Centennial Revolution Queen Anne Revivals in Evergreen. by JOHN GRIFFIN Queen Anne houses are common within the Parkways of older Memphis. The style rose to prominence in the three decades after 1880 when Memphis’ city charter had been restored and the town was abuilding. Though a simplified Victorian plan with a predictable layout, Queen Annes had exterior decorative variety that made each house distinctive from the street. There are three houses just being built that look as if they have been on the western edge of Evergreen since the first decade of the 1900s rather than the last. They all have a dominant hipped roof with a lower gable projection and a porch completing the front elevation. An overscaled dormer punctuates the main hipped roof of each. Queen Annes typically have a wealth of exterior surface texture. Here, there are fish-scale shingles in one gable and latticed vents in another. The dormers are variously hipped, gabled, and gabled with a pent roof enclosure. These three houses offer a thorough compendium of the style’s original detailing. The tall roofs with their cross gables and dormers create fascinating, expansive interior spaces that originally weren’t finished. Without air-conditioning, all that space was a highly stylized buffer between the living quarters below and the summer heat that builds up under a roof. Now mechanical systems allow every inch of that space to be exploited. Two bedrooms occupy the attic here, with a comfortable bath between. Downstairs the plan has been practically reversed from the original layout. The public rooms used to be across the front of the house, with bedroom and kitchens tucked behind. After dinner you retired to the front porch to visit and enjoy the cool of the evening. Now the public spaces have all retreated to the rear. Kitchen, dining, and “keeping room” open to the fenced backyard for privacy. One front room is called the living room, but it’s clearly vestigial and will probably atrophy. It does, however, provide a much-needed, getaway space that would work well as a library, study, or home office. A master suite fills the other half of the front. So now the main projecting bay, rather than enclosing the parlor open to all, holds the sleeping chamber with private bath/dressing room behind. It could, of course, be a den/guest room, and the master could likewise retreat upstairs and sprawl front to back if three bedrooms weren’t a necessity. Even though these three houses look like the bulldozer missed them when the Evergreen corridor was razed for the interstate that never was, once inside you realize how up-to-date they are. Though they appear centenarians, it only takes crossing the threshold to know a revolution has taken place. You can e-mail John Griffin at letters@memphisflyer.com.