Painted Ladies
- Style
- Queen Anne
- City
- San Francisco, CA
- Collection
- painted victorians
"Painted Ladies" is the name for San Francisco's Victorian and Edwardian houses, repainted starting in the 1960s in three or more colors to highlight their carved details. Elizabeth Pomada, Michael Larsen, and photographer Morley Baer coined the term for their 1978 book, Painted Ladies: San Francisco's Resplendent Victorians, and it has since spread to describe similarly repainted Victorian rows in cities from Baltimore to Wellington, New Zealand.
the building
Color over Queen Anne bones. The polychrome paint jobs aren't historically accurate re-creations. Victorian-era polychrome was common, but the specific modern color schemes were invented from scratch, layered onto Queen Anne houses to make their turned woodwork and ornament pop.
the style
These are Queen Anne houses, their turrets, bay windows, and carved ornament turned into a canvas: the modern paint jobs are designed to pick out and exaggerate that Victorian-era detailing rather than blend it away.
More on Queen Annesignificance
San Francisco built roughly 48,000 Victorian and Edwardian houses in this era, of which the repainted "Painted Ladies" rows are the most photographed survivors.
nearby
- Charles Dietle House
- San Francisco Mint building
- John Spencer House
- Japan Center (San Francisco)
- War Memorial Opera House
- St. Joseph's Hospital