Talk:Prow house

recent editing, including split of "Winged gable"

Hi, i notice extreme editing here, including split of some material to a new article Winged gable. It seems that the modern use of "prow house" has been shifted to there, and "prow" is mentioned there. I have not checked fully about that article, but if it is material copied from here then there has been an internal copyright violation, because the authors here were not credited in creation of that article.

Also the extent of removal here seems extreme, and unhelpful given that "prow house" is a term that is used. It is not right to simply trash this article and start a new, currently unlinked/unconnected article to cover some of the same ground.

I will pause for discussion but am inclined to revert the recent changes. --Doncram (talk) 06:10, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi Doncram. I have, indeed, made many changes to this article. Reason being that an article on a regional Ozark Mountains building type (which is absolutely legit) has been expanded into a fantasy of an international "prow house" giving examples of Frank Lloyd Wright and a German housing scheme.

The "other building types" section, I deleted because it was simply other building types which have nothing in common with the prow house. The buildings shown there were simply famous buildings with unique corner solutions which the author of that section of the article thought looked like a prow. None of these buildings was (to my knowledge as someone studying art and architecture for 35+ years) ever called a prow house, nor even remotely compared to one.

The association of house and boat is a very ancient one in architectural history, many a building deliberately creating this association. In fact, the origin for a "nave" of a church and other buildings derives from the Latin for ship - that doesn't make every church with a nave a prow house.

That goes for the FL Wright's Arthur Heurtley House, too. One detail was nicknamed a "prow" (NOT a "prow house") in the source quoted:

Coincidentally, the original owner, Arthur Heurtley, a banker, was a lover of sailing, so Wright built the home with a ship in mind, including the famous pointed "prow" just outside the main entrance. ("Wright 'masterpiece' tests the market". oakpark.com. 27 September 2005. Retrieved 11 January 2018.) - that does not a prow house make...

From that, a "prow window" has been made up which simply does not exist. I never came across it and I'll eat my hat if you can show me a reference to it as an architectural term (not as a nickname as in FLW's case) in any reliable source.

The "prow gable roof" is somewhat legit (not quite legit because the term is entirely made up by the author - see my explanation in the talk pages of Winged gable) but has nothing to do with the "prow house" - that's why I separated the two things. I don't want to claim any credit for anything and I mentioned in this history page that I moved the "Winged gable" to a new article in which I also, from the first draft, included the word prow. But I take your point and have included links between the two articles and I have laid out my reasons for splitting in the talk pages there. Gerbis (talk) 15:46, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Willits house

Qwirkle, First of all, you are were reverted once and the article was restored to the way it has been for a long time. You should have started a discussion here to reach a consensus.

Second, the source in Willits House clearly discusses the prow features of this house, as does the article.

From the source:

Wright incorporates diagonals into several other places in his design – the dining room has a prow shaped end bay and another prow shaped projection, the reception room has a similar prow shaped bay, the art glass light over the entry stairway is rotated 45 degrees, again emphasizing the diagonal, and the terminating piers of the porte cochere (capped with prairie style urns) are offset from the end wall by 45 degrees.

The fact that the house has a prow (several actually) is clearly stated. MB 19:07, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Having a small prow shaped bay does not make a building a “prow house”. That is a localized term of art for a rectangular house with a single, sometimes stepped, and usually veranda-ed tee-out at the center of the house’s public face. It’s an Arkansasism, based on a riverboat analogy, and a fairly obscure term until Wiki adopted it as a misnomer. Qwirkle (talk) 19:40, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't get your point. We are talking about a photo with a caption that says the house has "a flat-front prow". That is entirely accurate and doesn't imply the overall architectural style of the house can't be called other things. It doesn't say this is a "prow house". The picture and caption are appropriate for this article. The Willits House article correctly says the overall house is Prairie School. As far as I know, all the sources used in this article existed before the article was created - their use of the term can't be due to "a Wiki misnomer". MB 20:55, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

The pre-existing sources have two meaning for “prow house”. The scholarly one is for a certain type of Arkansas vernacular building. The article shows a single typical example of it, and an atypical variant, veranda-less, and brick rather than frame. The other meaning is for houses that actually look a bit like the front end of a boat pointing at the viewer, like some Lindals and Pan Abodes. That’s what a prow house is. All the other illustrations, if kept, should be noted that they are not about the article’s subject. Qwirkle (talk) 21:13, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree with all that. The caption was "The Frank Loyd Wright designed Willits House, with a flat-front prow". It seems fine to me but if you want to suggest something else, like "The Frank Loyd Wright designed Willits House, a Prairie School house with some "prow-like" features including a flat-front prow-like projection." I personally prefer more succinct captions. MB 22:49, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Nahh. To begin with, “flat-fronted” applies to about one actual prow house, the brick job in the article, and it still has a secondary projecting bay, which the Wright job lacks. There is no wrap-around veranda, another near-requirement. Next, the forwardmost portion isn’t the add-on, it’s the main massing of the house. It’s cruciform, not tee-shaped. It’s not described as a prow house in any published work, because it ain’t, but it is being beaten into the category by force. Qwirkle (talk) 00:54, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Rename?

A suggestion: perhaps this article could be renamed “Prow (architecture)”, with sections for the prow house (Arkansan), prow house (lindaloid), prows in FLW’s vocabularies, and other modernists, with mentions of, and lins to, starlings and cutwaters and so forth? As it stands, the temptation to equivocation is too great, but if the article reflects parallel usages, that should be lessened.

(Obviously, the section names I’ve used are placeholders, not something we’d want to see in the finished article.) Qwirkle (talk) 18:47, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable. There is not enough information on other prow-like things for separate articles, which is why it is all covered here. The article could be restructured as you suggest. The title would be "Prow architecture" without the parenthesis as those are used to disambiguate from other uses of the same title. MB 04:59, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Well, to begin with, this is about disambiguation; “prows”, properly speaking, belong to naval architecture. The use here is metaphorical. Writing “Prow architecture” implies that this is some school of practice, and it really ain’t. Qwirkle (talk) 17:24, 10 March 2020 (UTC)