Carpenter Gothic
U.S. domestic architecture style of the 19th century. The houses executed in this phase of the Gothic Revival style display little awareness of the original Gothic approach, but rather an eclectic and naive use of superficial Gothic decorative motifs. Turrets, spires, and pointed arches were liberally applied, as was much decorative gingerbread, made possible by the invention of the scroll saw. Carpenter Gothic houses were built throughout the U.S., but surviving structures are found chiefly in the Northeast and Midwest.
Carpenter Gothic, Carpenter Gothic Revival
Carpenter Gothic
A mid-19th century architectural style in which highly decorative woodwork and Gothic motifs were applied to otherwise simple homes or churches in America, usually designed and constructed by carpenters and builders; often asymmetric in plan. Buildings in this style are often characterized by: a façade that promotes vertical emphasis, such as by pointed arches that extend into the gables; Gothic motifs such as foliated ornaments, pinnacles with battlements, crockets, decorative brackets, foils, towers, turrets, and wall dormers suggestive of Gothic architecture; often, an entry porch having a flattened Gothic or Tudor arch; a steeply pitched roof or gabled roof, often with a gable at the center of the façade or with intersecting gables; lacy, highly ornate bargeboards and finials decorating the gables and dormers; decorative shingle patterns on the roof; high, ornamental chimney stacks; often, clusters of chimney pots; bay windows, casement windows with diamond-shaped or rectangular-shaped panes, lancet windows, ogee-arch windows, oriel windows, stained-glass windows, triangular arch windows often with mullions and relatively thin
tracery; label moldings; often elaborately paneled entry doors in a Gothic motif; a wood-paneled door or a battened door suggestive of the medieval period, sometimes bordered with sidelights. Occasionally called Carpenter’s Gothic.