331 Main Street: The Fred Wagener house
ntil 1896 this lot was part of the one next door to the north, on which stands the Scott house. It is No. 5 in the VanPelt subdivision, and was sold by Mrs. Scott and her daughter to G. Fred Wagener in that year.
Wagener at once built this house, which as far as is known was the first one built here. His son H. Allen Wagener inherited it , and then sold it in 1911 to George H. Fredericks. Claude Birkett and his wife Pauline bought it in 1915.
The house is of course much larger than the Scott house, and it similarly dwarfed the Ferenbaugh house next door. It was built in a late Queen Anne style, with its asymmetrical massing, fine front porch with a swag detail in the railing, panelled chimney and multiple pediments and porches. It anticipates the early 20th-century Georgian Revival and Classical Revival in some details, particularly the lack of surface decoration, the Doric columns on the front porch, the grouped windows and the beautiful interior woodwork.
Plots
Above right: 331 Main Street, built by G. Fred Wagener in 1896 on an empty lot purchased from the owners of #333. Its style, like that of many houses built near the turn of the century, is a transition between late Victorian and early 20th-century styles. Its shape and size certainly owe something to the late Queen Anne houses so popular in Penn Yan among the more prosperous merchants and their families; the lack of surface ornament, the Doric porch columns and other trim features are influenced by the new Georgian and Classical Revival styles that would dominate the new century.
People related to this lot and structure:
Abraham Wagener
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