William T. Comstock’s Modern Architectural Designs and Details “New Series,” volumes II, III, and IV, were published (in monthly parts) between October 1888 and March 1890. They are a continuation of the volume of the same title, which he published (as a unit, not in parts) in 1881. A full-page ad for that original first volume—still in print—is found at the back of volumes II and III.1 These subsequent volumes continue the same distinctive principle as the first: house designs and plans are included, followed by many detailed drawings of exterior and interior features.
In 1881, the aspect of volume I, which contained a great number of large-scale architectural details, was reasonably new in the publishing world. The very popular pattern book inaugurated by A. J. Downing in 1842 with his Cottage Residences had appealing house designs in perspective, some elevation cuts, a few details—all of rather small size—and an extensive descriptive text, aimed primarily at the client. A great many other designers followed suit with similar pattern books during the next quarter century.2 While it was indeed possible to build houses inspired by (or even carefully copied from) these models, practical builders and architects really wanted larger and more detailed plates of the architectural features, inside and out—design books specifically for the practical craftsman. The five years after the Civil War saw a huge increase in house building3 and, for the more elaborate houses in styles such as the Second Empire and later the Queen Anne, craftsmen needed more, and more varied, detailed designs. Builders, contractors, even architects preferred lots of illustrations rather than descriptive text, as the professional journal The American Architect and Building News observed in 1878.4
The first volume to include a vast cornucopia of details (but with some overall building designs too) was Cummings and Miller’s Architecture: Designs for Street Fronts, Suburban Houses, and Cottages, including Details, for both Exterior and Interior (1865), which contained “over 1,000 designs and illustrations.” By 1872 it had reached its 8th edition, and in 1873 Cummings brought out a new rich compendium, Architectural Details, Containing 387 Designs and 967 Illustrations of the Various Parts Needed in the Constructions of Buildings.5 New York architectural book publisher A. J. Bicknell who produced his own version of this new type of pattern book immediately picked up the concept of this “new” source of plentiful miscellaneous designs. His volume Detail, Cottage and Constructive Architecture containing 75 Large Lithographic Plates... showing a Great Variety of Designs came out that same year, 1873.6 W T. Comstock’s Designs and Details volume of 1881 was aimed at meeting this new need too, and to be a work of “practical utility.” It contained 734 scale drawings of doorways, windows, staircases, moldings, cornices, etc. His index of details includes 92 items, though some were various types of the same feature.7
William T. Comstock was an architect; he became primarily a publisher of architectural books. In 1879 he joined the New York City firm of “A. J. Bicknell & Co., Architectural Book Publishers.” Amos J. Bicknell—a publisher and compiler only, not an architect—had been issuing architectural books of many types since approximately 1867;8 his Specimen Book...of Architectural Designs (1878) was actually an illustrated catalog of twenty-seven of his other published titles. In 1879, Bicknell was joined by William T. Comstock and the company name was given as Bicknell & Comstock. In 1881 it was listed as “William T. Comstock, Successor to Bicknell & Comstock, Architectural Publishers.” Thereafter it was just William T. Comstock, and continued thus into the early twentieth century.9
The half-title of Comstock’s “New Series” of Modern Architectural Designs and Details, volume II, clearly explains its purpose: “a Monthly Publication, Giving Details of Exterior and Interior Woodwork Drawn to Scale, Gelatine [Photographic] Plates of Late Work by Prominent Architects, and Such Other Designs and Details as are Likely to Prove Useful in the Practical Work of an Architect or Builder.” In the introduction to the first group of plates Comstock explains their purpose:
These designs are intended to be practical, in the sense that they can be adapted to the use of a variety of buildings, particularly country dwellings, and are not intended to refer to any one house, but will be found suitable to a large class of modern structures. Some of the subjects represent work actually executed; others have been designed to meet possible requirements.
In the first volume of his Designs and Details series (from 1881) there were a huge number of “miscellaneous” details, suited to a wide range of houses, but also a select number of house designs by eleven architects of the day (ten listed by name), from Boston, New York City, Providence, and a few other locations. Clearly, their “details” were mainly from the working drawings of houses they had completed, or for projects they proposed. In the “New Series,” the designs by architects for houses they had erected increased, and the number of “miscellaneous” details—not connected with an illustrated building—greatly decreased. It would appear that it was easier for Comstock to acquire for publication drawings “already completed,” as they had served their original purpose, and now would spread the fame of the architect, and they would certainly be up-to-date. The list of architects prepared for this reprint shows how many professionals were illustrated in these three new volumes. 10
It is interesting to note that a few architects who today we would consider well known contributed drawings to the three volumes here reprinted: Bruce Price, James Renwick (of Renwick, Aspinwall and Russell at this date), and Frederick Clarke Withers. But equally interesting is that the photographic plates of recently-built houses include quite a number of additional “famous” architects, including McKim, Mead & White; Arthur Little; Lamb & Rich; William Ralph Emerson; Peabody & Stearns; Sturgis & Brigham; and Green & Wicks. Drawings for these were not, however, included.
In the 1881 volume, the Queen Anne (and also Eastlake and Elizabethan modes) were focused on by name as popular “current styles” to which the details could be adapted. The introductions to the “New Series” make no comment about architectural styles represented, but public and architectural taste had indeed again shifted. Most of the buildings represented are in what is now called the Shingle Style; there are a few, however, decidedly Queen Anne (such as the “Roadside Inn” of vol. IV); a number that, because of their half timbering, might be considered “Elizabethan” in inspiration; a few Colonial Revival; and several in stone that today we would call Richardsonian Romanesque. But unlike the earlier volume, most of the detail drawings in this “New Series” are in fact details for the exteriors and interiors of the dwelling (or occasionally commercial or other building) that are illustrated here, usually first in perspective, and then often in elevation views. In that sense, the details are not really “miscellaneous,” though obviously are intended to be adapted to any similar style dwelling. There are, however, a few truly miscellaneous plates that are of “old Colonial bits.” These are appropriate, of course, for interior detailing of Shingle Style houses since they were, after all, inspired in large part by vernacular shingled colonial dwellings.
W. T. Comstock is listed as the “publisher” of these three “New Series” volumes; the “editor” of volumes II and III of this series is given as architect E. R. Tilton. Indeed, several of his buildings are featured extensively, and he also did some of the miscellaneous drawings. But he was also was a draftsman for other firms, for one drawing (vol. II, pl. 30), from the New York firm of Rossiter & Wright, is signed by Tilton as “delineator.” Furthermore, this “in-house” contribution to the Designs and Details series seems to have been the new mode of production, for in volume IV, C. Powell-Karr is the editor, whose “Suburban School House” and his “Railway Station” drawings are prominent in that volume. Furthermore, his address, as an architect, is given as 23 Warren Street—the same as the W. T. Comstock company.
It would seem that Comstock had other irons in the fire besides designing buildings (at least in the early days), and publishing books; one of the manufacturers’ ads at the back of volume II is for an “Improved Leveling Instrument” (patented in 1884) which looks like a surveyor’s transit; the text reads, “William T. Comstock, Manufacturer, 23 Warren St., New York;” it received a glowing “unsolicited testimonial” from a user in Connecticut.
Comstock’s “New Series” Modern Architectural Designs and Details contained a good variety of up-to-date material (the dates on the drawings, or on the buildings themselves, are only a year earlier than their publication here); it was only one of his many useful publications. It is worth noting that Comstock’s books seem to have been reasonably well received by other professionals; two citations from The American Architect and Building News can be given. In 1882, in response to a subscriber in Missouri asking for titles of books on modern architecture, the editors recommended several, including Comstock’s Modern Architectural Designs and Details of 1881; and in 1885, in a list of “the best books on architecture and building” requested by an Illinois subscriber, the editors cited Comstock’s American Cottages of 1883, their sole entry under “Dwellings.”11
Today, these books provide us with a wonderful corpus of illustrations of Victorian buildings and their details for our study and delight. But how popular were these volumes with carpenters, contractors, and architects when they were published? Because of the vast number of details presented, finding cases that “match up” would be impossible to pursue systematically; but the popularity of volume I12—which suggested to Comstock that a new series along these lines would be profitable—certainly implies that they were indeed used. And Comstock seems to have had high hopes for them, as an agent in London handled them. Now that these volumes are republished, surveys, restorations, and documentation of older homes may provide some serendipitous discoveries of Comstock “designs and details.”
DANIEL D. REIFF, PH.D.
Daniel D. Reiff, Ph.D., is the author of Houses from Books: Treatises, Pattern Books, and Catalogs in American Architecture, 1738–1950, A History and Guide (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), which won the 2001 Historic Preservation Book Prize from the Center for Historic Preservation, Mary Washington College.