Popularized in the late 1880s by the fashionable society architect Richard Morris Hunt (1827-95), the Chateauesque was perhaps the most grandiose of the late Victorian styles, epitomizing all the excesses of the Gilded Age.

The Chateauesque was loosely based on the 15th- and 16th-dentury French chateaux of the Loire Valley.

The American versions, built primarily in New York and other eastern cities, were in fact modified stone castles, complete with steeply pitched hipped roofs, elaborate dormers and gable parapets, towers, spires, and all manner of florid Gothic detailing, from gargoyles to griffins. The style was fashionable into the first decade of the 1900s.

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