Eastlake

Eastlake is a style of exterior ornament applied to American wooden houses, mostly in the 1880s. Its details come from furniture design: posts and balusters shaped on a lathe, rows of spindles hung beneath porch roofs and across gables, round knobs, panels pierced with jigsaw-cut patterns, and shallow carved or incised flowers and lines. The parts were cut by machine, and houses were often painted in contrasting light and dark colors to pick them out.

Eastlake details usually appear on houses whose overall form is Stick style or Queen Anne, and the combination is often called Stick-Eastlake. Stick houses outline the wall frame with flat boards; Eastlake adds the turned and rounded pieces. The Carson Mansion in Eureka, California (1884-1886), by Samuel and Joseph Cather Newsom, mixes Queen Anne, Eastlake and Stick elements. Other examples include the William S. Clark House in Eureka (1888) and many row houses in San Francisco's Victorian districts.

The style is named after Charles Locke Eastlake (1836-1906), an English architect who was secretary of the Royal Institute of British Architects from 1866 to 1877. His book Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and Other Details was published in Britain in 1868 and in the United States in 1872, where it was reprinted six times. In it he argued for simpler, well-made household furniture and decoration, illustrated with his own designs.

American furniture makers and builders turned his ideas into a set of lathe-turned and jigsawn parts and applied them to houses. Eastlake disowned the results, writing that he found American tradesmen advertising 'Eastlake' furniture with which he had 'nothing whatever to do.' The style reached its peak in the 1880s, mainly as decoration on Queen Anne and Stick houses. Examples include the Thomas F. Ricks House in Eureka, California (1885), and the Winters House in Sacramento (1890). Stick-Eastlake had modest popularity, and relatively few examples survive.