Alpheus Gay House

Historic house in New Hampshire, United States
United States historic place
Alpheus Gay House
42°59′53″N 71°27′25″W / 42.99806°N 71.45694°W / 42.99806; -71.45694
Area0.3 acres (0.12 ha)
Built1870 (1870)
Built byGay, Alpheus
Architectural styleItalian Villa
NRHP reference No.82001682[1]
Added to NRHPMarch 9, 1982

The Alpheus Gay House is a historic house at 184 Myrtle Street in Manchester, New Hampshire. Built c. 1870 by Alpheus Gay, a local building contractor, it is one of the state's most elaborate Italianate houses. The house was owned for a time by the nearby Currier Gallery of Art, but is now in private hands. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.[1]

Description and history

The Alpheus Gay House is located in a predominantly residential area northeast of downtown Manchester, at the northwest corner of Myrtle and Beach streets. It is a 2½-story wood-frame structure, with gabled roof section and a flushboarded exterior. It has complex massing, a roofline studded with paired brackets on the main block and modillions on the servants' wing, and a three-story tower above its main entry. The main entrance is sheltered by a porch with square posts and decorative arches below the cornice. Windows have a variety of surrounding treatments, including rounded arches, peaked lintels, and bracketed flat lintels with projecting cornices. A carriage house is attached to the house's eastern servants' wing, with vertical board siding and simpler but similar styling to that on the house.[2]

The house was built about 1870 by Alpheus Gay, a prominent local contractor, as his personal residence. It appears to have borrowed heavily from design patterns published by Andrew Jackson Downing and Calvert Vaux. It is a late but particularly well-executed example of the Italian villa style promoted by those architects, and has undergone only modest alterations since its construction.[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  2. ^ a b "NRHP nomination for Alpheus Gay House". National Park Service. Retrieved 2014-05-18.
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† This entry has been removed from the registry.