Maple Lawn
Maple Lawn is a residential home in Balmville , New York and was built in 1859 for a local wealthy family in a neo-Gothic style. It was planned as Picturesque by Frederick Clarke Withers , following the principles of his late mentor Andrew Jackson Downing .
Little change has been made to the house since then, making it a well-preserved example of Withers' handwriting and Downing's designs. That's why it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
description
The home is on an acre lot on Downing Avenue in Balmville, an unincorporated housing estate within the Town of Newburgh , just north of the City of Newburgh . The Hudson River is a little further east. The house is surrounded by tall trees, including beeches , black nuts and trumpet trees .
The building is a two and a half story red brick house on a sandstone base and a steep pitched roof with three chimneys . On the south facade there is a centrally arranged, pre-built pavilion with a white square- cut verge on the overhanging eaves . Bay windows on both sides are designed similarly, as is the curved balustrade on one of the balconies on the upper floor. To the west of the double-door entrance is a canopy supported by fiber posts; to the east is a yoke window.
On the east side there is a similar veranda, the friezes of which are designed as grids . The north gable side and the two-story kitchen wing on the north side are decorated by another verge. A double garage was added there in the middle of the 20th century. Two more of the verges decorate the roof lines of the projecting gables on the western facade.
The floor plan of the rooms is asymmetrical. Many of the original moldings and other woodwork are original, especially the gothic fluted environments Jochfenster that of the nearby pilasters spring. The open fireplaces have the original marble surrounds .
An outhouse built of bricks and reddish brown sandstone with a mansard roof is behind the house and is considered a contributing object . A former coach house northwest of it was built together with the house, but extremely changed and converted into a residential building. It's not a contributing object.
history
Maple Lawn was commissioned by local Walter Vail in the late 1850s. little is known about him. At that time, those Newburgh residents who became wealthy from river trade and the onset of industrialization had large houses built with a view of the river, either in the northeastern part of the city or in the relatively undeveloped Balmville to the north. Maple Lawn got its name from the ubiquitous maple trees on the property that later fell victim to the passage of a hurricane .
The house has remained almost unchanged since then. The growth of Balmville towards the end of the 19th century led to the carriage house being split off to a separate parcel in 1903 and converted into a residential building. In the 1950s the consoles on the chimneys were removed and the double garage was added. At the time of entry in the register, the front balcony was still removed, but this measure has since been reversed.
aesthetics
Downing advocated Picturesque as the ideal for the type of house he favored. His houses integrated more closely with their surroundings than the neoclassical and federal style houses that were popular earlier in the 19th century. Withers, who worked with Downing after his immigration from England, turned out to be Downing's spiritual heir and successor after his death, together with the occasional colleague Calvert Vaux .
Maple Lawn was built in the shape of a mansion that Downing thought was the ideal form of a country house for someone with the means; it corresponds to his theories with the careful arrangement of the building in the then existing groups of trees on the property and with regard to the view of the river. The yoke windows and the verandas of the house create a connection between the building and the landscape. This is most evident from the arrangement of the dining room , which faces east, so that dinner can be taken on the shady side, while the opposite parlor takes advantage of the evening light.
The house demonstrates Withers' early work in the pre- Civil War era when he was more conservative than Vaux. In this creative phase he used a heavier construction method than he did in his later works, limited himself to the use of monochrome building materials and the ornaments to a minimum. The regular window arrangement, the asymmetrical floor plan of the house and the steep roofs result in the overall effect of the picturesque impression that the house leaves behind.
source
- Neil Larson: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Maple Lawn . New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . May 10, 1984. Retrieved February 5, 2009.
Coordinates: 41 ° 31 '25 " N , 74 ° 0' 41" W.