676 Main Street just across
the street from the public wharf. This is marked on one of the maps I
have seen as the "Ernst House" and this seems plausible since Abraham
(1849-1911) succeeded his father as important shipbuilder who had a
yard in this general vicinity just across the street.
This is not a perfect example of a villa but it does have some of the
usual Italianate features excepting perhaps that twentieth-century
veranda and the Scottish dormer.
This style may seem exuberant but it was an expression of the
confidence which the middle class businessmen felt at the time of
Canada's confederation. Those that liked the idea of Nova Scotia's
union with the Canadas, liked it a lot and built homes which were an
expression of their preferences for derring-do over staid but steady
approaches to business and home-building.
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Another Palladian door at 437 Main Street. Again that colour could be considered Mediterranean,
The
Bracketed Style is seen as developing out of the somewhat earlier
Italianate. It had few direct connections with this former style and
homes of this ilk often resemble Neo-Classical and Gothic Revival
models more than Italianate. This particular style appropriated whatever
happened to be at hand and added paired brackets under the
eaves and at the corners of the house. Simple mouldings
were often paired up with large complex looking brackets, otherwise the door frame was
often constructed along Neo-Classical lines rather than as shown above..
Windows were of the normal
Neo-Classical variety, which we do see here, but transformed by a
pair of brackets at each end
of the architrave, as shown in the other two homes.. Looked at closely,
the brackets are seen to have
been cut from three pieces of wood, the middle one being a bit thicker
and smaller than those attached to either side. Bracketed houses are
extremely common in Lunenburg County but are hard to count as a
distinct style since the basic structure is often of a more obvious
persuasion.
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