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Queen Anne
Victorian architecture reached its peak of excitement with the style known as Queen Anne, the one that we think of most often when Victorian architecture is mentioned. It is the style whose motto could be "anything goes," and often did! Queen Anne builders offered a flamboyant combination of facade variations, with patterned shingles and other building materials in a variety of colors and textures. Different roof shapes were combined with towers, turrets, and intricate chimneys. Spindles, brackets, curlicue cutouts, and other latticework was used for balconies and porches. Projecting bays and stained glass windows contributed to the exuberance of this style. Sometimes a decorative set of wood strips, called stickwork, was added to the wall surface to suggest the structural outline of the house.
Vernacular Victorian
 Not all properties built during the last half of the nineteenth century were in such elaborate Victorian styles. Often they were built in more traditional styles with Victorian details, such as Gothic peaks or Italianate brackets, added to them. At the same time and with the urging of national tastesetters like Andrew Jackson Downing, decorative elements were being grafted onto or used to "dress up" older structures. Local carpenters were imaginatively updating houses with the additions of gingerbread trim and elaborate porches, such as those added to older Boalsburg and Rebersburg properties.
The Centre Furnace Mansion offers another example of what Downing might have considered "A Common Country House, Improved." Originally an early five-bay brick in the Georgian style,
the Centre Furnace Mansion underwent a major facelift soon after the Civil War. Roof dormers were enlarged and peaked to give height to the house; front windows were enlarged by lowering them to the floor; a large front porch topped by a balcony and decorated with gingerbread trim was added; decorative brackets were placed under extended roof eaves; and the bricks and trim were painted in a new color scheme that matched Downing's recommendations that houses should be painted to be "in harmony with nature."
Simplified versions of Victorian styles continued to be built into the twentieth century. Early properties along West College Avenue in State College, built between 1900 - 1910, offer an eclectic collection of elements from all of the various styles – Mansard and gabled roofs, classical porticos, multiple dormers, bays, towers, wrap-around porches, and other decorative details.
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