The Italianate style, inspired by the rural villas and farmhouses of northern Italy as filtered through English Picturesque theory, became the dominant American architectural style for both commercial and residential buildings during the mid-19th century. In Bowling Green, Italianate architecture represents the post-Civil War building boom — the years of railroad-fueled prosperity that produced many of the city's most distinguished surviving structures.
The Italianate style arrived in Bowling Green during the post-Civil War rebuilding era, when the city's commercial and residential fabric was being reconstructed following the Confederate withdrawal of 1862. The style was the national standard for prosperous commercial architecture of the 1860s and 1870s, and Bowling Green's downtown district reflects this directly in the bracketed cornices and arched windows of its surviving 19th-century commercial facades.
Riverview at Hobson Grove (c. 1872) stands as one of the finest documented residential Italianate examples in Bowling Green — a mansion-scale application of the style that reflects the aspirations of the city's postwar merchant class. More modest Italianate row houses and townhouses are also represented in the downtown historic district.
The bracketed cornice is the Italianate's most distinctive feature — the row of decorative brackets just below the roofline that evoke the exposed structural brackets of Italian farmhouse construction. On commercial buildings, they are often elaborate and prominent; on residential buildings, they can range from simple paired forms to highly ornate carved or sawn designs. If you see brackets, think Italianate.