Stately Streets

This two-and-a-half story Tudor Revival house with cross gable roof and additional wings and roof segments creates an irregular and picturesque building profile. A gable front with clipped gable, faces East Genesee Street. Unfortunately, the entire property has not fared as well as the nearby Collins House, at East Genesee and Allen street. The Hunt house now serves as the front part of an apartment complex.

Edward A. Hunt was president of the Syracuse Candy Works located at 316 North Clinton Street. He had previously lived at 1463 South State Street.

The house’s first floor is brick, and the upper stories are half timbered and made of wood and stucco. A two-story rectangular bay projects from the main wall with gable, and rectangular windows are on the first floor, and on the second story is a porch, now enclosed, with decorative spindle-like supports between the openings, now filled with windows.

The present main entrance is through a narrow opening on the west side, under a cross-gable, but the entrance faces south. The roof on the cross gable that extends west changes it profile, becoming markedly steeper. The west façade has a smaller side gable nestled off center within the large one. A previous entrance may have been on the east side, in a wide bay, with brick side piers, now closed and covered with shingle and with a small rectangular window near the top. A similar bay is on the east side, suggesting an earlier open corner ground-floor covered entrance.

A large half-timbered gable is over the second story, over this side bay. Further north, a second story rectangular window bay projects from the main wall and overhands the side walkway, adjacent to the asphalt paved east side driveway. A long building extension was added in the 1960s or later on the north side of the house and extends far into the lot and a matching structure across the driveway from the house, extending from near the sidewalk to deep into the lot.

The Hunt house is not listed on the National Register as part of the WWW multiple property designation begun in 1996, but it would be in the boundaries of the proposed Westcott-University National Register Historic District, from which the above description is derived. Research on the district was carried out with a grant from the Preservation League of New York State. The nomination is under review by the State Historic Preservation Office. More than a dozen Ward houses and many more Arts & Crafts houses, bungalow and Craftsman-style cottages fall within the proposed district.

(Updated August 2020)