Vernacular Classical Revival House 1890s

447 Queen Anne Road

Teaneck became a township in 1895, in the midst of New Jersey's borough movement. its Population then numbered only 800. Much of the town was still largely rural and agricultural, with a few scattered concentrations of commercial buildings, a full complement of religious institutions, several train stations serving different lines, but not many dense subdivisions of houses. Trolley lines ran from Edgewater to Main street in Fort Lee, down Fort Lee Road to Broad Avenue in Leonia, and on to the junction at Hillside Avenue and across the Overpeck to Teaneck. With these transportation improvements came a few organized subdivisions, such as the one concentrated around the south side of town nearest the trolleys. Here, on long eastwest streets such as Hillside, Oakdene and Copley can be found many familiar house types of the classic streetcar suburbs.

One of these types, falling under the rubric of what historian Alan Gowans calls "the comfortable house," is the stout hip roofed, two-story model with a dominant giant order front porch. This fine example uses Corinthian columns to support its monumental pediment. Similar houses can be found throughout the northern part of the state, in such towns as Newark, Irvington, Plainfield, Montclair and Englewood. Stylistically, this somewhat naive experimentation with classical features is an 1890s vernacular parallel to the larger Colonial Revival which swept the country following the Centennial.