Lee House - 1890

 Victorian Queen Anne 'Free Classic' Residence

Lee House is the oldest existing structure from early Claremont of the 1890s, and the area's oldest example of the Victorian Queen Anne Free Classic style followed by its earliest college founders.  

Built in 1890, Lee House is a two-story front-gabled private residence in the Queen Anne Free Classic style.  This Free Classic subtype reflects classical and symmetrical forms and features, which Pomona College's founders deemed more compatible with their more sober academic and cultural ethics and sensibilities.  

This oldest example of the Free Classic subtype, reflecting Claremont's earliest collegiate tastes, exhibits the characteristic front-facing pediment gable, arched window trio, and Doric columns.  Lee House's Free Classic design was followed by other important early residences built nearby for Pomona College deans and faculty.  Three of these subsequent Victorian Free Classic residences still exist:  Norton House (1892) at 137 Seventh Street; Baldwin House (1893) at 137 College Avenue; and Cook House (circa 1896) at 119 College Avenue.  

In cultural and architectural contrast to these earliest Victorian Queen Anne Free Classic residences, Pomona College's Sumner House at College Avenue and First Street illustrates the more asymmetrical and decoratively elaborate Queen Anne Spindlework style.  Built in 1887 at a Piedmont Mesa site several miles away to the northwest, in anticipation of a different Pomona College site, its asymmetry of turned porch columns, "gingerbread" spindlework, and decorative exterior siding typify this earlier Victorian style that dominated the City of Pomona's more promenent residences.  The Sumner House was later purchased by the college and moved to its Claremont site in 1901, with later modifications made to its northern side.

     Lee House was built at the southwest corner of College Avenue and Seventh Street at 641 College Avenue (formerly Warren Avenue), two blocks north of Pomona College’s new Sumner Hall (formerly the Claremont Hotel).  Within two years Dean Norton's family residence was completed nearby (see below).  Lee House was later moved two blocks west in 1917 to its present location at 353 West Seventh Street.