Structure

The Rouleau house’s architectural style is Queen Anne, a design that was very popular in the 1880s and 1890s. Of all the Victorian house styles, Queen Anne is the most elaborate and the most eccentric. The style is often called romantic and feminine, yet it is the product of a most unromantic era -- the machine age. Factory-made, pre-cut architectural parts were shuttled across the North America on a rapidly expanding train network during the industrial revolution. Widely-published pattern books touted spindles and towers and other flourishes that are associated with Queen Anne architecture. Country folk yearned for fancy city trappings. Wealthy industrialists pulled out all stops as they built lavish "castles" using Queen Anne ideas. The Rouleau house in particular is a Queen Anne Free Classic. Instead of delicate turned spindles, these homes have classical columns, often raised on brick or stone piers. Like the Colonial Revival houses that are also becoming fashionable, Free Classic Queen Anne homes may have Palladian windows and dentil windows.