The John Woelke House

The Woelke House is one of a very small number of Queen Anne style residences remaining in Anaheim, and is a strong example of the style. The period of significance is 1896, its date of construction. The residence has good integrity despite having been moved to a new site in 1949 . The work of the house's architect, George F. Barber, had an impact on cities in every region of the United States.

The irregular massing of the Woelke House conveys the romanticism of the Queen Anne style, with the front corner punctuated by a tall, conical-roofed turret and a combination of both round and rectilinear forms in plan and on the facades. A small second-floor balcony is tucked into the second floor in a small space between the turret and the front gable. Crossing gables and a hipped roof also present a complex roofline.

The house contains the decorative flourishes that are also characteristic of the Queen Anne. Decorative details were made possible by advances in machinery, enabling the inexpensive production of saw-cut and lathe-turned decorative details such as the shaped barge boards, ball and spindle screens on the porch and gable ends, and the railing of the front porch. These details added to the highly textured wall surfaces that are achieved through a variation of siding types and styles: horizontal board siding, squared-off fish-scale shingles around top of turret and in gable ends, and fields and rows of bull's eye motif decoration. Horizontal banding divides sections of wall surface. The vertical proportions of the residence are also carried through in the narrow, paired, double-hung, mostly single-light windows.

The Queen Anne characteristics of the house extend through the interior as well. At the center of the house is an entrance and stair hall with a prominent two-flight staircase with turned balusters and newel posts. The high ceilings and transoms, along with the large windows, keep the interior cool without mechanical ventilation, while the interiors are provided with ample light due to the large windows. Picture rails give scale to the high walls and allow for hanging artworks throughout the ground floor and second floor corridor and stair hall.

It is not known where the millwork to construct and decorate the Woelke House was produced. While there were only a few Queen Anne houses built in the small towns of Orange County in a typical year, in nearby Los Angeles entire neighborhoods were being populated with houses in the style in developing streetcar suburbs such as Angelino Heights and University Park. As Los Angeles was the largest nearby industrial center, it is likely that the wood components of the house were milled there.

As an excellent example of the Queen Anne style, the Woelke House is also a rare survivor of the architectural context of Anaheim in the late 19th century and stands as one of only a few Queen Anne style residences remaining in the city. The Queen Anne style was once significant in Anaheim as it was in other Southern California towns with a growing and prosperous merchant class during the period, but most other examples have been lost to later development.

"National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.