The Vilsack Row in Morningside, designed by Frederick Scheibler, is famous as one of the early experiments with modernism in residential design. Here we have another approach to more or less the same problem: how to make compact and affordable housing that is nevertheless architecturally interesting and therefore attractive to potential residents. These houses were built in 1914 at almost exactly the same time as the Vilsack Row and diagonally across the street from it, but they could hardly be more different.
The architect here was A. B. Snyder,(1) not one of our most famous architects, but one who could be relied upon to produce an attractive design. In this row for Mrs. Josephine A. Garber, Snyder has taken an approach exactly opposite to Scheibler’s: he has created a Tudor fantasy that makes the row feel like an English village. That fantasy cost money, and these were larger and more expensive houses than the ones in the Vilsack Row. But they were still reasonably cheap. They were another successful answer to the same question.
Footnotes
- Source: The Construction Record, June 27, 1914: “Architect A. B. Snyder, Empire building, has bids in and will award separate contracts soon for the erection of a brick, cement plaster and tile block containing seven residences on Jancey street, for Mrs. Josephine A. Garber, 601 Emerson street. Cost $25,000.” J. W. Garber is marked as owner in 1923. (↩)
