Street in Landshut, Bavaria. H. W. Brewer. c. 1880. Signed with initials lower left. Source: Stevenson’s House Architecture, I, 264. Click on image to enlarge it.
Commentary by J. J. Stevenson
The general effect of this gabled architecture is shown by the accompanying drawing of one of the streets of Landshut (fig. 82). It contains both Classic and Gothic houses, but the effect of the two is so similar that we hardly distinguish them.
This mode of building a street, by setting the gable ends towards it, is unpractical and inconvenient. It necessitates a gutter between each house, which can have no overflow except at the ends, and, if it leaks, leaks into the houses. If the chimneys are in the party-walls, which is often the most convenient position for them, they must rise from this gutter to the height of the ridge, with a risk of smoking, and expensive to build. There is danger besides, of fire spreading from one roof to another, when there is no solid wall between the houses rising higher than the roof. For these reasons the practice has been gradually given up. [260-61]
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Bibliography
Stevenson, J. J. House Architecture. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1880.
Last modified 17 July 2017