West of Westcott

This is one of the few two-family houses designed by Arts & Crafts architect Ward Wellington Ward. It was built for Mrs. Alton Simmons and is one of  Ward’s earliest Syracuse buildings. Mrs. Simmons may have lived in one unit and rented the other, in what became a common practice in two-family houses.

The house is notable for its two-bay windows, indicating the living rooms of both apartments, but there is no second floor front porch – something that would soon be standard in similar houses. The projecting polygonal bay continues a tradition from Queen Anne style architecture, as can be seen at 106  Victoria Place (Gridded Garden Tour).  As in the house the bay rises to a decorative gabled dormer divided into panels with applied false half-timber.  Here the pediment terminates in a clipped gable – a Ward Wellington Ward signature element on many houses.