Sherburn owns a house built in 1895 on Neil Avenue. But only a bathroom. Many decades would pass before multiple bathrooms became the norm in new homes. Sherburn, who led the annual Victorian Village Tour of Homes for four years, said home styles in vogue in Columbus at the turn of the century had been popularized by the architecture at the big 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and Chicago's 1892 Columbian Exposition, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in America. Styles known today as American foursquare and Queen Anne predominated.
Foursquares have cubical shapes with pyramidal or hipped roofs.
The layout usually consists of four square rooms above three square rooms, with the staircase tucked into a hall. Queen Annes feature decorative exterior woodwork, large porches, gables, overhanging stories and sometimes towers. The layouts can seem surprisingly modern. The parlors of the time were like our formal living rooms, Sherburn said. If the house was big enough, there would be two parlors, and the back parlor was what we'd think of as the family room.