Quincy House Tour

212so12

212

212 South Twelfth Street is another house built by J. H. Konofes in 1889 and is a unique turn of the century home due mainly to its clear lack of high style characteristics. Konofes must have been a mason because both this house and 208 South Twelfth Street utilize a great deal of masonry detail.

In composition, the house is a two story gabled with a one story entry porch capped with a classical pediment. The organization is picturesque in form but much of the detailing and use of materials seem to lack any stylistic precedent.

On the first floor of the front gable, the corners round off and masonry buttresses rise above to the third story and end in cornice-like capitals. Similar buttresses come out of the back gable and rise above the eave line to support a pediment gable dormer.

The brick detailing in this house is quite unusual for the time period and suggests forms of east coast architects like Frank Furness. The use of abstracted classical ornament results in an architecturally unique house that does not attach to the Queen Anne or the ideas of Louis Sullivan and the Prairie School.