William G. Low House Explained

William G. Low House
Status:Demolished
Building Type:Seaside cottage
Architectural Style:Shingle style
Address:3 Low Lane
Location City:Bristol, Rhode Island
Start Date:1886
Completion Date:1887
Demolition Date:1962
Client:William G. Low
Architect:Charles McKim
Architecture Firm:McKim, Mead & White
Known For:An extreme example of the Shingle style
Unit Count:-->

The William G. Low House was a seaside cottage at 3 Low Lane in Bristol, Rhode Island.

It was designed and built in 1886–1887 by architect Charles McKim of the New York City firm, McKim, Mead & White. With its distinctive single 140adj=midNaNadj=mid gable it embodied many of the tenets of Shingle Style architecture—horizontality, simplified massing and geometry, minimal ornamentation, the blending of interior and exterior spaces.

The architectural historian Vincent Scully saw it as "at once a climax and a kind of conclusion" for McKim, since its "prototypal form ... was almost immediately to be abandoned for the more conventionally conceived columns and pediments of McKim, Mead, and White's later buildings."[1]

Just before it was demolished in 1962, the house was documented with measured drawings and photographs by the Historic American Buildings Survey.[2]

Wrote architectural historian Leland Roth, "Although little known in its own time, the Low House has come to represent the high mark of the Shingle Style."[3]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Book: Scully, Vincent . 1955. 1971 . The Shingle Style and the Stick Style . New Haven . Yale University Press . 153 . 9780300015195.
  2. Web site: Low, William G., House (supplemental materials) . May 1975 . Historic American Buildings Survey . Library of Congress . Washington, D.C..
  3. Book: Roth, Leland M. . 2001 . American Architecture: A History . Boulder, Colo. . Westview Press . 246 . 9780813336626.