Littlefield

Victorian House

Victorian Town Hall, Manchester

I think it is so weird how Victorian architecture can encompass so many things: flying buttresses, dragons, lions, red brick and stone, etc. The Littlefield house, on the corner of 24th and Whitis is an example of Victorian Architecture and its’ elements.
The gothic elements are represented throughout the house both in the interior and on the exterior. In Ruskin’s “The Stones of Venice” he talked about the six elements of gothic, which I will relate to the house.
1) Savageness or Rudeness: the Littlefield House may seem perfectly put together, but the “roughness of work” [1] and “the imperfection of the workman” [2] are shown in the laying of the brick and the attempt but not complete success of perfection.
2) Love of change: I think the love of change is the most prominent feature of the house. If you look at the layers, you see different iron gates, and columns that are asymmetrical, but the whole thing fits together. The layers of the balconies aren’t the exact same, and the materials even change throughout: red brick, stone, greenish iron, white columns. The love of change exhibits the “perpetual variety of every feature of the building…. great art, whether expressing itself in words, colours, or stones, does not say the same thing over and over again. To me, the change says that they welcomed variety and new ideas. Also, the shapes of the rooms on the interior are not similar to each other—one room has a circular attachment that serves little purpose.
3) Love of nature: The fences around the balconies are shaped like vines with leaves and the tiles on the top towers look like leaves. The top of the towers have tree looking things that seem to have leaves dripping off of them.
4) Disturbed imagination: The inside has the gargoyle dragons in the front room on top of the fireplace, and the top of the outside has lions heads on them.
5) Obstinacy or Rigidity: The outside, especially the top, seems very prickly and juts out at you at certain places. The top spikes of the towers project upward and look very sharp.
6) Generosity: The space between the two floors seems very large, and there is so much space that has been filled. Each detail of the exterior shows so much craftsmanship and hard work, and you can tell that there was so much labor and thought put into its’ design. Look at the space between the two floors:

[1] Anthology, 535.
[2] Anthology, 535.