Alpheus Gay House
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The Alpheus Gay House is a historic house at 184 Myrtle Street in
Manchester, New Hampshire Manchester is the List of municipalities in New Hampshire, most populous city in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. Located on the banks of the Merrimack River, it had a population of 115,644 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Manches ...
. Built c. 1870 by Alpheus Gay, a local building contractor, it is one of the state's most elaborate
Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...
houses. The house was owned for a time by the nearby
Currier Gallery of Art The Currier Museum of Art is an art museum in Manchester, New Hampshire, in the United States. It features European and American paintings, decorative arts, photographs and sculpture. The permanent collection includes works by Picasso, Matisse, Mo ...
, but is now in private hands. It was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
in 1982.


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 A modillion is an ornate bracket, more horizontal in shape and less imposing than a corbel. They are often seen underneath a cornice which helps to support them. Modillions are more elaborate than dentils (literally translated as small teeth). A ...
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. 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 Andrew Jackson Downing (October 31, 1815 – July 28, 1852) was an American landscape designer, horticulturist, writer, prominent advocate of the Gothic Revival in the United States, and editor of ''The Horticulturist'' magazine (1846–1852). ...
and
Calvert Vaux Calvert Vaux Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, FAIA (; December 20, 1824 – November 19, 1895) was an English-American architect and landscape architect, landscape designer. He and his protégé Frederick Law Olmsted designed park ...
. 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.


See also

*
National Register of Historic Places listings in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire This is intended to be a complete list of the properties and districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. Latitude and longitude coordinates are provided for many National Registe ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gay, Alpheus, House Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in New Hampshire Houses completed in 1870 Houses in Manchester, New Hampshire National Register of Historic Places in Manchester, New Hampshire