Talk:Dr. Frank Finney House

Architect

I'm assuming that Walter Dubree is referenced in the Colorado Historic Resources Survey or a local historic survey? I checked the National Register Nomination and he's not listed there. The house is clearly a George Franklin Barber design. With no apparent modifications other that being mirrored, it's in his catalogs as Design No. 20 in Modern Dwellings, 3rd Ed., and Design No. 230 in Modern Dwellings, 5th Ed. Can someone who initially wrote this article elucidate? I'm resisting just changing the text, though I'll mark it "citation needed." Archarin (talk) 14:28, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Four years later, sorry! Hey, Archarin, thank you for your comment. Walter Dubree is in fact listed in the NRHP document and in the NRIS database as the architect of the library, i.e. in the two references at the end of the paragraph. I am going to remove the "citation needed" tag. I just created the Walter Dubree article by the way. Your perspective that the design might be copied from a George Franklin Barber pattern book design is very interesting though. I am familiar with Barber's works/influence, it seems possible to me. Maybe it was indeed basically taken from a pattern book, with or without disclosure way back in 1908. The National Register nomination document author would not necessarily know, either way. Hmm, how to proceed now? Are you still active? cheers --Doncram (talk) 02:03, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi, Doncram - I don't recall now what I meant by "checked the National Register Nomination and he's not listed there," since I see him now; maybe I only had access to the little abstract paragraph at the time, as they've continued to scan whole nominations to the web. It's not unheard of, architects of that period borrowing each other's catalog designs - I can think of three other examples of clear Barber designs in other locations (New Bremen, Ohio; Phoenix, Arizona; and Rock Island, Illinois) that have historic attribution to other architects, so this is definitely not the first. (For what it's worth, there's a notable "Barber" design, for Pine Crest in Knoxville, Tennessee, that appears first in another architect's catalog, though it escapes me who at the moment). I'm never sure what to do with these - this one's especially complicated in that same way since it was built in 1899, and as far as I know it didn't appear in any Barber catalog until 1901 - it could be another example of things going the other direction. If you're curious, you can see the Barber version online here: http://cmdc.knoxlib.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15136coll3/id/344 on scan pages 129 and 130. If the plans vary by very much, that could be the source of the two-different-architects conundrum. It's a distinctively oddball house, with that center porch column that breaks all the Classical rules. Archarin (talk) 21:58, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Though it occurs to me that unless Walter Dubree also published catalogs, the path should certainly be Barber to Dubree, unless they both copied it from yet another architect... Let me dig around and see when it ought to have appeared in a Barber publication first. Archarin (talk) 22:08, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi thanks for coming back! And now I cannot figure out where there is mention of Dubree being architect of a library there; the NRHP nomination document doesn't mention that AFAICT. It only flatly asserts "Architect: Walter Dubree" without any development in the text, and I can't find mention of "library". It would be great if you could sort this out any better, and further develop this article and/or the Walter Dubree article. Hmm, now that you say it, yes the 3 columns of porch look odd as a variant of tetrastyle! --Doncram (talk) 22:13, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Very glad you have expertise about this, and can point to that Barber version on pages 129 and 130. To me that doesn't look exactly the same: is it flipped left to right? And is the rounded turret-like portion in the actual/photo in the article the same or not as the polygon in the plan? It is so close in appearance though, that some acknowledgement to Barber seems needed. It would be great to convey something in the article, that it appears very similar to a Barber catalog design. And to cover the local long-term pride in this being their most wonderful architectural work, which the nomination written by a local Junta historian goes on and on about. Including to cover that locals did not know about probable source being Barber catalog, or at least that whatever Dubree did seems to be minor adaptation, not truly original. This will be hard to word, given lack of more local knowledge/sources, but I would at least like to imply/suggest something here, without stating anything not actually supported. --Doncram (talk) 22:25, 9 July 2019 (UTC)