Adams House (2016) is a modern adaptation in keeping with the Arts & Crafts bungalow style home.

The Arts & Crafts style became popular in the 1920’s with several mail order companies, like Sears and Montgomery Wards, offering kit houses by mail and delivered to the jobsite. Most have large overhanging front porches supported by tapered box columns of wood or brick. The term bungalow is often associated with smaller homes of this style as they were relatively easy to build and their simple floorplans still suit modern lifestyles. The windows are usually multiple vertical panes over a single lower on double hung windows but other mullion grid patterns were used, often on the same house, including diamond shapes, leaded glass stylized tulips and geometric patterns, small square and octagon windows and patterned glass (usually used on bathroom windows). Bathrooms were tiled palaces in colors from black and white to “Depression green” and pink in the 4o’s.

Art Deco was popularized by the Paris Exhibition of 1920 where adornments to building façades were limited and geometric. In Frenchtown, two structures on Second Street, The People’s Bank Building and Barton Brothers (formerly a bank also) are notable examples with white glazed brick street sides accented with black and green glazed brick. Diamond and stair stepped patterns adorn the cornice areas of each and large single panes of glass that were now available for the first time were shown off at street level. Inside plain paneling and unadorned but large woodwork are hallmarks of the style.

Many Streamline Moderne homes may be found in Frenchtown, and are gaining appreciation among young home buyers for their relatively contemporary styling. Now listed as contributing structures to the historic districts, these mid-century modern homes are finally protected and are starting to become appreciated. Often built of brick or stone veneer with engineering features impossible before their time, such as corner-less windows (a detail popularized by Frank Lloyd Wright) and narrow textured brick faces. Both of these details may be seen on the house at 1401 North Third Street. The interiors of these homes often have swirl textured plaster walls, narrow strip oak hardwood flooring and uncased, radiused corner windows and doors and marble window sills. Many of the windows in these structures were commercial style painted iron with horizontal dividers. Secondary windows were single pane glass casement style or double hung and front doors are solid slab wood with small, asymmetric windows.

Although architects and historians try to categorize structures into these and other building styles, many are of multiple influences and are not a pure style. And although unaltered since construction, they may exhibit characteristics of various styles of their contemporaries; such as Second Empire, Romanesque and Italianate that were all popular at the end of the Twentieth Century, as seen on the large home at 719 North Second St. with its Empire roof, Italianate applied swag cornice and prominent stone Romanesque entryway. Others exhibit multiple influences through alterations by their owners over time; some by an attempt to “update” and others may have had additions added to them of progressively later styles. It is important to note that all of the structures predating 1950 are in the city’s “Period of Significance” and are protected from negligent acts of remodeling, “updating” and other alterations and require the approval of both the Historic Landmarks Board and Building Permits before any work may proceed on them. This includes garages, fences and other historic architectural details as well in order that these structures will remain for future generations as examples of the times and the events that influenced their development.