Development east of downtown Syracuse began as early as the 1840s, but it wasn’t until the 1870s that the Westcott-University neighborhood began to take shape. The late nineteenth century was an era of suburban expansion in cities throughout America, when networks of streetcars allowed access to new neighborhoods on the outskirts of city centers. Dating from 1870 to the early 1910s, the Westcott-University neighborhood originated as a group of independent real estate development tracts and later formed into a single cohesive neighborhood. Although the neighborhood is now connected to Syracuse University, the Westcott-University neighborhood experienced minimal influence from the university during its development.
Unlike other streetcar suburbs, such as nearby Berkeley Park and Scottholm, developers marketed the Westcott-University neighborhood for homebuyers of moderate means, with only small sections intended for more wealthy individuals and families. The area included small lots arranged near each other to maximize affordability for the new working- and middle-class homeowners seeking financial and social stability.
Constructed over a 40-plus year period, the architecture of the Westcott-University Neighborhood provides a textbook of American urban residential styles of the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. The district features a mixture of architectural styles, from simple vernacular gable-front forms to larger residences executed in popular architectural styles of the period such as Queen Anne, Craftsman, Prairie, and Colonial Revival styles. Builders constructed most houses using common patterns from pattern books, lumber companies, or building contractors. Yet, there are many architect-designed houses in the district too, including superb examples of the work of Albert Brockway, Clarence Congdon, Paul Hueber, Edward Howard, Harry Phoenix, Justus Moak Scrafford, Alfred T. Taylor, LaMont Warner, Gordon Wright, and many by Ward Wellington Ward.