Innisfail
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David Van Nostrand House (Innisfail)
1888. West side of Corn Neck Rd., 300 feet north of Old Indian Neck Rd.
Built in close proximity with fine views east to Rhode Island Sound and west across the Great Salt Pond, these three summer houses touch major strains in late-nineteenth-century resort architecture. Innisfail, the northernmost, is a small cottage orné in the informal tradition of Newport cottages in the late 1860s and 1870s exemplified by work of Richard Morris Hunt. The Willis and Maltby houses follow a formula well suited to seaside summer houses, with a circumferential porch girding the first story; on the Maltby House a prominent, sweeping roof covers both first story and porch. The Willis House uses traditional details and forms, including the mansard roof popular on Block Island throughout the late nineteenth century, while the Maltby House has a beach-stone-clad first story and cypress-paneled interior that signal an interest in the natural, even rustic, qualities favored by the Arts and Crafts Movement.
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