Toutorsky House (Henry B. Brown House)

Miller, who conducted a fifty-year architectural practice in Ithaca, New York, was, in 1872, the first student to graduate from Cornell University's School of Architecture. He worked in a variety of late Victorian styles, primarily influenced by contemporaneous developments in England, a common practice among provincial American architects of the period. In his Brown house, Miller employed a vocabulary associated with Flemish architecture, whose revival was popularized in England by Richard Norman Shaw. Three major vertical masses intersect at right angles and relate to the house's corner site and its plan, which has two major entrances and a biaxial arrangement of rooms. Each of the three-and-a-half-story brick masses (one facing 16th Street and the others Riggs Place) has a stepped gable, and each is composed using different fenestration patterns. The scrolled stepped gable on the 16th Street facade surmounts a wall with tall vertical windows that span its five-bay width, while the gables facing Riggs Place are angular and less ornate in outline. Continuous rock-faced brown sandstone belt courses circumscribe the house, merging with window sills and lintels on all stories. These strong horizontals blend with the deep red of the brick and subtly balance the vertical thrust of the numerous, compactly placed, deeply set windows. Although picturesque in outline and arrangement of masses, Miller's composition is totally controlled and coherent when viewed from 16th Street and hierarchically spread out as its masses diminish in size and importance on Riggs Place.