Wednesday, April 25, 2012

You say Palladium, I say Palladian

A palladian window is a large window divided in three parts: a central sash that is arched at the top and two sashes on each side of it that are smaller than the central sash; the smaller sashes are rectangular, topped with flat lintels.  This style of window is also called a palladium window depending on where you look on the internet.  Needless to say, this window is very common in the D.C. metro area with some of the production home builders like NV homes, Winchester homes, Pulte homes, and Toll Brothers.  The challenge for a bricklayer is how to cross over this style window with a brick arch.  Cast stone commonly is used.




Here is a palladian surround we did for Plus One Masonry @ Pulte homes.  As you can see the lines are clean and the look maintains it's colonial architecture.  There are several examples of historical palladian/colonial buildings in Annapolis Maryland one of which is the Hammond-Harwood House


And a modern example in Baltimore is a multiple building project at Johns Hopkins University for Henry J Knott Masonry.  Here it is 3D google maps.


Getting back to the residential palladian window, here is the design we use for a brick arch.  There are two  tricks to making it look good in my opinion.  First is how the radial arch and the lintel jack arch come to a natural meeting point on each side of the 1/2 round window. Second is to avoid small brick pieces if possible.  You do this by starting with a 7" long radial brick, and by the time you are to the 5th course on the 1/2 round center, the bonded arch meets up with the bonded lintel wing.



My vote is for calling it a palladian window.