St. Germain Place - Galveston, TX - Victorian Style Architecture on Waymarking.com

From HGTV

Italianate Architecture
By: Douglas Trattner

Italianate buildings tend to be characterized more by their ornamentation than by the structure itself," explains Gerald Foster, architect and author of American Houses: A Field Guide to the Architecture of the Home.

"After a period of picturesque architecture, Italianate reverts back to a tighter symmetrical floor plan of an earlier time," says Foster. "Basically, it’s a simple box with a lot of ornamentation."

• Rectangular. Italianates have a plain shape and are usually two or three stories tall
• Sloping roofs. Italianate houses are easily distinguished by their gently sloping roofs and deep overhanging eaves, which are seemingly supported by a row of decorative brackets, or corbels. Brick, stone or stucco is used to construct the exterior.
• Tall, rounded windows. "The windows are always tall, slim and most often rounded on top," notes Foster. They usually appear in sets of three, evenly spaced from left to right, but also show up as doubled-up pairs. First-floor windows are taller than those on upper levels. Shutters are seldom found on these homes, replaced by thickly hooded, pedimented or framed windows.
• Columned entryway. A single-story column-supported porch protects the double-door entrance.
• Square tower, or cupola. A centrally placed square cupola often just above the roofline. "These cupolas top off the buildings nicely, and they have an Italian feel to them," Foster notes.

"It takes a certain level of sophistication to understand and appreciate the qualities of an Italianate."

From the City Council Planning and Development Division
City of Galveston
January 26, 2017

Saint Germain Place formerly known as the Jacobs Building and originally known as the IkelHeimer and Company Building built in 1898. The building was built for local businessman Mark Max as a Commercial income property. The Architect was famed George B. Stowe. The three-story late-Victorian building was designed with a corner turret, a flat roof and dozens of tall arched windows. Beautiful granite columns and a wide balcony spanning the exterior of the second floor.

The Galveston-born architect George B. Stowe contributed to the transformation of Postoffice Street in the 1890's with the three-story building for the investor Marx Marx. It was Stowe's first major downtown building, and it led Marx to commission him the next year to design Galveston's first "skyscraper", the six-story Improvement Loan & Trust Company Building (1900, demolished 1955) at 2228 Postoffice and Tremont. Tan brick and classical colonnettes mark Stowe's academic aspirations. But the chamfered corner tower with its conical cap is a vestige of Victorian picturesqueness. The building was remodeled for use as residential apartments in the early 1990's. New ground-floor facades were installed that were intended to be compatible with the historic fabric of the building as stated in Galveston Architecture Guidebook by Ellen Beasley and Stephen Fox.