Written by Bridget Wingert. October 2nd, 2014, Bucks County Herald (pg A11)
Standing outside Oscar Martin’s house last Sunday, Jennifer Jarret, an architectural historian, described some of the details – and there were plenty, inside and out.
Details are in the brickwork – Flemish bond, a checkerboard pattern, on main walls; in the Flemish gable at the center; in the dining room’s coffered ceiling; in shelves and staircases: and in the tiny library at the back of the house.
On this sunny and warm day, groups of walkers were learning about Oscar Martin buildings during the Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce’s Excellence in Design Tour. This year, the focus was on Doylestown Borough. It was Sept. 28, Martin’s 141st birthday.
The architect built his house at Shewell Avenue and Union Street in 1902, when he was just 25, and he lived in it the rest of life. It is a brick house, a transition from the Victorian and Queen Anne styles of just a few years before, to the early 20th-century Craftsman influence.
On an opposite corner, the 1899 Meyers House, was Martin’s first commission. Seeing one house across from the other allowed immediate comparison in styles – Queen Anne but simplified on one side, the Martin’s more modern home on the other side.
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Doylestown Firehouse, photograph by Mark Markgraff
