open-gable cottage
A cottage with a wide gable and plain form. It could just as well be called the flush-wall, center-axis cottage, because these features characterize its design, but that would be an awkward label. The open-gable was built for almost 50 years throughout most of the country. It has been a two-story house, though there were one-and-a-half story versions clad in brick, shingle, and clapboard, the last being the most prevalent. The open-gable cottage has clean lines, simple form, and no projections off the façade; it carries the façade wall up into the gable, with no distinction between façade and gable until the early 1890s. This house has a classical orientation, in that the façade is a linear temple front in which thin corner boards or pilasters carry a low, wide pediment. The introduction of cornice returns reinforces this impression. The façade is organized around a center axis running from the apex of the gable to the ground level. Able windows are placed on or along the side axis, and porches with three posts have the middle post placed on the same line. What detailing appears is often derived from bungalow or Craftsman designs. (Gottfried & Jennings, 1985)