornamentation with foliate designs and flat surfaces. The incised ornamentation on both bedroom fireplaces is identical. The master bedroom fireplace features pale gray colored marble, while the fireplaces in the dining room and southwest bedroom feature charcoal gray colored speckled slate. The William H. Hatch House is situated two blocks south of Lake Street and two blocks east of Thatcher Avenue in the southwestern portion of River Forest, an area that experienced nineteenth-century settlement and had largely reached residential maturity by 1930. In order to examine how the Hatch House stacks up against other Queen Anne Style homes in this part of River Forest, a windshield survey was conducted of the blocks bounded by Lake Street to the north, Madison Street to the south, Lathrop Avenue to the east, and Thatcher Avenue to the west. (See Attachment B.) The vast majority of housing in this area consists of bungalows and American Four-Square houses—^both highly popular early twentieth century styles—that are clad in wood, brick, stucco, or some type of modem siding. The Hatch House is notable as one of the few high style Queen Anne homes south of Lake Street in River Forest. The 1882 residence is also a rare, and possibly the oldest, example of a Queen Anne Style home in the area featuring the spindle work subtype. Only one other home resembling the spindle work subtype—146 Keystone—is comparable to the Hatch House in terms of scale, integrity and design. This two-and-a-half story residence features an irregular, steeply pitched roofline with corbelled chimneys, asymmetrical massing, varying cladding materials (wood clapboard and shingles), bay windows and a partial-width spindle work porch with turned supports. The two-and-a-half story Queen Anne Style homes at 143 Keystone and 205 Thatcher Jire more restrained examples of the style with full-facade porches featuring slender, turned supports. However, the balustrades of both porches feature straight, rather than spindled, rails. Three other Queen Anne Style homes—135 and 223 Gale and 223 Thatcher—are more modest in scale and feature wrap-around spindle work porches that aren't sympathetic to the design of their front facades and were likely later additions. The area south of Lake Street has two excellent examples of the free classic subtype of the Queen Anne Style—the two-and-a-half story residences at 236 and 307 Keystone. Both feature wrap-around porches with classical columns as well as a host of other elements of the style. The residence at 307 Keystone also has a large Palladian window in the front-facing attic gable with modillions beneath its overhang. The house at 214 Gale is an eclectic version of the free classic subtype with a partial-width porch featuring paired Doric columns on pedestals, along with a cross gambrel roof and two cylindrical comer turrets with conical towers. The house at 335 Gale has a large comer tower with pedimented lintels above its first-floor windows and dentil molding at its roofline, along with a partial-width porch with front facing pediment. The area surveyed also includes an example of both the half-timbered (31 Keystone) and masonry (147 Thatcher) subtypes of the Queen Anne Style. The area surveyed also includes a number of vernacular versions of the Queen Anne Style that are modest in scale, restrained in terms of design and cladding materials, and topped by front gable or cross-gabled roofs. A few homes have experienced drastic alterations that have virtually obscured their original Queen Anne Style appearance. For example, the front elevation of the house at 211 Gale is completely covered by two-story enclosed porches lined with double hung windows. Only its cross-gabled roofline clads with fish scale shingles reveal that it was built as a Queen Anne Style house. Today, the Hatch House's picturesque appearance and towering presence epitomizes a bygone era when elegant Victorian homes on oversized lots epitomized the desires of owners who preferred the "country atmosphere" of River Forest to the urban ills of Chicago.
William H. Hatch House - National Register of Historic Places
Statement of Significance: The William H. Hatch House at 306 Keystone Avenue (formerly 145 Grove Avenue) in River Forest is locally significant under Criterion C for architecture. Completed in 1882—just two years after River Forest was incorporated—it was built for the family of William Hatch, who worked in the grain commission business. The picturesque two-and-a-half story Hatch residence is an excellent example of the Queen Anne Style, featuring an irregular and steeply pitched roofline, varying cladding materials, asymmetrical massing, spindle work porches, and corbelled chimneys. It also features important hallmarks of Queen Anne interiors: a formal entrance hall with grand oak staircase, stone fireplaces with incised ornamentation, and the extensive use of wood trim and paneling. One of the few high-style Queen Anne homes south of Lake Street in River Forest, the Hatch House is also a rare, and possibly the oldest, example of the spindle work subtype that was popular in this area. The Queen Anne was the dominant style of domestic building in the United States from about 1880 until 1910. An eclectic and picturesque style, it was used for urban, suburban and rural residences and less frequently for small commercial buildings. The style was named and popularized by a group of nineteenth-century English architects led by Richard Norman Shaw (1831-1912). From the early 1870s on, Shaw's sprawling manor houses were published in the architectural press and thus came be known, admired, and imitated by American architects. The name is rather inappropriate, for the historical precedents used by Shaw and his followers had little to do with Queen Anne or the formal Renaissance architecture that was dominant during her reign (1702-14). Instead, they borrowed most heavily from late medieval rural models of the preceding Elizabethan and Jacobean Eras. H.H. Richardson's Watts-Sherman House in Newport, Rhode Island (1874) is generally considered to be the first American example of the style. Richardson followed Shaw very closely in the design for this half-timbered house, while providing a degree of American character by substituting shingles for tiles to sheath the upper walls, and stone for brick as cladding for the ground story. A few high-style examples followed in the 1870s, and by 1880 the style was being spread throughout the country by widely circulated pattern books and the first architectural magazine. The American Architect and Building News. The expanding railroad network also helped popularize the style by making pre-cut architectural details conveniently available through much of the nation. Industrialization and advanced manufacturing techniques allowed for the mass production of millwork and extravagant architectural detailing that was previously restricted to expensive, landmark houses. Queen Anne houses feature asymmetrical facades with an emphasis on verticality. Irregularities in ground plan were facilitated by the widespread adoption of balloon framing techniques in the late nineteenth-century. Wall surfaces typically feature a mixture of cladding materials and textures, such as brick or stone on the ground level and upper floors covered with horizontal boards, stucco, or shingles shaped in varying designs. In masonry houses, texture is created through differing patterns of brick courses or the insertion of terra cotta panels. Half-timbering, when used, is typically seen in the gables, which also may feature patterned shingles or more elaborate motifs, such as appliques of stylized sunbursts or sunflower motifs. The use of comer turrets or towers of different shapes, including round, polygonal and sometimes square, are characteristic of the Queen Anne Style and were intended to further break up the wall planes. They are typically placed in the front fa9ade comer and rise from the ground level or extend out from the second floor. Houses in the style feature irregular rooflines, typically steeply pitched hipped roofs with one or more lower cross gables. Others may have cross-gabled or front-gabled roofs. Rooflines and towers are often broken by gabled dormers and may be topped with decorative detailing, such as cresting and finials. Chimneys are treated as important design elements, often featuring molded or patterned brickwork or corbelled chimney caps. Porches are also hallmarks of the Queen Anne Style. They may cover part or all of the front facade and commonly extend along one or both sides of the house. Recessed porches sometimes occur on upper floors within the main structure of the house or within towers. The front fa9ade's paneled entrance door is typically situated off-center and may have a large pane of glass set into its upper portion. Queen Anne houses also display a variety of windows types, such as casements, double-hung, Palladian, and oriels. Casement windows are often arranged in groups, and double-hung windows may have upper sashes outlined with small glass squares. In their book, A Field Guide to American Houses, Virginia and Lee McAlester identify two decorative detailing subtypes that comprise the vast majority of Queen Anne Style houses: the spindle work and the free classic types. The American spindle work interpretation became dominant during the 1880s and featured wood detailing that was turned on a lathe and typically displayed on porches. About half of Queen Anne Style houses have delicate turned porch supports and spindle work ornamentation, which most commonly occurs in porch balustrades or as a frieze suspended from the porch ceiling. Spindle work detailing is also used in gables and under the wall overhangs left by cutaway bay windows. Lacy, decorative spandrels and knoblike beads are also common ornamental elements of this subtype. Spindle work detailing is sometimes referred to as gingerbread ornamentation, or as Eastlake detailing (after English designer and critic Charles Eastlake, whose taste in ornament was adopted by Americans for exteriors) The free classic adaptation became widespread during the decade of the 1890s. This decorative subtype features the use of classical columns, rather than delicate turned posts with spindle work detailing, as porch supports. These columns may be either the full height of the porch or raised on a pedestal to the level of the porch railing; the railings normally lack the delicate, turneded balusters of the spindlework type of detailing. Porch-support columns are commonly grouped together in units or two or three. Palladian windows, comice-line dentils, and other classical details are frequent, such as swags and garland applique. The fully developed Queen Anne floor plan moved away from classical symmetry and became much more open, allowing light and air into the rooms from all directions. Sliding pocket doors opened up the rooms to each other, creating one large space, or smaller, private rooms. The dominant interior feature was a large entrance hall, featuring a central circulation space with both fireplace and grand staircase. Walls often featured paneled wainscoting with wallpaper above and fully paneled walls were popular among the well-to-do in the late-nineteenth century. Built-in furniture was common and almost every room had baseboard molding. Door and window surrounds—both exterior and interior—tend to be simple in Queen Anne Style houses. Fireplaces were important decorative features and the stylish types were Rococo Revival models in marble and Renaissance Revival designs with incised decoration on marble or wood. From the mid-nineteenth century onward softwood pine boards were increasingly treated as subfloors for decorative coverings, such as parquet or "wood carpet" floors in oak that could be purchased by the yard. Tiles were often used for entrance halls while pile carpets were kept for the best rooms of the house. The 1882 William H. Hatch House at 306 Keystone in River Forest is an excellent example of the Queen Anne Style, featuring the earlier spindle work subtype that was popular in the 1880s. The two-and-a-half story house is prominently sited on an expansive comer lot and its asymmetrical composition features a variety of forms, materials and colors. The basement level features masticated limestone, the upper stories are clad with wood clapboard, and the two pedimented gables at the attic level feature patterned shingles. The wall planes are broken by two off-center pavilions topped by pedimented attic gables (east and north elevations), one hipped-roof pavilion (west elevation), and a polygonal tower (south elevation), the roofline of which is broken by a pedimented dormer. Three asymmetrically placed spindle work porches— two along the front elevation (on the first and second floors) and one at the southwest comer of the home—contribute to the home's picturesque appearance. They feature slender turned supports as well as spindled railings and friezes. Tall one-over-one wood-sash windows flood the interior with light. Verticality is emphasized by the home's steeply-pitched hipped roof with cross gables—a type used on half of all Queen Anne houses—and its short ridgeline runs parallel to the sides of the house. The two corbelled chimneys serve as important design elements. The interior of the Hatch House exemplifies the Queen Anne Style in terms of its plan and decorative elements. The residence is arranged on either side of a formal entrance hall that leads to a grand oak reverse-flight staircase featuring square newel posts with turned knobs, spindled balustrades, and a large landing at the mezzanine level. The Queen Anne staircase with stained glass in the landing window was a typical formula. The stair landing of the Hatch House is well lighted by a strip of unusually tall double-hung windows, each of which is topped by a colorful stained-glass transom. The modest pine floor of the staircase was almost certainly carpeted by its original owners, as that was the preferred covering of Queen Anne staircases. The second floor of the Hatch House features a pine subfloor covered by "wood carpeting" in oak, which could be purchased in strips by the yard and was commonly used in the late nineteenth-century. The use of wood trim and paneling were important elements of Queen Anne interiors, and the Hatch House features baseboard molding as well as simple door and window casings throughout. Its formal dining room is surrounded by oak beadboard wainscoting topped with a cap featuring a continuous ribbon motif A colorful stained glass casement window is set within a tall, narrow niche above the fireplace in the southwest comer of this room. Wood paneled doors are used throughout the house, including two sets of pocket doors—a must for every grand Queen Anne Style house—separating the entrance hall from the front parlor and dining room. The Hatch House is also graced by five stone fireplaces which serve as decorative focal points of their rooms. The front and rear parlors are separated by a narrow, centrally located wall featuring a richly veined brown marble fireplace with mantels of different designs on either side and a tall, pass-through niche above. The Renaissance Revival style mantel facing the front parlor is more elaborate and features baseboard molding, vertical fluted paneling, and engaged Corinthian columns with ivory-colored shafts on pedestals. The rear parlor mantel has baseboard molding, delicate incised ornamentation with foliate designs, and decorative brackets. The fireplaces in the dining room and two south bedrooms all feature delicate incised ornamentation with foliate designs and flat surfaces. The incised ornamentation on both bedroom fireplaces is identical. The master bedroom fireplace features pale gray colored marble, while the fireplaces in the dining room and southwest bedroom feature charcoal gray colored speckled slate. The William H. Hatch House is situated two blocks south of Lake Street and two blocks east of Thatcher Avenue in the southwestern portion of River Forest, an area that experienced nineteenth-century settlement and had largely reached residential maturity by 1930. In order to examine how the Hatch House stacks up against other Queen Anne Style homes in this part of River Forest, a windshield survey was conducted of the blocks bounded by Lake Street to the north, Madison Street to the south, Lathrop Avenue to the east, and Thatcher Avenue to the west. (See Attachment B.) The vast majority of housing in this area consists of bungalows and American Four-Square houses—^both highly popular early twentieth century styles—that are clad in wood, brick, stucco, or some type of modem siding. The Hatch House is notable as one of the few high style Queen Anne homes south of Lake Street in River Forest. The 1882 residence is also a rare, and possibly the oldest, example of a Queen Anne Style home in the area featuring the spindle work subtype. Only one other home resembling the spindle work subtype—146 Keystone—is comparable to the Hatch House in terms of scale, integrity and design. This two-and-a-half story residence features an irregular, steeply pitched roofline with corbelled chimneys, asymmetrical massing, varying cladding materials (wood clapboard and shingles), bay windows and a partial-width spindle work porch with turned supports. The two-and-a-half story Queen Anne Style homes at 143 Keystone and 205 Thatcher Jire more restrained examples of the style with full-facade porches featuring slender, turned supports. However, the balustrades of both porches feature straight, rather than spindled, rails. Three other Queen Anne Style homes—135 and 223 Gale and 223 Thatcher—are more modest in scale and feature wrap-around spindle work porches that aren't sympathetic to the design of their front facades and were likely later additions. The area south of Lake Street has two excellent examples of the free classic subtype of the Queen Anne Style—the two-and-a-half story residences at 236 and 307 Keystone. Both feature wrap-around porches with classical columns as well as a host of other elements of the style. The residence at 307 Keystone also has a large Palladian window in the front-facing attic gable with modillions beneath its overhang. The house at 214 Gale is an eclectic version of the free classic subtype with a partial-width porch featuring paired Doric columns on pedestals, along with a cross gambrel roof and two cylindrical comer turrets with conical towers. The house at 335 Gale has a large comer tower with pedimented lintels above its first-floor windows and dentil molding at its roofline, along with a partial-width porch with front facing pediment. The area surveyed also includes an example of both the half-timbered (31 Keystone) and masonry (147 Thatcher) subtypes of the Queen Anne Style. The area surveyed also includes a number of vernacular versions of the Queen Anne Style that are modest in scale, restrained in terms of design and cladding materials, and topped by front gable or cross-gabled roofs. A few homes have experienced drastic alterations that have virtually obscured their original Queen Anne Style appearance. For example, the front elevation of the house at 211 Gale is completely covered by two-story enclosed porches lined with double hung windows. Only its cross-gabled roofline clads with fish scale shingles reveal that it was built as a Queen Anne Style house. Today, the Hatch House's picturesque appearance and towering presence epitomizes a bygone era when elegant Victorian homes on oversized lots epitomized the desires of owners who preferred the "country atmosphere" of River Forest to the urban ills of Chicago.
Sep 05, 2007
Posted Date
Apr 01, 2022
Historical Record Date
Sep 05, 2007
Source Name
United States Department of Interior - National Park Service
