Stick Style Architecture

Stick style is a late nineteenth century American architectural style, transitional between the Carpenter Gothic style of the mid-nineteenth century and the Queen Anne style it had evolved into by the 1890s, popular from roughly 1860 to 1890. Its defining feature is decorative overlay boards applied over exterior clapboards, typically intersecting at right angles and sometimes diagonally to resemble medieval half-timbered construction, without providing any actual structural support. Its buildings commonly combine plain overall layouts with gables, decorative shingles, wraparound porches and exposed trusswork, and the style was applied to residences as well as train stations and life-saving stations. Notable surviving examples include the 1874 Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station in North Carolina, the John N. A. Griswold House in Newport, Rhode Island, and the Emlen Physick Estate in Cape May, New Jersey; a more ornate derivative known as Stick-Eastlake incorporated decorative elements from Charles Eastlake's design movement.