Featured here are some of the famed "Painted Ladies" of Lafayette Square in Saint Louis, Missouri. Note the curved or bowed "bellcast" mansard roofs. This style of home was very popular among the well-to-do during the late Victorian (or Second Empire) period.
Interestingly, the Second Empire style, with its mansard roofs, became popularized in the mid-twentieth century as the stereotypical haunted house. This was because by the 1950s and 1960s, so many of these stately homes had fallen into disrepair. By the early years of the twenty-first century, however, late Victorian homes came back into fashion. A house such as this, located in an historic district of St. Louis, can sell for well over a million dollars.
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