Spins on Second Empire

Web exclusive commentary on The Mania for Mansards from our editor.

By Gordon Bock

	The Second Empire house Norman Bates called home in the movie Psycho is one of many mansard-roofed media stars, and itÕs also a stop on Universal StudiosÕ backlot tour (www.universalstudioshollywood.com).

What is it about the Second Empire style that stands out to this day and continues to evoke strong emotions? Whether you love it or hate it, think it's ugly or beautiful, no one's on the fence about these distinctive houses with their unmistakable French roofs. What's more, among the many other Victorian houses of its era, why did this one become such a media star? From the Addams family house in the New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams, to the Bates residence in the film Psycho, to the Munster Mansion of television fame, the Second Empire has been cast as the poster child for a creepy old house. Yet it has attracted fine artists the caliber of Edward Hopper who launched a career with the painting The Mansard Roof (1923), and made the house an icon of the American rural landscape with House by the Railroad (1925). Old-House Journal reader and building scholar Jim Mears feels that the Second Empire is the most masculine of the 19th-century styles.

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