19th century millwork A RIOT OF ORNAMENT IN WOOD

Gingerbread meant overdone, at one point in time: a word for superfluous details on houses so over-embellished they resembled the decadent sweets of medieval royalty, or fictional fairytale cottages.

- PATRICIA POORE

More recently, the Victorian penchant for applied wood ornament has been celebrated. If the gingerbread is still there, it's maintained or replicated.

Trim long-missing is replaced, either in a dense wood species or a modern material or composite that looks authentic but won't rot. Examples, both historic and newly installed, suggest placement and proportions for adding just the right amount of Victorian exuberance.

We associate gingerbread ornament and gingerbread-style houses with the 19th-century Victorian era. That's because the mid- to late-19th century was the heyday of millwork, especially in the United States and Canada. Wood was abundant, labor cheap. The new mechanical saws and lathes, and the mass manufacture that came with the Industrial Revolution, allowed a burgeoning market for wood embellishments. "Gingerbread" was added to earlier houses, as when the owners added a new front porch.

Embelllishment was not new-Greek Revival had its fluted pilasters and Corinthian capitals, Italianate houses their bracketed cornices. Gingerbread, though, signifies applied ornament that may not be intrinsic to the architecture: an excess of lacy embellishment that evokes confectionary gingerbread houses.

The connection between gingerbread (the food) and architectural gingerbread is a little murky. Most obviously, "gingerbread" cottages look like gingerbread houses (think Hansel and Gretel), which date to the early 1800s in Germany. Use of the word "gingerbread" for both a cookie and a style goes back further.