214 S Geneva St Ithaca

Street Address History:
Earlier street address 32 S Geneva St.
The city renumbered its streets in 1899 using the hundred block system (see Crandall City Engineering Map, 1899).

Source of Building Data: 1910 Sanborn Fire Insurance Atlas;
Multi-Family Construction: ; 
Roof of Main Structure: Non-combustible; 
Additional Sections: Section one, back right (W), 1 story, shingle roof; 
Outbuildings: ; 
Porches: Porch 1, wraparound front and right side (W, N), 1 story, non-combustible roof; 
Other: ;

Source: Henry St. John Local Historic District Nomination, Sara Johnson and Kristin Olson, Historic Ithaca, Inc., 2012.
Description: 
214 South Geneva Street is located mid-block on the west side of the street. The lot is of average size for the 200 block of the street, but the broad house occupies most of the property. The house was constructed ca. 1890 in the Queen Anne style. The three-story house is roughly rectangular in plan with a one-and-a-half-story shed-roofed wing on the west. The central hipped roof of the east three-story section has a variety of rooflines and projecting gables.
Walls are clad in clapboard with wood stringcourses and corner boards. The gable ends feature diagonal board siding and a second story overhang wrapping around the southeast corner is clad in mixed pattern wood shingles. Windows are generally 1/1, and appear singly, in pairs, and in groups of three.
The primary, east, façade has a gable dormer projecting from the center of the main roof, with a blind window and an interior brick chimney projecting from the peak of the gable. The gable is trussed with incised vergeboards. Immediately east of the dormer, a lower cross gable projection with a jerkin head roof gable extends to the east. The jerkin head has sawtooth-edge vergeboards. A second story balcony is located at the intersection of the primary east section and the east gable projection. The balcony’s sweeping shed roof is an extension of the main hipped roof. The balcony has turned porch posts, curved brackets, and a low balustrade with turned spindles. A smaller, lower gable dormer projects from the north side of the roof.
The main entrance is in the center of the east façade, under the shingled second story overhang. Immediately north of the door, the walls of the jerkin head gable projection are chamfered, creating a bay that wraps round the northeast corner, where a shed-roofed one-bay porch shelters a second entrance, recessed to the west. The recessed wall is one bay wide and features a single stained glass-Queen Anne-style sash on the second story.
The paved driveway for 212 South Geneva Street runs along the north side of the house.
Significance: 
Contributing. Architecturally significant.
214 South Geneva Street is architecturally significant as an example of a Queen Anne style residence. It has a high level of integrity, retaining its original form and massing, decorative wood trim, and a variety of cladding materials. The removal of porches on the east and north façades does not have a significant impact on its integrity.
The house is on the east half of lot 26 of the lots laid out south of Green Street by Simeon DeWitt. Records indicate that this was one of the few lots south of Green Street along Geneva and Albany streets that Francais A. Bloodgood did not purchase from Simeon DeWitt. Prior to 1839, the lot was owned by John Speed, Ithaca’s sixteenth village president. It is not known whether Speed constructed a house on the lot. John Bridgen, a tinsmith, purchased the property from Speed in 1839 and owned the lot until 1868, building a house there prior to 1851. It is likely that the expansion of the house to its current form occurred during its ownership by Clarissa Burritt, who owned the property from 1877 to 1909.
Alterations: 
On the 1888 Sanborn company map, the house is shown as a two-story rectangle with its longer axis running north-south. A second one-story rectangular wing of the same size is immediately west, with a one-story square addition at the west wing’s northwest corner. The 1893 map indicates a change in plan: the house is roughly square with a projection near the north corner of the east façade, a porch wrapping around the northeast corner, and a porch at the north corner of the west façade. This corresponds with the existing plan of the house. Between 1919 and 1929, the balcony on the east façade may have been added, as well as small one and two-story additions at the north corner of the west façade.
Between 1954 and 1975, the wrap-around porch at the northeast corner was removed. This also included a second story porch in the center of the jerking head projection.
Sources: 
Ithaca directories, 1864-1981. Historic Ithaca, Inc., Ithaca, NY. 
Levine, Jeffrey. Building-Structure Inventory Form for 214 South Geneva Street, Ithaca, NY: 1987. Historic Ithaca, Inc., Ithaca, NY. 
Photograph of 214 South Geneva Street, July 1975. 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.