The Meux Home Museum recaptures the flavor of Victorian Fresno by presenting a middle-class residence -- furnished in the period, as a representative house museum.
A costumed docent will lead you on a one hour tour of this restored urban dwelling of the 1890's. By modern standards elaborate, the Meux Home was nonetheless a middle-class residence, built for $12,000 from a carpenter's catalog.
This home is typical of the Victorian Era it was created for. At that time the architecture took on a variety of forms from different sources that were brought together in a single design. All of this was done in order to create something charming and comfortable.
To the Victorian, charm had to hold a certain element of surprise and this solid, two-story edifice has many such surprises. The silhouette of the Meux Home moves in and out at odd angles.
A set of artfully composed roofs thrust skyward from the second story, as do the numerous chimneys.
The walls of the home are covered with a variety of textures and decoration: horizontal clapboards, fishscale shingles, variegated shingles, and ornamental floral-like relief work. The large, roofed verandah which extends along the south and east walls is held up by beautifully turned spindle work accented with gingerbread details.
The wide verandah offered relief and protection from the hot valley sun. The structure is filled with windows, complimented with individual sets of bat-wing shutters. One of it's more interesting features is it's octagonal shaped master bed-room with its steep, turreted roof.
The architecture of the Meux Home results in a calculated restlessness that makes the home as intriguing today as it was in its own day.
The 10 rooms are furnished more or less as a Victorian family might have had them - the kitchen has a pie safe and the library; a portrait showing the young Dr. Meux on his way to join the Confederate Army.
The Meux home was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 14, 1975.
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