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.
