Wolf House (now Parkersburg Historical Home)

It is the tall, thin, three-story bay tower with a high conical roof, combined with the large-scaled arched entrance porch, which immediately captures one's attention in the design of this house. The local banker, C. C. Wolf, who had the house built, chose a designer who employed a Richardsonian Romanesque vocabulary, but the house seems like a series of large-scale building fragments that have not quite been put together. This fragmented quality is juxtaposed at various points with counterefforts to unify the design, as in the elongated corbel table that has been carried out under the eaves of the house and then continued and wrapped around the bay tower. With the large scale of the entrance on one side of the street facade, one expects that the house will also branch out on the other side, but it doesn't. The house has been restored by the Parkersburg Historical Society, and is open to the public.