Finch-Guerlac House

3 Fountain Place, built in the 1840s; remodeled in 1874
This house was a small Greek Revival cottage when it was built in the 1840s. A Gothic Revival frontispiece was added in 1851, and the house acquired its Queen Anne characteristics (some historians would describe them as Stick), which you see today, when it was renovated by William Henry Miller in 1874. Characteristic elements include the asymmetrical plan, complex roofline, projecting bays, octagonal turret projecting from the wraparound veranda, and decorative slatework and stickwork in the gables. Stained-glass panels on the south façade and the wooden railing of the verdana with its quatrefoil motif are also distinctive. Many external architectural features are echoed inside this well-preserved house.

The house was home of lawyer and Cornell Law School dean Francis Miles Finch and Cornell history professor Henry Guerlac.

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