The Chateauesque is based on the monumental 16th century chateaus of France. The style combines Gothic elements with the 16th century’s fashionable move to Renaissance detailing. In the United States, the style was popularized by Richard Morris Hunt, the first American architect to study at France’s prestigious École des Beaux-Arts. Due to the Chateauesque style’s requirement of massive masonry construction and elaborate detailing, the style was unsuitable for vernacular adaptation and remained a rare and architect-designed fashion.
Identifying features include a steeply pitched hipped roof, a busy roof line with intricate and multiple vertical elements, such as spires, pinnacles, turrets, gables and shaped chimneys, multiple dormers extending beyond the cornice line and walls of stone masonry. Turrets and towers typically have steep candle-snuffer roofs, whereas dormer roofs are usually steep, parapeted gables. Ornamental metal cresting is sometimes observed along roof ridges and above the cornice. Windows, doors and façade elements are often decorated with shallow relief carving or Gothic tracing. Windows are typically divided into narrow vertical panels by stone mullions with smaller transoms above. Windows and doorways are typically arched in a characteristic Gothic basket shape.