Architectural Styles: Stair Towers
I took this picture while kicking off a new project in Needham recently. The house has a big gable roof facing the street with a huge overhang sheltering a porch and a shed dormer for the second floor bedrooms that makes me want to categorize the house as a shingle-style bungalow, which works with the circa 1900 construction date for the structure. Coming around to the rear there’s a section of the house with a gable running perpendicular to the street that continues the details of the front of the house but is clearly a later addition. Right at the intersection of the new and old is a tower element, with corner windows no less. That architectural gesture in my mind places the addition to the early-2000s because at that point the firm I was working for did stair towers on nearly all of it’s projects. This wasn’t for arbitrary or purely aesthetic reasons as far as I could tell from my junior position at the time; tower elements fulfill many functions not the least of which is creating a space for a stair that meets modern codes and also connects to living spaces in the basement of the house (many houses in the region have tight, utilitarian stairs for basement access). A tower is also an organizing element that can mediate between the new and the old portions of the house, which is what is happening in this example. In my clients case functionally the tower is allowing access to the addition on the second floor of the house and doesn’t actually house a complete stair (only a few steps). The windows let light into what would be an otherwise dark stair landing that prior to the addition probably had good daylighting. Pushing the windows to the corner is a more modern gesture that I (and others obviously) love to do on projects since it feels contemporary and really makes a space feel more connected to the outdoors.
Seeing this tower gave me a sense of deja vu and had me initially wondering if my old firm had done the work, the outside certainly had their stylistic characteristics. I went down to the building department and a very helpful person there had the permit drawings emailed to me in about 2 hours - days faster than I expected! The addition was completed in 2005 and the design was by a firm called Concord Architects, which now seems to be defunct as far as I can tell. What’s more is that the drawings were done by hand! That was pretty unexpected because at that point I had worked at 4 firms in a 6-year period and none of them were producing construction drawings by hand. I told this to a good friend who is in the business and his takeaway that this was a “real architect” since they were keeping to the old ways. I don’t know about that, but I do know that they did a nice job on this one and it makes things easier for me to not have to match newer details that don’t mesh with the original house.
I do like that stair tower, both outside and in. I wonder if we’ll ever feel like those are out of style, will it be “so 2005” someday?
