218 S Albany St Ithaca

216 and 218 S Albany are shown as being in the same building on the 1929 Sanborn map.
Year built 1900 from Tompkins County Department of Assessment.

Source: Henry St. John Local Historic District Nomination, Sara Johnson and Kristin Olson, Historic Ithaca, Inc., 2012.
Description:
218 South Albany Street is located mid-block on the west side of the street on a deep lot, one of a series of four mid-block properties with lots that extend further west than those closer to the north and south corners of the street. The house is composed of two distinct parts: a primary (east) two-and-a-half-story, irregularly massed, cross-gabled section, and a secondary (west) two-story section of simple rectangular massing with a gable roof. The east section was constructed or remodeled in the Free Classic Queen Anne style ca. 1897. Walls are clad in a variety of materials: clapboard on the primary first story walls, shingles on the second story and in the gables, and flush board cladding on the bay windows. The west section may have been constructed prior to 1851. It features wood corner boards, clapboards, and a wide cornice, but few other details of the west section are visible from the street.
The east section’s multiple intersecting gables are clad in asphalt shingles and a brick chimney projects from the center intersection of the gables. The house sits on a substantial raised rusticated stone foundation. Windows are generally 1/1, though many contain stained glass Queen Anne-style upper sash. Windows facing the street are generously sized. The east façade has a deep partial-width pediment porch across the south half of the east façade. The porch features a wide cornice, groupings of Doric porch supports, a low simple balustrade, and broad wood steps. A small second story porch sits atop the north half of the first story porch. The second story slightly overhangs the first story and the prominent front gable extending over the second story wall surface is supported by a series of curved brackets. The gable has dentil trim and a recessed balcony with small Doric columns. Below this gable, the northeast corner of the house is a polygonal bay with windows on the east, corner, and north sides of the bay.
The polygonal corner wraps around to the north façade. The cross-gable projection to the north overhangs the first story, sitting above a secondary entrance to the house. This entrance is sheltered by a narrow flat-roofed porch with Doric posts and a simple balustrade. The overhanging second story contains narrow 1/1 windows below a wide cornice. The gable extends over the second story and features a large round arch recesses. The second story wall is ornamented with a single large diamond pattern composed of vertically oriented shingles.
The cross-gable projection to the south creates a large second story overhang on the south façade. A small three-sided bay window sits below this bracketed overhang. West of the gable projection, a small, hipped roof bay window projects from the second story. Concrete steps lead to a doorway at the west corner of the façade.
The four-bay double automobile garage has an asphalt-clad hipped roof. The walls are clad in clapboard framed by corner boards. It was built between 1919 and 1929.
Significance:
Contributing. Architecturally significant. Garage contributing and architecturally significant.
218 South Albany Street is architecturally significant as a substantial intact example of a Free Classic Queen Anne style house. It retains a high level of architectural integrity and retains nearly all of its original features. The four-bay, hipped roof automobile garage shared with 222 South Albany Street is also architecturally significant and retains a high level of integrity as an example of an early automobile garage.
218 South Albany Street was either built or remodeled and expanded between 1893 and 1898. A house was located on this lot as early as 1851, when the property was owned by a clerk named Humphrey Martin. Until 1898, the house depicted on Sanborn company maps was a simple rectangular two-story mass with a one-story rear addition. In 1897 Helen Peirce purchased the property from Elizabeth A. Wilson. The1898 Sanborn company map indicates a two-story house with an irregularly shaped plan and a two-story rectangular addition. This change in plan coincides with the Peirce’s purchase of the property.
The Peirce family owned multiple properties on South Albany and Fayette streets in the 1890s and early 1900s Helen Peirce was the wife of Willard Peirce, superintendent of the Cayuga Division of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Rail Road. Her brother-in-law, Clarence Peirce, owned the Peirce Coal Company. In 1890 she purchased the property to the south, 222 South Albany, and sold it to her sister-in-law, Rose Emma Peirce, in 1893. Rose Emma Peirce and her husband Clarence lived in a house on the property at the time of the sale and the deed included the condition that the existing house be moved as far to the south of the property as possible. This condition was met by 1904, when the house is shown on the Sanborn map in its new location. 218 South Albany Street was owned by the Peirce family until 1920.
Alterations:
Sanborn company maps do not indicate any substantial alteration to the house after its reconfiguration ca. 1897, though it is possible that small one-story porches were added on the north and south façades. The maps indicate that a single-bay automobile garage was constructed in the southwest corner of the property between 1910 and 1919, which was replaced by the existing four-bay garage between 1919 and 1929.
Sources:
Diaz, Roberto. Building-Structure Inventory Form for 218 South Albany Street. Ithaca, NY: 1987. Historic Ithaca, Ithaca, Inc., NY.
Ithaca directories, 1864-1981. Historic Ithaca, Inc., Ithaca, NY.
Sanborn Map Company. Ithaca, NY fire insurance maps, 1888-1961.The History Center In Tompkins County, Ithaca, NY.
Tompkins County Department of Assessment. Tompkins County tax assessment photographs, 1954. Historic Ithaca, Inc., Ithaca, NY.
Tompkins County, NY. Deeds and survey maps, 1850-2010. Office of the Tompkins County Clerk, Ithaca, NY.

Source of Building Data: 1910 Sanborn Fire Insurance Atlas;
Multi-Family Construction: ; 
Roof of Main Structure: Shingle; 
Additional Sections: Section 1, back (W), 2 story, shingle roof; 
Porches: Porch 1, front (E), 1 story, non-combustible roof / Porch 2, left side of Section 1 (S), 1 story, non-combustible roof; 
Outbuildings: ; 
Other: Bay 1, left (S);