A local architect with a peculiarly personal style designed this high, angular gambrel-roofed shingle and clapboard Queen Anne house for Walter Stearns, an executive in a cardboard box company. Elegant details, each sharply defined as a self-contained entity, are scattered about somewhat disjointedly: in the front gable, a pseudo-Palladian motif consisting of an oculus window resting on a window triplet; below, at the second floor, an off-center loggia; along the side elevation a brick chimney framed at the corners and paneled with gray stone and a cluster of triangles to mark the dormers and the bay that contains the fireplace. Interspersed with this precise and disjunctive geometry are panels and cartouches of lush ornament, and what is left of cushioncapped porch columns, all embellished with Romanesque leafage, but given a mild Art Nouveau or Sullivanian undulation. For good measure, a bracketed Neo-Colonial shell hood surmounts a side door.
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Walter Stearns House
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