Country 101: Georgian, Gothic or Italianate? 

Walk or drive the highways and byways of Headwaters and you’re bound to spot heritage homes built in the popular styles of earlier times. These houses often replaced the humble log cabins built by the first settlers from the trees cut down as they cleared the land for farming. The style of those cabins? Perhaps best described as “hurry-up-winter’s-coming.” The restored two-storey log house featured in our 2020 summer issue [“Safe Haven in a Log Cabin”] is one of the few remaining reminders of those early settlers’ homes.

Not surprisingly, subsequent generations and new arrivals wanted homes that were roomier, more comfortable and more stylish. Sometimes they would build a new wing on the log house, add a second floor, disguise the logs with stucco or another siding – or start anew.

If starting anew, The Canada Farmer often provided inspiration. Published from 1864 to 1876, this magazine featured designs for farm buildings and houses, including Georgian, Gothic Revival and Italianate styles, and made building design accessible to people in rural areas.

It’s worth noting that not all the features of the styles described in the following were necessarily present and often varied as the builders ad-libbed or borrowed freely from other styles.

Georgian balance

The Georgian style was popular in Great Britain during the reigns of the first three kings George in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1865 The Canada Farmer published drawings that showed a solid, dignified Georgian house with very little ornamentation.

The design, usually two storeys, is painstakingly symmetrical, and the centred front door usually has sidelights and a transom, with two sash windows on either side and five across the second storey. A low hip roof slopes down to each wall and may feature dormers, vertical windows projecting from the roof. The Melville home featured in our autumn 2018 issue [“Georgian on their Minds”] and Greystones Restaurant [“Greystones Reborn,” spring ’21] are classic examples.

Going Gothic 

As suggested by its name, Gothic Revival design reintroduced medieval features, including lancet windows, tall, narrow and pointy, as well as decorative finials atop spires. Though churches and two-storey homes were often built in this style, most Gothic Revival houses in Headwaters are much simpler.

In fact, the Gothic Revival cottage, based on drawings in The Canada Farmer and touted as “a cheap farm house” became ubiquitous throughout Ontario. Typically one- or one-and-a-half-storeys, these homes feature a steeply pitched roof, a central front door with one or two sash windows on either side, and a windowed gable – often topped by a finial – above the door. Intricate bargeboard often decorates the gable eaves as well as the main eaves. The Caledon farmhouse highlighted in our spring 2012 issue [“An Eco-Revival for a Gothic Farmhouse“], pictured above, is an example.

Italianate and beyond

As the people of Headwaters became more prosperous and dreamed of loftier things, the grand – and busy – Italianate style became a go-to design. In fact, if 19th-century buildings still stand on the main street of any Ontario town, there will likely be something Italianate. In Headwaters, both the Orangeville and Shelburne town halls are examples, no surprise as the two buildings were designed by the same man.

Orangeville’s town hall boasts the typical Italianate low-pitched hip roof with a pediment, a decorative form that is usually triangular, above the main entrances, as well as a domed cupola, deep overhanging eaves supported by brackets called “corbels,” and the tall, narrow, arched windows that are a hallmark of Italianate style. Yellow brick “quoins” mark the building’s corners and yellow brick also provides decorative contrasts with the predominant red brick, which was readily available at local brickyards. The yellow bricks apparently came from Mount Forest.

The Italianate residence presented in The Canada Farmer was a two-storey square house with projecting eaves, corbels and other ornate details.

Many more styles were introduced through the 19th and early 20th centuries. These include Beaux-Arts Classicism, featuring Doric and Ionic columns; Neoclassical, marked by pilasters, which are columns that project from a wall, as well as a transom and cornice over the front door; and Second Empire with its mansard roof and ornamental ironwork.

An enduring legacy

It’s fun to examine a heritage building and name its features – quoins and corbels, pilasters and pediments – and think about not only the design, but also the artisans – the masons who chiselled the stones, the bricklayers who stood on the scaffolding and placed the bricks, and so on. When finished, they could stand back and be proud of the art they had made. And perhaps hope that they had created an enduring legacy that would still be admired more than a century later.