Title: GIFFEN-KLINGER HOUSE
Location Current Site: Boulder CO UNITED STATES
Creator Assoc Person Name: Draper,Joan, Kyner,Lynne
Creator Assoc Person Role: Associate, Photographer
Date.Creation: 1891-1891
Subject.Image Description: Corner View
Description.Image Comments: 1040 Mapleton Ave. House is rumored to have been designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, but he died in 1886. ELCALP Project - for Joan Draper ENVD 4114, Fall '98 Wrought iron fence & ivy covered walls.
Source.Acquisition Date: 2000-01-04 00:00:00
Style/Period: Shingle Style
Style/Period Description: SHINGLE STYLE
(1879 - 1893)
The Shingle Style was an Americanization of the English born Queen Anne Style and a development from it. Quieter, simpler, and more horizontal than the Queen Anne, it was first employed by architects in the Northeasten United States who studied and emulated aspects of 17th and 18th century English colonial architecture, especially the shingled houses of New England. The term "Shingle Style" was actually coined by architectural historian Vincent Scully in a 1955 book of the same name, which examined the resort and country houses of America's elite. Scully identified an 1879 house in Mount Desert, Maine (1879), by William Ralph Emerson, as the first example. The Shingle Style became popular nationwide in the 1880s. Its most famous high style proponents were Henry Hobson Richardson and firm of McKim, Mead, and White in the East, and in California, Willis Polk. Their work was popularized in pattern books and in the mass-circulation and architectural press. Sometimes aspect of the Shingle Style were combined with aspects of the Queen Anne or Romanesque Revival Style.
Most Shingle Style buildings were houses or other domestically scaled buildings, such as chapels and apartment buildings. The characteristic aspects were: horizontality, the covering of the wood frame by a continuous shingled surface, and asymmetrical open planning. Shingle Style houses were often had long broad, horizontal gabled or gambrel roofs, and they were volumetrically complex. Dormers and porches were common. Decorative detail was usually simple, although rock faced masonry could add visual interest to the texture of shingles.
Subject Image View Type: Exterior, general view
Description.Subject Report: The Giffin-Klinger house, also known as "Ivy Crest, is located at at 1040 Mapleton Avenue. This is a large Shingle Style home. It is located on Mapleton Hill, a historic landmark district in Boulder. It dates from 1891, a time in which the Shingle Style was popular. The Giffen-Klinger house is two stories and 4698 square feet. The first story is made of Lyons sandstone, and the upper floor is covered in wooden shingles, now painted gray. It features dormers, oriel windows, porticos, and a steeply sloped hipped roof reminiscent of the Queen Anne style. An oriel window graces the center of the north facade. The east side has a portico with decorative balustrades. It was designed to take in views from all sides. Its east-west orientation responds to the views of the mountains, rather than the street.
In 1891 Sydney Giffen, the builder of Ivy Crest came to Boulder from New York to practice law. His house is rumored to have been designed by Henry Hobbs Richardson, the famous Boston architect, but the actual architect is unknown. Giffen was a member of the town board and a Regent of the University of Colorado. Frederick J. Klinger bought the house in 1911 from Giffin. He served as mayor of Boulder. In 1915, Klinger built one of the first cement tennis courts in Colorado south of the house. It was very popular, serving as a social gathering for teenagers and for the tennis tournaments of the State Preparatory School. After Klinger's death in 1952, his daughter Marion and her husband Harlow Platts inherited the house. Platts served on the city planning and zoning board for over 30 years. He initiated a measure to appoint a professional planner to work for the city on a permanent basis. The city named a park in his honor in South Boulder. The house is a Boulder Landmark.
Sources
Colorado Historical Society- Historic Building Inventory Record;
Jane Barker, 76 Homes of Boulder County.
(Lynne Kyner, 1998)
ID Number.Former Image Accession VISC: 62970
Date.Image: 1998
Rights Description: Copyright owned by The Regents of the University of Colorado, a body corporate, and the photographer. All rights reserved.
Source.Requestor Full Name: Draper, Joan
Collection Name: Architecture and Planning Collection
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