The William G. Low House was a seaside cottage at 3 Low Lane in

Bristol, Rhode Island Bristol is a town in Bristol County, Rhode Island, US as well as the historic county seat. The town is built on the traditional territories of the Pokanoket Wampanoag. It is a deep water seaport named after Bristol, England. The population of ...

. It was designed and built in 1886–1887 by architect

Charles McKim Charles Follen McKim (August 24, 1847 – September 14, 1909) was an American Beaux-Arts architect of the late 19th century. Along with William Rutherford Mead and Stanford White, he provided the architectural expertise as a member of the partn ...

of the New York City firm, McKim, Mead & White. With its distinctive single

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

it embodied many of the tenets of Shingle Style architecture—horizontality, simplified massing and geometry, minimal ornamentation, the blending of interior and exterior spaces. The architectural historian

Vincent Scully Vincent Joseph Scully Jr. (August 21, 1920 – November 30, 2017) was an American art historian who was a Sterling Professor of the History of Art in Architecture at Yale University, and the author of several books on the subject. Architect Phil ...

saw it as "at once a climax and a kind of conclusion" for McKim, since its "prototypal form ... was almost immediately to be abandoned for the more conventionally conceived columns and pediments of McKim, Mead, and White's later buildings." Just before it was demolished in 1962, the house was documented with measured drawings and photographs by the

Historic American Buildings Survey Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) is a division of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) responsible for administering the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and Historic American Landscapes ...

. Wrote architectural historian Leland Roth, "Although little known in its own time, the Low House has come to represent the high mark of the Shingle Style."

References

External links

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Low House floor plans
from Great Buildings Online {{DEFAULTSORT:Low, William G., House McKim, Mead & White buildings Houses completed in 1886 Houses in Bristol County, Rhode Island Demolished buildings and structures in Rhode Island Shingle Style houses Queen Anne architecture in Rhode Island Historic American Buildings Survey in Rhode Island Buildings and structures demolished in 1962 Shingle Style architecture in Rhode Island Gilded Age mansions