Capitol Hill Home Styles, "What Style Is It?" -- Preservation Cafe, Cap. Hill Restoration Society February 15, 2006

For more information, contact the Capitol Hill Restoration Society at 543-0425.

Capitol Hill is known as a "Victorian" neighborhood, but are all our houses "Victorian Style"? Indeed not, and Judith Capen, AIA, will give a powerpoint presentation at the February Preservation Cafe to help straighten out Capitol Hill's stylistic lexicon.

"What Style Is It?" will look not only at buildings of different styles but also at various elements of those buildings--the mansard roofs, Italianate cornices, and Craftsmen porches that help define those styles. Capitol Hill's buildings start in the late 1790s with the Federal and Georgian styles (or at least the row-house equivalents of those styles.) We have buildings influenced by the Greek Revival movement and others by the Italianate period. Towards the end of the 19th century building became even more diverse, with elements from Richardsonian Romanesque, Moorish Revival, Gothic Revival, Egyptian Revival, Renaissance Revival, and Queen Anne styles. All these and more were added into the mix--Stick Style, Beaux Arts Classicism, Georgian Revival, Tudor Revival, and finally Modernistic.

Judith Capen is the perfect guide: she is a long-time Capitol Hill resident, a restoration architect, teacher of architectural history classes, and author of Restoration Society's guideline, Building styles in the Capitol Hill Historic District.