Seth Warner House
- Year
- 1869
- Style
- Italianate
- City
- Chicago, IL
The Seth Warner House at 631 N. Central Avenue is the oldest surviving house in Austin, built in 1869 by businessman Seth Warner in the Tuscan Villa Italianate style. In 1924, George Haskell and his wife converted it into the Austin Conservatory of Music, and in 1934 violinist Paul Vernon merged in his Austin Academy of Fine Arts, turning the house into a neighborhood arts center that operated until 1979.
the building
Italianate details. The house keeps its Tuscan Villa Italianate features: a verandah on the rear, a bracketed cornice running the roofline, and a cupola crowning the roof, the hallmark elements of the style as built in 1869.
From house to conservatory. George Haskell and his wife converted the house into the Austin Conservatory of Music in 1924. Ten years later, violinist Paul Vernon merged his Austin Academy of Fine Arts into the school, and the combined institution ran as a neighborhood arts center until 1979.
the style
Built in the Tuscan Villa Italianate style, the house is distinguished by its verandah, bracketed cornice, and roof cupola, details typical of the Italianate villas fashionable in the years before the Chicago Fire.
More on Italianatesignificance
The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 3, 1982, and designated a Chicago Landmark on February 23, 2022, at the time one of only 13 Chicago landmarks that predate the 1871 Chicago Fire. It suffered fire damage on June 15, 2023.
nearby
- First Congregational Church of Austin
- Laramie State Bank Building
- Third Unitarian Church Building
- John Jacob Walser House
- Rollin Furbeck House
- Edwin H. Cheney House