3124 3rd Ave. So.: Arthur E. & Carrie E. Holbrook House

A transitional Queen Anne/Colonial Revival house

Built: 1898
Cost estimated on building permit: $4,000

This is the last house Healy built in the Healy Block Historic District. The first owners were Arthur and Carrie Holbrook. Arthur was president of the Glenwood-Inglewood Water Company. The Holbrooks lived here from 1899 until 1922. Several owners later, in 1970, Wayne and Delores Tinberg bought the house. They had previously lived in a house on the 3000 block of Second Ave. So., which was demolished for freeway construction. Wayne remembered going through the empty Healy houses before they were demolished to make way for the freeway. He also remembered his sons going out at night to play in the freeway construction site. Even though the Tinbergs were not planning to move, a real estate agent talked them into looking at 3124 Third Ave. So. They fell in love with it and bought it immediately. Wayne and Delores, stalwarts of the Healy Block, lived in this house until 2007, welcoming new neighbors and participating in neighborhood preservation efforts.

This house is an example of a shift in architectural fashion that began in the late 1870s. Several factors pushed T. P. Healy and many other architects and builders to transition from the Queen Anne style to Colonial Revival. Prominent among these factors was the Centennial Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia, which, for the first time anywhere, included a replica of a Colonial American home staffed with history re-enactors. Another important factor was the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition (also called the Chicago World’s Fair). Its main attraction, an assemblage of neo-classical buildings dubbed “The White City,” greatly impressed the fair’s millions of visitors. 3124 3rd Ave. So. retains the characteristic asymmetry of the Queen Anne (off-center bay windows on first and second floors), but the Palladian window in the third-floor dormer, the pilasters at the corners of the front façade (also called “corner boards” in this configuration that wraps around the corner), the fluted Doric columns, and the neo-classical balusters on the front porch are all characteristics of the Colonial Revival.

Healy built at least 20 Queen Anne/Colonial Revival hybrids before and after 3124 3rd Ave. So., most of them in the Lowry Hill and Lowry Hill East neighborhoods. The first, in Lowry Hill East, was the Orth House, 2320 Colfax Ave. So. in 1893. In 1896, he built one on the Healy Block at 3116 2nd Ave. So., which was demolished for the freeway. Then, in 1898, Healy built a mirror image of 3124 3rd Ave. So. at 3329 2nd Ave. So.

Cement-asbestos siding was added to this house at some point, but the current owners have removed that siding from the front of the house and have restored the original lap siding. They also restored the front porch and have interpreted the house with decidedly modern paint colors.

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Private property