|
 Charles G. Curtiss Sr. House Posted by:  S5280ft
N 42° 22.296 W 083° 27.968
17T E 296947 N 4693981
On South Union Street North of Church Street.
Waymark Code: WMEKG
Location: Michigan, United States
Date Posted: 06/10/2006
Views: 38
The Curtiss House is one of Plymouth's most outstanding Late Victorian houses. The house was built probably in 1890 for and probably by Charles G. Curtiss, Sr., a Plymouth builder about whom almost nothing is known. His gravestone and the certificate of death indicate that he was born in Connecticut on March 25, 1823, and died in Plymouth on May 30, 1893. Several brief newspaper notices in the Plymouth Mail in the 1887-91 period show that he was involved in building and moving houses and that he was the Noble Grand of the local Odd Fellows lodge in June 1891, and was a member in August 1891, of the local board of review charged with reviewing a special assessment roll. Following Mr. Curtiss's death, his wife Caroline continued to own the house until 1901. The house's primary importance, in view of the lack of information about Mr. Curtiss, is architectural. Its rich exterior overlay of Italianate, Second Empire, and Eastlake elements is unique in Plymouth. The house is also the only example in Plymouth of the gabled-ell house form having a tower in the angle. This house form had been popular in Michigan and across the nation since the 1850s, but it was becoming very much out-of-date by 1890. It is as if Mr. Curtiss, assuming that he played a major role in designing his own house, used in its construction ideas that he had gathered over many years of house-building.
Description:
Standing on a fieldstone foundation, the Charles G. Curtiss House is a two-story, cross-gable-roof, wood-frame, gabled-ell building with a one-story, hip-roof, rear section. A square-plan tower in the angle of the L projects a little less than half its depth forward of the facade of the ell and rises three stories. It is capped, above a bracketed cornice, by a mansard roof with a gabled dormer in each face. The exterior, clad in clapboarding and patterned shingling, displays a shed-roof, Eastlake, turned-post verandah, with spindlework frieze, fronting the tower and ell, and stickwork gable ornaments with semi-round undersides. At the back of the verandah, the front wall of the ell displays a treatment of rectangular wood panelling. A slant-sided bay window with pent roof projects from the front of the upright at the lower-story level, while a substantial shed roof with concave upper surface hoods a tripartite window above it.
Parking nearby?: yes
D/T ratings: 
Registered Site #: Local 1917
Historical Date: Not listed
Historical Name: Not listed
website: Not listed
|
Visit Instructions:Take a photo of your GPS at the marker. We'd prefer a photo of you with your GPS, but we realize that sometimes that's just not possible or preferable.
Also include a bit about your visit to the marker.
NEW: Instructions for logging Missing Marker Visits.
If the Marker is missing, but still listed here, you must provide a photo of you at the actual item historically honored. (This should be the waymark's "default" image). Indicate in your log that you took your photo at the Historical Location instead of the marker, because the marker was missing. Please also still include a bit about your visit to the site.
|