History:

Built in 1903, the Gilbert & Annie Chamberlin House is an excellent representation of the Free Classic Queen Anne style.  Queen Anne-style features are displayed in the home’s pitched roof, multiple cross gables, beveled and boxed bays, corner boards and sunburst designs, a prominent facade gable, recessed balcony, and a full-width front porch.  Free Classic-style details are depicted in Classic cornice returns, dentiled cornice courses, narrow-width horizontal clapboard siding, and round fluted porch columns with Ionic capitals. The house was constructed by the Chamberlin Real Estate & Improvement Company for Annie Wickersham Chamberlin and her husband, Gilbert Lewis Chamberlin, the founder and president of the company.  The home was custom-designed for the Chamberlins by William J. Ballard, a Pasadena architect employed by the Chamberlin Company, and was prominently featured in the April 1907 edition of Spokane’s Home Builders, a promotional plan book published by the company.  The plan book included floor plans of the property, a description of the home’s design, and photographs. The photos pictured a view of the exterior and four vignettes of the interior and its furnishings.  Like the Gilbert & Annie Chamberlin House, “Chamberlin-built homes” were advertised in the plan book as being “built on honor,” each house “well-constructed in every way” where “nothing but the very best of materials were used in its construction.” Chamberlin’s impact on Spokane was great and in 1912, he was praised for his “remarkable record of having built several hundred homes” in the city.  He was described as one of the “most progressive residents of this city,” where “his labors” constituted “an effective and valuable force in the improvement, development, and adornment of Spokane.”

Architectural Description:

Constructed in the Queen Anne style by the Chamberlin Real Estate & Improvement Co. and designed by architect William Ballard, the home features a prominent front-facing gable which projects over and covers a full-width front porch at the first floor. The front porch is supported by full-height round, fluted columns with Ionic capitals that are anchored to a wood porch deck.  A turned-post balustrade protects the deck.  A frieze with decorative dentils is prominently displayed above the porch columns below the eave of the pent roof and also along the rake of the gable above the porch.  The prominent front-facing gable at the second floor is punctuated with a recessed second-floor balcony.  The recessed area in the balcony is framed with an outline that is similar to a Palladian window.  

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