Property Details

One of the district’s finest Italian Villa-style dwellings, built of wood frame construction with a symmetrical three-bay façade and a porch extending across the façade. Windows flat-topped, set singly and in groups. Truncated hipped roof, supported by paired brackets and clad in standing-seam metal, capped with a belvedere with a finial. Historic iron fence extends across the front of the lot. Built by Cyril C. D. Pinchot and first occupied by one Benjamin Sum. (ca. 1862)

Pinchot-Sum, 1862 (Italianate) Built by Cyril C. D. Pinchot, grandfather of Governor Gifford Pinchot, this picturesque villa has some blending of Greek Revival details such as the dentils between elaborate double brackets and classical pediments as window caps. An inventive carpenter showed original bravura with egg-shape forms decorating the pillars of the veranda. The Egg House! Also added were fanciful spandrels and roof-top cupola complete with pendant and a finial. Note the typical cast-iron harp fence. This villa is well preserved with all identifying features intact. It was featured in Harry Devlin’s Portraits of American Architecture: A Gallery of American Homes 1989.