Newsom Brothers

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Newsom Brothers. Samuel (1854–1908) and Joseph Cather (1858–1930) Newsom were prolific designers and builders of late-C19 domestic architecture in the USA. Their most celebrated house is the William Carson Residence, Eureka, CA (1884–5), a composition featuring barge-boarded gables, gouty colonnettes and extreme ornamentation in what can only be described as an exuberant free style. Many designs were published in the California Architect and Building News, and Joseph Cather produced a large number of pattern-books, including Artistic Buildings and Homes of Los Angeles (1888), California Low Priced Cottages (1888), and Picturesque and Artistic Homes and Buildings of California (1890). At the beginning of their partnership (1878) they were building in the Eastlake or Stick style, then they turned to Colonial Queen Anne, followed by much cribbing from Richardson, then a flirtation with the Colonial Revival or Shingle style, the château style, the Georgian Colonial Revival, and Beaux-Arts Classicism. Clearly all was grist to their architectural mill. Later they turned to regional Mission Revival (based on Spanish Colonial architecture) and around 1900 to the Arts-and-Crafts style. Whatever style they used, they were never guilty of restraint.

Bibliography

Gebhard et al. (1979);
Newsom (1890, 1895, 1895a, 1896);
Newsom & and Newson (1978);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Jane Turner (1996);

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