The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Architecture of Colonial America, by Harold Donaldson Eberlein.

DOORWAY OF WYCK, GERMANTOWN, PHILADELPHIA.

An excellent example of the Pennsylvania Colonial type. Built 1690.

Frontispiece.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF
COLONIAL AMERICA

BY

HAROLD DONALDSON EBERLEIN

ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
By MARY H. NORTHEND
AND OTHERS

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1915
{iv}

Copyright, 1915,
By Little, Brown, and Company
———
All rights reserved

Published, October, 1915

Norwood Press
Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

FOREWORD

IT is the purpose of this volume to set forth a brief history and an analysis of the architecture of Colonial America, in such wise that they may be of interest and value both to the general reader and to the architect.

The subject will be treated with reference to the close connexion existing between architecture and the social and economic circumstances of the period, so that some additional light may fall upon the daily conditions of life among our forefathers. At the same time, there will be a careful critical analysis of the origin and development of the several seventeenth and eighteenth century styles that have left us so wealthy an architectural heritage, an heritage based upon a groundwork of traditions brought across the Atlantic by the early craftsmen and artisans.

Such an analysis, it is hoped, will materially contribute to a broader appreciation of our possessions and will not be without value in the interpretation of modern buildings in which the traditions of the past have been perpetuated.{vi} Perhaps it is not too much to hope that a more exact knowledge of early achievements may even supply a measure of inspiration and guidance to those who purpose building homes for themselves.

In thanking those who have so courteously assisted in the preparation of this book, acknowledgment must first of all be made to Miss Mary Harrod Northend, to whose suggestion the undertaking was entirely due, and whose illustrations have, in large measure, made it possible of realisation. The author gratefully records his indebtedness also to Messrs. J. B. Lippincott Company, of Philadelphia, for permission to use a number of illustrations of Pennsylvania houses that appeared in “The Colonial Homes of Philadelphia and its Neighbourhood”, by H. D. Eberlein and H. M. Lippincott, and likewise for permission to reproduce an illustration of the Adam Thoroughgood house from “Historic Virginia Homes and Churches”, by Robert A. Lancaster, Jr.; to the Architectural Record for permission to incorporate, in chapters IV, VIII and XI, parts of papers contributed to that magazine; to Dr. George W. Nash of Old Hurley, for generous assistance in supplying many illustrations drawn from a wide geographical area; to H. L. Duhring, Jr., of Philadelphia, for suggestions that bore important fruit in the progress of{vii} the work and for the illustration of the Saal at Ephrata; to Messrs. R. A. Lancaster, Jr., G. C. Callahan and Joseph Everett Chandler for sundry items of assistance; to the Librarian and staff of the Library Company of Philadelphia, and to the Librarian and staff of the Pennsylvania Historical Society for continued courtesies while the following pages were in course of preparation, to the Brickbuilder, to Mr. Edmund C. Evans and, finally, to Messrs. Horace Mather Lippincott and Philip B. Wallace for valuable help in the matter of photographs.

LIST OF PLATES

THE ARCHITECTURE OF
COLONIAL AMERICA

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

ARCHITECTURE is crystallised history. Not only does it represent the life of the past in visible and enduring form, but it also represents one of the most agreeable sides of man’s creative activity. Furthermore, if we read a little between the lines, the buildings of former days tell us what manner of men and women lived in them. Indeed, some ancient structures are so invested with the lingering personality of their erstwhile occupants that it is well nigh impossible to dissociate the two.

But it is rather as a revelation of the social and domestic habits of our forebears that the story of architecture in Colonial America concerns us immediately at this point. As the naturalist can reconstruct the likeness of some extinct animal from a handful of bones or tell{2} the age and aspect of a sea creature that once tenanted a now empty shell, so can the architectural historian discover much concerning the quality and mode of life of those who dwelt aforetime in the houses that form his theme. The indisputable evidence is there in bricks and stone, in timber and mortar, for us to read if we will.

What can be more convincing than an early New England kitchen in whose broad fireplace still hang the cranes and trammels and where all the full complement of culinary paraphernalia incident to the art of open-fire cookery has been preserved? The fashion of the oven attests the method of baking bread. A mere glance at these things brings up a faithful and vivid picture of an important aspect of domestic life. Or, turning to another page in this book of the past, we read another tale in the glazed lookout cupolas—“captains’ walks” they were called—atop the splendid mansions of portly and prosperous mien in the old seaport towns. Thither the merchant princes and shipowners of a by-gone day were wont to repair and scan the offing for the sails of their returning argosies, laden with East Indian riches or cruder wares from Jamaica or Barbadoes.

The old Dutch houses of the Hudson River towns reflect an wholly different mode of life. The living rooms, in many instances, were all{3} on the ground floor and the low, dark, unwindowed attics proclaim the custom of laying up therein bountiful stores of grain and other products of their fruitful farms. In the same region the manors and other great houses bespeak a fashion of life that cannot be surpassed for picturesque interest in the annals of Colonial America.

The spacious country houses in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia, with their stately box gardens and ample grounds, tell of the leisurely affluence and open hospitality of their builders whose style of life often rivalled in elegance, and sometimes surpassed, that of the country gentry in England. In the city houses there were the same unmistakable evidences of the courtly social life that ruled in the metropolis of the Colonies. Round about the city, and throughout the Province of Pennsylvania, were substantial stone and brick farmhouses that fully attested the prosperity of the yeoman class and also indicated some striking peculiarities in their habits and customs.

Going still farther to the South, we read in the noble houses that graced the broad manorial estates of Virginia and Maryland of a mode of existence, socially resplendent at times and almost patriarchal in character, which had not its like elsewhere.

So it goes. One might multiply instances{4} indefinitely to show how architecture was a faithful mirror of contemporary life and manners and how the public buildings of the day represented the classic elegance of taste, then prevalent, that found expression in a thousand other ways. We shall also learn why it was that New England, with all its ready abundance of stone, preferred to rear structures of combustible wood while Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, with all their vast and varied wealth of timber, chose to build of brick or stone, often at the cost of great inconvenience and expense.

Our patriotic, historical and genealogical societies have done much to make us regard the men and women of by-gone years with a keener veneration than we, perhaps, formerly paid them. This book, it is hoped, in the same way, will be of some avail to increase our appreciation of the architectural wealth back of us. We have a history of which we may well feel proud and we have an architectural heritage, dating from the time when that history was in the making, which we may view with deep and just satisfaction.

The worthy record of structural achievement during our Colonial period ought to fill us with high respect for the ability and energy of the men who, while they were building a nation and subduing a wilderness, found time also to rear

WARD HOUSE, NEAR SALEM, MASS.

Characteristic of seventeenth century New England type.

a vast aggregate of structures, both domestic and public, that to-day command our unfeigned admiration and are fit to afford us no small degree of inspiration for our own architectural guidance.

But we must turn also to another aspect of the subject and consider the architecture of Colonial America from a more purely technical point of view as well. The historical side of the question, embracing social and economic relations, it must be remembered, however, is vastly important and will conduce to a more intelligent grasp of the whole situation. Indeed, without adequate historical knowledge, many architectural phases will be inexplicable of character or origin. As an example we may cite the New England frame tradition. Blood tells in architecture quite as much as it does anywhere else and unless we know the history of the early colonists, unless, in fact, we know their historical antecedents in England, we cannot expect to understand fully their hereditary preference for timber buildings. Thus we see that history and architectural expression go hand in hand and one must study both to have a full comprehension of either.

Keeping ever before us, then, the full significance of history, we shall examine the architecture of the Colonial period in a far more sympathetic and intelligent spirit than we{6} could possibly expect to do if we were to eliminate the historical background. Of course, in the present volume the historical background must be a background, architectural matters must have the preponderance of attention and history, however fascinating it may be, must be referred to only to elucidate architectural phases.

Near akin and closely linked to understanding is the quality of appreciation and it is necessary for us to understand our architectural past that we may fully appreciate it. It is likewise absolutely essential for us to understand and appreciate our architectural past in order that we may appreciate our architectural present. A thorough acquaintance with the work and ability of the architect who reared the buildings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries will give us a truer perspective and better enable us to judge the merits of contemporary performances. Widespread intelligent appreciation inevitably leads to the betterment of public taste, so that our study of the past is bound to have a favourable reflex action upon the architectural activities of our own day.

Twin sister to appreciation is discrimination and as we appreciate the architecture of Colonial America we shall also learn to discriminate between the different local manifestations and{7} attribute each to its proper origins. In this connexion a word of explanation should be offered in answer to a question that some readers, no doubt, have already asked themselves regarding the title chosen for this volume—“Why was it not called Colonial Architecture in America?” Solely because such a title would have been misleading. Indeed, there is no more commonly misapplied term than “Colonial Architecture.” Colonial America had two varieties of architecture, one of which is correctly called Colonial and the other is not. The one is entirely distinct from the other and it is mischievous to confound them. The second variety is Georgian and it is illogical and indefensible to call it anything but Georgian. The Colonial architecture evolved its distinctive forms in America subject to the dictates of local necessity while the Georgian was directly transplanted from England and, although it showed marked tendencies to differentiation in the several parts of the Colonies, preserved its unmistakable likeness in every instance to the parent stock from which it sprang.

The Colonial architecture which is really Colonial presents several distinctly different forms of local manifestation, each of them pronouncedly characteristic. One form is to be found in New England, and outside of New{8} England it is not to be met with. Another type, of wholly diverse aspect, is peculiar to the parts of New York State settled at an early period by the Dutch colonists and to the parts of Long Island and northern New Jersey where Dutch influence was paramount. Still another and altogether distinct Colonial type of architecture is to be seen in numerous examples in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. A fourth type, with yet other clearly defined peculiarities, may occasionally be discovered in Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. The scarcity of examples of true Colonial architecture in the last-named section is explicable by the fact that the southern planter, when his wealth increased, chose to live in more sumptuous manner than his first built dwelling permitted. He therefore built himself a stately Georgian house, better suited to the more elegant style and equipage he now found himself able to maintain. The “fair brick house” in Georgian mode, with porticoes and pillars, often stood upon the site of the earlier house, which was either partially incorporated with it or demolished to make way for it because the first chosen location was the most eligible on the estate and best suited the fancy of the owner.

All these types of Colonial architecture possess an healthy, indigenous flavour that smacks of the manly vigour and robust hardihood of{9} the pioneers who had the courage and the initiative to forsake their wonted paths of comfort and known conditions at home and face unflinchingly the dangers and difficulties of an untamed wilderness as the founders of a settlement whose future was by no means assured and of whose ultimate greatness they little dreamed. This tone of staunch, native originality was due to the local forms, evolved in response to local exigencies, dictated by resourceful motherwit and engrafted upon an inherited stock of architectural traditions which the first settlers, hailing from this or that part of the old world, had brought hither with them. In other words, it was the logical and necessary outcome of architectural precedent, modified by contact with a new environment, and all its forms are clearly traceable to typical antecedents on the other side of the Atlantic. Edward Eggleston has somewhere said that “it is difficult for the mind of man to originate, even in a new hemisphere.” He is oftentimes coerced into originality by force of circumstances. So it was in our early architectural efforts. The first settlers followed tradition so far as they could and essayed original departures only under stress of necessity or expediency.

While the several forms were full of the grace that was inherent in the early builders’ spirit of construction and design, they were also strong{10} because they were so thoroughly utilitarian and because nearly every feature was produced in response to some specific local need. The vital quality of the early and truly Colonial architecture has not been exhausted and after nearly three hundred years we turn to it to find it still rich in adaptability to many of our present requirements. Owing to its essentially utilitarian characteristics, Colonial architecture in all its forms is wholly unpretentious, informal, and, one might almost say, fortuitous, but it suited the manners and estate of the majority of the people for whom it was devised.

On the other hand, formality, as an element in American architecture, came in with the advent of the Georgian influence. For the most part it was not a chilling, hard, rigid formality but rather the formality of ordered symmetry and concurrence with the elegant genius and refinement of classic architectural conventions. It was, if one chooses so to put it, formality tempered with domesticity and common sense. The American colonists of the eighteenth century adopted the Georgian style, when they were able to afford it and had acquired the desire for it, and adapted it to their own ends. These adaptations took shape in divergent forms in the several parts of the Colonies, exhibiting certain local peculiarities in New England and others quite as distinct

LAUREL HILL, FAIRMOUNT PARK, PHILADELPHIA.

Belonging to the second type of Middle Colonies Georgian. Built 1762.

in the Middle Colonies or the South. Notwithstanding their minor differences, however, the specimens of Georgian work in America all bear an unmistakable family resemblance which proclaims their common ancestry from a British classic origin. The later Georgian work in America followed the later phases of the style as they developed in England and hence we find a great many variations attributable to differences in date as well as to differences in locality, but in all its divers manifestations, whether temporal or local, American Georgian is true to the spirit and traditions of its strongly individual parent stock of inspiration.

Economic and social conditions made possible the introduction and development of the Georgian style in America and the same conditions nurtured and kept it alive so long as its influence continued to dominate the public taste. When its latest phase passed over into the forms of the Classic Revival, a new order of society, actuated by different ideals, had arisen. An era of general peace and growing prosperity in the early years of the eighteenth century permitted and encouraged the colonists to pay more heed to the material amenities of life than had previously been their wont and it was but natural that, with favourable domestic conditions, they should seek to emulate the luxury and more polished manner of life obtaining in{12} the mother country, and the adoption of contemporary British architectural modes was one way in which that filial emulation found expression. When the period of Georgian influence came to an end and the Classic Revival type held the first place in popular esteem, new economic, social and political circumstances existed with which the prevailing architectural mode was more in keeping. Widely distributed affluence, coupled with a general spirit of independent self-sufficiency and a disposition to follow French inspiration, found fit environment in the pomposity of neo-classic settings whose vogue is mainly attributable to influences that arose in the train of the French Revolution, the same influences that gave us the Empire type of furniture so largely copied in both England and America.

Surveying thus the history of architecture in America, from the beginning of the Colonial period down to the end of post-Colonial activity, a continuous and logical process of development can be traced of which each succeeding phase was a faithful exponent of contemporary local manners and modes of life. Truly indigenous architecture was non-existent. Architectural derivations, modified and often obscured as they were by force of circumstances, are not always obvious and occasionally, in order to detect them, careful analysis and some{13} knowledge of history are necessary. Nor need the student of American architecture be perplexed at discovering certain hybrid types. It is but natural that such should be evolved by a resourceful people with a genius for adaptations and possessed of a variety of models, a combination of whose features expediency suggested. In spite of all the bewildering multiplicity of manifestations which the architecture of Colonial America affords, the derivations from hereditary European sources may be identified by the expenditure of a little effort and the threads of continuity and growth then become clearly apparent. A detailed elucidation of the genesis and progressive stages of the several types will be the content of the ensuing chapters.{14}

CHAPTER II

THE DUTCH COLONIAL TYPE

1613-1820

THE Dutch Colonial house is at once a mystery and a paradox. It is a mystery because it seems to defy the law of physics about two bodies occupying the same space at the same time. It is a paradox because, despite its apparent simplicity, it is most complex in its texture and varied in its modes and expression.

We have all heard it said of the Dutchman’s breeches that they could be made to contain whatever objects could be forced through the pocket apertures, and the number of things that the Dutchman could stow away in the baggy recesses of his nether garments has always been a source of wonder to the foreigner. It is precisely the same with his house. It really seems to be elastic. Viewed from the outside, it gives the observer the impression that its extent is small and that the space within must necessarily be limited. On stepping across the{15} threshhold, however, a surprise awaits one. Room seems to open out from room in a miraculous manner, and there is apparently no end to the space that can be made within the four walls. At times, baffling despair fills the mind at the attempt to master the anatomical intricacies of the Dutch abode. The early Dutch house is practically all upon the ground floor, but the attic, occasionally, is almost as complex in its mysterious arrangement. The Dutchmen and their wives were past masters in ordering the economy of space. The bulk of household gear they could stow away in compact style always excites our wondering admiration. Perhaps their familiarity with canal boat life, and the attendant necessity of compressing their belongings within strait limits, suggested many of their household arrangements. At any rate, the Dutch houses are a standing example showing how much can be done within closely restricted bounds.

The Dutch house in America is to be found in the valley of the Hudson, in Long Island, and in the counties of northern New Jersey, particularly Bergen and Essex, settled at an early period by the Dutch. The purest forms of the early type are to be found along the Hudson. In Long Island, certain modifying influences began to work at an early time and in portions of Long Island, especially in the neighbourhood{16} of Hempstead and towards the Eastern end of the Island, where settlements were made about the middle of the seventeenth century by New England colonists, we find a curious combination of Dutch and English characteristics in the local architecture. In northern New Jersey, while the type is thoroughly Dutch, the majority of houses are of a somewhat later date than those along the Hudson and exhibit features not to be found in the houses erected by the first colonists of New Netherlands.

Notwithstanding certain minor differences that will be brought to our notice by comparison, there is an unquestionable continuity of type that differentiates the houses of Dutch architecture from all the other structural creations of the American colonists. The style of the first Dutch houses contained within itself the seeds of development, and while the earliest expression of Dutch Colonial architecture was practically the same as that in vogue in Holland at the time of the colonists’ emigration, the later examples disclosed new features which local necessity and native ingenuity had suggested and achieved. By this very flexibility and elasticity the Dutch colonial style has shown its adaptability to varying conditions, and in that adaptability lies no small share of its fitness as a resource for present-day needs.

select a striking concrete example—discloses the style in its earliest form. Although Hurley was not settled until about 1660, the houses erected there showed practically no departure from the styles with which the settlers were familiar in Holland before their emigration. To show their absolute fidelity to the traditional type of Dutch house, we may refer to the amazement created in the mind of a Dutch diplomat who, when taken to visit Hurley two or three years ago, declared that it was more Dutch than almost anything left in Holland. Ever since its foundation, Hurley has slumbered peacefully on, disturbed only at times by Indian raids and the alarums of war. Physically it has changed scarcely at all since the founders settled on the rich lands by the Esopus. It is one of the backwaters of our civilisation that has preserved intact the exterior aspect and much of the inward character of the date of its settlement. The lapse of time has wrought little change in its fabric and the swirling eddies of feverish American progress have raced past it, heedless of its presence, so that it has preserved for us a refreshing bit of the days and ways of the New Netherlands of Peter Stuyvesant and his sturdy colleagues.

Old Hurley is just as Dutch as Dutch can be; Dutch in its people, Dutch in its houses, Dutch in its looks, Dutch in everything but{18} name, and that was Dutch for the first few years of its history when it was known as Nieuw Dorp, that is, New Village. To understand, therefore, the mode of life and the comfortable, easy-going informality with which the architectural style fitted in, we cannot do better than take a brief survey of this picturesque community.

Hurley cheeses and Kingston refugees have given Hurley most of its renown in the outside world. So plentiful and so famous, at one time, were the former, that Hurley was popularly credited with having “cheese mines.” The following old Dutch jingle, done into English by a local antiquary, tells of plenty at Hurley, not only of cheese but of many other kinds of foodstuffs as well:

What shall we with the wheat bread do?
Eat it with the cheese from Hurley.
What shall we with the pancakes do?
Dip them in the syrup of Hurley.
What shall we with the cornmeal do
That comes from round about Hurley?
Johnnycake bake, both sweet and brown,
With green cream cheese from Hurley.

Does not this reflect the reign of peace, plenty and contentment? The old Dutch, indeed, is truly realistic as the question comes “Wat zullen wij met die pannekoeken doen?”, and at the answer, “Doop het met die stroop van Horley,” one involuntarily licks his chops over{19} the dripping sweetness of “die stroop.” The very mention of cheese and cheese making brings to the mind visions of fat farming country with sleek kine feeding, knee-deep in pastures of heavy-matted clover, from whose blossoms the bees are distilling their next winter’s store. Such a mental picture for Hurley town is not far amiss. Lying in comfortable contentment in the rich bottoms along the banks of the Esopus, its horizons both near and far bounded by the Catskills and their foot-hills, it approaches the ideal of bucolic felicity, and one freely admits that “Nieuw Dorp exists a pastoral or else Nieuw Dorp is not.”

Comfort, solid comfort, is the keynote of Hurley, indoors and out. Its houses, built along the one village street, their farm lands stretching back beyond them, have an aspect of substantial prosperity and cheer. Long, low buildings they are, with thick stone walls, whose roofs jutting just above the windows of the first floor, begin their climb to the ridge pole, enclosing with their shingled sides great, roomy garrets that seem like very Noah’s arks, with everything under the sun stowed away in their recesses. Such portion of this second floor as the old Dutchmen saw fit to spare from storage purposes, they made into chambers for their families, and pierced the roof slope with tiny dormers. Oftentimes, however, the only light{20} came in at the gable ends, through windows on each side of the massive chimneys. It was not at all unusual to give over the whole upper floor to the storage of grain and other food supplies, while the family lived altogether below on the ground floor. The cellars were not one whit behind the garrets in holding supplies. The people of New Netherland were valiant trenchermen before whose eyes the pleasures of the table loomed large, and they used up an amazing lot of victuals. Such overflowing store of potatoes and carrots, turnips, pumpkins and apples as went into those cavernous bins! Rolliches and headcheeses were there a-many, with sausages, scrapple, pickles and preserves, to say nothing of barrels of cyder. These all contributed their share to the odour of plenty that rose up through the chinks and pervaded the rooms above. Only those who have met them face to face, in all their substantial corporeality, can realise the indescribable cellar smells of old Dutch farmhouses. Everywhere economy of space was practised, and things were tucked away in all sorts of odd corners. Some of the bedchambers were scarcely as large as a steamer stateroom, and these ofttimes had little pantry closets beside the bed—a truly convenient arrangement for those disposed to midnight pantry raids. Tradition says that the good people of Hurley even took their{21} cheeses to bed with them that the heat of their bodies might help to ripen them.

Hurley’s gardens were, and are, a source of genuine delight. They are charmingly inconsequent and unconventional. There is not a jot of plan or pretence about them. Hurley vegetables grow side by side with gentle flowers in a most democratic promiscuity. Cabbages and cucumbers rub elbows with roses and lilies. Plebeian sunflowers and four-o’clocks stand unabashed beside patrician boxwood and blooms of high degree, while onions and lavender, in sweet accord, send their roots into the common ground within a foot of each other. The Dutch gardens, if not grand, are, at least, comfortable and useful, and have an air of sociability about them that puts one immediately at ease.

What the people were in Holland, that were they in New Netherland, and what they were elsewhere in New Netherland, that were they in Hurley only, perhaps, somewhat more conservative and tenacious of old customs and ideas, as is apt to be the case in places remote from the active scene of events. The Dutch of the Hudson were not the slow, stupid, fat-witted louts that Washington Irving and his copyists pourtray, although, to us of English blood, many of their ways seem strange, and some amusing. They were broad-minded, alert, wholesome, human people who took life pleas{22}antly and got whole-souled enjoyment in their frequent festivals. They were incapable of stiff formality, and the architecture of their houses was exactly suited to their mode of life.

When we remember how tenaciously the English settlers clung to tradition in selecting the materials for their houses, those in New England holding by the timber tradition while the stone and brick tradition prevailed in the Middle Colonies and the South, one might expect to find among the Dutch colonists the same adherence to Dutch traditions in the case of materials, especially as the early Dutch houses so closely followed their prototypes in Holland. In this respect, however, the Dutchman made a virtue of necessity and quickly learned to be governed by expediency, using with good effect whatever materials the locality most readily provided. Although brick was in most cases the hereditary material which Dutchmen might have been expected to prefer, with natural thrift and common sense they used stone when bricks were not to be had, or wood when they could not get stone. Thus, for instance, we find the early Dutch houses of the Hudson Valley built of stone. Those in northern New Jersey were likewise built of stone of different colour and character from that found in the Hudson region. Again, in Long Island, where stone was not available, they built of wood and cov{23}ered their houses with shingles, often leaving as much as fourteen inches to the weather. Dutch quickness in utilising readily available material is also seen in the willingness to use field stone for walls, while the New Englander, despite the abundance of the same material, merely used it for the divisions between his fields.

Furthermore, the Dutchman did not restrict himself to any one material for the whole fabric of his house. He was not in the least averse to using a variety of materials in the same building and this he often did with excellent effect. It is no unusual thing to find two or three materials used for several parts of the same small building, and it is not a hard matter to find instances in which stone, brick, stucco, clapboards and shingles all occur in the one structure and the result is usually felicitous, possibly, perhaps, because of the naïveté with which the several materials are employed, necessity and common sense being obviously the causes dictating their presence.

The stone used was sometimes carefully squared and dressed and, at others, the walls were of rubble construction without any attempt at careful arrangement. Occasionally the front of the house would be of dressed stone laid in orderly courses while the sides and back showed rubble walls. Then, again, where circum{24}stances permitted, brick quoins and window and door trims, as in the Manor House at Croton-on-Hudson, might be used while the body of the walls was rubble. In this connexion it should be stated that the walls were carefully laid so that the stonework would hold together without much dependence being placed on the mortar, for the earliest mortar was of rather poor quality. In this respect the masonwork approached the ideal of a good wall construction.

When stucco was used it was generally plastered over a rough stone surface and whitewashed or washed with some colour. When this stucco is removed it will often be found that the wall underneath is of admirable rubble construction and that the stucco coating was apparently added as a ground work for white or coloured wash. Some years ago, the stucco coat was removed from the walls of the Manor House at Croton-on-Hudson, and the stone walls beneath presented a far more interesting surface than the plaster, which seems to have been added at a date considerably subsequent to that of original construction.

An examination in detail of the characteristics of the earliest Dutch houses discloses the following features of importance. As previously stated, almost all the houses were low, the eaves coming down to within a few feet of the tops

of the first-floor windows. In many instances, the roofs were unbroken by dormers as the garrets were used largely for storage purposes and the bedchambers were on the ground floor. If families were large, one or two bedrooms would be partitioned off in the garret, the major part, however, being reserved for the storage of grains, household effects, and various supplies. Even then, the roofs were not interrupted by windows but the light would come from windows in the gable ends beside the chimneys. In many cases the stone walls at the gable ends did not rise above the line of the eaves and the portion above that would be hung with clapboards. Of course there were instances in which houses rose to a greater height and contained second floors as a visible part of the plan. Such was the old Hoffman House in Kingston-on-Hudson, built not long after the middle of the seventeenth century. It is to be noted, also, that, in that case, the stonework in the gable ends was continued to the top of the gable and there was no wall of overlapping clapboards.

The earliest houses were covered with roofs of the ordinary ridge type and presented the appearance outwardly of one-storey buildings, though in effect they often contained two floors. The gambrel roof of the Dutch houses was of later evolution and was probably suggested{26} by force of circumstances. The gambrel construction made it possible to give more room in the garrets so that chambers could be accommodated with greater ease and there would not be so much waste room just inside the eaves, as the slope of the roof was at a steeper angle. It has been suggested that the gambrel roof came into being as an ingenious method of beating the devil around the bush, when a tax was laid upon houses of more than one storey in height. Technically and legally the gambrel roof house was but one storey high although, as a matter of fact, the gambrel made it possible to have an additional storey in the roof which served all practical purposes quite as fully as though the walls had been carried up to enclose a second floor. In the older Dutch houses with gambrel roofs, the pitch is never steep and the contour presents somewhat the lines of a flaring bell.

Although the gambrel roof was known in New England as early perhaps as 1670 and was, in all probability, borrowed from the Dutch, there is a wide difference in appearance between New England and Dutch gambrels. Generally speaking, the New England gambrels have the pitch from the eaves much steeper and shorter while the top pitch is longer than in the Dutch houses. In the Dutch gambrel roof, on the other hand, the steeper slope{27} usually makes an angle of forty-five degrees, or less, and is by far the longer, while the top slope is quite short and has an angle of about 25 degrees. This difference in angle gives the Dutch gambrel roofs a rarely beautiful quality, especially when the lower end of the long slope just above the eaves was made with a kickup to avoid darkening the windows or possibly to throw the rain-water farther away from the walls. Whatever may be the origin of the gambrel,—and many ingenious theories have been suggested—whether it originated as previously suggested, to avoid the tax on two-storeyed dwellings, or whether the desire to increase the breadth of the span, by piecing out rafters, was the underlying cause, it is an exceptionally agreeable form of house covering and so closely associated with the dwellings of the Dutch Colonial period that we may properly identify it as a characteristic feature of that style.

Before leaving the subject of roofs, the development of the wide-projecting eaves, as we find them in the New Jersey and some of the Dutch Long Island houses of the eighteenth century, must be considered. The earliest Dutch houses as, for example, those at Kingston or Hurley had not the flaring eaves. Neither had the earliest Dutch houses in New Jersey. It has been ingeniously suggested that the projection{28} was evolved to protect the walls and prevent the rain from disintegrating the mortar which, in the early part of the Colonial period, was frequently not of as good quality as it was later. This theory would seem to explain, to some extent, the habit of carrying the masonry at the gable ends only to the height of the first floor joists, filling in the space between that line and the peak of the gable with clapboards. In such cases, where the mortar of the exposed gable walls was damaged by the weather, it was an easy matter to re-point. Mr. Embury has still further suggested, coincidentally with this theory, that the desire to protect the masonry suggested the penthouses on two-storeyed structures. There is something to be said both for and against this hypothesis, but as the discussion does not materially affect the subject immediately before us it must be reserved for another place.

To the Dutch Colonial house may probably be attributed the origin of that essentially American institution, the porch, or at least one form of the porch as we now have it. “The porch has been evolved and developed in response to a distinct and manifest need in our mode of life imposed by climatic conditions. It falls in with our habits bred of love of outdoors; our seasons invite, nay even, at times, compel its use. True, the porch has its proto{29}type in certain architectural features found in England and on the Continent (especially in some of the Southern countries), but, as we now have it, it is a peculiarly national affair and its evolution has been due to American ingenuity in an effort to meet the demands of local requirements. The earliest American houses, from New England to the Southern Colonies, faithful to prevailing precedent and tradition, had no porches, porches, that is, as we ordinarily understand the term. It was only as our domestic architecture developed along lines marked out and prompted by peculiarly American conditions and needs that precedents were forsaken, adaptations made, and porches appeared, at first in a rudimentary and tentative form and then finally, after the lapse of years, reached the full fruition of their growth in the form familiar to us. That growth varied widely in the course it followed, according to the several sections of the country and consequent diverse requirements and preferences,” but one form at least may be traced to the growth of plans in the houses of the Dutch Colonial type. This growth started with the projecting eaves at the front which, eventually, were carried out long enough to make a porch roof and supported at their edge by pillars or columns. An excellent example of this may be seen in the piazza of the Manor House at Croton-on-Hudson where{30} the flaring slope of the roof is thus carried out and forms a porch covering. The same process may be traced in some of the later Dutch houses of New Jersey and Long Island.

Almost synchronously with the development of the porch as a distinct feature, we find a tendency to carry the walls a trifle higher and pierce them with a row of small, low windows above the porch roof and immediately below the line of the eaves which have now become distinct, the porch roof being cut off and made an independent member. These low windows, which were usually on a line a few inches above the floor inside have been rather facetiously called “lie-on-your-stomach windows.”

The doorway of the early Dutch houses was not a feature of any architectural pretension. It was approached by one or two steps only, as the houses were close to the ground, and sometimes a small platform, or a stoop with settles on either side, gave an inviting appearance indicative of the hospitality within. The doorway was rectangular without attempt at adornment further than occasionally a narrow transom with small, square lights. Even this was often lacking. The Dutch door divided in the middle shared the honours with solid, undivided batten doors. Both types were in common use, although preference was given the Dutch or divided door for the main entrance{31} and the corresponding back entrance at the opposite end of the hall.

As the Dutch Colonial style developed in the eighteenth century more attention was paid to the adornment of the entrance and about the time of the Revolutionary War, which made the Colonists more fully aware of each other’s presence and served to spread and popularise ideas, we find that Georgian motifs were borrowed and adapted to local needs with a broad freedom of treatment that imparted a good deal of individuality to them and removed them at times almost altogether from the Georgian category from which the first inspiration had sprung. Up to this time the Dutch Colonial type had been singularly free from the working of outside influences and had developed independently along lines suggested by its inherent qualities. But even after this infusion of Georgian feeling the treatment was so typical and original that the newly introduced and adapted motifs were perfectly congruous with the parent stock upon which they had been engrafted.

Finally, in making the survey of the distinctive exterior features of the Dutch Colonial style, it should be remembered that the dormers, which so frequently appear, were not characteristic of the earliest dwellings but were a later development dictated by expediency when it was found desirable to use more fully the attics{32} for sleeping rooms than was customary in the earliest houses, where all the light necessary was admitted from the gable ends and where the attics were storerooms and workshops for domestic operations such as weaving and spinning, often carried on by the slaves.

Ordinarily the Dutch house in ground plan was a long rectangle with an ell extension at one end. Oftentimes the roof of this ell extension swept down to within a few feet of the ground. There was no attempt at symmetry of plan in the arrangement of these houses but the walls were pierced with doors and windows wherever convenience dictated their presence. The Dutch house was almost invariably set close to the ground and it is this fact, together with their restful roof lines, that gives so many of the old Dutch dwellings their aspect of thorough repose. As stated before, the Dutch preferred to live downstairs and only used the attic for bedchambers when force of circumstances made it necessary. The two chief rooms of the house were the kitchen and the best parlour. In the one, not only was the cooking done but all the ordinary household life of the establishment was concentrated and there the family both played and worked. In the other the household gods were stored away and the best furniture and china of all sorts were displayed in proud array. Ordinarily a wide hall ran through the house{33} from front door to back door and the rooms were on either side of this. Small bedrooms were tucked away back of the parlour and kitchen, while sometimes a great living room took the place of the kitchen on one side of the hall and the kitchen was pushed into the ell extension at the rear. Thanks to the lack of formality in the plan of the Dutch house, it was capable of indefinite growth and in that respect the architecture was profoundly affected by the mode of life of the occupants. It not infrequently happened that a larger addition was built to the old houses and this addition was again added to by another smaller addition when a married son or daughter came home to live and share the protection of the paternal rooftree.

The stairway in the majority of Dutch Colonial houses was not an important feature and was not made much of. It merely led to the attic where some of the children or servants slept, if there was not room enough below stairs, and where all sorts of materials and provisions were stored or where spinning and weaving were done. Consequently, little decoration was bestowed upon it. The hand-rail might or might not be of mahogany and supported on straight, slender spindles. It was often boxed in to prevent the heat from rising to the attic and thus being lost.{34}

The chief feature in the old Dutch rooms was the fireplace, and many of these old fireplaces are of cavernous proportions. The chimney breast almost invariably extended well into the room and the spaces on either side were often filled with built-in cupboards, or else with deeply embayed window seats. Very little attempt at decoration was made in the panelling of the over-mantels and indeed there was often no panelling at all but the rough plaster of the wall was whitewashed. The walls were exceedingly thick, often two feet or more, and this gave deep reveals to the windows. All the woodwork in the earlier houses was ordinarily plain and was usually painted a spotless white as it so often was in Holland and this made a striking background for the hinges, latches, bolts and other hardware whose decorative value the Dutch thoroughly appreciated and which they accordingly fashioned in graceful shapes. It was not until a later period, towards the middle of the eighteenth century and later, that any attempt was made to embellish the woodwork by carving or turning and even then the adornment often consisted of only simple but well-proportioned mouldings. Towards the end of the eighteenth century when the Georgian influence, particularly in its Adam phase, began to be strongly felt, one finds adaptations of current motifs such as oval fans, swags, drops,{35} flutings, reedings, sunbursts and divers other decorative forms in vogue at the period. All of them however were handled with a surprising degree of freedom and independent of English precedents and the manner in which they were used seems to be thoroughly original. It is at this period of elaborated woodwork that we also find the doorway assuming importance as a decorative feature of the house. Slender turned columns—some of them ought rather to be called spindles—were added at the sides, occasionally there were glass side lights with leaded tracery and fanlights in elliptical door heads or tracery in square transoms were all used to add a note of state to the doorway that had hitherto been very plain and unpretentious. In the fanlights, as well as in the side lights, it was not unusual for the tracery to be formed in delicately-moulded lead work. In a very able study of ornamental detail of the older Dutch houses by John T. Boyd, Jr., published in The Architectural Record, the author says: “The first thing one notices about these details is their freedom. It is an architecture absolutely without orders. In some rare cases, there are mantels with little Tuscan columns, but they are not among the finest examples and are found side by side with freer forms. The over-mantels {36}often ... show a very rare use of fluted pilasters.

“A freer and very exquisite channelling was often used, which is found in many houses with slight variations. The theory of all these Dutch mouldings is a series of many fine parallel lines and shadows made by hollows, beads, and fillets, beautifully varied in proportion, all very delicate in scale.”

It has been stated that the interior woodwork was generally painted white and that the rough walls were ordinarily whitewashed, but while speaking of the paint it should not be forgotten that the Dutch had a wonderful eye for colour and, though the interiors of their houses presented an aspect of spotless white, the exteriors rejoiced in chromatic brilliancy that at times was positively dazzling and, even in its weatherworn stages, presented a lively appearance that could not fail to attract the attention of the most unobservant. Greens, blues, and reds were used with the greatest freedom and, just as in Holland to-day, gave a touch of kaleidoscopic interest that served to throw all the delightfully intimate and fanciful details of the Dutch house into strong relief.

The shutters of the earlier Dutch houses were usually of the batten type and at the top often presented the curious saw cuts intended to admit a ray of light or for ventilation. These saw cuts were made in almost any pattern from that of a half moon or a five pointed star to a heart or a{37} pot of flowers. This same conceit of decorative saw cuts has been perpetuated in the shutters of modern houses patterned after old Dutch models. Shutters of a later period were pannelled.

Of all the types of domestic architecture that have been either evolved or modified in America during the Colonial period, none more generally commends itself to the favourable consideration of the modern home builder than that which the Dutch settlers of Manhattan, North Jersey and Long Island worked out as the most satisfactory solution for their needs. Although the body was sturdy and stout, the ornamental details, which were developed in the later period, were often extremely graceful, the proportions throughout the type are agreeable and in every instance, whether early or late, we find the omnipresent charm of domesticity, which in the long run is more valued by the majority of people than a stately formality which sacrifices a measure of comfort to the exacting purity of proportion.{38}

CHAPTER III

THE COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE OF NEW ENGLAND

THE Colonial houses of New England are of singular interest because they fill a gap in our architectural history, a gap regarded for a long time as embarrassing and awkward to bridge over. They are also peculiarly interesting because they are so full of surprises that open up with increasing frequency to repay diligent investigation on the part of the architectural student, the historian or the antiquary. They are still further interesting because they supply us with important and ample material for comparative study.

The gap alluded to is the apparent hiatus in the connexion between domestic architectural precedents and tradition in old England, on the one hand, and Colonial manifestations, as popularly conceived until very recently, on the other. In order to avoid an undue extent of introductory explanation, it will be assumed that the reader is reasonably familiar with the general characteristics of outward appearance displayed by seventeenth-century English houses and{39} knows something of the structural methods employed in their erection. To appreciate fully and understand the spirit and peculiarities of the earliest Colonial architecture of New England, we must seek, in the course of our examination of the subject, to find a fundamental and close correspondence between it and the architecture of old England, no matter how far the visible traces of that intimate relationship may have been obscured by subsequent alterations and additions to the original houses whose fabric affords our basis of comparison. If we keep our eyes and wits alert, we shall not be disappointed in the results of our search.

While pursuing our quest for evidences of architectural descent or consanguinity, we should keep constantly in mind three things. Indeed, we must keep these three facts before us to understand not only the early phases of architecture but many other aspects of seventeenth-century New England life as well. First of all, the men who built the early New England houses and the men who lived in them were Englishmen, and, as Englishmen, they were naturally disposed by temperament to be strongly conservative and to cling tenaciously to precedent and tradition, particularly in a matter of such vital importance as the fashioning of houses. They were, in short, proving the truth of Edward Eggleston’s dictum that “men can with diffi{40}culty originate, even in a new hemisphere.” In the second place, all their training in craftsmanship was English and it was but reasonable that they should continue to work in a new land with the same tools and to fashion their materials in precisely the same manner as they had been wont to do in the land of their birth. It was but natural, too, that they should perpetuate the technicalities of the trades they had learned in old England in the training they gave their apprentices. This identity and continuity of craft traditions may be clearly seen in the furniture of early New England, which is exactly the same as contemporary furniture in England in contour, joinery, and the technique and pattern of the carving. Identity and continuity of craft characteristics may also be traced in the turning of baluster spindles, in the chamfering of beams, in the framing of house timbers and in a dozen other ways. Lastly, those early American Englishmen were possessed of no mean degree of clear-headed, practical common sense and were eminently resourceful, as pioneers in a new and untamed land must needs be if their efforts at colonisation are to be crowned with success. If local exigency seemed to demand that they modify their methods to fit current needs, they were prompt to devise a suitable adaptation to meet the requirement. But these adaptations and

departures from precedent were not indulged in from mere caprice or with any deliberate and conscious intent to develop a new and original mode of architectural expression. The adaptations in each case, before they became precedents for subsequent repetition elsewhere, were suggested by obvious necessity and originality was left to take care of itself, with the usual happy results arising from the observance of the principle that the safest and truest originality comes by a gradual process of evolution, elimination and adaptation to local needs.

In view, then, of the foregoing considerations, one not unreasonably expects to find the early New England house identical or almost identical in appearance and structure with the contemporary English house of a like size, only such differences being evident as local expediency occasioned. If one could only see several such houses now as they unquestionably were at the date of their erection, this chapter would be altogether unnecessary, for the resemblance between them and their prototypes in our old home beyond the Atlantic would be so striking that the veriest dolt would be sensible of it. In nearly every instance the alterations and accretions of centuries have blurred and often hidden the points of likeness, but, by the judicious employment of archæological surgery, we may readily trace all the steps of evolutionary{42} development from the well-known old English type to a type that became peculiarly American and local, that is to say, peculiar to New England. The steps are all logical and we can see how the early colonists began by building houses as they were accustomed to see them built in old England and ended by building a type whose characteristics were generally determined by local conditions and expediency. We can see how, by successive steps, mediæval English peculiarities of structure and design gradually gave way to methods of more recent contrivance or of foreign origin. Indeed, among all the colonists, whether of English, Dutch, Swedish or German blood, directly they had passed the temporary log-cabin stage, there was a virtual identity between the architectural forms of the parent countries and their own earliest permanent architectural attempts, and the process of differentiation did not begin until new environment and new necessities pointed the way to the adoption of new modes and forms. It is exceedingly important to recognise the strong current of continuity and to realise that the architecture of Colonial America, in its sundry manifestations, was not, as some are pleased to contend, an wholly independent growth without old-world antecedents or clearly marked historical background.

The evolution of local architecture, of course,{43} not only mirrors the social and economic development of the colonies but also presents numerous edifying variations within the confines of New England which show how strongly the course of architectural growth in the new land was influenced by conditions locally prevalent in the old home. It can oftentimes be seen how the artisans from one particular place in England perpetuated certain idiosyncrasies of craftsmanship within limited Colonial areas and that those peculiarities are found nowhere else. In both its economic and purely technical aspects, the mode of domestic architectural expression devised in Colonial New England has many admirable features to commend it and is due partly to native Yankee mother wit and shrewd practicality quickened by the spur of necessity, and partly to the spirit of true British conservatism and attachment to long-established custom, a spirit that was strong in the early Puritans and often determined their actions in spite of themselves.

A brief survey of seventeenth-century manners and men, within the bounds of New England, will greatly assist us in forming an intelligent appreciation of the houses erected in this pioneer period. The log-cabin of the first few years of colonisation we need scarcely consider, for the rude huts erected at first were merely temporary shelters, were soon replaced by more{44} substantial structures, and were not really representative in any sense. The houses built as soon as the colonists had an opportunity to become accustomed to their new environment and get their economic bearings, reflected a condition of society in which a modest degree of simple comfort, resulting from rigorous thrift, rewarded the majority while prosperous affluence fell to the lot of comparatively few. Well built dwellings were comfortable but not pretentious. They were apt for all ordinary domestic requirements but, save in exceptional cases, there was no approach to luxury. They usually had rooms enough for all essential purposes but rarely were any special or extra rooms set apart for distinctive uses, with the exception of the parlour or “best room,” which often held the best bed and served variously as state bedroom for most honoured guests, repository for the most treasured household gods and the choicest items of domestic equipment and, finally, as the gathering place for the more worthy visitors at times of weddings, funerals or other important occasions.

The number of bedchambers provided in most cases would nowadays be deemed totally inadequate for the people to be accommodated and, to cite only one instance thoroughly typical of innumerable others, the members of the Revere household, if we may believe the statis{45}tics of tradition, must have been packed away at nights in sardine-like and most unsanatory proximity, or else some of them slept in the cellar or on the roof. This was well on towards the latter part of the eighteenth century, too, when habits in this particular had certainly not fallen below the standards of the seventeenth century. Besides the members of the Revere family, there were various apprentices and domestics, all of whom found shelter beneath the roof of this typical seventeenth-century house. It was no uncommon thing for two or three children or young persons to sleep in one bed and there was often more than one bedstead in a room. Truckle or trundle beds for children were frequently put in the bedchambers of their elders, while indentured servants and apprentices oftentimes slept in the kitchen, or else master and mistress slept in the tempered atmosphere of the kitchen fire and underlings took to the frigid regions above. Wherever the kitchen was put into commission as a sleeping apartment, there was the folding or “let down” bed or slawbank, which Mrs. Earle describes as “an oblong frame with a network of rope. This frame was fastened at one end to the wall, with heavy hinges, and at night it was lowered to a horizontal position, and the unhinged end was supported on heavy wooden turned legs which fitted into sockets in the{46} frame. When not in use the bed was hooked up against the wall, and doors like closet doors, were closed over it, or curtains were drawn over it to conceal it.” What though the sleeping arrangements of the seventeenth century, and indeed of much of the eighteenth century, for that matter, would often have called forth the sharp condemnation of a modern tenement house inspector, the colonists, nevertheless, made shift to get along in tolerable comfort and raise large families of children, with a due regard for the amenities of life, who became the most exemplary of citizens.

If the kitchen was sometimes used as a sleeping room, it was almost universally used as a living room. It was the vital point of the household whence radiated all domestic energies. It was spacious and was made as bright and cheerful as it could possibly be. Around the great open fireplace, where the cooking was done, centred all in-door activities from carding, spinning and weaving to corn husking. Here the family circle, eldest in places of greatest comfort, children and servants about the outer edge, gathered in the firelight of the long winter evenings; here the neighbour or chance traveller was entertained, and here lads and lasses, in the full glare of family publicity, did much of their courting, sometimes whispering their sweet nothings, from opposite sides of

PAUL REVERE HOUSE. GREAT ROOM, GROUND FLOOR.

The old wall paper is not coeval with the house.

the fireplace, through a “courting-stick,” a wooden tube six or eight feet long with mouth and ear pieces at each end.

In houses sufficiently spacious to admit of a living room or a “keeping-room” separate from the kitchen—such a room was analogous to the old English “hall”—the kitchen was still a cheerful room of great importance and the scene of many domestic fireside industries. It was a common thing to make lean-to additions to the original structure and the kitchen was often put in such an addition or in an ell extension. It was only the houses of the affluent, like that of Governour Theophilus Eaton at New Haven, built about 1640, that could boast what we should nowadays consider a very moderate number of rooms on the ground floor. Besides the great hall or living room in Governour Eaton’s house, there seem to have been a large kitchen and a pantry or buttery on one side, and on the other a parlour and a counting-house or library. Of the appointments of these rooms we may gain some idea from the inventory of Governour Eaton’s effects at the time of his death in 1657. In the hall or living room there were “a drawing Table and a round table; a cubberd & 2 long formes; a cubberd cloth & cushions; 4 setwork cushions, 6 greene cushions; a greate chaire with needleworke; 2 high chaires set work; 4 high stooles set worke;{48} 4 low chaires set worke; 2 low stooles set work; 2 Turkey Carpette; 6 high joyne stooles; a pewter cistern & candlestick; a pr of small andirons; a pr of doggs; a pr of tongues fire pan & bellowes.” The other rooms were furnished in a comparable manner. Living rooms in less pretentious houses had similar equipment though, it is scarcely necessary to add, they were not usually so complete nor so elegant.

The very plan, or rather plans for there were several, of early New England houses proclaimed an English origin. The house of Governour Eaton, just mentioned, is said to have been built in the form of a capital E. The “E” plan was a very common form in the manor houses and even in the larger cottages of the England of Eaton’s time. It was also a very old form, “dating from the thirteenth century, if not from the twelfth, or even earlier, and it had, in its long career, come to be the expression of a regular and well-recognised arrangement.” “Other houses of this plan were built in different parts of New England for men of consequence and substance.”

“The common houses,” according to Edward E. Lambert, the antiquary, “at first were small, of one storey with sharp roofs, and heavy stone chimneys and small diamond windows.” Many of the early dwellings also had two floors. One type of these small houses commonly found in{49} Massachusetts and Connecticut consisted of two rooms with a chimney between them. The house door opened into a small entry containing the staircase, opposite the door and carried up beside the chimney. The chimney was the core around which the house was built and projected above the middle of the ridgepole. Each room had a fireplace. To this type of house was frequently added a lean-to across the whole rear and this addition usually accommodated the kitchen. Sometimes the lean-to was incorporated in the plan when the house was built. In either case, the long, narrow lean-to room contained a fireplace which generally had a flue in the central chimney. When dwellings of this description had two rooms on the ground floor, one would be the kitchen and general living room and the other the parlour containing the “best bed,” an arrangement alluded to in a previous paragraph; where there was the additional lean-to room for the kitchen, the two other rooms would be living room and parlour.

In northern Rhode Island there was another common type that contained one room, at the end of which “was a vast stone chimney which appeared on the outside of the house.” Beside the fireplace and in the offset made by the chimney jamb, was a winding staircase—in the earliest houses it was sometimes a ladder{50}—leading to the upper room or loft, as the case might be. An amplification of this “stone-end” type of house was occasionally found with two rooms placed side by side and a fireplace in each room in relatively the same position. That these types of floor plan were part of the common English architectural heritage we shall presently see by comparison with subsequent chapters. The position of the chimney served to all intents as an exterior indication of the internal plan of the house. Of course, many departures from these two original plans are to be met with in the early Colonial houses of New England but it will usually be found that such departures are due to later additions to a structure based, in the first instance, on one or the other of them.

We are so accustomed to thinking of the old New England houses as structures covered with clapboards that we are in danger of forgetting what is underneath this outer coat. In fact, it is safe to say that the majority of people do not know what is underneath, and many would be greatly surprised if they did. After all, the clapboard casing is a disguise, and the people of New England are so thrifty and, as a rule, have been so careful to keep their buildings in good condition that the clapboards hide the traces of age that would otherwise be visible and put the oldest buildings on a par with those{51} of later date. The clapboard casing masques different things beneath its surface. If we rip it off many of the oldest buildings, we shall find behind it nothing more nor less than an old English half-timber house, built precisely as were the half-timber or “black and white” houses in the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts. The exigencies of climate soon made it evident that such a mode of structure was not altogether suited to the rigorous winters of New England and then, too, something must be attributed to the desire on the part of subsequent owners to follow prevalent fashion which prescribed the clapboard jackets. In houses of more recent date, of course, the clapboard shell may be regarded as an integral part of the structure but, in the earlier buildings, it is nothing but a masque, put on at a later date, to protect the walls and give added warmth when the first-adopted method of wall building was found insufficient, or in some cases, perhaps, to comply with the dictates of a passing fancy.

Whenever this clapboarding is torn off for repairs, original conditions become obvious and may readily be studied. The writer has seen such old houses, when partly denuded of their clapboard casing, reveal typical half-timber constructional methods, similar in every particular to the methods pursued by the half-timber builders in England. The cills, the studs, the{52} diagonal timbers and all the other parts of the frame are set and joined, tenoned and pinned, just as they were in England and the spaces between the studs are “pugged” with rough brick or stones and coarse clay stiffened with chopped straw, also in the time-honoured English manner. It is quite possible that in some instances the spaces between the studs may have been “pugged” with “wattle and dab”—thick clay daubed on a loose mesh of interwoven wattles or withes—for the tradition of this process certainly crossed the Atlantic and appeared in some of the early clay chimneys of Connecticut.

So many people have expressed surprise when told of the unbroken persistence of the half-timber tradition that it will be in order to mention specific instances which, however, may be regarded as typical of many other buildings of contemporary date. For much painstaking and scholarly investigation in this field, and for much accurate restoration, the public is indebted to Joseph Everett Chandler, of Boston, whose restorations of numerous historic buildings have won him well deserved esteem and confidence.[A]

WYNNESTAY, PHILADELPHIA. 1689.

An intact example of Pennsylvania Colonial, of Welsh workmanship.

SOUTH FRONT OF WYCK, GERMANTOWN, PHILADELPHIA. 1690.

Pennsylvania Colonial type with German influence apparent.

It was the writer’s privilege to see the old Bake House in Salem just after it had been rescued by private generosity from impending demolition and moved to its present site hard by the House of the Seven Gables. In the course of making necessary repairs and restorations, the clapboard casing had been entirely removed and it was possible to see fully the whole structural scheme. The timbers and pugging were as just noted. Although the windows were, at that time, of the sash type, with small panes, the traces were clearly visible of alterations that had been made at an earlier date, probably somewhere about 1720, when the sash window rose into high favour and was generally substituted for the leaded casement with small diamond-shaped panes. The timbers gave unmistakable evidence that the window apertures in the sides of the house had originally been wide enough to accommodate a range of casements and that they had been neither so high nor so low as the sash or double hung windows that took their places. In other words, the timbers showed that the apertures had been{54} narrowed to a considerable extent and, at the same time, extended both upwards and downwards.

Inside the house, the heavy oak studs, when the laths and plaster were torn off, showed chamfered corners, usually stopped at the ends with a stop that was thoroughly mediæval in character and might be found duplicated in the beams of trussed roofs in any old building in England dating from the sixteenth century or earlier. The tops of the studs, in some cases, showed a peculiar splay outward at the sides and rough notching by way of ornament. Surely here were touches of mediæval English workmanship that had been perpetuated in the new land by a workman who had served his apprenticeship in an English village where all the old joinery traditions were preserved intact.

The overhang on the second floor projecting some distance beyond the walls of the first is another striking instance of the survival of half-timber building traditions in not a few of the old houses. We see it in the House of the Seven Gables, in the Bake House, in the Paul Revere house in Boston, in more than one old house in Marblehead, and in plenty of other ancient dwellings, some of them recently restored, throughout the land, where restorations have been intelligently undertaken and carried out. It has almost invariably proved the case{55} either that the pendants were intact beneath the clapboards, or that the stumps of them were there, clearly showing the existence of the feature. In not a few cases the overhang has disappeared because the clapboard casing has been carried down flush with the outside of the upper storey. This was the case with the House of the Seven Gables, and it was only when the clapboard casing, in which it had been jacketed for many years, was removed that the overhang once more came to light and the stumps of the original pendants were forthwith restored. The finding of such pendants and such overhangs coupled with the frequent occurrence of such features as just noted in the case of the Bake House afford us irrefutable evidence of the perpetuation of the English half-timber building traditions. It has been fondly supposed by some that the overhang was meant for purposes of defence. It may have been turned to that use when occasion required, but defence was certainly not the original idea, for in that case the projection would doubtless have been carried all the way around the wall, as it was in the case of the block houses, where, of course, this feature was meant primarily to facilitate defence and cover the occupants as they dropped boiling oil, hot lead, or other missiles on the heads of their assailants whenever they approached near enough.

From the early New England houses, that em{56}bodied so many old English architectural traditions, was gradually evolved, under stress of local expediency, a type that met the needs of the colonists. That type was not only intensely practical in its characteristics but its simplicity and straightforwardness gave it a vital artistic interest that still commends it to our favourable consideration.{57}

CHAPTER IV

PRE-GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

English, Welsh, Swedish and German Influences

FROM the very outset, Pennsylvania was the most polyglot and conglomerate of all the English colonies or provinces in America. West Jersey and Delaware, which latter State was originally a part of Pennsylvania and known as “the three lower counties on Delaware,” in some degree shared this miscellaneous character, and together the three formed a practically distinct unit in the Middle Colonies, peculiar in composition and without parallel elsewhere. The diversity in nationality and speech among the early settlers was directly reflected in architectural manifestations and the variant types were never wholly welded together into one distinct style and, even long after the advent and almost universal prevalence of the Georgian mode, they continued in use concurrently. Just as similar phenomena were to be detected in the several parts of New{58} England, they displayed local peculiarities of artisanship attributable to the different traditions obtaining in the respective parts of the Old World from which the individual artisans had come. The two most noticeable features in the early population of Pennsylvania were the diversity of elements and the clannishness and consequent isolation of the people who composed the several distinct parts of the colony. These elements remained distinct from each other both from preference and interest, and natural conditions favoured this division.

First of all in date of settlement on the shores of the Delaware were the Swedes, whose successful efforts at colonisation began in 1638. The Dutch, it is true, had previously made some slight attempts at settlement. In 1616, in pursuit of the exploration essayed but abandoned by Hudson in 1609, Captain Hendrickson, in the “Onrust” (“Restless”), had sailed up the Delaware to the mouth of the Schuylkill and, in 1623, under Captain Cornelius Mey, Fort Nassau was built at what is now Gloucester Point, nearly opposite Philadelphia. In the main, however, the Dutch preferred to stay down the bay and, in 1650, Fort Nassau was abandoned. They were traders rather than settlers, so far as their connexion with the Delaware was concerned, and the first real settlements, therefore, are to be credited to the{59} Swedes who were home-loving, industrious farmers, proud of their homesteads and capable in the management of their dairies but possessed of little inclination towards commercial activity. The Swedish foundation was permanent and, though the Swedish population was eventually absorbed by the more numerous elements brought hither a few years later by Penn’s “holy experiment,” it left an indelible and significant mark upon the corporate composition of the colony and the traces of Swedish influence are still distinct and unmistakable, not only in much of the local architecture, in the names of places and persons, and in the strong strain of Swedish blood in many Pennsylvania families but in humbler and less obvious matters as well. As an instance of the latter may be mentioned the common strain of red cattle to be seen everywhere on the hills and in the valleys of eastern Pennsylvania. These same red cattle are the descendants of the Swedish kine, brought hither nearly three hundred years ago by the hardy colonists who planted their farmsteads along the waters of the Delaware and its lower tributaries.

Attracted by the prospect of religious liberty, by the liberal inducements offered them, and by the fatness of the land, a great variety of settlers, following in the wake of Penn’s pioneers, flocked to the colony on the Delaware and{60} found there a safe and happy refuge after the troublous existence many of them had led before their departure from their old homes. Besides the English, who were almost altogether Quakers, there were, in this second wave of immigration, both Welsh and Germans. Later still, a small Dutch element was added and then came the Scotch-Irish. Each of these elements naturally perpetuated its own peculiar architectural traditions, and why those traditions continued so long a time distinct in their expression we shall presently see.

While the English Quakers were numerically preponderant, counting the neighbourhood of Philadelphia and West Jersey as a unit of population, and were politically in supreme control until late in the eighteenth century, the Welsh and Germans dwelt close beside them and were accorded so large a measure of practical independence in the management of their own affairs that their communities were virtually imperia in imperio. For twenty or thirty years after the founding of Pennsylvania, “the Welsh were the most numerous class of immigrants” and in place names, in blood, in local history, and in architecture their enduring influence is plainly discernible. Before they migrated from the land of their birth, they had entered into an agreement with Penn by which he promised them “a tract of forty thousand acres, where

they could have a little government of their own and live by themselves.” Accordingly, upon their arrival, this tract was surveyed for them in the high, rolling lands embraced chiefly within the present bounds of Montgomery and Delaware Counties, a section that more nearly resembled in character their beloved Wales than did any other part of this new country of their adoption. The tract was called the Welsh Barony for the sturdy, “red-haired, freckle-faced descendants of the ancient Britons insisted that this territory, specially set apart for them, was a barony or county palatine and, in very truth, it was a manor with the right of court baron.” These Owens and Joneses, Evanses and Wynnes, Powells and Pughs and all their kith and kin, managed their affairs according to their own notions and, at first, dispensed with the usual system of township and county organisation. Civil authority was vested in the Quaker meetings until, in 1690, the three townships of Merion, Haverford and Radnor were formed and the civil jurisdiction of the meetings superseded. Welsh was the official language of the courts and records and Welsh was the daily tongue of all the people in the barony and very few of them understood English, so that when William Penn preached at Haverford, in 1701, his hearers could not have been much edified, so far as his words were{62} concerned. Closely bound together by the tie of language and separated by the same means from the other colonists who spoke English, Swedish or German, these Welsh gentry and yeomen held aloof from outside affairs, content with a mode of life that was “unusual on a provincial frontier” for its “amount of enjoyment and expenditure for dress and entertainment.” Local independence and self-sufficiency were only broken down when the barony was thrown open to outside settlers because the Welsh occupants refused to pay quit-rents on more land than they actually used or held. Their strong feeling of nationality, however, remained and nothing could have been more natural than that the architecture for which they were responsible should have had, as it did, a characteristic local flavour.

The earliest German community was Germantown and, though it is now a part of Philadelphia, in 1683 and for more than a hundred years afterward, Penn’s “greene country towne” and the village of the Germans were separated by a long stretch of open country and the highroad between the two was oftentimes so bad that it was an obstacle rather than an aid to communication. The German settlers spoke their own language, printed their own books, pursued their own industries, worshipped in their own way, built their own schools and{63} managed their own affairs of internal organisation without either interference or assistance from the powers in Philadelphia. As did the earliest settlers in Germantown, so also did their countrymen, who continued to come to America in ever-increasing numbers and travelled farther and farther into the interior of the land where the richness of the soil and the opportunity to follow their own inclinations without let or hindrance from interfering or antagonistic neighbours invited them.

Besides keeping aloof, during most of the early period, from the settlers of other nationality, the Germans were also subdivided among themselves. There were the Pietists or Rosicrucians, who had their settlement or community on the banks of the Wissahickon. Although they maintained some intercourse with the other German settlers, they nevertheless led a distinct existence. The people in Germantown, likewise, formed a complete community in themselves and the industries in which they engaged at an early date, namely, the operation of paper and knitting mills, are still flourishing in the neighbourhood, in some instances on the original sites. Again, the settlers in the Skippack region were far removed from those in Germantown and developed peculiarities of their own. The Moravians, in their turn, pushed still farther into the northern part of{64} the province and founded settlements quite distinct from all other colonisation enterprises. Their ancient buildings are deeply interesting and have preserved permanently the traditions of the country whence the Moravians originally came. An examination will clearly show a similarity in many points to the Suabian modes of architectural expression, as one might expect from the close ties of kinship.

The isolation of the several elements of population in the colony was still further favoured by the fact that, at first, the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware colonists who followed Penn resembled their Swedish predecessors and were not commercial in their instincts like the Dutch, who were aggressively mercantile with their fur trade. What they needed for home consumption the early Pennsylvanians made for themselves, so far as they could, and in every way were essentially agricultural and diametrically opposed to the Dutch. For some years after the founding of the colony, Swedes, English, Welsh, and Germans alike turned their eyes inland. We might say that their policy of colonisation was introspective rather than expansive.

This introspective policy of colonisation did not tend toward the expansion or the prosperity of the colony and, while the colonists led lives of comfort in their own preferred seclusion, it{65} was not until they turned their eyes to the sea and engaged in commerce that the prosperity of Philadelphia, and of the colony generally, increased by leaps and bounds. The roads, for the most part, were extremely bad and, in the winter and spring, were hopelessly miry. Where the settlers did not follow the course of the streams for the spread of their area of colonisation, they followed the Indian trails, and most of the old roads leading out from Philadelphia, the old arteries of traffic along which the colonists made their homesteads, and from which they pushed farther and farther into the interior, were originally the pathways worn by the red men through the forest.

While the Swedes chose the streams to determine their course of colonisation, the Germans usually stuck to the Indian trails which, in time, became the highroads to their various communities. In the earliest times, the German lads and lasses forded the streams and came on horseback along these roads, carrying their goods for market in the city in panniers. It was not long, however, before sufficient improvement was made in the condition of the highways to allow the great four, six, and eight horse wains to be driven to the city periodically from the more remote settlements. In these wains were contained the products of the six months’ or year’s labour on the farms and, with the money from{66} what they sold, the farmers bought materials which they took home to be manufactured into the various articles of necessity or comfort required by the different members of their households.

Not until they learned, in the course of time, to appreciate the fundamental liberalism that characterised the principles of the colony as established by the Founder, and not until the gradual development of commercial industries tended to bring them more together had the different groups of colonists any common ground upon which they might meet without bringing their diversity of principles and prejudices into conflict. In the meanwhile, the architectural course of the province had fallen into several well-defined separate channels that are still easily recognisable. That these divers phases of Colonial architecture should retain their individuality side by side is not to be wondered at when we consider the early diversity and isolation of the various racial elements of the province, explained at length in the foregoing pages, and when we consider, also, the tenacity with which the people clung to their distinguishing racial peculiarities of every sort long after the barriers of antagonism or isolation had been broken down.

It is always well to be explicit, and it is easier to make the basis of contention clear when a

definite instance is cited. We shall, therefore, use certain specified houses for the sake of example. The first of these to claim our attention is Wynnestay, shown in one of the accompanying illustrations, the ancient home of the Wynne family, on the borders of the Welsh Barony. When built in 1689, it was in deep country; now it is surrounded by a suburban growth. Practically the only alteration that Wynnestay has ever undergone was raising the ridgepole of the roof, on the oldest part, to the line of the 1700 addition at a time when it was found necessary to make some repairs. Save this, and what has been built at the back to meet increased domestic needs, Wynnestay remains to-day in its pristine state and is, therefore, valuable as a well-preserved example of Welsh Colonial work. Doors and windows are low, but of generous breadth, and capped by heavy stone lintels made of thick, oblong slabs that must have cost no ordinary exertion and energy to set them in place. The two dormers have the same sharply-pointed peaks that we shall see in another Colonial example. As might be expected, the walls are thick and everything about the building is of the most solid construction.

When Wynnestay was built, the colonists had had no time to evolve new architectural forms, so we may be sure that in erecting their dwell{68}ings they followed as closely as they were able all traditions and precedents with which they had been familiar in the old country. That Wynnestay and its contemporaries faithfully represent the farmhouses and small manor houses of Wales and England we may feel the more certain because capable artisans, both house carpenters and stone masons, accompanied the earlier settlers and by this time had arrived in considerable numbers in the colony, and of course were working by the principles instilled into them in their apprentice days.

The masonry of the Pennsylvania Colonial type has been highly admired time and time again by architects in all sections of the country. The same sort of masonry work is being done by local stone masons today, and so individual and characteristic is it that they are sometimes sent for to erect walls at a great distance from their own locality, because no other masons can be found to put quite the same touch into the face of the wall or lay the stones in quite the same way. But the charm for which their handiwork is justly famed is due to the fact that they are merely following the tradition handed down to them by the old Welsh and English masons who came over with the first settlers. The tradition has been faithfully perpetuated ever since. We find it in strong evidence in all the old houses of that{69} type, in fact in all the old buildings. It will be adverted to, in the chapter on old Colonial churches, in connexion with St. David’s, Radnor. Again we see it in such a building as Waynesborough, which, by the way, is particularly interesting as marking the transition from the early Colonial type to the early Georgian.

Although Waynesborough was not built until a few years after Graeme Park or Hope Lodge, those striking examples of the first phase of the Middle Colonies’ Georgian, it has, nevertheless, retained in certain features a strong resemblance to the early Colonial Welsh type. The masonry is precisely the same, but more noticeable even than this are the lintels of the doors and windows, constructed of a number of stones vertically set in a flattened or elliptical arch. This form is to be seen in much of the early Welsh work concurrently with the great slabs noted at Wynnestay.

In general character Wynnestay is similar to the other Welsh houses near by, such as Pencoyd, at Bala, built in 1633, or Harriton, built a little later, but it has suffered less change in the lapse of years than its near neighbours in Lower Merion township or other sections in which the Welsh influence was felt, and it is better fitted to represent the type. The house is built of native grey fieldstone of varied sizes{70}—some of the stones were probably turned up in the course of clearing the fields round about—lined with white mortar and presents an interesting feature in the bold moulding of the cornices. A continuation of the cornice from the eaves, following the same horizontal line, traverses the face of the wall at each gable end, making, with the gable cornice, a complete triangle. This arrangement of the cornice as a string course across the gable ends gives the roof a downright, positive appearance. The cornice in this arrangement is not dissimilar from the penthouse so often used on structures of this date between the first and second floors. Wynnestay was built at two different periods. The first part, built in 1689, has a penthouse along the front with a triangular hood; the later addition, built in 1700, has the penthouse between the first and second floors, but without the triangular hood above the door. Still another feature showing the close connexion of Waynesborough with the early Colonial type, as exemplified by Wynnestay, is the hood over the house door. Although the penthouses have disappeared the hood has remained, and indicates very plainly a certain line of descent.

Wynnestay and other old houses just like it were the forerunners of a type of structure that has come to be known as the Pennsylvania Colonial farmhouse type; very worthy{71} the type is, truly comfortable, homelike and sensible, and deserving the popularity accorded it, so long as it sticks closely to its severe simplicity and avoids all attempt at pretence. The very moment, however, we depart from time-honoured tradition and attempt to begaud this sort of building with Georgian embellishments and furbelows—a thing far too often done—it looks unseemly and ludicrous. Before leaving the subject one should add that the Pennsylvania Colonial farmhouse is found in roughcast as well as stone, and that the buildings erected by the English settlers, though similar, were apt to be somewhat higher than the old, squat dwellings of the Welsh, whose natural predilection for “stumpiness” is well exemplified by the towers of their churches.

Our next Colonial example is Wyck in Germantown, at the corner of Walnut Lane and Germantown Road. Like Wynnestay, Wyck has undergone scarcely any change since its staunch walls were reared. Furthermore, Wyck has never been sold, but has passed from owner to owner by inheritance, and as its possessors have always been careful to maintain everything in its original condition, it can readily be seen that a more trustworthy example of Pennsylvania Colonial architecture could not be chosen. Wyck represents the German influence in Colonial architecture. The structure is{72} really two houses joined together. The first was built about 1690 or earlier; the second, though built somewhat later, nevertheless dates also from an early period. Through the first part of the connecting portion, that links the two houses into one, ran a passage or waggon way. This passage was afterward closed in and now forms a great hallway from which open outwards big double doors almost as wide as barn doors, with a long transom of little lights above them.

The whole long south front of the house is whitewashed. Trellises cover the face of the wall, and the vines, with their masses of thick foliage, stand out in sharp contrast to the gleaming brightness of their background. At Wyck the windows are higher and not so wide in proportion as at Wynnestay, and the same may be said of the dimensions of the doors. The proportions are excellent and the measurements of sash-bars, muntins, and panes have been duplicated by architects again and again, with most satisfactory results. The dormerheads have the same sharp angularity as those at Wynnestay. At Wyck, however, the cornice runs only beneath the eaves, and does not extend across the wall at the gable end. This extension of the cornice as a string course was more apt to occur in houses of Welsh or English build, while the Germans, one of whom built{73} Wyck, usually left their gable ends unadorned. In fact, there is no cornice at all at the gable ends of Wyck, and the junction of wall and roof is marked only by plain barge-boards, beyond which the roof edge scarcely projects. At Wyck the pitch of the roof is not so steep as at Wynnestay, and it may be remarked that the flatter pitch was generally found on Colonial houses built by the Germans, and also in the later English Colonial houses.

Both Wynnestay and Wyck, different as they may be in national tradition, are alike in their thoroughgoing staunchness, their straightforward simplicity of expression and detail and their utter lack of all conscious attempt at adornment. It is true, both houses have distinct elements of charm and embellishment, arising from such details as the trellises and long transoms with little lights at Wyck, or the hoods above the doors and the extension of the cornice across the gable-end walls at Wynnestay, but the effect is wholly fortuitous and not the result of design. Both houses are thoroughly typical of most of the contemporary dwellings, and because of their escape from damaging alterations no part of their charm has been impaired. Both, too, well exemplify architectural modes that have continued uninterruptedly in use to our own day. In the portions of the country where the English element{74} predominates, the little peculiarities of English tradition are still plainly observable in modern work, while in the parts of the country where the Pennsylvania German element is most numerous, it is easy to trace, even in small matters, the enduring influence of German architectural tradition, introduced by the early German settlers. Indeed, we may very properly compare the persistence of architectural minutiæ to the persistence of family traits and features in the human race. So much, then, for worthy specimens of Pennsylvania styles that are truly Colonial. The instances given are by no means isolated, but stand as representatives of a numerous class of buildings to be found not only in Pennsylvania, but in Delaware and New Jersey.

Before leaving the subject it should be noted that the brick farmhouses of New Jersey, while often following closely the type noted in Pennsylvania, occasionally assumed, as the period wore on, much more bulky proportions than the dwellings of the early settlers, the roof rising to a considerable height, and the body of the structure assuming great depth as well as breadth. Some of these great brick structures date from a comparatively early period, and may be attributed to the rapidly increasing prosperity of the West Jersey planters, who had the advantage of the Pennsylvania settlers

through their considerably earlier settlement. The oldest houses were usually built on points of land stretching out into the numerous creeks by which a part of the country is intersected, so that their communication by water was always assured when the roads were bad, as they frequently were. In this respect they resembled many of the old houses of Virginia and Maryland. The walls of some of these early Jersey houses are made of thick planks, tightly grooved together with a sliding tongue, and stand today as staunch and true as when they were first built. Stone was not a popular building material in Jersey, but brick was generally used instead, and for brick was sometimes substituted a kind of adobe or large block of sun-baked marl.

It is interesting to note that the long narrow transom of small lights which we so often find over house doors in the Colonial period and the first phase of the Georgian, seems to be a remnant of Queen Anne tradition that got into English architecture from Dutch sources, probably in the reign of William and Mary when such a large importation of Dutch ideas and Dutch practices came into England.

While noting foreign influences in Colonial architecture we must not forget to include the tendency to steep pitch and also gambrel forms in roofs shown by the Swedish colonists. Nor should we forget to chronicle two exceedingly{76} interesting specimens of wholly foreign appearance that were erected in Pennsylvania at an early date. One is the Moravian Sisters’ House, at Bethlehem, erected about 1748 and the other is the Saal or great hall of the monastery at Ephrata, built by the Seventh Day Baptists about the same time. The tiny dormers are exact replicas of the dormers to be seen on the towering and seemingly boundless roofs of any old German town while the small, irregularly placed windows and steeply pitched, high roof of the Ephrata Saal make the building look as though it might have been transplanted bodily from Nürnberg or Rothenburg.{77}

CHAPTER V

THE COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE OF THE SOUTH

A CLOSE student of the English language, thoroughly conversant with all the local peculiarities that characterise the speech of the several parts of our country comprised within the bounds of the original Thirteen Colonies, knows that different words and expressions, retaining their seventeenth or eighteenth century significance, have lingered in different communities. The mountaineers of Kentucky still replenish their pipes from “pokes” of tobacco; in Virginia and Maryland, insufficiently baked bread is said not to have “soaked” long enough, meaning that it has not stayed in the oven as long as it ought; in Pennsylvania we still “fetch” things when we go for them and bring them back with us; and the soles of outworn New England shoes are “tapped,” though they may be “half-soled” in other parts of the country, and New England nags are “baited” at inn stables. Now all these archaisms, if one chooses so to call them, are of impeccable English derivation, though many of{78} them have long since fallen into disuse in England, and they were of common and correct usage at the time of the colonists’ emigration to the New World. The Colonies were always conservative—provincial places usually are—and our very retention of the virile forms of speech in ordinary use in the England of the Stuarts and the House of Hanover has contributed not a little to the foundation of our just boast that the English spoken today in Virginia, Maryland, parts of the Carolinas, eastern Pennsylvania and New England is better and purer than most of the English now spoken in England itself. The only feature of this phenomenon of speech persistence not fully explicable is the fact that certain parts of linguistic tradition have been perpetuated in some parts of the country while others are to be found only in localities far removed so that a Virginian’s allusion to bread insufficiently “soaked” would be unintelligible in Massachusetts.

If the vitality of usage is so noticeable in a fluid and mutable thing like language, it is not surprising that architecture, which is visible and comparatively permanent in its manifestation, should exhibit in a markedly obvious manner an adherence to traditional forms. Nor is it surprising, considering the diversity of the speech forms singled out by chance for perpetuation in different parts of the country, to find a{79} similar diversity in the retention of local architectural forms, though all may be of purely English origin.

The greater part of the South, like New England, was wholly English in blood and the small element of foreign extraction was not sufficient to exert any appreciable influence upon architectural types. The South had no numerous Welsh, Swedish or German contingent, such as there was in Pennsylvania, and no Dutch majority, as in New York, either to create an exotic bias and modify the expression of its architectural heritage or to seek independent utterance in the same territory. It was English to the core and so was the architecture. Only, as in the matter of speech, we find that traditions somewhat different from those manifested in New England were chosen for preservation. This was partly due, no doubt, as has already been pointed out, to the preponderance of the Saxon strain in the South while New England settlers could trace some of their hereditary preferences to the fact that so many of them came from the Danish parts of old England. The traditions transplanted to American soil by the Southern settlers flourished not only during the period antecedent to the advent of the Georgian mode but persisted concurrently with it and their influence is plainly to be detected in houses erected within the memory of people{80} still living. They are so distinctly individual and so different from the forms to be seen in the Northern or the Middle States that they may be readily recognised at a superficial glance from the windows of a speeding railway carriage. Judging from the light thrown on the subject by recent research and restorations, it is not at all improbable that the colonists of the South and the colonists of New England adhered, at first, to not a few architectural practices identically the same. As an instance we may refer to the chimney built to its full height outside the house wall. This feature endured in the South, while in New England it was practically discontinued at an early period. The reason is not far to seek. The rigours of New England winters demanded the conservation of all available heat and it was simply common sense to enclose the chimney within the house walls, and let none of the warmth, emanating from the heated stones or bricks of the chimney breast and flue, escape into the outer air and be wasted. The more moderate climate of the South did not require such careful conservation and so the outside chimney retained its old form. So it doubtless was, also, with other features so that the divergence in local forms, apart from the matter of hereditary choice of materials and the modes of craftsmanship thereby involved, already alluded to,{81} soon became pronounced and created a crystallised type. What were the distinguishing characteristics of this type, we shall shortly learn. It will, however, be helpful to our general understanding first to get a glimpse of the social life of the period when the Southern Colonial house was in process of evolution.

The earliest settlers in Virginia were, for the most part, gentle born. They were, in some cases, brothers, nephews or younger sons of peers of the realm. Such was George Percy, brother to the Earl of Northumberland. More commonly they were drawn from the families of the lesser nobility and from the untitled squirearchy of county families or else from the prosperous mercantile or professional classes. Either they personally or their relatives, who assisted in establishing them in their venture of colonisation, were in comfortable circumstances so that they could count upon having at least a reasonably advantageous start in the new land and were, therefore, from the outset in a condition soon to improve their estate by embracing the abundant opportunities fortune offered them. Besides this politically preponderant class, there were numerous indentured servants and artisans, many of whom, upon the expiration of their bonds, acquired land and became prosperous planters. Last of all, there were the negro slaves who were brought into{82} the colony at an early period and rapidly increased in numbers. Social distinctions were quite as sharply defined and rigidly observed in Virginia and the other Southern colonies as in England and social customs remained unchanged by transference across the sea. The closest and most affectionate intercourse that circumstances would permit was maintained with friends and relatives in the Mother Country. In a word, Virginia was merely a detached and expanded bit of England and life went on much as though the Atlantic did not exist, save for the inevitable delay in communication. As was life in early Virginia, so was it substantially, at least so far as our present purpose is concerned, in the other Southern colonies, so that we may regard Virginia conditions as typical.

For all the ease of life, the abundance of creature comforts, the importation of personal and household luxuries and necessities by every ship that entered the capes and the general prosperity made possible by a kindly soil and climate in conjunction with favourable economic conditions, the measure of affluence, even among the wealthiest, was not sufficient during the first fifty or seventy-five years of Virginia’s existence to justify reckless or lavish expenditure upon the fabric of the dwelling house. The homes of the planters, therefore, though comfortably and even luxuriously appointed, ac{83}cording to the standards of the period, were modest in size and unpretentious in character. When Nicholas Hayward determined to establish one of his children on a plantation in Virginia and wrote to William Fitzhugh, one of the wealthiest and most influential planters, desiring information and advice, the latter replied, pointing out the course pursued by many of the other planters, that the wisest plan would be to import indentured bricklayers and carpenters from England who, in the course of the four or five years for which they were bound, could erect a substantial house, and, at the same time, by the performance of other labour for which they might be hired out, earn enough to pay for the cost of building materials and their keep as well. Fitzhugh also counselled Hayward not to build a large dwelling and even questioned the advisability of putting up “an English framed house of the ordinary size” as the charges for skilled artisans were excessive. He added that his own dwelling had cost thrice the sum a house of like size would have cost in London and that it usually took three times as long to complete the same amount of work as it did in England.

Notwithstanding his inherited preference for stone and brick as building materials, the early Virginia colonist had perforce to make a virtue of necessity and build his house of wood. Al{84}though, in the majority of cases, the Virginia colonist took to brick and stone when circumstances permitted—they were almost universally used so soon as the Georgian influence began to be felt and the accumulation of wealth conduced thereto—the necessary dependence upon wood at the outset created a precedent and launched a Southern tradition that has subsisted to our own day. In many parts of the Old Dominion there was practically no stone to be had and it was a difficult matter to secure even enough for chimneys. Often all dependence for this purpose had to be placed upon brick and brick was none too easy to come by at first. Good brick clay, to be sure, was abundant and the manufacture of bricks received encouragement from the first but there were serious difficulties in the way of transportation after the bricks were made and by the time these difficulties were surmounted many of the older houses had been built and it was hardly to be expected that the planters, after constructing substantial and comfortable abodes of timber would demolish them and replace them by others of brick, after brick was more plentiful, merely to comply with the arbitrary directions issued by the authorities in England when, in 1637, they instructed Governour Wyatt “to require every landowner whose plantation was an hundred acres in extent to erect a dwell{85}ing house of brick, to be twenty-four feet in length and sixteen feet in breadth, with a cellar attached. In the cases where the area of the grant exceeded five hundred acres, the size of the dwelling house was to enlarge in proportion.”

The earliest Southern houses in Virginia and elsewhere, after the brief log-cabin stage had been passed, we may feel assured were of wooden construction with brick or sometimes stone chimneys. All about was the greatest abundance of the finest pine, cypress, cedar, oak, chestnut, hickory, elm and ash timber which fully answered for all structural needs and the feather-edged plank or clapboard, nailed to the framing of posts, studs, girts and cills was in common use for building purposes. It was probably owing to the absence of stone and the comparative scarcity of bricks at an early date that we do not find evidences of attempted half-timber construction with clay and brick or clay and stone pugging as we do in New England at the same period.

It was only at first, however, that there was a scarcity of bricks and even then the difficulty in obtaining them was more a matter of transportation than of supply. Brickmakers and bricklayers were among the first artisans brought over and from the very infancy of the colony, as just stated, brick-making was encouraged. Indeed, at an early date, bricks{86} became an important article of export to Bermuda, whence limestone was fetched back in exchange. There was abundance of brick to supply the home demand and the obstacle in the way of its wider use by the first generation or two of planters was the difficulty of getting it from the kilns to the sites where it was to be used and not, as some suppose, the necessity of importing it from England. It is pointed out in another chapter that the so-called “English brick” was merely brick made according to English dimensions and so termed to distinguish it from brick fashioned after the Dutch pattern. Very few of the old brick buildings were constructed of imported material and, under ordinary circumstances, it would have been the height of folly to send overseas for it, even though it might come as ballast. In Virginia, bricks were rated from eight to fifteen shillings a thousand while, in England, between 1650 and 1700, their price was eighteen shillings and upward a thousand. As the seventeenth century advanced bricks became increasingly plentiful in the South. After Sir Thomas Dale’s arrival and the establishment of his new enterprise at Henrico City, the first-floor walls of the houses in that place were built of brick burned in the kilns that were there set up, but when Secretary Kemp, in 1638, built a brick house at Jamestown, it was probably the first{87} dwelling entirely constructed of brick in the South. After this, other brick houses were erected in Jamestown and, subsequently, Governour Berkeley built himself a brick house at Green Spring, about two miles distant. It was not usual, however, to employ brick very extensively till towards the end of the seventeenth century or the beginning of the eighteenth when ample fortunes had accumulated and transportation possibilities had somewhat improved. Even then, the use of brick was by no means universal but was largely dependent upon local conditions, although there was unquestionably a preference for it over wood when it could readily be come by.

Whether wood was used or brick, the Southern houses of the seventeenth century and the fore part of the eighteenth conformed pretty closely to the same architectural type and even in the more ambitious dwellings, erected by the very wealthy towards the end of this period, there was generally no radical departure from the accustomed style. For the most part, the homes of even the most affluent planters were simple in plan and plain in appearance. The typical dwelling was an oblong structure with the house door on one of the long fronts, a steeply-pitched roof, a chimney at each end, and often had but one full floor with an attic above it, although a more commodious second floor{88} was by no means uncommon. In 1679, Major Thomas Chamberlayne, a prominent citizen of Henrico, contracted with one Gates, a carpenter of the same county, to build him a frame house, forty feet long by twenty feet wide. The outside walls were to be boarded and there was to be no cellar, but the framework was to be supported on cills resting on the ground. Upper and lower floors were each to be divided by wooden partitions into two rooms. At each end there was to be a brick chimney. So many descriptions of similar houses and specifications for their erection occur in seventeenth-century documents that we are quite justified in regarding them as typical of the period. The Adam Thoroughgood house, built of brick in Princess Anne County, Virginia, between 1640 and 1650, presented the same general contour. The roofs were customarily of cypress shingles although tiles were subsequently employed to some extent. The pitch of the roof closely resembled the pitch of some of the earliest New England roofs but in both the South and North there is observable, as the years go by, a general tendency to depart from English precedent and flatten the pitch so far as conditions would permit. In this connexion it must also be remembered that thatch was a common roofing material in England and required a steep pitch in order to shed the rain quickly while the use of shingles

permitted a less abrupt angle without impairing the water-shedding qualities of the roof.

One of the most strongly characteristic features of these houses was supplied by the outside chimneys at each end. They were of brick or of stone, when by chance it could be secured, and occasionally, in some of the later houses built according to this early tradition, they are of brick and stone combined, the stone being used for the heavy base while the stack is made of brick. Throughout their whole height, these chimneys were built outside the house wall, whether the house was of timber or brick, and were broad at the base narrowing down by successive stages of sloped weatherings and offsets, in much the same manner as a Gothic buttress, to the bottom of the stack which rises straight and slim by comparison with its substructure. The chimney of the Thoroughgood house is an excellent example of this method of chimney treatment. The Southern exterior chimneys, in many cases, had the sloped weatherings and offsets both at sides and back while the few early New England chimneys of the same type were usually flat at the back and were graded off only at the sides.

Another noticeable characteristic of the early Southern houses is to be seen in the long dormers with sharp-peaked gables that often pierced the roofs, quite in contrast to the comparative{90} rarity of dormers in the early New England houses of similar date. The same manner of introducing a sharp-peaked dormer or small gable into the side of a pitch roof is to be seen over the doors of some of the old Southern barns. The occurrence of the gambrel is not nearly so frequent as in the North nor do we find evidences of framing with the overhang. It may be that this last mentioned point of difference between the South and North can in part be accounted for on the ground that the overhang in England lingered longest and met with most favour in towns while in the open country it was less in evidence. As many of the New England colonists came from towns while a great proportion of those in the South came from rural surroundings, it was but natural that both should perpetuate the features to which they were most accustomed. This hypothesis, of course, is purely conjectural but it is by no means impossible since very slight and trifling matters often serve to determine choice. In the smaller and humbler dwellings of the South were to be found the same general method of construction and the same features of contour as in their larger prototypes.

It would be exceedingly difficult to lay down any specific generalisations regarding the interior plan of the early Southern houses inasmuch as they varied widely in different instances accord{91}ing to the individual requirements of the occupants, the size of their families and the manner in which they saw fit to make additions from time to time as necessity dictated. We have seen that Major Thomas Chamberlayne’s house had two rooms upstairs and two rooms down, divided by wooden partitions which may or may not have been covered with tenacious clay stucco and whitewashed. In this manner walls were sometimes finished, at others they were wainscotted. The windows were glazed with small panes set in lead. In the house of Governour Berkeley at Green Spring were six apartments while that of William Fitzhugh, which however had undergone sundry additions, numbered twelve or thirteen. The Stratton house in Henrico had three chambers above stairs and one below along with a hall, kitchen, and pantry. In York County we are told of houses that had only a hall or dining room, a kitchen and a bedchamber which were probably all on one floor. Then, again, there were houses with a hall and kitchen on the lower floor and a chamber above, while some of the wealthier people had commonly three or four rooms on each floor. In all events, the houses followed the same general plan and where there were many apartments they were apt to be in the nature of ells or extensions clustered in a rambling manner about the{92} central core which was of the type common to the country.

Three features are deserving of particular attention in the plan of the early Southern house, however varied its internal arrangements might otherwise be, and the more so because they persisted and found a recognised place in the plan of the Georgian house as it was developed in the South. In the first place, the hall, which was also referred to as the dining hall or parlour hall, was wide and afforded ample space and circulation of air. It was the place where meals were commonly eaten and where the family sat. The house door opened directly into it and it exactly corresponded with and fulfilled the functions of the great hall in the small manor houses of England. This interior disposition of the house was suited to the climate and when the Georgian mode rose in the ascendant the wide hallway, often extending the full depth of the building and used more or less as a living room, was retained. It was quite in contrast to the small entry or the narrow stair-hall of New England houses which the rigours of New England winters made it desirable to have as a protection for the rest of the house when the house door was opened. In the second place, the Southern housewife often found it convenient and desirable in the scheme of her domestic economy to have the kitchen{93} in a separate building somewhat removed from the body of the house. There were servants enough to make this arrangement practicable and the mild climate favoured it also. Besides, this plan fitted in well with the practice of having the servants’ quarters outside the house. This feature of detached kitchens was also perpetuated in the Georgian era and not only was its influence felt in the South but we find instances of it in Pennsylvania. Such was the arrangement at Graeme Park, Horsham, near Philadelphia, built in 1722 by Sir William Keith, whom we know was favourably impressed by the manner of living in the South where he had visited prior to establishing himself at Horsham. We also find the detached offices and servants’ quarters at Stenton, the home of James Logan; at Hope Lodge, Whitemarsh and at Mount Pleasant, the home of that doughty and ingenious old sailor man and merchant, Captain John Macpherson, afterwards the scene of much lavish entertainment by Benedict Arnold and his bride when they occupied it for a brief season. The same arrangement also obtained at Cliveden and was not improbably suggested to Chief Justice Chew by the recollection of a similar plan in the homes of his Southern kinsfolk. This feature of the detached kitchen forms an interesting point of connexion between the domestic Georgian architecture of the{94} Middle Colonies and that of the Southern. In the third place, the majority of the Southern Colonial houses had one or more bedchambers on the ground floor. This feature proved itself of practical convenience and, like the other two just enumerated, was often perpetuated in the Georgian mode. Indeed, the practice has continued in favour to our own day.

In his valuable “Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century”, Philip Bruce gives a graphic pen picture of the ordinary surroundings of the seventeenth-century Virginia planter’s house, a picture that may equally well apply to the generality of houses in the other Southern colonies at the same period. After noting the usual plainness and simplicity of the environment, he goes on to say:—“The yard, as it was called, consisted of open ground, overshadowed here and there by trees. In the immediate vicinity of the house was situated the garden, devoted partly to vegetables and partly to flowers, thyme, marjoram and phlox being as abundant there as in England. Many of the flowers and shrubs had only recently been brought from the mother country. Byrd is discovered in 1684 writing to his brother in England, and thanking him for the gooseberry and currant bushes which had just been received; in the same year he expresses to a second correspondent his appreciation of a gift of{95} seeds and roots, which had been planted and had safely flowered [iris, tulip, crocus and anemone]. The summer houses, arbours and grottoes, which Beverley declares were to be found near the residences, were doubtless generally situated in the garden, and were erected to afford a cool place of retreat in the warmest hours of the summer day; the garden itself was always protected by a paling to keep out the hogs and cattle which were permitted to wander without restraint. In the immediate vicinity of the dwellings of the wealthy landowners, there were, as a rule, grouped the dovecot, stable, barn, henhouse, cabins for the servants, kitchen and milk-house, the object of this in the last instances being to remove from the mansion the operations of cooking, washing and dairying. In many yards, a tall pole with a toy house at the top was erected, in which the bee martin might build its nest, this bird bravely attacking the hawk and crow, and thus serving as a guardian of the poultry.” It would not be difficult to find the counterpart of these conditions in many a place in the South today, that is to say, in places patterned after the Colonial tradition, in which the formal Georgian element has never played an important part nor led to the laying out of great, symmetrically-planned gardens.

Of the more elegant and substantially built{96} brick houses that characterised the end of the period when the truly Colonial style still prevailed, it will sufficiently serve our present purpose if we refer specifically to two, one in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and the other on the Cooper River in South Carolina. The first is Cedar Park, on the shores of the Chesapeake, built about 1692. It consists of one full floor above whose window-heads project the eaves of the steep-pitched roof in which is contained a roomy attic or concealed second floor, if that designation seems more agreeable, lighted by dormer windows. Its exterior aspect coincides in all particulars with the features previously noted as characteristic of the Southern Colonial type of house whether constructed of brick or wood. It is in an excellent state of preservation and the additions and wings that have been appended in no wise obscure the contour and identity of the original type. There is not one feature about the house to suggest Georgian influence or Georgian formality. The internal arrangement, also, agrees with the plan of the type common to other domestic structures erected in the South during the seventeenth century. There is the great central hall into which the house door opens, a hall through which one could readily drive a coach and four if there were occasion and there are adjacent bedchambers on the first floor. The{97} other apartments are grouped about as convenience has dictated their placing at the times when additions were made. At the opposite end of the great hall from the house door a flight of steps descends into an ancient hedged garden, bounded by the waters of the bay.

The other house is Mulberry Castle, built in 1714. While obviously not Georgian in its salient characteristics, Mulberry Castle certainly gives evidence of more ambitious design than was usual at the precise period of its erection. Certain details, it is true, such as the pillared porch with its pediment, sheltering the house door, or the cornice beneath the eaves, show a restrained classic influence which we are accustomed to associate, quite properly, with the architectural manifestations of the reign of Queen Anne or the first years of her Hanoverian successor, but the general contour of the house savours strongly of the one-floor Colonial type with its steeply-pitched roof. In the case of Mulberry Castle the attic or second floor has been so expanded that the roof has assumed approximately the appearance of a modern mansard or perhaps it would be more logical and truthful to say that it has become a hipped gambrel with a steep pitch. The internal plan, also, is sufficiently irregular to warrant its classification with the Colonial type. In certain interior details, such as the{98} mantels and panelling, later additions and alterations have evidently been made which add to its Georgian semblance and emphasise its transitional aspect, but the unalterable features of mass and arrangement recall us to the contemplation of well known seventeenth-century peculiarities.

In the study of the great mass of all this truly Colonial architecture of the South two points strike one forcibly. The first is that it is wholly different from the typical later architecture of Georgian mode and is fully entitled to be classified by itself. The second is that there is much about it, especially in the case of such buildings as Cedar Park and Mulberry Castle, to command our sincere admiration and serve as a valuable model for modern emulation.{99}

CHAPTER VI

THE GEORGIAN MODE IN NEW ENGLAND

IT is nearly always difficult and sometimes an ungracious task to attempt to make sweeping distinctions and establish hard and fast boundary lines. Fortunately for us, we meet with an exception to this well-nigh invariable rule in the case of marking the division between Colonial and Georgian architecture. The one point on which we may seize to emphasise the distinction between these two modes of architectural expression, each exceedingly vital in its own field, is the introduction of the classic element in ornamental detail and the formal or balanced element in plan, an element that implies both external symmetry in the marshalling of mass and internal symmetry in determining arrangement. The Colonial mode of expression as exemplified in the architecture of early New England, New York, the Middle Colonies and the South, whatever local differences it might exhibit, was traditional and, to a certain extent, fortui{100}tous. That is to say, it was informal and represented forms which homely considerations of convenience and the process of gradual cultural growth had dictated from time to time in the course of centuries. It was also mediæval in its affinities and, for the most part, unpretentious because it embodied only the essential features that the great mass of the people, whether in England, Wales, Holland, Sweden, or the German principalities had found requisite and desirable. In short, it was a folk growth and was essentially domestic and simple.

Georgian architecture, on the other hand, echoed the spirit of the Renaissance. Its whole fundamental principle afforded a direct antithesis to the conceptions on which Colonial architecture was based. It breathed the atmosphere of the well-ordered classicism that had spread over the Continent and over England in the train of the New Learning and had its outward concomitant in the stately creations inspired by the masterpieces of Greek and Roman antiquity. However modified by the successive media of its transference from the original springs of inspiration, it still voiced the measured formality and easy restraint inherent in the ancient models. It was essentially the architecture of a well-to-do, polished and, if you will, somewhat artificial state of society that demanded a medium of courtliness and

circumstance of surroundings for its proper existence. The formal note of classicism had come into English architecture in the reign of Henry VIII, had flourished apace under Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren, and blossomed richly in domestic forms during the reigns of William and Mary and Queen Anne. With the Queen Anne developments, however, we have little direct concern in America. It was not until after the first George had been some years on the throne that a marked change became evident in the domestic architecture of the American Colonies.

By the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century there had been a marked increase in the wealth of the country. A reasonable security from the wild alarums of Indian warfare and an orderly and uninterrupted course of civil life left the well-to-do more time to pay to the amenities of existence, and the general growth of material prosperity provided the means to indulge the taste for larger, better and, in a word, more pretentious domestic environment that accorded with the affluence and important social position of the prominent citizens. When the worthies of the early eighteenth century were thus minded and encouraged to build anew for themselves and erect substantial and more commodious homes for their own use and the enrichment of their{102} posterity, nothing was more natural than that they should turn to the mother country for a suitable style and pattern to direct them in their new undertaking. They were always most punctilious to follow the styles of London in their clothing and prided themselves upon the accuracy with which they kept pace with all the changing fashions in apparel on the other side of the sea. In like manner, also, they looked to the current architectural fashions in England for inspiration to guide them in so momentous a matter as the establishment of a dwelling suited to their estate and fit to be the domicile of succeeding generations of their name.

It is quite true that certain peculiarities characteristic of the English architecture of Queen Anne’s time had occasionally made their appearance in New England before this general efflorescence of the earliest phase of the Georgian mode and even considerably afterwards they were not wholly wanting—specific reference will be made to them in a subsequent paragraph—but the prevailing architectural tone from 1720 or 1725 onward was unmistakably Georgian. Certain modifications were made, to be sure, as expediency suggested or necessity demanded, but despite all local adaptations, which will be pointed out as they occur in the examination of sundry examples, the strong{103} family resemblance to the contemporary domestic structures of England could not be overlooked.

The most notable piece of local adaptation, to which not even the uninterested or superficial observer can be blind, was the wholesale grafting of the New England wooden or clapboard tradition, which by this time had become ineradicably established, upon a mode of architectural expression that had been hitherto almost invariably—and always in England—interpreted in brick or stone, as it was elsewhere in the American Colonies. Even when the fabric was virtually built of brick, as in the case of the Royall house at Medford or the Lee house at Marblehead, it was encased in an outer shell of wood, sometimes grooved, bevelled, painted and sanded to present the appearance of cut stone.

Another marked peculiarity of the New England Georgian work, a peculiarity perhaps invited and intensified by this almost universal predilection for a wood casing, at least so far as domestic structures were concerned, is the comparative plainness and absence of architectural embellishment from a great many exteriors in strong contrast with the wealth of elaborate carved and moulded detail to be found within. In a way, they seem to have assimilated or, perhaps, it would be truer and{104} more accurate to say that they reflect the outward reserve and restraint of New England character, a reserve, however, that often melts into cordial geniality under the favouring auspices of a closer acquaintance. Indeed, judging from the exterior of many a house, one is wholly unprepared to find the exquisite and rich panelled and carved adornments that confront the visitor, once the threshold is passed. This shearing off or repression of outward architectural graces makes it exceedingly difficult sometimes to tell at first glance whether a house belongs in the Georgian category or not, especially when there is nothing peculiarly distinctive about the contour of the mass to serve as an indication. In this connexion, too, it must be explicitly stated that not a few of these square, roomy old clapboarded houses, of a general farmhouse type gradually evolved from the earlier and truly Colonial mode, discussed in a previous chapter, assumed occasional Georgian features in the way of a door or the setting of a window whose promise was not borne out by any further evidence of architectural pretension either inside or out.

In studying architectural history and examining the architectural characteristics of a certain given territory, the mind is constantly impelled to seek analogies and points of resemblance and relationship with the contemporary

architectural phenomena observable in other places. By systematically scrutinising and comparing the Georgian work throughout the Colonies, always keeping the historical background in view, one cannot escape the conviction that there were three phases of Georgian manifestation and, furthermore, that whatever minor local differences may have arisen, there was a fairly close chronological correspondence between them and the several phases that marked the evolution in England. Speaking approximately, we may say that the first phase included the houses erected prior to 1740 or 1745; the second phase endured from 1745 till about 1775 or 1780, while the third phase, profoundly influenced by Adam inspiration, lasted until the Greek or Classic Revival completely held the field. In this last phase, be it remembered, must be reckoned some of the best work performed by Charles Bulfinch and Samuel McIntire, work that really marked the transition stage between the Georgian style and the rejuvenated and direct importation of classicism that dominated public taste in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. In order to make this threefold division quite clear and trace the process of evolution through its successive stages, it will be necessary to refer to specific features found in well known examples typical of each phase.{106}

While the earliest Georgian type in Pennsylvania showed a tendency toward extreme simplicity and, at the same time, some heaviness, the first phase of New England Georgian often displayed a close resemblance to the heavy but ornate treatment of Queen Anne’s day. The heaviness and boldness of detail belonged to and were characteristic of the epoch and were to be expected in any event. The restraint and simplicity in Pennsylvania, in the cases of Stenton and Hope Lodge, were probably to be attributed somewhat to Quaker predilection on the part of the owners. In the case of Graeme Park, built for Sir William Keith, the lack of more elaborate detail may have been due to the limitations of the workmen’s skill. For the sake of concrete example, we may point to the severely plain, rectangular doorways with straight transoms of small lights at Stenton, Graeme Park and Hope Lodge, all of them thoroughly representative of the Pennsylvania phase of Georgian at this date. In New England, by way of sharp contrast, we find segmental pediments over doorways and a wealth of elaborate adornment in the shape of pilasters, intricately carved capitals and nicely hand wrought mouldings to dignify them, all designed and executed in a manner strongly reminiscent of what one may see in Queen Anne’s Gate or Grosvenor Road in Westminster. The heaviness of pro{107}portion and boldness of line belonged to the period, as just noted, and were common to both the New England and Pennsylvania forms of expression. In New England, however, there were no Quaker scruples and preferences to impose a restraining influence and, in consequence, traces of Queen Anne elaboration lingered till about 1740. Our first Georgian type in both New England and Pennsylvania shows the straight transom of small square lights.

Excellent examples of the elaboration with Queen Anne affinities to be found in the first Georgian type in New England, may be seen in the door of the Dummer house at Byfield, Massachusetts, built in 1715; the door of the Macphaedris-Warner house in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, finished in 1723; the door of the Royall house at Medford, Massachusetts, finished in its present form in 1737; the door of a house in Hatfield, Massachusetts, built about 1735 or 1740; the door of a house in Hadley, Massachusetts, dating from 1714 and, last of all, the door of the “Parson Williams” house at Deerfield, Massachusetts, built in 1707. This last, of course, is altogether within the Queen Anne period and is thoroughly characteristic of the date but it is desirable to refer to it here for purposes of comparison to show certain points of similarity between it and the others enumerated before it. In every instance save one{108} there is some elaborate form of pediment, segmental or swan’s neck. The mouldings are heavy and bold and the torus or cushion mould frequently occurs as a frieze. There are flanking pilasters with intricate capitals and sometimes imposts bearing up the entablature or else there are vigorously carved panels in place of the pilasters and, above them, richly wrought acanthus modillion brackets supporting the entablature.

In nearly all of this early work we find large, bevel flush panels and the cornice mouldings in panelled rooms are strongly defined and robust in contour. The overmantel panelling is made an important feature but the mantel shelf itself is usually insignificant and, at times, hardly more than rudimentary. In several of the houses just referred to, especially the Dummer house and the Macphaedris-Warner house, we find windows topped with a flattened arch or segmental lintel instead of having a straight top and in some cases there is a slightly countersunk tympanum between the bottom of this flat arch and the top of the wooden window casing. In the Warner house, several of the windows are tall and narrow in proportion to their height, the sashes being only two panes wide. Both these window forms are typically early and disappear entirely at a later date.

to be found round-headed arched doorways with double doors and the arch, either round or flattened, appears in various forms from time to time while the fluted or carved or turned key block, in sundry curious varieties, appears at the centre of arches and also in other places. The key block practically disappears in the second phase of Georgian. The arch also loses its prominence and we find more straight lines. Indeed, during the second or more distinctly Palladian phase of Georgian we scarcely find the arch at all in domestic architecture except in the middle member of the Palladian window or in the lights over house doors. One might go on almost indefinitely tabulating characteristic details that belong essentially to the first Georgian phase but enough has been said to direct attention to the general aspect and to enable an observant person to differentiate it from the others.

Of the second Georgian phase in New England we could not desire a better or more thoroughly typical example than the Lee house in Marblehead, erected in 1768. It is the embodiment of robust and yet agreeably proportioned classicality. The mouldings and cornices have lost the ponderosity of proportion that was observable in many of the houses of earlier type. The placing of ornamental detail is far more carefully considered and governed with{110} a reasonable restraint. Interesting as some of the earlier examples of door treatment were for their very exuberance of fancy and their vigour, they were, nevertheless, a trifle awkward when compared with a well designed and better balanced doorway of a subsequent date. When acanthus leaves, rosettes or other decorative motifs are introduced, it is in a thoroughly well mannered way that leaves nothing to be desired regarding proportion or propriety of placing. The spiral baluster spindles on the staircase of the Lee house are exceptionally fine and worthily represent the style of baluster turning and carving that belongs especially to this middle period.

In the banquet hall the overmantel presents an unusually fine specimen of the wood-carver’s art. The great panel, with dog-ear corners and Flemish scroll supports, is flanked by two pendants of fruit, flowers and leaves carved with all the delicacy and intricate finish of the school of Grinling Gibbon. It is more elaborate, of course, than most of the interior carving found in the second Georgian phase but it is typical in that it is better disciplined than the earlier efforts in the same direction which were often inclined to be crude. The interior cornices are more refined in detail and not so bold in contour as formerly. The egg and dart motif becomes common and other ornamental details are used{111} in an understanding way and in their conventional forms, whereas at an earlier period they were not always historically correct, though often ingenious, nor were they invariably well placed.

The last phase of New England Georgian architecture was distinctly a period of Adam inspiration as it was in other parts of the country, with this difference, however. Elsewhere the third Georgian phase was forsaken all too soon for the newer glamour of the Classic Revival for which, in a manner, it prepared the way. In New England, under the influence of such men as Charles Bulfinch and Samuel McIntire, the delicate proportions and fascinatingly refined details brought into English architecture by the Brothers Adam remained in favour until well into the nineteenth century and exercised a beneficial effect that has not yet lost its force. With excellent taste both Bulfinch and McIntire employed the Adam heritage of urns, pendent husks, anthemia, ovals, spandril fans and all the rest of the Pompeian refinements, and McIntire unhesitatingly lengthened out the proportions of pillars and pilasters until he had removed all suggestion of grossness from his design and imparted a slender grace to all his work. Though he made various innovations, McIntire really prolonged the Adam period in New England and saved domestic{112} architecture, wherever his influence was strong enough, from the deplorable banality into which the more unconsidered forms of the Classic Revival degenerated.

In the felicity of its local adaptations, in the dignity it imparted to the visible side of public life, in its virile development manifested in the churches and other public buildings, the Georgian architecture of New England has given us numerous patterns worthy of emulation in toto or in part and has left an indelible and beneficial impress upon the nation’s artistic consciousness.

CHAPTER VII

GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE IN NEW YORK

STRANGE as it may seem, the territory comprised in the present state of New York is not nearly so rich in Georgian remains as are the other parts of our country contained within the boundaries of the original Colonies. At first it may astonish the student of architectural history to find one of the oldest, wealthiest and most important communities, rich not only in material resources but in history, so devoid of the Georgian landmarks that characterise the adjacent sections of the country. New England is filled with well preserved memorials of the eighteenth century. So likewise are New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the South. How is it, then, that New York is, by comparison, so deficient in this respect?

Several reasons may be assigned in answer to this question. In the first place, the representative Georgian houses in all parts of the Colonies were the homes of that part of the population{114} that enjoyed affluent circumstances; they were not the homes of the plainer folk nor of those in humble circumstances. The majority of well-to-do citizens were to be found in New York City and there, naturally, were most of the Georgian houses. Even those that counted themselves as residents of other parts of the Province, as a rule, had their town houses there. What befel the Georgian country houses we shall shortly learn.

Unfortunately for the student of our architectural history, the relentless tide of mercantile progress in New York City has ruthlessly swept aside nearly all the landmarks of former generations and replaced them with high office buildings, factories, flats or warehouses. Only in the fabric of a few of the older churches or in some of the backwaters left by the eddying currents of urban life have a few scattered remnants of the city of the eighteenth century been preserved for us and even these are rapidly disappearing.

In the second place, a large proportion of the Georgian country houses, outside the territory now covered by the spread of New York City, have suffered so sadly at the hands of nineteenth century “improvers”, whose unintelligent alterations and additions have wrought architectural havoc, that oftentimes nearly all traces of Georgian characteristics have either been seri{115}ously marred or altogether destroyed. Instead of stately Georgian dwellings of august mien and compelling interest, as they once were, they have become mere commonplace and often repulsive agglomerations of masonry like other structures erected during the uninspired Victorian era. This is their plight outwardly and within they have often been subjected to indignities quite as revolting. Such systematic and calculating vandalism on the part of former owners cannot be too severely condemned but condemnation will not undo the mischief, and only the most conscientious process of restoration can in some measure remedy the misdeeds of the “enlightened” nineteenth century spoiler.

Another important reason for the paucity of Georgian domestic structures within the territory of New York is that, in the Hudson region and in the valleys abutting upon it, the majority of houses built during the eighteenth century, houses belonging to those in moderate and comfortable circumstances and also some belonging to people of great wealth and social prominence, remained Dutch in type and in their later architecture borrowed freely from Georgian and Classic Revival sources and adapted such details as they saw fit to new uses with a considerable degree of success. The Dutch colonial tradition was exceptionally strong, virile and intensely characteristic and persisted{116} in spite of the introduction of the Georgian mode. Curiously enough, notwithstanding the potent individuality of the Dutch style, none of its significant peculiarities seems to have been grafted upon the Georgian stock in like manner with the blending processes and modifications that took place in New England or in the South.

Finally, a great many houses built about the beginning of the nineteenth century or at the very end of the eighteenth in the western part of New York showed a strong Classic Revival influence rather than any essentially Georgian affinities.

Several of the finest examples of eighteenth century work, which for lack of further special subdivision of our subject must be included in the Georgian period, belong to the Queen Anne category under the strictest classification. These are Fraunce’s Tavern and the Philipse House in Yonkers. The former was erected during the reign of Queen Anne and was originally the home of the Van Cortlandts and DeLanceys. It was not until the middle part of the eighteenth century that it became a hostelry. So many important events have been closely associated with the venerable building, among them Washington’s affecting leave-taking of his officers and troops, that it was both the privilege and duty of patriotism and a proper national pride to rescue the fabric from neglect and the

base uses to which it had fallen and restore it, so far as possible, to its former appearance and condition after all the vicissitudes which several generations of nineteenth century neglect and lack of appreciation had imposed upon it. In its general proportions, in the lines of its hipped roof and in many interior details, such as the panelling, it is distinctly reminiscent of some of the best English work of Queen Anne’s day although in several respects may also be traced the architectural influences of a later era. The other building, even earlier in date than Fraunce’s Tavern, has not suffered from the same damaging chances of fortune and debasement and far fewer of its details are conjectural. One might say that the carcase and contour of the Philipse Manor House are of Queen Anne character but that beyond that it is conglomerate since it embodies so many peculiarities and additions of later times that it can scarcely be considered truly typical of any one epoch. While much of the fabric is in its original condition, as erected in the latter part of the seventeenth century, the addition of Georgian details and adornments made by the lords of the manor during the eighteenth century may readily be traced, and while they are all interesting and admirable and not in any sense to be regarded as pieces of vandalism, they prevent the structure from presenting an{118} appearance in strict chronological keeping with the date of its erection.

The Schuyler and Van Rensselaer houses have also undergone some unfortunate modifications from time to time which have impaired their typal value to the architectural student so that we are forced to content ourselves, when considering the Georgian houses of New York that are still really characteristic, with the Van Cortlandt house in Van Cortlandt Park and the Jumel Mansion. These are, both of them, interesting and worthy specimens belonging to the middle Georgian phase or the phase that corresponds chronologically with the middle Georgian phase elsewhere, but even here the hand of the “restorer” has recently taken some liberties which one cannot help feeling were unnecessary. The Van Cortlandt house—it is not to be confounded with the Van Cortlandt Manor House which is of much earlier date and is situated at the mouth of the Croton River many miles distant—was erected slightly before the middle of the eighteenth century and is an admirable specimen of the Georgian feeling of that particular day. One of the most striking features of exterior detail is to be found in the procession of grotesque heads or masques carved in high relief on the keystones of the lintels above the windows. They are typical of the decorative trend of the epoch, and although

WAYNESBOROUGH, PAOLI, PA. 1724.

Transition from Colonial to First Georgian phase.

GRAEME PARK, HORSHAM, PA. 1721.

Middle Colonies Georgian, first phase.

their employment is not common in American Georgian architecture, other examples are to be found on the tower of the State House in Philadelphia, the tower of Christ Church, in the same city, and in the trims of some of the small circular windows in the gable ends of the Old State House in Boston. The panelling and interior adornments of the Van Cortlandt house display the disciplined proportion and judicious placing usually observable in other representative houses of the middle of the eighteenth century before the delicacy and decorative profusion of Adam influence had replaced the simpler and more robust conceptions of the school of Gibbs and his contemporaries. The Jumel Mansion with its hipped roof terminating in a balustraded deck, its substantial foursquare dimensions, its heavy quoins and its well proportioned columns is also eminently characteristic of the same school of architectural design.{120}

CHAPTER VIII

PENNSYLVANIA, NEW JERSEY AND DELAWARE GEORGIAN

1720-1805

THE Georgian houses of Pennsylvania, West and South Jersey and Delaware hold the attention of the observer and stimulate his imagination with compelling force as do few other architectural remains in the territories embraced within the boundaries of the original Colonies. Architect and painter, antiquarian and historian, poet and fictionary, the student and the dilettante dabbler—all alike come under the potent spell of these stately old dwellings and all alike find something therein to absorb their interest. When the Georgian period began—we may set its beginning approximately for all the Colonies about 1720—the affairs of the provincial governments had long since passed the experimental stage. In Pennsylvania, the Jerseys and Delaware, a consistent policy of peace with neighbours and careful domestic thrift, along with the fertility of the

HOPE LODGE, WHITEMARSH VALLEY. 1723.

Middle Colonies Georgian, first phase.

soil and the habitual industry of the people, had accumulated a substantial volume of public and private wealth. Ripe conditions readily begot the temptation to build more ambitiously and means were not lacking to gratify the inclination to spend. From the beginning of the Georgian period onward, houses were planned and built with an air of amplitude and assured permanence that bespoke a comfortable consciousness of firmly established and easy affluence which justified the builders in planning broadly both for their own day and for future generations. Town houses and country houses equally indicated the wealth and estate of their owners and reflected the lavish and elegant mode of life more truly than any of the other tangible memorials still remaining from those days.

From the middle of the eighteenth century Philadelphia was the largest and most important city in the American Colonies and one naturally expects, therefore, to find country houses more representative and more numerous in the neighbourhood than elsewhere. For that reason the Georgian houses in the vicinity of Philadelphia will furnish the examples used in the latter part of this chapter to illustrate the variations of type characteristic of Pennsylvania, Delaware and the Jerseys, in other words, the section of the country for which Philadelphia was the natural centre of influence.{122}

To some it may, perhaps, seem strange that houses which oftentimes exhibit so much architectural elegance and elaboration of detail should have been built in a community supposedly dominated by the principle of outward simplicity professed by the Society of Friends. As a matter of fact, however, the Quaker influence, though always a powerful factor in every aspect of Philadelphia life, was offset and oftentimes strongly opposed by the vigorous social and political activity of the “World’s People”, that is to say, the members of the Church of England and the adherents of the Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Lutheran and Baptist Churches, many of whom were the acknowledged leaders of society and managed to impart no small degree of dash and gaiety to the life of their day and generation. It should also be remembered that the Friends were by no means uniform in their interpretation and practice of the social discipline of their organisation. While some of the plain Friends were exceedingly strait in their behaviour and dress and eschewed all manner of frivolity, there were many who found it quite compatible with their consciences to attend brilliant social functions, attired in sumptuous and brave coloured clothes, dance, go to punch drinkings and join heartily in the frequent fox hunts for which the country about Philadelphia has always been famous.{123}

In one particular both Friends and “World’s People” were precisely alike. They all dearly loved good eating and were noted for openhanded hospitality and frequent entertaining. At a later date, when John Adams first came to Philadelphia, he notes in his diary with constant and unabated surprise the “sinful feasts” in which Philadelphians habitually indulged. Indeed, a slight acquaintance with the old diaries is enough to convince one that the men, women and children, too, of eighteenth century Philadelphia often “gormandised to the verge of gluttony.” The following entry in the diary of Ann Warder is so characteristic of what often took place that it is worth quoting at some length. She says:—

“This morning most of the family were busy preparing for a great dinner, two green turtles having been sent to Johnnie—We concluded to dress them both together here and invited the whole family in. We had three tureens of soup, the two shells baked, besides several dishes of stew, with boned turkey, roast ducks, veal and beef. After these were removed the table was filled with two kinds of jellies and various kinds of pudding, pies, and preserves; and then almonds, raisins, nuts, apples and oranges. Twenty-four sat down at the table.” The next entry states that “My husband passed a restless night with gout.”

John Adams, recording his admiration for the town house and furniture of Judge Chew of{124} Cliveden, says of a dinner given by that gentleman:—

“22 Thursday. Dined with Mr. Chew, Chief Justice of the Province, with all the gentlemen from Virginia, Dr. Shippen, Mr. Tilghman, and many others. We were shown into a grand entry and staircase and into an elegant and magnificent chamber until dinner. About 4 O’clock we were called down to dinner. The furniture was all rich. Turtle and every other thing, flummery, jellies, sweetmeats, of 20 sorts, trifles, whipped sillabubs, floating islands, fools, etc., & then a dessert of fruits, raisens, almonds, pears, peaches, wines most excellent & admirable. I drank Madeira at a great rate & found no inconvenience in it.”

Servants in considerable numbers were necessarily maintained in the larger establishments and were made up of slaves, indentured bondsmen or redemptioners, and free servitors who were paid what we should now consider ridiculously small wages for their services.

Balls and routs were by no means infrequent and some of the larger houses boasted sumptuously appointed ball rooms that would do credit to many a large house of present day design. As one example of these we may note the ball room of the Powel house in Third Street which occupied the whole front of the second floor. “In this state apartment, the overmantel was an exquisite piece of the wood carver’s art and represented a hunting scene above which were wrought armorial bearings in high relief. Deli{125}cately finished carving was also to be found in other parts of the house.... The doors of the rooms are of solid mahogany while a rich mahogany wainscotting runs all the way up the staircase.... The front of the house is of unusual breadth and, as might be expected, the rooms are of dimensions far beyond the ordinary.”

The courtly mode of life of the “World’s People” was reflected even in their church going array. One diarist of the middle of the eighteenth century, a stranger who had travelled extensively in the Colonies and was therefore competent to judge, writes after attending Christ Church on a Sunday morning, that he saw there a larger number of well dressed people than he had ever seen together before. He continues:—“The Episcopalians showed most grandeur of dress and costumes—next the Presbyterians—the gentlemen of whom freely indulged in powdered and frizzled hair.” “While Philadelphia was the seat of the Republican Court, the grandeur of Christ Church congregation was increased. The arrival of the worshippers in damasks and brocades, velvet breeches and silk stockings, powdered hair and periwigs, was a sight to see. Some came afoot, others drove in chairs or clattered up in cumbrous, awesome coaches, with two or four horses, while Washington’s equipage, drawn by{126} six cream coloured steeds, added the final touch to the imposing spectacle.” All this cavalcade seemed but an echo of the earlier days when Sir William Keith, of Graeme Park, Horsham, one of the early governours of the Province, was wont to drive to the churchyard gates with his coach and four, with outriders in truly regal fashion, liveried footmen on the post board and his arms blazoned on the panels of the doors. Nor was Sir William alone in this gorgeous display, for there were others who came with similar equipage and even today more than one of these lumbering old coaches, with arm-blazoned doors, may be found mouldering away in the coach houses of old country places.

An inventory of Sir William Keith’s effects and chattels from his plantation of Horsham will give some notion of the luxury that prevailed there:—

“...a silver punch bowl, ladle and strainer, 4 salvers, 3 casters, and 33 spoons, 70 large pewter plates, 14 smaller plates, 6 basins, 6 brass pots with covers; chinaware; 13 different sizes of bowls, 6 complete tea sets, 2 dozen chocolate cups, 20 dishes of various sizes, 4 dozen plates, 6 mugs, 1 dozen fine coffee cups ... delft stone and glass ware: 18 jars, 12 venison pots, 6 white stone tea sets, 12 mugs, 6 dozen plates and 12 fine wine decanters ... 24 Holland sheets, 20 common sheets, 50 tablecloths, 12 dozen napkins, 60 bedsteads, 144 chairs, 32 tables, 3 clocks, {127}15 looking glasses, 10 dozen knives and forks— ... 4 coach horses, 7 saddle horses, 6 working horses, 2 mares, one colt; 4 oxen, 15 cows, 4 bulls, 6 calves, 31 sheep and 20 hogs. A large glass coach, 2 chaises, 2 waggons, 1 wain.”

Besides all these items there was a great quantity of household gear that would take too much space to catalogue. Other inventories of the time were comparable to the one just given.

It is no wonder that people who were able to live in the manner indicated by such lists of personal effects wished to have houses in keeping with their means and looked with favour upon architectural designs of elegant proportions and details. Unlike many of the fine Georgian houses of New England, which exhibited a comparatively plain and simple exterior, the houses of the same date in Pennsylvania and the Middle Colonies displayed a degree of outside elaboration to correspond with the interior embellishments.

The materials used were ordinarily either brick or stone, the latter in many cases being carefully cut and dressed, sometimes for the front only, sometimes for the walls all the way round. This was quite in accord with the tradition of the locality to which allusion has been previously made. While much of the fine woodwork was executed on the spot, a good deal of it was fetched from England by wealthy merchants for their own use in their ships {128}trading between Philadelphia and English ports. The gardens were usually designed in a manner to comport with the houses they surrounded and it is no unusual thing even now to find well kept box borders and hedges that have been the pride of their owners for generations.

Having noted the conditions that made the Georgian style of architecture particularly acceptable to people of substance in the eighteenth century it now remains to examine in detail the features constituting its distinctive local character. The examples of Georgian domestic architecture to be found in and about Philadelphia offer an unsurpassed field for examination and comparison, and a study of their peculiarities shows an interesting evolution through three distinct forms, all of which, nevertheless, belong to the same generic classification. “Georgian,” of course, in the narrowest sense of the word would indicate the mode in vogue only during the reigns of the Georges, but Georgian architecture is not to be limited by any such cramped or arbitrary bounds. It was the style evolved by logical steps from the prevailing type of preceding reigns and was, in short, an expression of Renaissance Classicism, filtered through a medium of English interpretation and adapted to local needs, on lines first marked out by the seventeenth century architects headed by Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher

Wren. The stateliness and formality of Georgian design satisfied the cravings of prosperous Colonial gentry for the affluent pomp and circumstance with which they chose to surround themselves.

The process of evolution in the several Georgian types of the Philadelphia neighbourhood was slow in its working, perhaps, but unmistakable as a comparison of examples will show. Indeed, a glance at the illustrations accompanying this chapter will discover easily distinguished differences of contour and detail corresponding to the evolutionary stages. Fortunately, history comes to aid us, removing all element of conjecture and giving us, instead, a comfortable certainty of the ground we are treading on. It is, of course, impossible to set any exact and unalterable dates for our three Georgian types; our purpose will be best subserved by giving approximate dates between which certain characteristics may be looked for and certain changes expected to take place. We may, roughly speaking, say that the first type flourished between 1720 and 1740, the second type from 1740 to 1770 and the third type from 1770 to 1805. Several parts of these three type divisions were marked by times of great building activity and others again by times of comparative idleness. From 1720 to 1730 there was a great deal going on. Then{130} again, about 1760, we find a regular epidemic of house construction breaking out. Just before, during and after the Revolutionary War, as one would naturally assume, public stress, peril and uncertainty discouraged the prosecution of new plans, although the builders, even then, were not wholly idle. What has just been said applies particularly to country seats, as we have fuller data concerning them than we have about most of the town houses. What were once country seats have been selected, too, because they are, for the most part, intact, while comparatively few of the town houses remain in their original interior state, being, as they chiefly are, in a part of the city now given over to business or to the housing of the foreign population.

Philadelphia affords especially favourable opportunity for a careful examination and study of the several types of Georgian expression. Indeed, for purposes of comparison, the advantages it offers are unsurpassed, owing to the available wealth of varied material of the best sorts, and that, too, in a state of excellent preservation. At times one is really troubled with an embarrassment of riches in this respect and selection becomes difficult. From the early years of the eighteenth century, Philadelphia advanced rapidly in commercial prosperity. Ship building, textile industry and various sorts{131} of manufactures soon brought a bulk of trade second to none among the seaports of the Colonies. Traffic with the East and West Indies, as well as with Europe, poured gold into the coffers of her merchants and brought affluence and culture at an early stage of her career. The chief wealth of her most considerable citizens was almost invariably derived from profitable shipping ventures. By 1750 Penn’s “greene country towne” had become the greatest and most important city in the country, the metropolis of the American colonies. “No other could boast of so many streets, so many houses, so many people, so much renown. No other city was so rich, so extravagant, so fashionable.” Among the features that impressed visitors from distant lands was the fineness of the houses. Men of such social distinction and substance as were many of Philadelphia’s principal citizens would not be meanly housed, and it is not surprising, therefore, that much of the best domestic Georgian architecture in America is to be found in the city or in its immediate neighbourhood, where town houses or country seats mirrored the estate and consequence of their owners. As one instance—and there were many—of a delightful and favourite suburb, now included in Fairmount Park, but then well beyond the city boundaries, we may cite that portion of the Schuylkill, of charm and{132} loveliness unexcelled, where the river winds among rolling highlands on whose summits spacious homes of comely dignity sheltered some of the most distinguished citizens of the metropolis whose society was gayer, more polished and wealthier than anywhere else this side of the Atlantic. Here, too, the country seats bespoke the urbanity and degree of their occupants, and here, today, they still bear mute witness to an elegance long passed.

Notwithstanding all this architectural wealth and its perfect accessibility, Philadelphia has hitherto received but scant justice at the hands of many architectural writers. In an highly esteemed and well known work, properly regarded as a valuable source of information anent architecture in Colonial and Post-Colonial America, the writer of one portion has greatly erred in his estimate and analysis of Philadelphia’s Georgian remains, probably through insufficient acquaintance with that part of his subject. After referring to Philadelphia as architecturally “the embodiment of Philistinism,” he goes on to speak of the buildings of Colonial days and says of them, “The details generally are hard and crude and often inappropriate.” As a representative example of the eighteenth century country place he instances the Bartram house and writes, “The home of the Colonial botanist, John Bartram,{133} at Philadelphia, built in 1731, has two-storey semi-detached columns with huge Ionic scrolls. The German rococo mouldings in the window frames, too, are out of all scale with the humble dwelling.” Bartram’s house ought not to be regarded as in any way representative of Philadelphia domestic architecture, and, least of all, as representative of Georgian buildings. It is in a class all by itself and represents nothing but John Bartram’s home-made efforts in both plan—if it can be said to have any plan—and execution of detail. Whatever its inconsistencies and defects, there is undeniably the charm of beauty and interest about the place, but it has no architectural affinities. The same writer goes on glibly to assure his readers that “In Pennsylvania there were rarely any verandas, porches or gardens,”—a mischievous and misleading statement.

The verandas and porches may take care of themselves for the nonce, but the gardens need a passing word of vindication. In no place were there more notable gardens than in Philadelphia. Leaving Bartram’s garden out of the horticultural tale—the writer might cavil at it as a kind of nursery—there was “The Woodlands” near by, whose gardens, from the middle of the eighteenth century onward were as extensive and famous as any in the land, and exquisitely planned and maintained. There was{134} the Grange, well known from early Colonial days, whose garden, even in its decay, is wonderful and beautiful.... There was Ury House whose box garden has been the pride of its owners and has delighted their guests for more than a hundred and fifty years and is today maintained in all its pristine trimness. There were the gardens at Grumblethorpe, Netherfield, Cedar Grove, the Highlands, Belmont, Fair Hill, to name only a few, while in the heart of the city the Bingham, Powel, Blackwell, Willing, Morris, and Cadwalader houses, along with many others, all had spacious gardens, well planted and tastefully arranged. A writer who could ignore all this material, could scarcely be expected to do justice to the houses. The examples now to be adduced will set the matter in a fairer light.

It ought to be stated that most of the eighteenth century houses in Philadelphia and its neighbourhood were not designed by professional architects, but were planned by their owners and executed by skillful carpenters and builders. Some architectural knowledge was held to be a part of a gentleman’s education, and such men as Andrew Hamilton and John Kearsley, though amateurs, displayed no contemptible ability. The master carpenters of the city, in 1724, composed a guild large and prosperous enough to be patterned after “The{135} Worshipful Company of Carpenters of London,” and, in 1736, became possessed of a choice collection of architectural works devised to his fellow members by James Portius whom William Penn had induced to come to his new city to “design and execute his Proprietary buildings.” In the Ridgway branch of the Philadelphia Library there is also a collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century books, treating of architecture, carpentry, joinery and various subjects connected with building, an examination of which will show that the artisans of the Georgian period were well supplied with guides devised to make the mysteries of their craft plain to the “meanest understanding.”

The two houses chosen to exemplify the first Georgian type are Graeme Park, Horsham, begun in 1721 and finished the following year by Sir William Keith, sometime Lieutenant-Governour of the Province, and Hope Lodge, in the Whitemarsh Valley, built in 1723. Graeme Park was then in the heart of the wilderness and a special road had to be cut, still called the Governour’s Road, to enable His Excellency to reach the Old York Road whenever he chose to trundle to the city in his great begilt and blazoned coach, drawn by four stout horses and attended with all the panoply of state as befitted a person of his rank.

The house suited the manorial style of life{136} maintained by the baronet. To the rear of the main building were detached wings containing quarters for the servants, the kitchens and the various domestic offices, thus leaving the whole of the hall for the use of its occupants. The small buildings disappeared years ago, and the whole place, long unoccupied, is gradually falling into decay, a plight from which, however, it could be easily rescued. The house is over 60 feet long, 25 feet in depth and three storeys in height. The walls are of rich brown field stone, carefully laid and fitted, and are more than 2 feet thick, while over the doors and windows, whose dimensions are thoroughly characteristic of the date of erection, selected stones are laid in flattened arches.

At the north end of the building is a great hall or parlour, 21 feet square, with walls wainscotted and panelled from floor to ceiling, a height of fourteen feet. The fireplace in the parlour is faced with dark marble, brought from abroad, while in the other rooms Dutch tiles were used for the same purpose. On each floor are three rooms. Stairs and banisters are of heavy white oak, and all the other woodwork, of yellow pine, is of unusual beauty, executed in simple and vigorous design. The woodwork is worthy of special attention, for therein we may see embodied some of the chief characteristics of the first Georgian type. The{137} detail of ornamentation is heavy and bold, though by no means ungraceful. Mouldings and cornices are more pronounced in profile than we find them at a later date and stand out with peculiarly insistent relief, while certain forms quite vanished in subsequent types. The close affinity with the moulding details of the distinctively Queen Anne type is strongly noticeable. One feature worth mentioning is the mantel shelf in the parlour. Such shelves were rarely found till a later date.

Hope Lodge, hard by St. Thomas’s Hill, in the Whitemarsh Valley, was built in 1723, as previously stated. It is a great square brick structure of two storeys in height with a hipped roof. As at Stenton (built in 1728), the bricks are laid in Flemish bond and occasional black headers appear. The doors and windows, like those of Graeme Park, Stenton and other contemporary houses, belonging to the first Georgian type, are higher and narrower in proportion than those of a later date. Over the front windows are wedge-shaped lintels, flush with the wall surface, formed of bricks set vertically in the centre and gradually spreading fanwise toward the sides in diagonals convergent to the base. Some of the windows at the sides and back show the flattened arches, to be seen at Graeme Park and Stenton, over slightly countersunk tympana above the frame tops. Over{138} some of the doors are transoms of six or seven square lights in a single row, while over the tall and very narrow side door, just as at Stenton and as over the two narrow rear doors at Graeme Park, there is a transom of eight square lights in two rows of four each. A cornice at the eaves has a deep sweeping cove of plaster on a lath backing, while the heavy moulding courses are of wood. Viewed from the front, the roof is hipped, but from the side it presents a curious combination of hip and gambrel.

Within, a hall of unusual width, far larger than most rooms nowadays, traverses the full depth of the house and opens into spacious chambers on each side. The chief rooms have round arched doorways and narrow double doors, heavily panelled. All the panelling, in fact, is heavy. The single doors of the first floor are surmounted by handsome pediments. There are deep panelled window seats in the ground floor rooms and the windows have exceptionally broad and heavy muntins. The breadth of the fireplaces, faced with dark Scotch marble, and the massiveness of the wainscotting correspond with the other features. Throughout the house all the woodwork, which is said to have been fetched from England, though handsomely wrought, is heavy and most substantial. Midway back in the hall a flattened arch springs from fluted pilasters with capitals of a peculiar{139} design. The stairway, which is remarkably good, and strongly suggests an old English arrangement, ascends laterally from the rear hall. Back of the house a wide, brick-paved porch connects with another building where were the servants’ quarters and kitchens—an arrangement characteristic of the period.

Of the houses representative of the second Georgian type, Whitby Hall, Kingsessing, West Philadelphia, comes first on the list. The western end of Whitby Hall, the part with which we are here concerned, was added in 1754 by Colonel James Coultas, “merchant, ship owner, farmer, mill owner, fox hunter, vestryman, soldier, judge, High Sheriff of Philadelphia from 1755 to 1758, and enthusiastic promoter of all philanthropic and public enterprises.” The gables of the high pitched roof face north and south and are pierced with oval windows to light the cock loft. The walls, not on one side only, as is often the case where a special nicety of finish was sought, but all the way round, are built of carefully squared and dressed native grey stone. On the south front is a flag paved piazza, surmounted by a graceful spindled balustrade, while around the western and northern sides runs a penthouse. The deeply coved cornice beneath the eaves is carried in a continuous horizontal line as a string course across the gable end or rather the gable side walls.{140}

A remarkable feature about Whitby is the arrangement of the roof. It is the exact reverse of what is ordinarily found. The ridge pole, instead of running parallel to the length of the structure, traverses its breadth, thus making the peak higher, the slope longer, and allowing space for a roomy third floor, all of which the view of the south front clearly shows. This arrangement also avoids the need of dormers. “On the north front is a tower-like projection in which the stairway ascends with broad landings. The low doorway in this tower has always been used on occasions of large gatherings at Whitby, whether grave or gay, because it admits to the wide hall running through the western wing, giving admittance to the large rooms on either side. The doorway and windows in the tower are all surrounded by brick trims, which give both variety and distinction against the grey stone walls—a treatment not often met with near Philadelphia. In the top of the pediment with its dentilled cornice, a bull’s eye light, also surrounded with brick trim, is of particular interest because it was a porthole glass from one of Colonel Coultas’s favourite ships, and was set there because of a cherished sentiment. On peak and corners of the tower pediment three urns add a note of state.

CLIVEDEN, GERMANTOWN, PHILADELPHIA. 1761.

Middle Colonies Georgian, second phase.

THE WOODLANDS, SOUTH FRONT. PHILADELPHIA, C. 1770.

Middle Colonies Georgian, third phase.

of the 1754 addition were fetched from England in Colonel Coultas’s ships. The pilasters and cornices in the hall are exceptionally fine. Rosettes are carved in the dog ears of the door trims and the cheeks and soffits of the jambs are set with bevel-flush panels. In the parlour the carving of the overmantel and the panelling are unsurpassed for either execution or design. The central panel above the fireplace is three feet high and nearly six feet wide, and not a joint can be discovered in it. Below it is a band of exquisitely wrought floriated carving in high relief. Although it is possible to find more elaborate woodwork, it is rarely that one meets with a degree of elaboration tempered with such dignified restraint and consummate good taste.”

Another house of the second Georgian type is Mount Pleasant, or Clunie, as it was at first called, in Fairmount Park, built in 1761 by Captain John Macpherson, and in later years the home of Benedict Arnold. Mount Pleasant is a structure of almost baronial aspect, with east and west fronts alike of imposing mien. An high foundation of carefully squared stones is pierced by iron barred basement windows set in stone frames. Above this massive, grisly base, the thick stone walls are coated with yellow-grey roughcast. Heavy quoins of brick at the corners and, at the north and south ends{142} of the building, great quadruple chimneys joined into one at the top by arches, create an air of more than usual solidity. A broad flight of stone steps, their iron balustrades overgrown with a bushy mass of honeysuckle, leads up to a doorway of generous breadth. The pillars at each side of the door and the superimposed pediment, the ornate Palladian window immediately above on the second floor and, above that again, the cornice pediment springing from the eaves, all contribute to set a stamp of courtly distinction upon the pile.

Above the second floor the hipped roof springs, pierced east and west by two graceful dormers and crowned by a well turned balustrade that traverses nearly the whole distance between the chimneys. The fan light over the door has remarkably heavy, fluted mullions and much of the detail throughout the house, though highly wrought, is heavy. The two flanking outbuildings, set 30 or 40 feet distant from the northeast and southeast corners of the house, designed for servants’ quarters and domestic offices, give Mount Pleasant a peculiarly striking appearance. Without them it would be only an unusually handsome Georgian country house, with them it at once takes on the manorial port of one of the old Virginia mansions. The interior woodwork, both upstairs and down, is rich in elaboration of detail, and the door{143} frames, with their heavily moulded pediments, are exceptionally fine.

Cliveden, the third member of the second group, was built in 1761 by Chief Justice Chew. Its solid and heavy masonry is of carefully dressed Germantown stone, and at the peaks of the gables and corners of the roof are great stone urns. Back of the house are two wings, one semi-detached and the other entirely so, used for servants’ quarters and domestic offices. All the features and detail about Cliveden are thoroughly in keeping with the same characteristics as in the other two houses already described.

The windows are broad and fill a great part of the wall space in the façade, and the doorway is an essential feature that has been made the most of by the architect. Both indoors and out the strongly classic feeling has been emphasised in pillar and pediment, pilaster and entablature. Triglyphs, guttæ and every other detail of classic embellishment have been wrought with the nice precision due a worthy subject.

Comparing Whitby, Mount Pleasant and Cliveden with the former houses of the first Georgian type, certain differences at once strike us. The whole aspect is changed by the greater breadth of windows and doors. The houses look wider awake. This change in the size of the windows means, of course, that the rooms{144} within in most cases were lighter and more cheerful than before. Then, too, the Palladian window has appeared. Both Mount Pleasant and Cliveden afford good examples of it, Cliveden’s being placed at the side while at Mount Pleasant it forms an important feature in both the east and west fronts.

At Mount Pleasant and Cliveden we see, too, that the door has become a subject for elaborate treatment, quite in contrast to the extremely simple and unassuming manner of dealing with the same feature in the earlier houses. At Mount Pleasant the severity of the roof line is tempered by a balustrade and the effective management of the chimneys while, at Whitby and Cliveden, urns embellish the peaks and corners. Within we find that acanthus leaves and thistles have begun to grow, the rose has blossomed, other conventional flowers and foliage have budded and egg and dart mouldings have appeared. In other words, carving as a mode of embellishment has attained an established vogue. The moulding profiles have lost some of their trenchant boldness and, though the ornamental detail, both indoors and out, is still vigorous, and at times massive, there is generally visible an air of delicacy and refinement not present before.

The Woodlands, the Highlands, and Upsala exemplify for us the third type of Georgian.{145} William Hamilton built the Woodlands about 1770. Anthony Morris finished the Highlands in 1796, and Norton Johnson began Upsala in 1798 and completed it three years later. Across the north front of the Woodlands, at regular intervals, are six Ionic pilasters above whose tops runs an elaborately ornamented entablature with pateræ and flutings, the whole surmounted by a pediment. Before the house is a low and broad paved terrace filling the space between the semi-circular bays that project from the ends of the building. Between the two middle pilasters, a round arched doorway with a fan light opens into the hall. On the south or river front a flight of steps ascends to a lofty white pillared portico from which a door opens directly into the oval shaped ballroom.

In another respect the whole exterior aspect of the Woodlands is different from the houses of the second type. Window treatment is always a most important item in determining architectural character and it is just here that a significant change is to be noted. The size of the opening is, in some cases, the same, in others it is larger but, more noticeable still, the muntins are far smaller and we lose the bold, trenchant barring of white that emphasises the aspect of windows of the earlier buildings.

The interior is finished with all the delicacy that one might expect judging from the evi{146}dences of Adam influence without. One highly significant feature of interior treatment in houses of the third type is the change made in the arrangement of the mantels. We have seen that in houses of the first type, such as Graeme Park and in houses of the second type, such as Whitby Hall or Mount Pleasant, the overmantel panelling and embellishment were accorded much care and elaboration. The chimney breast often extended a considerable distance into the room and the ornamental superstructure above the fireplace reached all the way to the ceiling.

Although these ornate overmantels reaching to the ceiling had begun to fall into disfavour in England a little after the middle of the eighteenth century, when houses of the second Georgian type were being erected in the Philadelphia neighbourhood, Colonial conservatism disregarded the newer style and clung to the mode approved by time-honoured precedent. The fireplace with its setting has always held a position of such exalted honour as the centre of family life that the following extract from Clouston’s Treatise on Chippendale is particularly illuminating in this connexion. In speaking of the influence exerted by Sir William Chambers on architecture as well as on furniture, he says:—“When he returned to England in 1755, [from the Continent] he was

THE HIGHLANDS, WHITEMARSH VALLEY, PA. 1796.

Middle Colonies Georgian, third phase.

HOMEWOOD, NEAR BALTIMORE.

Southern Georgian, second phase in transition to third.

accompanied by Wilton and Cipriani, afterwards so well known as an artist and decorator. He also brought Italian sculptors to carve the marble mantelpieces he introduced into English houses.

“These were made from his own designs, and the ornament of figures, scrolls, and foliage was free in character. Strange to say, these mantelpieces, designed and made by an architect, were yet the means of taking away this important part of interior decoration from the hands of the architect altogether and causing it to become quite a separate production, made and sold along with the grates.

“In former times it had been an integrant portion of the room, reaching from floor to ceiling, balanced and made part of the wall by having its main lines carried round in panelling and enriched friezes. It was the keynote of decoration and the master builder of the times grew fanciful and exerted his utmost skill upon its carving and quaint imagery, centralising the whole ornament of the room around the household shrine.

“Mantelpieces had gradually come down in height, though still retaining much of their fine proportions and classic design. Many causes had contributed to this, the chief being the disuse of wood panelling and the preference given to hangings of damask, foreign{148} leather and wall-paper. In the reigns of Queen Anne and the Little Dutchman the custom of panelling was partially kept up but the lining was only white painted deal, after the fashion in Holland. At this time the upper part of the chimney piece was still retained, but only reached about half way up the wall. Gibbs, Kent and Ware kept the superstructure as much as they could, but Sir William Chambers dealt it the most crushing blow it had yet received by copying the later French and Italian styles and giving minute detail more consideration than fine proportion. He discarded the upper part altogether and helped to make ‘continued chimney pieces’ things of the past.”

The much used Adam oval found expression even in the shapes of rooms, and besides the oval ballroom at the Woodlands, we frequently find in houses of the third type rounded or elliptical hallways and chambers.

At the Highlands, in the Whitemarsh Valley, we see the front of the house adorned with tall Ionic pilasters rising from base course to cornice, which is itself elaborately wrought. The woodwork inside is excellent, but unfortunately the Adam mantels with their compo decoration have been removed and now grace another house some miles distant. At Upsala, in Germantown, however, we are in better luck, for there{149} the Adam mantels have remained untouched. The illustrations show the rest of the house and make further specific comment unnecessary, save to remark, regarding the windows, that here, as in other houses of this latest type, larger panes of glass than in the two earlier types are met with in not a few instances.

Before proceeding further in the course of comparison, a word ought to be said about the colour of the paint used for interior woodwork of the Georgian houses of all three types. For some reason there seems to be an impression abroad that white was employed to the exclusion of everything else. There was, it is true, a preponderance of white but its use was by no means universal. A close examination of successive layers of paint on some old woodwork reveals various shades of greys, blues, drabs, brownish yellows and other hues beneath one or more coats of white. Grey seems to have been one of the earliest variants from white and, in some places, nothing else was ever used. At Graeme Park, for instance, the first coat of paint was grey, and no other colour ever adorned its panelling and door and window trims. At Stenton, on the other hand, the taste of the occupants dictated a change of colour from time to time and we find a good deal of variety in the successive coats. During the prevalence of the second Georgian type white seems to have{150} found more general favour. With our last type, delicate colours again began to be used.

Contrasting the Woodlands, the Highlands and Upsala with the houses illustrating the second Georgian type, we find still further evidences of architectural evolution. During the prevalence of the second type individual features were singled out for decorative emphasis, but in the days of the third type the entire front of the house or sometimes the whole exterior was regarded from a decorative point of view. At Cliveden the treatment of the doorway and the urns on the roof are the features relied upon for the embellishment of the façade. At Mount Pleasant the doorways of the east and west fronts, the Palladian windows above them, the balustrade on the roof and the treatment of the chimneys supply a fuller and more ornate decorative effect. But when we reach the third period we see that the architect has considered carefully the decorative element in both the proportions and detail of the whole building. It would be hard to believe that the designer of the Woodlands, in drawing his plans, had not carefully aimed at the pleasing ensemble of the masses. The effect of the rounded ends is agreeable and a marked departure from the straightforward rectangularity of most of the houses of preceding types. The lofty portico of the Woodlands south or river front had no{151} precedent in Philadelphia. Vaux Hill or Fatland, erected about the same time, and Loudoun, a few years later, had the same motif, and even John Bartram, in his last addition to his house, adopted the same treatment. Neither was there a precedent for the method of dealing with the north front, so we see that the Woodlands struck two new notes in local architecture.

At the Woodlands and the Highlands we find pilasters carried the full height of the walls—a new feature. The fenestration is arranged with more regard to outward appearance and not solely from a utilitarian point of view. We find that the high panelled overmantels, which constituted an important architectural feature, had given place to the low and elaborately adorned mantel that ought to be regarded rather as a piece of furniture than as an architectural entity. Fireplaces had grown smaller, fan lights above doors had become common and were enriched with beautiful and sometimes intricate metal tracery. The comparison between these later fan lights with their airy grace, and the earlier fan lights of Mount Pleasant, with their ponderous mouldings, is instructive. In the detail of all ornament heaviness has vanished and the polished elegance of Adam influence has taken its place. Everywhere we find pateræ, drops and swags, fluting and quill{152}ing, oval fans and dainty urns and vases with delicate leaf and flower treatment.

Regarding the texture of stone walls, we ought also to note that in the second and third types we find neatly squared and dressed stones used to a considerable extent. At Cliveden, the Highlands and Upsala the fronts alone are of cut stone while at Whitby Hall the walls on all sides are treated with the same formal precision.

Briefly summing up, then, it is clear that three distinct types exist. The first has Queen Anne affinities but is Georgian in time and much of its feeling. Ornamental detail is simple and bold and at times a trifle heavy. The profiles of mouldings are strong and in high relief. Simplicity and strength, combined with grace, give the prevailing note in every instance. The second type is lighter and more ornate, but with characteristic conservatism and abhorrence of the new fangled whims of Sir William Chambers and the Brothers Adam, Philadelphia adhered to the modes in vogue in England from twenty to twenty-five years before and kept Ware in countenance who, in 1750, was still crowning his buildings with heavy Queen Anne urns.

Notwithstanding the staunch adherence to conservative architectural principles, however, a new feeling is everywhere perceptible. Though{153} the overmantel decorations still extended all the way to the ceiling, the character of the ornamentation employed was vastly more elaborate and graceful than anything to be found in buildings of the first type. If the profiles of mouldings were not so bold and insistent they were, nevertheless, quite as graceful. With the advent of floriated and foliated motifs in the carving, we naturally find a closer care to detail of all kinds. At the same time there is to be seen a more punctilious heed to all the little niceties and characteristic distinctions between the classic orders.

By the time our third Georgian type appears, Adam influence has become paramount and put to flight all mid-Georgian ponderosity. Even in the case of manifestly “carpenter built” houses of the period, where, quite unlike the three excellent examples here chosen to represent their particular classes, no especial architectural merit is to be looked for, we find no heaviness of line, and the character of ornamentation employed is distinctly either a copy or an echo of Adam motifs and, in not a few cases, has caught much of their spirit.

It must be understood that the houses used for illustration have been chosen because they represent their many contemporaries in the same neighbourhood, all of which display the same characteristics according to the date at which{154} they were built. The foregoing analysis does not pretend to be complete—it would take far more space to trace all the subtleties of the subject—but aims only to direct attention to certain facts that may conduce to our clearer understanding of American Georgian and its resources in supplying our present needs.

In considering the variations between the Georgian types of the Philadelphia neighbourhood it must be borne in mind that they ought not to be judged too straitly by contemporary work in England. Such comparison would only be misleading and unfair for several reasons. In the first place, at the beginning of the Georgian period, local conditions forbade the lavish display of carved ornamentation that marked so many houses of the same date in England. At that time there were few craftsmen in the Colonies capable of executing the elaborate carving in vogue on the other side of the Atlantic. The builders of mansions, therefore, must perforce content themselves by a close adherence to line and proportion and do without the highly wrought carved embellishment. Then, too, besides this difficulty, many of the builders of these early houses belonged to the Society of Friends, most of whom from their religious principles were averse to a wealth of ornament. In the second place, judging by contemporary English standards would be mis{155}leading because at the time the second Philadelphia Georgian type began to flourish, and the means and inclination for elaborate ornament were both present, Colonial conservatism had become an important factor in the dictation of style, and however closely Philadelphians might copy the current modes of London in matters of dress, in their manners and architecture they chose to cling to well established precedent and had always remained thenceforward from twenty to thirty years back of their British cousins in the method of their architectural expression. Hence, for instance, the overmantels reaching to the ceiling built as late as 1765. In all its phases, however, Philadelphia Georgian, whatever minor differences there might have been, was true to the traditions of the great English architects, and because of its purity of style is worthy of close study today for the vital inspiration it can supply.{156}

CHAPTER IX

THE GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE OF THE SOUTH

IF ever the architecture of a region or period truly reflected the personality and manner of life of the people, it was surely the Georgian architecture of the South in the eighteenth century. The planters of that region were affluent and highly cultured and so eminently gifted with the social instinct that the manor houses and mansions could not fail to indicate by their material aspect the lavish hospitality and splendid estate that it was the wont of their owners to maintain. The great Georgian houses, surrounded by broad plantations, that dotted the whole land, could have been erected only in a society possessed of abundant wealth. And the South was opulent. Blessed by nature, as the country was, with a genial climate and fruitful soil, and favoured by exceptional economic conditions, great fortunes had accumulated which permitted the existence of a large leisure class and encouraged a profound regard for all the comforts and refine{157}ments of physical environment. In New England we have seen that the architectural riches of the Georgian style were chiefly reserved for interior embellishment, while the majority of exteriors were allowed to go comparatively unadorned, with a few notable exceptions. In the South, on the other hand, the exuberance of nature and the seductive charm of the climate invited the builder of a house to expand his plans and take full advantage of impressive physical settings. Consequently we have the amplitude of aspect so typical of the Southern mansion, an amplitude that is also in some measure due to the extensive domestic entourage and made possible by the abundant means of the occupants.

That the wealthy Southern planters should require surroundings of domestic splendour that would have been impossible in most other parts of the Colonies, either from lack of means or lack of inclination to indulge in so lavish an expenditure, surroundings that had much in common with the conditions obtaining on many of the baronial estates in England, we may understand when we consider, by way of example, the history of the Byrd family of Westover in Virginia. Colonel William Byrd, the first of the family in America, came to Virginia in 1674. He built the first house at Westover in 1690 and at his death left, as part of his estate, a domain{158} of 26,231 acres. His son, Colonel William Byrd 2nd, succeeding to this great wealth and further increasing his fortune by his second marriage, began the erection of the present house about 1727 and completed it some time prior to 1735. When this second William Byrd, “William the Great of Westover, died in 1744, the acres of the noble estate numbered 179,440, about 281 square miles, a veritable principality indeed.” It has been said of him that “his path through life was a path of roses. He had wealth, culture, the best private library in America, social consideration, and hosts of friends; and when he went to sleep under the monument in the garden at Westover, he left behind him not only the reputation of a good citizen, but that of the great Virginia wit and author of the century.” His epitaph, after calling attention to the educational advantages he had enjoyed and his close friendships with many of the greatest men of his day in England, goes on to relate that “he was called to the bar in the Middle Temple, studied for some time in the Low Countries, visited the Court of France, and was chosen Fellow of the Royal Society. Thus eminently fitted for the service and ornament of his country, he was made Receiver general of his Majesty’s revenues here, was thrice appointed publick agent to the Court and ministry of England, and being thirty-seven years a member, at last{159} became President of the Council of this Colony. To all this were added a great elegancy and taste of life, the well bred gentleman and polite companion.”

It is scarcely to be wondered at that a man so endowed by nature, education and the possession of vast wealth should build in a manner suited to his condition. In fact it would have been strange if he had not. But William Byrd was not alone in his enjoyment of unusual advantages. Although the incidents of his history were not duplicated, his case was nearly paralleled by other men of his century in the South. Almost without exception these favoured children of good breeding, to which was joined the convenience of ample affluence, manifested an elegant taste and an active personal interest in the building of their homes and it is to this interest on their part that we of to-day are indebted for much of what is best in the execution of American Georgian work. Not a few of the Southern planters were themselves competent architects but, as representatives of their class in this particular, it will be sufficient to mention two of them, persons no less illustrious than George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Washington always manifested a deep interest in architecture, is believed to have designed Pohick Church, had some hand in the plans of Christ Church, Alexandria, supervised{160} building on his own estates, exercised a directing influence over the destinies of the public buildings planned or begun during his lifetime in the Federal City and left an example of his capacity as a decorative designer in the plastic ornaments of the famous mantel at Kenmore. How deeply Jefferson was concerned with architectural matters, both public and private, and how he maintained a lifelong interest in everything pertaining thereto, an interest that began in early youth and became stronger with advancing years, we well know. Pressure of onerous public duties never abated his desire for architectural betterment throughout the country nor diverted him from using all possible efforts to secure the realisation of ideals. “Architecture,” he once wrote, “is worth great attention—the most important of the arts, since it shows so much.” At another time he penned the following:—“To give buildings symmetry and taste would not increase their cost, it would only change the arrangement of the materials, form and combination of members. This would cost less than the burden of ornament with which these public buildings are often charged. But the very first principles of the art are unknown.” These views might find some application not inappropriate at the present day. Jefferson did not confine his architectural interests to matters theoretical nor to designing. He was

often to be found in the actual rôle of workman. When he began the operations at Monticello, about 1770, that left it in its present form, he not only planned and supervised the work, “but was personally responsible for such practical phases as heating, ventilation, plumbing and drainage. He planned the farm buildings and the laying out of all the roads and bridle paths about the place. In addition, he trained all his own workmen and even made experts of several of his slaves, whom he later set free to earn their living at the trades he had taught them.”

In the South, as in New England and the Middle Colonies, we may without much difficulty discern three phases of the Georgian modes of expression, all of them with characteristics more or less clearly defined. In view of the extended analysis of those phases made in the chapter devoted to the Georgian period in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, it will be unnecessary to dwell at length upon the corresponding characteristics to be found in the domestic architecture of the South, a course that would merely involve bootless repetition. As occasion arises, therefore, in considering typical examples of Southern building, attention will be directed chiefly to points of divergence and local peculiarities and modifications. The practices of building kitchens and offices in{162} structures apart from the body of the house; of planning bedchambers on the ground floor and of making the hall of ample enough proportions to be used as a living-room, when so desired, have already been adverted to in the chapter on the Southern Colonial style. All three practices were developed during the seventeenth century and by practical usage proved their excellence so that they were retained when a new and more elegant architectural mode supplanted the fashion of an earlier day.

In several instances, such as Tuckahoe, erected about 1707, Belvoir in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, built about the same date, and Gunston Hall, finished after the middle of the eighteenth century, we may trace a transitional form, retained from seventeenth century precedents. The general contour of these houses exhibits strong affinities with the truly Southern Colonial type of dwelling but in the manner of execution and the employment of ornamental detail we are on the Georgian side of the boundary.

For the first Georgian phase, we cannot do better than study such houses as Carter’s Grove on the James River, built about 1737, and Westover, finished several years prior to that date. In both places we find many of the characteristics that we should be disposed to look for after a careful perusal of the notes on{163} the earliest type of Georgian houses given in Chapter VIII. In general contour and the treatment of the roof, Carter’s Grove is not unlike Stenton. In addition, however, to the particulars alluded to in Chapter VIII, we find at Carter’s Grove the exceptionally broad hallway peculiar to the South, twenty-eight feet wide. It is to be noted also that there and at other places, too, in the South, are to be seen richly wrought baluster spindles, spiral turned or carved, just as in some of the finer houses in New England. In this connexion it is important to remember that at Tuckahoe, in addition to the spiral turned balusters, there is some unusually fine carving on the staircase executed in a more expansive and flowing style than the carving of the middle or end of the century. The rich pilasters and pediment of the doorway at Westover also show kinship to an earlier tradition just as do some of the adornments of contemporary doorways in New England.

Tulip Hill at West River, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, offers an excellent example of the Southern Georgian house erected about the middle of the eighteenth century. In point of detail it has the usual earmarks of the date of its erection which it is unnecessary to revert to. Several other points, however, are to be noted. Decorative panels in relief at each side of the circular window in the front gable and a decora{164}tive device in the pediment of the portico are touches of embellishment of a kind not frequently found in the North and they have their counterpart in many similar ornaments to be found on other Southern houses built about this period. It is to be noted, too, that the portico or porch is beginning to have a recognised architectural place in the South. A few years later it assumed more imposing proportions in the shape of the great white pillars, two storeys in height, supporting a massive pediment carried forward as an integral part of the roof. While speaking of porches it must not be forgotten that credit is due the South Carolina type of Georgian house for the double-decked or two storey porch so frequently met with in that state.

The necessity or desirability of developing the porch feature may have hastened the welcome of the Classic Revival in the South because of the opportunity it gave of constructing that architectural adjunct in an imposing and thoroughly well-mannered and congruous method. At all events, the Classic Revival seems to have met with earlier favour in the South than elsewhere and its vogue was practically synchronous with the third or Adam type of Georgian expression. As a case in point, there is Monticello but it should be observed that Jefferson’s conception of the Classic Revival

mode, if Monticello is to be regarded as a specimen of Classic Revival work, had a dignity, honesty and sincerity about it that was afterwards often lost sight of when employed by other men.

One cannot quit the task of reviewing the Georgian architecture of the South without feeling deeply impressed with the great dignity and breadth manifested in all its forms. It was a sincere expression of the architectural needs of an important social condition and while it was founded on time-honoured precedent, at the same time its application was thoroughly American and full of vitality.{166}

CHAPTER X

THE POST-COLONIAL PERIOD AND THE CLASSIC REVIVAL

AFTER the close of the Revolutionary War came a period of comparatively rapid evolution in architecture. This phase of post-Colonial evolution reached its culminating point in the signal successes and almost ludicrous failures of the Greek or Classic Revival, successes and failures that occurred simultaneously, strange as it may seem, though caused by the same influences, and are still to be seen in the older cities of our land, oftentimes standing in close proximity.

Historically considered, this process of swift evolution is attributable to several causes of which the chief were the rapidly increasing affluence and prosperity of the new republic and the general approval with which French influences and fashions were regarded. In the era of vigorous mercantile and industrial reaction after the stress and strain of a long and exhausting war, it was but natural that not only merchants, manufacturers and other men of sub{167}stance, but also whole communities as well, should seek to express in structures domestic and public the proper pride and confidence of their new-found political importance and freedom. New social and civic demands were to be met and architecture was quick to reflect the spirit of growth and progress. In a measure, too, there were the ravages of shot, shell and fire and the decay incident to a long financial depression to be repaired. With an access of material prosperity came also an access of economic elegancies and men of means and position demanded that their domestic surroundings should measure up to new standards of luxury. When they found themselves in circumstances to build anew, as they not infrequently did, their houses, while usually following much the old arrangement of plan and number of rooms, displayed new influences of ornamental detail and the alteration or addition of features in conformity to the new mode. Furthermore—and this was by no means the least factor affecting the new conditions—in the general social overturn, wrought by the event of war, the Loyalists, who represented a large portion of the wealth and refinement of the Colonial period, had been ruined, dispossessed of their estates, driven from the country or had withdrawn to England or some of the other Colonies and their places had oftentimes been{168} taken by persons who had hitherto held a humbler state of life. These men of new wealth and standing, who owed their advancement to their warm espousal of the American cause, built themselves houses to accord with their recently acquired rank and sought by the fineness of their dwellings, as is the wont of parvenus, to make up for lack of birth and breeding. It was but natural, too, in all these cases just mentioned, that popular taste should incline toward an architectural vogue that was French in its immediate inspiration rather than toward any style whose precedents were to be found in the Mother Country whose recent political domination was still held in bitter remembrance.

Architecturally considered, this evolution that culminated in the full fruition of the Classic Revival shows three influences that are to be reckoned in any attempt at its analysis. In the first place, there was the Adam phase of the Georgian mode which had begun to find pronounced expression in the American Colonies from about 1770 onward. The greater refinements of this type, as analysed in preceding chapters, were strongly in evidence up to 1800 or shortly afterward and their Adam provenance was clearly distinguishable. In the second place, there were the carpenter-designed and built houses of plainly defined Georgian ancestry. During the eighteenth century, the public{169} mind had become so thoroughly imbued with the Georgian spirit of architectural classicism, tempered and modified, to be sure, by conveyance through a British medium, but classicism all the same, that even the most unpretentious little houses gave evidence of the prevailing influence in one form or another. It might be a house door with pilasters and pediment or it might be a mantel. The pilasters flanking the doorway might have lost all traces of near kinship to any of the classic orders, so far as their details were concerned, and so might the pediment also, but the mere fact that they were there showed plainly the source whence they were derived. These carpenter-designed-and-built houses of the end of the eighteenth century may be regarded as a residuum of the architectural spirit of the epoch. Last of all, there was the pure classic influence, the circumstances of whose transplanting to America we shall examine in detail.

Both the architecture of the Georgian period and the architecture of the Classic Revival were essentially classic in spirit but there was a vast difference between their several manifestations of classicality and it is most important that we should grasp that fundamental difference. The classicism of Georgian architecture was free in its spirit and interpretation and was elastic in its adaptability to the requirements of domes{170}tic or public edifices. The architects who applied it were blessed with common sense and while they incorporated a distinct element of formal order in their work, they were not trammelled by so narrow a conventionalism that they feared to make such adaptations as their own original genius prompted, provided they were consistent with the source of general inspiration. In other words, the classicism of Georgian architecture was classicism humanised and rationalised by transmission through the channels of the Renaissance or the labours of such discriminating students of antiquity as the Brothers Adam. It was elastic and suited alike to public edifices and abodes of both high and low degree. It was also direct and simple and had the dignity and vitality that art unaffected and ingenuous always shows. For this very reason it was so convincing and so long retained its hold upon popular taste.

The classicism of the Classic Revival, on the other hand, was essentially and unalterably rigid in its adherence to the forms of antiquity and the archæological manner of applying those forms. It was not an adaptation, it was, in very truth, a revival of the modes of two thousand years ago, a gigantic exhibition of architectural archæology. The strength of Georgian architecture lay in the freedom and elasticity of its classicism and its ready flexi{171}bility to adaptation. The weakness of the architecture of the Classic Revival was in its rigidity and inflexible resistance to efforts to adapt it to varied modern requirements. In the South, it is true, it showed a few traces of freer interpretation, perhaps because in some cases the artisans were incapable of rendering the accurate reproductions executed by better skilled Northern mechanics but, even with this slight allowance, the stamp of rigidity remained indelible.

Despite a degree of stiffness and pedantry, however, the architecture of the Classic Revival, in its more felicitous manifestations, displayed not a little real excellence, stateliness and grace. Many truly important structures were built during the period of classic ascendancy and to-day, after years of vicissitude in popular taste, their charm of grace and quiet dignity is still fresh and enduring and constantly reminds us of the courtliness of the generation that wisely planned and achieved them. In its less regulated forms, on the contrary, probably due to the ambitious contractor rather than to even an inferior architect, the architecture of the Classic Revival was often unsuitable in its application, uncomfortable and sometimes ridiculous. In the fore part of the nineteenth century, classicism became an obsession among builders whose sole aim seems to have been to{172} transform each city in the land into a second Athens or Rome. Everywhere could be seen buildings that, if not planned on classic lines in their interior divisions or their side elevations, were at least adorned with Greek and Roman orders. This church or bank was embellished with a portico of Corinthian columns, that one across the street had a corresponding portico of severest Doric character while another, perhaps, around the corner rejoiced in graceful Ionic pillars and, doubtless, just beyond was a house whose owner took a proper pride in the impeccable purity of his Tuscan piazza. Sometimes all the orders got inextricably jumbled together on the same edifice and overrun with a veritable forest of acanthus leaves and anthemia, and yet the effect was not wholly bad, however much it might distress a purist, because the builders, in the exuberance and freshness of their vigour, could not help producing some vitality, although they were trying to be scrupulously accurate while expressing themselves in a medium they did not fully understand. These unseemly mix-ups of architectural botany or botanical architecture, whichever one prefers to call it, were not of common occurrence it is pleasant to record. They were the exception, and served to lend point to the really excellent and creditable things that were achieved at a time when a decorous formality{173} went hand in hand with cultivated taste and not a little vigour of thought.

The mutation of architectural style from the Georgian mode to that of the Classic Revival was virtually synchronous and correspondent with the sway of the Empire styles in furniture, the decorative arts and personal attire. The Classic Revival style is altogether post-Colonial in date and its exotic impetus and inspiration, derived from the France of the First Napoleon and grafted upon a Georgian stock, cannot be regarded as essentially a part of the logical process of architectural evolution which had hitherto progressed by gradual and, for the most part, well nigh imperceptible steps from one traditional form to another.

The vigorous classicism of the Georgian period, thanks to its filtration through Renaissance channels, was elastic and appropriate in its application. Even the elegancies and refinements of the Adam school of Georgian expression, though drawn direct from the store of classic antiquity, were judiciously adapted to current needs by masters of the art of discrimination. But the type of classicism exemplified in the Classic Revival was deliberately transplanted bodily and de novo from the ancient world by Napoleonic fiat, in like manner with the designs for furniture and the patterns to dominate the products of the other decorative{174} arts. The transplanters sometimes showed a predilection for heavy Roman forms rather than for the delicacy of Greek refinements, and the transplanting was occasionally done in a clumsy way with little apparent regard for fitness or the principles of sane adaptation. With all the wealth of antiquity to draw from, it would have been strange indeed if the fautors of revived classicism had not produced much that was both exceedingly worthy and beautiful. As pointed out before, whatever defect or weakness characterised the expression of the Classic Revival style, viewed in the aggregate, is not to be attributed to the forms employed but to the manner in which those forms were sometimes misapplied and forced into uses or combinations to which they were ill suited.

This neo-classic inspiration of Napoleonic French contrivance found favour in America, thanks to the strong Francophile sentiment prevailing in the latter part of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth, which even dictated the colour and design of ladies’ gowns and their method of coiffure. In the able hands of such men as Charles Bulfinch, the neo-classic manifestation well merited all the popular approval accorded it. It is scarcely fair, however, to put Bulfinch forth, at least in his earlier period, as a typical exponent of Classic Revival architecture. He was, it is{175} true, imbued with the new influences but he had too much creative instinct and too much sense of fitness ever to descend to mere copying or wholesale borrowing. Besides, he was, one might say, by date of birth and training, a product of the Adam age and, by native bias, in full sympathy with its delicate and refined methods of expression. Indeed, we may properly regard Bulfinch as marking the transition from the Adam or last phase of Georgian architecture to the modes of the Classic Revival for he combined in his work many of the best features of both. He knew how and when to employ Adam delicacy and refinement of detail or Adam exuberance of embellishment without falling into a surfeit of finicky and saccharine over-elaboration; he knew also when and where to use classic boldness and vigour and even classic austerity without sinking from classic grace into any of the heavy Roman forms of brutal vulgarity and military bombast that sometimes marred the work of later exponents of Classic Revival inspiration.

Bulfinch was possessed of consummate good taste, a fine sense of proportion and a genius for judicious adaptation. He was educated while the Adam influence was at its height, had broadened his field by observation and foreign travel and began to practise just before the first fresh impetus of direct classicism was launched. It{176} was, therefore, quite natural that, with his trained perception and happy faculty of selection and combination, he should have picked out the best in each school, and peculiarly appropriate that his work should exemplify the transitional stage by which one was merged into the other for, in the evolutionary process, already alluded to, the purest form of neo-classic design found its analogue in the earlier Adam practice.

Along with Bulfinch, as a representative of the transition stage, must be classed Samuel McIntire, of Salem, whose work both public and domestic has always been justly esteemed. He, too, retained a large share of Adam elegance and wealth of detail which he successfully incorporated with motifs and methods of treatment inspired by the more recent impetus of classicism. To McIntire’s influence may be attributed much of the slender delicacy of proportion and the attenuation of pillars and pilasters—this attenuation had a counterpart in some of the contemporary New York Dutch design—so noticeable in a great deal of New England architecture of this period. He eliminated all grossness and pared down the dimensions of columns while he drew out their length to a degree that had no precedent in ancient practice and would have shocked the French purists under whose auspices the new movement

Photograph by C. V. Buck, from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON.

Classic Revival.

had been inaugurated. Despite these departures from architectural and archæological orthodoxy, however, McIntire’s work is replete with exquisite charm and is justified by applying to it the touchstone of good taste.

Latrobe, McComb, in his later work, L’Enfant, Hoban, Dr. Thornton, Thomas Jefferson, Strickland and other noted architects of the last years of the eighteenth century and the fore part of the nineteenth followed classic precedent somewhat more closely in the practice of their profession and may, therefore, be considered the most faithful and typical exponents of Classic Revival principles. Much of their work is noble in conception and peculiarly suited to the monumental character of the buildings they designed.

The influence of the Classic Revival was to be noted earliest in public edifices such as the Boston State House on Beacon Hill, the New Theatre or the Bank of the United States in Philadelphia or, most of all, in the Capitol at Washington in the design, erection and restoration or rebuilding of which so many of the most eminent architects of the day had a share. There the classic orders were reproduced with faithful accuracy in combinations that displayed their chaste beauty and noble proportions in the most dignified and impressive manner. Capitals of impeccable exactitude and fidelity{178} to their prototypes, pediments and entablatures of due proportion, triglyphs, mutules, modillion brackets, acanthus leaves, egg and dart mouldings, dentils, anthemia and all the other structural and ornamental features characteristic of either Greek or Roman architecture became familiar objects to the public gaze and exercised their subtle but powerful agency in the education of a disciplined and elegant sense of architectural propriety.

The architecture of the Classic Revival was undoubtedly at its best in public edifices or in large and imposing mansions which afforded sufficient opportunity to display its ample characteristics. Such structures, moreover, did not require any great stretch of ingenuity in making adaptations. While columns might have to be lengthened out or features foreign to classic conception added, the task of accommodation rarely offered serious difficulties to be overcome. In the hands of such men as Bulfinch or McIntire, at the outset, or of Latrobe, Hoban, Strickland and their various able contemporaries, the Classic Revival gave us many truly admirable structures instinct with dignity and grace. In the hands of the too confident and insufficiently educated mechanic who ventured to try his hand at designing, it was a very different thing indeed and its remaining examples of this inferior type can scarcely be viewed with pleasure.{179}

If one may trace an analogy between the Adam mode and the best manifestations of the Classic Revival with its stately structures full of breadth, dignity and repose, so may one also trace with ease an analogy between the carpenter-designed-and-built houses of the end of the Georgian period and much of the insignificant domestic work of the Classic Revival. In other words, the elegant Adam creations bore virtually the same relation to the contemporary carpenter-designed houses as did the larger and serenely chaste compositions of the Classic Revival to the small and inexpensive attempts on the part of ambitious builders to apply the same style to little, cramped structures for which it was manifestly unfit. There was this difference, however. The carpenter-architects of the end of the Georgian period were far superior in discrimination and taste to their successors, who tried to make up for their lack of knowledge by ill-judged essays that succeeded only in being ridiculous. Their tiny, temple-fronted houses were not domestic and were as unreal and architecturally unsatisfying as stage settings viewed from the rear. They were bombastic and pompous—one feels almost like saying “pompious”—and displayed no real merit or refinement to back up their preposterous pretensions to a dignity and state not at all in keeping with their true purpose.{180} The so-called “carpenters’ classic” mode, which was really a chastened and restrained form of the debased Classic Revival style, was infinitely preferable because it was simple and did not pretend to be something it was not.

Among the thoroughly striking and important buildings erected in this era that ought to be mentioned, besides those already referred to, are the Sub-Treasury in New York, Girard College in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Custom House, and the Cathedral in Baltimore. These are typical buildings and, for that reason, worthy of being kept in mind, but the list of creditable examples might be added to almost indefinitely.

As a direct result of the Classic Revival influence there was a certain amount of modest and agreeable adaptation which created a pleasant domestic episode in the annals of American architecture. Examples of this modified classic school are unpretentious and, for the reason that they mark no ambitious flights, commendable in their own field. For want of a better name we have been accustomed to call this architectural species “Carpenters’ Classic.” Whatever its shortcomings—and not much can be expected of it for it makes no pretence—it was infinitely better than much that followed it.

In contemplating the story of the Classic Revival one can find much to be thankful for.

Let its failures be what they may, it was in large measure due to the work done during the period of its ascendancy that we owe a certain tradition and precedent in public work that has wrought for good and is still working in our own day.{182}

CHAPTER XI

PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF THE COLONIAL AND POST-COLONIAL PERIODS

THE architecture of Colonial America, exclusive of the churches, was almost altogether domestic in its scope and yielded but comparatively few examples of impressive public edifices in proportion to the area of the territory embraced. There were, however, enough secular public buildings scattered through the length and breadth of the Colonies to make a striking representation when grouped together and what the aggregate collection of such structures lacked in point of numbers was amply made up in point of individual excellence or historic interest, or both, on the part of the several units. In the space of one chapter it would be manifestly impossible to discuss fully all the secular public buildings of the Colonies but enough of them can be considered to convey a comprehensive idea of the civic architectural setting of Colonial days.

If the houses and churches of the Colonial{183} period in America reflect the social and religious life of our forefathers, no less truly do the public buildings reflect the civic and political side of their existence. To be sure, the public buildings are not without their interest and power to shed light on the social and economic conditions, but it is especially in their civic and political capacity that their appeal to us is strongest. Then, too, we may truly say that they form much of the setting for the dramatic side of our history and, therefore, the picturesque association is potent. With the State House in Philadelphia (Independence Hall, as it has been called in later years), we cannot fail to associate the Declaration of Independence and the framing of our national constitution, eleven years afterward. Neither can we fail to associate with Faneuil Hall or the Old State House in Boston the stirring events that preceded the outbreak of the War for Independence.

Of all the public buildings in the Colonies, the State House in Philadelphia, as the birthplace of our national existence, claims the place of first attention and highest honour in the esteem of all loyal Americans. Architecturally speaking, all the public buildings chosen for consideration in this chapter represent more or less faithfully the local characteristics of the places in which they were built. We naturally expect, therefore, to find in the State House{184} at Philadelphia an example of the Middle Colonies Georgian at its best, nor are we disappointed. From an architectural point of view, the State House was a notable and imposing structure when it was erected in 1733 and, from the same point of view, it would be equally notable and imposing had it been built only yesterday. The scale is so broad and impressive that it dwarfs other buildings of far greater size and loftier structure in the vicinity. In this respect it is comparable to a small person of large presence and much dignity, the scant measure of whose inches is not accounted in the impression created among his fellows. We have all seen such. Though the actual area covered by the State House is inconsiderable—it is only one hundred feet long by forty-four feet in depth, with a tower, on the south side or rear, measuring thirty-two feet by thirty-four—there is such amplitude of proportion in the rooms, in the size of all the central features and in the detail of ornamentation, that the visitor instinctively feels himself in one of the great buildings of the country, altogether irrespective of the brave memories by which its walls are hallowed.

Seen from without, the State House is a most satisfying piece of Georgian work. The north front, pierced by a single door and eight broad windows on the lower floor and an unbroken range of nine windows on the upper, has a con{185}vincing charm of combined dignity and simplicity. The doorway is severely plain and of proportions characteristic of the date at which the edifice was built. The wide muntins of the small paned windows, the well spaced string courses, and the oblong panels of blue marble beneath the windows of the upper floor, diversify the surface and impart a grace that quite prevents the impression of dumpy stodginess that less carefully managed Georgian façades sometimes give. A white balustrade, running the length of the building and set where the pitch of the roof breaks into a much flattened gambrel to form a deck, affords an additional note of grace and lightness comporting well with the triple chimneys with arch-joined tops at each gable end.

The contrast between the deep red brickwork of the tower, carried one stage above the cornice of the body of the hall, and the white wooden superstructure for the clock, surmounted by an open cupola over the bell, is striking and particularly effective viewed from the south on a sunny morning in winter or early spring, when everything is fretted with a laced pattern from the bare branches of the surrounding trees. In the second stage of the south side of the tower, immediately above the door, is a Palladian window that has always compelled admiration. The crushed capitals of the pilas{186}ters and dividing pillars, though perhaps rude in line and execution, are delightfully suggestive of the weight and solidity of the tower above them. Grotesque heads and faces as ornaments for keystones were not very extensively used in our Colonial Georgian architecture, but over the windows on three sides of the uppermost brick stage of the tower are faces that for pathos of expression can quite match those on the tower of Christ Church that lift their seemingly sightless eyes alike to sun and snow and blinding rain. Though noticed by few among the thousands that daily pass by, they are worthy of attention. Masques or grotesque heads are also used in one or two other places, such as the over-door carving in the interior of the building.

The warm tone of the walls is especially pleasing. Years and weather, yes, and dirt, have imparted an exceedingly mellow tinge to the hard burned brick laid in courses of Flemish bond, and although the glazed black headers, found in so many old houses, are of rare occurrence, the hue of the Colonial bricks is peculiarly rich. Relieved as the masonry is by trimmings of native bluish marble and pencilled by weathered mortar joints, the walls have a wonderful quality of texture and colour.

Although the triple-arched arcades and low, hip-roofed buildings on either side of the State House are new, they are restorations and con{187}form to the provisions of the original plan. That plan called for such structures, and they were begun several years subsequent to the commencement of work on the main portion of the State House, but gave place at a later date to the hideous barracks, devised to meet the exigencies of public business, which endured till the last wave of restoration happily removed them.

The State House was designed to accommodate the legislative and executive branches of the Provincial government. The great east room, to the left of the door on entering, was intended for the use of the Assembly. In this room the Declaration of Independence was signed and in this room, also, eleven years later, the Constitutional Convention sat and framed the Constitution of the United States. Whether the west room, across the corridor, and communicating with it by three large open arches, was originally meant for the Supreme Court of the Province is uncertain, but, at any rate, it was in time appropriated to that purpose. The second floor has a long gallery running the full length of the building along the north side facing Chestnut street, and this apartment has been variously designated as “The Long Room,” “The Banqueting Hall” and by sundry other titles. Facing the south are two smaller rooms, separated by a spacious hallway or{188} lobby, which also opens into the Long Room. One of these lesser rooms seems to have been intended for the use of the Governour’s Council.

Although the date of the building of the State House was 1733, its completion was not accomplished till eight years later. This fact probably accounts in some measure for the affinities of detail in the interior woodwork with the second Georgian type, alluded to in the chapter on Georgian architecture in Philadelphia and the neighbourhood. The doorway on the Chestnut street front, both by its proportions and its severe simplicity, belongs rather to the first type of Georgian as exemplified by Stenton, Hope Lodge and Graeme Park. Inside the building, however, we find the egg and dart moulding, modillion brackets carved with acanthus leaves, ornate cornices with triglyphs, dentils and mutules, fluted pillars and pilasters with ornate Roman capitals, rosettes, elaborately wrought modillion brackets under the treads of the stair, deeply panelled soffits and jambs, ornate pediments above doors and overmantels, and all the other details characteristic of the second Georgian period. In addition to being exceedingly elaborate, the woodwork of the State House is executed in a masterly manner and marked both by boldness and an unusual degree of grace.

State House group, the two buildings projecting farther toward the street than the rest, are decent in appearance but quite unpretentious. Of exterior architectural embellishments, such as the State House can boast, they are innocent, save the cupolas, which are good. Inside, the woodwork detail is pleasing. The western building, Congress Hall, was erected in 1788; here Washington’s second inauguration took place and here John Adams was inducted into office as President. The eastern building, intended for the City Hall, was built in 1791. While Philadelphia was the seat of national government it was turned over to the Supreme Court of the United States and here presided Chief Justices John Jay, John Rutledge and Oliver Ellsworth.

In New England, the most impressive secular public buildings are the Old State House in Boston, built in 1728, Faneuil Hall, built in 1741, and the Bulfinch State House, on the summit of Beacon Hill, built in 1795.

The Old State House, a structure of peculiarly pleasing proportions and admirable poise, is thoroughly representative of the best Georgian feeling of the period of its erection both in manner of construction and detail. Its square lantern of three stages is particularly interesting as are also the stepped gables at each end, with the carved figures of the British lion and unicorn apparently stationed as heraldic{190} supporters of the ornate apex with the clock. On account of these stepped gables the criticism has sometimes been advanced that the Old State House shows traces of Dutch influence in its design. While it is quite true that stepped gables are characteristic of many Dutch buildings, the attribution of Dutch influence in the treatment of the Old State House can scarcely be justified for there is nowhere else observable any suggestion of Dutch tendencies and the precedent for stepped gables in unmistakably English work of an earlier date is by no means wanting. Rich in historic memories, of which, perhaps, the Boston Massacre stands forth most vividly, it is deservedly cherished with civic pride as the ancient centre of Provincial life and it is gratifying to see how punctiliously and accurately it has been restored to its pristine condition under the able direction of Joseph Everett Chandler, to whose enthusiasm are due many other faithful restorations of seventeenth and eighteenth century New England architectural treasures.

Faneuil Hall, hard by, also worthily upholds the Georgian traditions of the mid-eighteenth century in its storeyed façades, its gracefully proportioned and detailed cupola and the excellence of its interior cornices, pillars and carved capitals. This “cradle of American liberty” is a truly noble building and a worthy setting{191} for the stirring historic episodes that have been enacted beneath its roof or under the shadow of its walls.

The Bulfinch State House, a “model of classicality” as someone has not inappropriately called it, is an exceptionally impressive precursor of the Greek or Classic Revival. Designed at a time when the graceful interpretation of the Georgian style, introduced by the Brothers Adam, was still dominant, it combines the characteristic elegance of its epoch with the bold vigour of classic inspiration, drawn direct from the font of antiquity, that distinguished the best public architecture of the early nineteenth century. Despite the alterations and additions to which it has been subjected, its strong individuality still dominates the structure, of which the original fabric is now but a small part, and breathes abroad the ample spirit of post-Colonial dignity.

The original buildings of Harvard, or rather the worthy successors of the first buildings, none of which remain, exhibit, in their plan, proportions and general treatment, many admirable features quite comparable to those of the best contemporary large Georgian buildings in England and their substantial dignity, thoroughly in keeping with their purpose, reflects the greatest credit upon the Colonial officers and benefactors of the University.{192}

Of the other Colonial or post-Colonial secular public buildings in New England deserving of admiration and close study, all of which it would be a congenial task to write about at length, did space permit, three especially must be mentioned before passing on to discuss those in another part of the country. They are the Custom House in Salem, which will always be associated with the fanciful melancholy of Hawthorne’s literary genius; the Town House or State House at Newport, built in 1743 from the designs of Richard Munday and, last of all, the Market or City Hall, in the same place, built in 1760 after the plans of Peter Harrison, sometime an assistant to Sir John Vanbrugh, whose close connexion with that eminent English architect and subsequent removal to the American Colonies throw an interesting side light upon the bonds linking Colonial architectural developments with their source of inspiration.

New York could boast the stately old building of King’s College; Fraunce’s Tavern, whose festive board, upon the occasion of balls and receptions, groaning with toothsome viands, caused the feasters to groan with gout the next day; the City Hall, begun in 1803, whose chaste classic elegance, surrounded by huge modern structures, still bears eloquent witness to the civic good taste of the period when it was erected. Henry James was greatly impressed with its{193} “perfect taste and finish, the reduced, yet ample, scale, the harmony of the parts, the just proportions, the modest classic grace, the living look of the type aimed at.” On looking at such noble examples of the architecture of a past generation, one cannot but regret that the ruthless sweep of commercial progress has brushed aside and demolished so many monuments of the New York of Colonial days.

In Colonial cities and towns the town hall and market, usually found close together if not actually occupying the same building, according to old English custom, were so representative of the visible course of civic life that some account must be taken of their presence though few of them now remain. The old Provincial Hall or Court House in Philadelphia, erected in 1707, was so thoroughly typical of these combined judicial and mercantile structures that, although torn down many years ago, it deserves some notice in this place. It stood in the middle of Market street at the corner of Second and back of it the market sheds or shambles stretched away towards the west, occupying the whole middle of the street, and increasing in extent year by year as the city grew and more accommodations for the farmers became necessary. It was a substantial brick structure, built on arches, and was similar in character and appearance to the town halls of{194} that day in many English county towns. “It was,” wrote a local antiquary, in one of his sketches, “an important place. Monarchs on their accessions were there proclaimed; wars were thence declared; and peace, when it came to bless the people, there found a voice to utter it. New governours addressed the people over whom they were appointed to rule, from its balcony; the emblems of sovereignty, the royal arms of England, were there displayed.” There centred all the official, legislative and administrative life of the Province, there the Provincial Council sat, there the elections were held and there were the gaol and those much dreaded but effective instruments of correction, the pillory, the stocks and the whipping post. The stocks, standing as they did in such close proximity to the market, the rougher sort drew not a little amusement from pelting culprits there confined with overripe vegetables and we are told, in the reminiscent notes of one who was a boy at the time of the Revolution, that “the whipping-post and pillory display was always on a market day—then the price of eggs went up much.” Such was the old Philadelphia Court House and very like it were the town houses and markets in the other Colonial cities. One good example of this type of building, still standing, is the brick portion of the market at Second and Pine streets, Philadelphia, which

nearly resembles the Georgian town houses that may yet be seen in quiet little English market towns. Very similar to this bit of Georgian excellence are the old Town Hall in Chester, Pennsylvania, and the Town Hall in Newcastle, Delaware.

In trying to form an adequate mental picture of the civic life of Colonial times, in relation to its architectural setting, we must not overlook the hostelries, theatres, schools and hospitals. The eighteenth century ordinary came into contact with the social and civic life of the period at every conceivable point. Thither came the most substantial citizens, there matters of public concern were discussed, meetings were held, entertainments were given, distinguished strangers were fêted and travellers found welcome hospitality. If one has a taste for poking about and nosing into out of the way nooks and corners, a voyage of discovery in some of our older cities will often be richly rewarded. On north Second street, in Philadelphia, one may still dive under arch-ways and find inn yards surrounded partly by balconied back buildings that stretch away in a string of offices and kitchens, partly by stables and waggon sheds. One almost feels that these inns have been transplanted bodily from old London, so like are they to their English prototypes and, we may incidentally add, in a much{196} completer state of preservation. Just such inn yards as these served for theatres in Shakespeare’s day. It was from such inn yards, too, in the old staging days, that the mail coaches set out with cracking whip and blast of horn. The petty itinerant shows, that used to come occasionally to divert our Colonial forebears by the sight of a real live lion or bear or electric eel or any unusual creature that the showman had been able to acquire, availed themselves of the inn yards for exhibitions. In 1763, Elizabeth Drinker, then at Frankford, notes in her diary: “A lioness passed this road in ye morning. Paid 2d. for seeing her—a large ugly animal.” No doubt the “large ugly animal” had been previously exhibited in some of the inn yards on Second street, for out that thoroughfare passed all the traffic for New York and every place to the north.

Coffee houses, also, were favourite gathering places for conversation and refreshment and one of the most famous in Philadelphia—they were much the same in all the cities—was the London Coffee House or Bradford’s Coffee House, at the corner of Front and Market streets. It was built in 1702 and presented an interesting example of truly Colonial architecture in its striking brickwork, its penthouses and its jerkin-headed, gabled roof. It should be noted that the jerkin-head roof treatment,{197} the plain survival of an English tradition, was to be found on a number of other early Pennsylvania buildings but the practice of building in this manner was soon discontinued. Watson in his “Annals” tells us that “at this Coffee House—the Governour and other persons of note ordinarily went at set hours to sip their coffee from the hissing urn, and some of these stated visitors had their known stalls. It was long the focus which attracted all manner of genteel strangers; the general parade was outside of the house under a shed of but common construction, extending from the house to the gutter way, both on the Front street and High street sides. It was to this, as the most public place, they brought all vendues of horses, carriages, groceries, &c., and above all, here Philadelphians once sold negro men, women and children as slaves.”

It is to be sincerely regretted that the London Coffee House, like its near neighbour the Provincial Hall, was torn down many years ago for, quite apart from its architectural interest, its historic associations were important and intimately connected not only with local events but with events that had a bearing upon the affairs of the whole country. One of these was the beginning of the opposition to the Tea Act which started in Philadelphia and not in Boston as is popularly supposed. “When the tax{198} on tea was reduced to three pence per pound there seemed to be a general disposition to pay it. At this juncture, when the arrival of a fresh consignment from the East India Company was expected, William Bradford gathered at the Coffee House several citizens, whom he knew to be heartily opposed to the measures of the British Government, and together they drew up a set of spirited resolutions anent the tea question. On the following Saturday, October 16, 1773, a ‘large and respectable town-meeting,’ presided over by Doctor Thomas Cadwalader, was held at the State House and the resolutions were adopted enthusiastically. The same resolutions were almost immediately afterwards adopted, nearly word for word, by a town-meeting in Boston (November 5, 1773), where a disposition to receive the tea had become general, from an idea that an opposition to it would not be seconded or supported by any of the other Colonies.”

Until the middle of the eighteenth century, the American public had been without any organised effort to present dramatic performances and, consequently, there were no theatres to be numbered among public buildings before that time. Just after the middle of the century, however, a stock company came over from England and started upon a round of engagements in the different cities of the Colonies.{199} By a portion of the people they were heartily welcomed but for the most part they met with an indifferent if not actively hostile reception. Nevertheless, despite all opposition, they persevered, and in time won an established position in the social life of the day. At first they made shift to get along with quarters improvised in storehouses or other buildings that might be temporarily adapted to their purpose but eventually it became necessary to have structures designed especially to meet their needs. In 1759 a small wooden theatre was built in South or Cedar street, Southwark, Philadelphia, but was used for only a brief period. Its place was soon taken by a second structure, substantially built of brick, farther up South street, above Fourth. This brick theatre was opened November 21, 1766, “and was the first permanent building used for theatrical purposes in America.” Both this building and its wooden predecessor were on the south side of South street and hence in Southwark, as the jurisdiction of the Philadelphia city authorities ended on the north side of that thoroughfare. There was more liberty of action in Southwark and both the first and second theatres were located there to escape the violent opposition of the powerful Quaker element which frowned upon dramatic performances and urged that “the practise of play-acting would be{200} ‘attended by mischievous effects, such as the encouragement of idleness and drawing great sums of money from weak and inconsiderate persons.’”

To this Southwark theatre repaired all the wealth, beauty and fashion of Philadelphia, at that time the metropolis of the Colonies. There, until 1773, the “American Company” had its regular season and, despite Quaker hostility, Philadelphia was the most important theatrical centre of all the Colonial cities. During the acute troubles with the Mother Country prior to the outbreak of the Revolution and while that struggle was in progress the old stock company was driven from Philadelphia as most of its members were loyal British subjects. While the British occupation of Philadelphia lasted, Lord Howe’s officers gave amateur performances in the Southwark theatre, devoting the proceeds to the benefit of the “widows and orphans of the army.” The unfortunate Major André took an active part in these dramatic efforts, and not only acted but assisted in painting the scenery, and one drop curtain, bearing his name as artist, was used until it was destroyed by a disastrous fire in 1821. This circumstance and the fact that General Washington during his residence in Philadelphia, as President of the United States, frequently attended the performances, occupying one of the{201} stage boxes above which the arms of the United States had replaced those of Great Britain, have lent an unusual interest to this first permanent American theatre. It was a rectangular building with a low pitched gable end towards the street front and devoid of any architectural pretension save three round headed windows above the door and a modest cupola on the ridge of the roof. Only the north wall of the old building still stands and is incorporated in the fabric of a distillery which occupies the site of the theatre.

In 1793, Charles Bulfinch built the first theatre in Boston and, in 1794, the “New Theatre” was opened in Philadelphia, at Sixth and Chestnut streets. It was designed in a far more pretentious and stately manner than the old Southwark theatre and showed the coming influence of the Classic Revival. In front was a long, pillared portico or arcade and the whole façade displayed a good deal of architectural enrichment of a formal kind. It may be regarded as thoroughly typical of the new architectural tendencies and representative of the best sort of play-houses that were erected for a number of years thereafter.

The Pennsylvania Hospital was the most notable eighteenth century structure of its kind and its sterling architectural excellence becomes ever increasingly apparent with the{202} flight of years. The only attempts at embellishment are upon the central pavilion and are both well-considered and restrained. All the rest of the building was carried out with the extreme simplicity of the eastern wing which was the first portion to be built and was erected in 1753. One could not find anywhere a more striking example of the transforming power of a string course of contrasting colour upon a severely plain wall. The white string course, standing out in strong relief against the deep red brick walls and passing between the row of window heads on the ground floor and the window cills of the storey above it, communicates to an extremely plain exterior a charm and dignity of aspect that redeem it from the bald austerity of a factory or barracks. Save this string course and the cupola atop the roof, this oldest portion of the hospital and the corresponding west wing are devoid of architectural adornment but their just proportions and easy amplitude of dimensions are particularly satisfying to the eye.

Among the public buildings of the Colonial period, noteworthy both for their architectural character and for historic association, Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia, where the sessions of the first Continental Congress were held, demands the consideration of all patriotic Americans. Quite apart from its historic importance,{203} Carpenters’ Hall challenges the admiration of every lover of Georgian architecture in its sturdiest manifestation. The State House in Annapolis, the Court House in Williamsburg, the Custom House in Charleston and other public edifices of similar character imparted to civic life in Colonial and post-Colonial days an element of dignity and poise.

The Classic Revival had one of its early significant manifestations in the buildings of the University of Virginia, a group for which we have to thank no less a person than Thomas Jefferson. The plan embodied the most comprehensive building scheme that had yet been essayed. To Jefferson’s discriminating architectural taste and conscientious devotion to his self-imposed task as architect and supervisor of the work we owe it that the University buildings worthily represent one of the best phases of revived classicism in America. There is a dignity and honesty in Jefferson’s conception of revived classicism and a thorough sincerity that often failed to appear in later work of the same school. The result achieved commands our respect and when we remember that the parts of plans and sections of details were jotted down on scraps of paper and the backs of scribbled memoranda we cannot help wondering what would have happened if the same seemingly careless and unsystematic course were{204} pursued in our own day. It was doubtless the enthusiastic devotion of the architect and his constant supervision along with the conscientious efforts and pride of every artisan that saved the day as it did in so many other cases.

CHAPTER XII

CHURCHES OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD

IT is a far cry from the first place of worship contrived at Jamestown, in 1607, to the stately fanes erected in the eighteenth century in all the Colonies. Through each successive stage of development, however, runs a thread of continuity corresponding to the material circumstances of the colonists. Everywhere in the Colonies, the church building was an exceedingly important structure and no one building or set of buildings, in each community, more faithfully reflected the social and political as well as the religious conditions of the colonists. Setting aside the civic and defensive uses to which church edifices were often put, especially in the earliest period, and confining ourselves to the purely ecclesiastical side of their existence, we shall find them an invaluable index to the varied aspects of the life of the times.

For the sake of contrast, both historical and architectural, it will not be amiss to quote Captain John Smith’s account of the first{206} Virginia place of worship so that we may fully realise the strides of progress made from the feeble Jamestown beginning in 1607. He says: “This was our church till we built a homely thing like a barne, set upon cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge and earth; so was the walls. The best of our houses [were] of like curiosity; but the most part far much worse workmanship, that neither could well defend [from] wind nor raine. Yet we had daily Common Prayer, morning and evening; every Sunday two sermons; and every three months the Holy Communion, till our minister died; but our prayers daily with an Homily on Sundaies we continued two or three years after till our preachers came.” The words “till our preachers came” mean, of course, the successors of the Rev. Mr. Hunt who had accompanied the expedition.

In tracing the history of the older parishes and congregations, it is the rule rather than the exception to find two or three successive houses of worship erected, as the means and growing numbers of the people made it possible or expedient, to replace former structures of meaner fabric which seem to have been regarded from the outset as merely temporary gathering places, meant to serve only until worthy edifices could be undertaken. Some of the earliest churches were merely block houses or forts, occasionally surrounded by stockades, proclaim{207}ing the ready physical as well as spiritual militancy of the worshippers within their walls, but these were abandoned so soon as the increasing prosperity and a greater sense of security from attacks by hostile savages warranted a more peaceful and comfortable type of building for religious purposes.

Of course, in the several parts of the Colonies, the character of the buildings erected for religious uses indicated the prevailing local ecclesiastical organisation. In the South, especially in Virginia and Maryland, where the Church of England was the recognised dominant body and Church and State were closely allied, we find the churches conforming to English ecclesiastical traditions. In the Middle Colonies, where religious liberty was freely permitted, we find a greater variety including the structures peculiarly adapted to the worship of the Church of England, Quaker meeting houses and the buildings designed to accommodate the different German sects. In theocratic New England, while Church of England edifices were to be met with now and again, the simple meeting house type, agreeable to the congregational form of worship, everywhere prevailed.

And now let us glance for a moment at the manner of people who frequented these churches Sunday after Sunday. We shall find among them the extremes of both worldly pomp and{208} ostentation, on the one hand, and humble simplicity, on the other, as they went to the weekly discharge of their religious duties. Our Colonial forebears, however democratic some of them may have been in religious principle or however much some of them may have decried set ceremonial forms, were, almost without exception, great respecters of persons and in no way did they more fully display this common failing—it is just as prevalent in kindred forms at the present day—than in their methods of seating the congregations according to the accepted worth or dignity of the individual members.

In the South, the lords of the manors or the squires, just as in England, had their great square pews in the chancel or, perhaps, a whole transept would be reserved to their exclusive use for their family, dependants or tenants as was the case, for example, in Christ Church, Lancaster County, Virginia, where Robert (“King”) Carter, at whose charge the edifice was built, made such a reservation. The “King’s” own high panelled family pew, just before the pulpit, had a brass rail around the top from which hung damask curtains on all sides except that opposite the pulpit. This screened the occupants, when standing up, from the gaze of the rudely inquisitive.

Upon the removal of the seat of the Virginia{209} government from Jamestown to Williamsburg, in 1699, Bruton Parish Church became the “court church” of the Colony and “official distinction was recognised and emphasized” in the order of seating. The historian of the parish, writing of the present building, which was completed in 1715, says: “To His Excellency the Governour and His Council of State was assigned a pew elevated from the floor, overhung with a red velvet canopy, around which his name was emblasoned in letters of gold, the name being changed as Spotswood, Drysdale, Gooch, Dinwiddie, Fauquier, Lord Botetourt and Lord Dunmore succeeded to office. In the square pews of the transepts sat the members of the House of Burgesses, the pews in the choir being assigned to the Surveyor General and the Parish Rector, while in the overhanging galleries in the transept and along the side walls of the church sat the Speaker of the House of Burgesses and other persons of wealth and distinction, to whom the privilege of erecting these private galleries was accorded from time to time.”

In city churches, because of the greater number of important folk, questions of precedence in seating were more perplexing than in the country. At Annapolis in St. Anne’s, in Christ Church at Philadelphia and also in the “court churches” in New York and Boston the{210} Royal Governours’ pews were marked by appropriate symbols of the majesty of state, the royal arms carved in walnut that once hung above the Lieutenant Governour’s seat being still preserved at Christ Church in Philadelphia. The lesser dignitaries sat in due order becoming their station.

In New England it seems to have been the general custom in the earlier period for the men to sit on one side of the church and the women on the other. Afterwards, families sat together. In order to avoid bickering and contention about the order of precedence it was not an unusual thing to appoint a committee to “dignify the meeting.” The members of these committees were changed from time to time “in order to obviate any of the effects of partiality through kinship, friendship, personal esteem or debt.” A second committee was appointed to seat the members of the first committee according to their proper rank. In her charming book, “The Sabbath in Puritan New England,” Alice Morse Earle says:—

“Sometimes a row of square pews was built on three sides of the ground floor, and each pew occupied by separate families, while the pulpit was on the fourth side. If any man wished such a private pew for himself and family, he obtained permission from the church and town, and built it at his own expense. Immediately in front of the pulpit was either a long seat or a square enclosed pew for

the deacons, who sat facing the congregation. This was usually a foot or two above the level of the other pews, and was reached by two or three steep, narrow steps. On a still higher plane was a pew for the ruling elders, when ruling elders there were. The magistrates also had a pew for their special use. What we now deem the best seats, those in the middle of the church, were in olden times, the free seats.”

“In front, on either side of the pulpit (or very rarely in the foremost row in the gallery), was a seat of highest dignity, known as the ‘fore seat,’ in which only the persons of greatest importance in the community sat.”

Not only in New England, but in the other Colonies as well, seats and pews in the galleries seem to have been preferred as the most desirable by persons of quality and consideration in the community next to the specially exalted seats belowstairs.

In many places, particularly in the Middle and Southern Colonies, the churches were regarded as the most dignified places of sepulture for persons of consequence, and their gravestones, with the armorial bearings and inscriptions almost effaced by the treading feet of generations of worshippers, are to be seen in the aisles and chancel pavements. The chancel was esteemed the most honourable place of burial and as an instance of this may be mentioned the grave of General Forbes, the hero of Fort Duquesne, in the chancel of Christ Church, Philadelphia. John Penn, one of the Pro{212}prietaries, is buried at the foot of the chancel steps. It is interesting in this connexion to note, by way of exception, that Judge Moore of Moore Hall, the stout old Pennsylvania Loyalist, and the person of greatest consequence in the parish of St. David, Radnor, directed that he and his wife, the Lady Williamina Wemyss, should be buried at the threshold of the church. Emblazoned hatchments were frequently used at the time of funerals and some of them are still preserved in our old churches. As in England, during much of the eighteenth century, it was the fashion in the Colonies to bury persons of note at night by the light of torches.

In not a few of the early churches there was an utter lack of uniformity in the style of the seats or pews employed and permission was often granted to influential persons to buy space within the churches and erect pews of their own, suited to their personal fancy. The space not occupied by these privately owned pews was sometimes filled with movable benches, stools, or chairs, and it was not an unusual thing for the humbler members of the congregation to bring their seats with them and put them wherever they could find room. We find ample evidence of this condition of things in places as widely apart as the simple country parish of St. David’s, Radnor, in the Welsh{213} Barony, and King’s Chapel in Boston. In early days the members of St. David’s congregation fetched thither nondescript seats as they listed and it was not until well into the eighteenth century that rough benches were furnished and “rented for the support of the Church.” Not till the middle of the eighteenth century do the parish records show the existence of pews and the custom seems to have then prevailed of “selling a piece of ground within the Church on which the purchaser had the privilege of building such a pew as he desired.” With this system, or rather lack of system, in seating, it appears that squabbles occasionally arose as we may judge from the following minute in the old register:—

“October ye 26th, 1747. Whereas a Difference hath arisen between Francis Wayne and his Brother Isaac Wayne [the father of General Anthony Wayne] about their Right in the pugh Late Anthony Wayne and John Hunter, and it appearing to the Vestry that ye sd. Francis and Isaac have purchased the Ground of a Pugh and the sd. Isaac having Built upon a part of the Ground the Vestry Do agree that the sd. Francis have the ground for half a pugh joining of the west side to Richard Hughes and Wm. Owen’s Pugh.”

So late as 1763 the “Vestry granted to Robert Jones the privilege to build a Pew on a piece of ground in St. David’s Church, adjoining Wayne’s and Hunter’s pew, he paying for the{214} ground £4 10s.” In King’s chapel in Boston the vestry “stipulated that each member should pay the cost of building his own pew; this was accordingly done, but without any uniformity, so that the interior of the old church must have presented an amusing diversity of work.... The walls were decorated with banners, escutcheons, and coats of arms of the King of England, of the nobility and gentry of the congregation, and of the Governour of the province, and the interior was considered so magnificent and so luxurious as to be a blot upon the religion of Massachusetts.”

As might be expected, when so much was made of assigning each member of the congregation a seat befitting his dignity, the question of suitable clothing loomed large in the minds of our forebears and from one end of the Colonies to the other they gave way to the temptation to appear before their neighbours in their best frills and furbelows so that the church service on Sunday was often a clothes show as well. To such an extent was this passion for display carried that it led to a custom in some country parishes of New England to which Alice Morse Earle refers. She says:—

“One very pleasing diversion of the attention of the congregation from the parson was caused by an innocent custom that prevailed in many a country community. Just fancy the flurry on a June sabbath in Killingly, in{215} 1785, when Joseph Gay, clad in velvet coat, lace frilled shirt, and white broadcloth knee breeches, with his fair bride of a few days, gorgeous in a peach coloured silk gown and a bonnet trimmed ‘with sixteen yards of white ribbon,’ rose in the middle of the sermon, in their front seat in the gallery and stood for several minutes, slowly turning around in order to show from every point of view their bridal finery to the eagerly gazing congregation of friends and neighbours. Such was the really delightful and thoughtful custom, in those fashion-plateless days, among persons of wealth in that and other churches; it was, in fact, part of the wedding celebration. Even in midwinter, in the icy church, the blushing bride would throw aside her broadcloth cape or camblet roquelo and stand up clad in a sprigged India muslin gown with only a thin lace tucker over her neck, warm with pride in her pretty gown, her white bonnet with ostrich feathers and embroidered veil, and in her new husband.”

If the same custom did not prevail in other parts of the country, doubtless the members of the congregation had ample opportunity, and made the best of it too, to scrutinise the apparel of their fellow worshippers. It is to be feared, however, that their brave attire sometimes suffered damage from insufficiently dusted seats for we read that the sexton of Christ Church, Philadelphia, probably the wealthiest and most splendid church in the Colonies, having applied in 1761 for an increase of salary, it was agreed to give him “£20 a year on a condition that he was ‘to wash the church twice a year and sand it at Easter and Sep{216}tember; and also to sweep the church once every two weeks.’”

The music was of an exceedingly indifferent character from an artistic point of view and was not always edifying and whole hearted on the part of the congregation. In New England, musical instruments were only introduced after a storm of bitter opposition and general repugnance to the “boxes of whistles,” as organs were contemptuously called. Even in the Middle and Southern Colonies, where a prejudice against instruments did not exist, the music must often have been of a distressing nature. Referring once more to Christ Church we read that “the singer then called the Clerk, was Joseph Fry—a small man with a great voice, who, standing in the organ gallery, was wont to make the whole church resound with his strong, deep and grave tones.” When there was a ripple of improvement in the general musical situation, after the Revolution, “the efforts of church musicians to raise the standard were apparently not looked upon with favour. Joseph Fry, or his successors, did not ‘make a cheerful noise before the Lord’ to the taste of the congregation, for in 1785 the vestry passed a resolution ‘that the clerks be desired to sing such tunes only as are plain and familiar to the congregation; the singing of other tunes, and frequent changing of tunes, being to the certain{217} knowledge of this vestry, generally disagreeable and inconvenient.’”

Although early New England settlers were at first summoned to meeting “by drum, horn and shell,” bells were soon introduced and in the Middle and Southern Colonies great store was set by them and more than one fine peal was brought hither from England. The bells of Christ Church, Philadelphia, were particularly famous and were always being pealed so that the German traveller, Dr. Schoepf, said that you would think you were in a papal or imperial city—there was always something to be rung. “From the time that ‘the ring of bells’—the first in the Colonies—was first hung, their metal throats were busy proclaiming all sorts of things from the anniversaries of King Charles’s Restoration, Guy Fawkes’s Day, and the King’s Birthday, down to semi-weekly markets or the arrival in the Delaware of the ‘Myrtilla,’ Captain Budden’s ship, in which the peal had been brought out from London.”

In a previous chapter reference has been made to the splendid equipage in which wealthy people of the Northern and Middle Colonies came to church. A word must be added, to complete the picture, of the way in which Southern congregations arrived. While a few of the very wealthy drove to church in their state coaches, the great majority came on horse{218}back for the distances were too great to traverse afoot. Horses were tethered in groups to the trees about the churches and it was the recognised custom that the congregation should gather in the church yard before and after service and they gladly embraced the opportunity thus afforded for social intercourse. In country districts of the South the same condition prevails to-day, and saddle horses and buggies may be found in groups under all the trees near the church building or in the sheds, where such are provided.

And now we pass to a consideration of the architectural features of the church buildings in the several Colonies. We shall begin with those in Virginia as they were the earliest. Only two of the seventeenth century structures in the Old Dominion remain but they are sufficiently distinctive to give us a very definite idea of the architectural ideals that actuated the Virginia colonists. These are St. Luke’s at Smithfield, built in 1632, and St. Peter’s, New Kent County, built at the very beginning of the eighteenth century, but so closely following the type of the first mentioned building that it may be reckoned as a seventeenth century structure. Besides these two, there is the tower of the old church at Jamestown to which has been added, in the way of restoration, a body designed upon the lines of St. Luke’s, Smithfield.{219}

St. Luke’s is a staunchly built rectangular brick structure with a steep pitched roof and a heavy, square tower, of three stages, at the western end. The coping of the eastern gable is curiously stepped in a way that suggests Dutch or Flemish influence. The general appearance is that of a rural English village church that might have been transplanted to its new environment. There is little in its contour, proportions or detail that savours of Renaissance inspiration, then dominant in England, but rather does it smack of the old English Gothic feeling that characterised many of the sixteenth century structures, when the Gothic spirit was really decadent but still strong enough to retain certain well defined traditional features. The side walls are strengthened and divided into bays by buttresses and the pointed arch is retained above the twin lancet windows. The mullions of these windows and of the east window, with its unusual combination of round arch and pointed arch sections, are substantially constructed of bricks. The one particular in which Renaissance influence is visible is the use of quoins instead of buttresses to stiffen the tower corners. The round arched door is almost Norman in character. Within, the walls are plastered above the wainscot and the ceiling is a single barrel vault.

St. Peter’s, New Kent County, presents the{220} same general contour so that a family resemblance is unmistakable but it is less felicitous in all its details. The tower is pierced by such large arched openings in front and at the sides that it appears to stand on legs and to have no particular connexion with the ground. There are no buttresses to support the walls, the windows are rectangular with flat-arched lintels and are filled with sashes. While venerable and interesting, St. Peter’s can scarcely be regarded as in any way architecturally so satisfying as St. Luke’s is. How much of this lack of charm is due to so-called “restoration” and “improvements,” it would be hard to say, for want of sufficiently specific data.

One of the earliest structures to show a distinctly Renaissance feeling, a suggestive precursor of the Georgian buildings that soon followed, was Bruton Parish Church at Williamsburg, completed in 1715. Here for the first time may be seen the cruciform plan, often met with in other Virginia churches, sometimes of Latin, sometimes of Greek outline. It is curious that this feature, which belongs peculiarly to edifices of Gothic provenance, should make its first appearance in a structure of Renaissance inspiration. The pitch of the roof is steep and this fact, along with the cruciform plan, gives the contour a partly Gothic character. All else is of Renaissance affinities.

There are no buttresses, the tall windows with round or compass heads contain sashes with broad muntins and the sturdy, square tower, of three stages, at the western end, is surmounted by an octagonal wooden spire which, although severely simple and devoid of architectural ornament, suggests in structural treatment the methods of Wren and his contemporaries. Circular windows pierce the end walls of the transept and chancel and these were originally filled with panes of plain glass set in broad muntins. The brick is laid in Flemish bond and the cornice is exceedingly simple and far less prominent than in later buildings of purely Georgian character.

For examples of the typically Georgian churches of the South we may instance Christ Church, Lancaster County, Virginia, “Old Pohick Church,” Fairfax County, Virginia, with the building of which Washington was intimately concerned and of which he was a vestryman, and Christ Church, Alexandria, where Washington was also a vestryman and frequent attendant. The last named building was designed by James Wren, a descendant, it is said, of the great Sir Christopher. Other churches just as typical might have been selected but these three will fully answer the purpose.

Christ Church, Lancaster County, was built in 1732 at the charge of Robert (“King”) Carter{222} as before stated. The ground plan is in the form of a Greek cross, all the arms being of equal length. The shingle roof is hipped and of steep pitch, the cornice is bold and vigorously proportioned, the walls are of brick laid in Flemish bond with black headers. The windows are round-or compass-headed and the brick surrounds project slightly from the face of the wall, meeting at the top in a white keystone. The muntins of the sashes are heavy and the panes small. The door is set between heavy pilasters and surmounted by a straight pediment. Above the pediment, and just below the cornice, is a small elliptical window. Within, the aisles are paved with stone, the pews are high and straight backed, the pulpit is an imposing structure and the plastered ceiling is vaulted. All the details, both inside and out, are characteristic of the Georgian mode.

“Old Pohick Church,” the parish church of Mount Vernon, was built in 1769 and shows evidence of later Georgian feeling in several of its details. The cornice, notably, has become more refined in the proportion and contour of its mouldings and the muntins are of less buxom dimensions. The building is taller than Christ Church, Lancaster County, and the walls are pierced by two tiers of windows, those in the lower tier being rectangular while those in the upper tier are round headed. Both upper and{223} lower windows have surrounds of one-coloured brick, not projecting as at Christ Church but set flush with the surface of the wall. The building is practically square in plan, the corners being stiffened by white stone quoins, and the roof is hipped. Inside, the aisles are paved with stone, the communion table, surrounded by a railing, stands at one end of the church and the wall back of it is panelled and embellished with a broken pediment resting on four Ionic pilasters, in the panels between which are painted the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed and the Ten Commandments. Against one of the side walls is built a high, wine-glass pulpit with a great sounding board above it and, just below it, the clerk’s desk. At the angle of the walls and ceiling is an unusually heavy and elaborate wooden cornice. All the minutiæ of the interior woodwork show the increasing refinement of proportion and detail characteristic of this part of the Georgian period.

Christ Church, Alexandria, built slightly later than Pohick Church, is substantially the same in plan, the main points of difference being the Palladian window at one end of the building and the tower and portico at the other, the latter embellishment being a later addition. Inside, the chief point of difference consists in the placing of the pulpit immediately in front of the central member of the Palladian window,{224} the panelled spaces on each side of the window being devoted to the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments, according to a common custom. Christ Church, Alexandria, further differs from Pohick Church in having galleries around three sides, supported on slender Tuscan columns. The coved cornice at the angle of walls and ceiling, while exceedingly graceful, is not so beautiful as the wooden cornice in Pohick Church.

From considerations of date and geography, our attention is next claimed by the group of small churches in the Middle Colonies which may be represented by the Gloria Dei (Old Swedes), Philadelphia, St. David’s, Radnor, and Trinity, Oxford. The present structure of the Gloria Dei was built in 1700 to replace the old block house, built in 1665, which had afforded a place of worship for the congregation since 1677. Seen from the exterior, the church is cruciform in plan with an apsidal east end. At the west end is a small, sharp pointed belfry surmounting a projection in front of the church which is carried up to the peak of the roof somewhat in the manner of a tower, the lower part forming a vestibule. The roof is exceedingly steep in pitch and, by the same token, thereby exhibits the Swedish origin of its plan. The apsidal east end also indicates its Swedish origin for both the steep pitched roof and the apse{225} were thoroughly characteristic of the Scandinavian ecclesiastical edifices. The brick is laid in Flemish bond, the headers, which seem to have been the arch bricks in the kiln, being covered with a vitreous blue black glaze. At several places an interesting diaper pattern is worked in the walls by the ingenious use of these glazed headers. The great square windows are filled with heavy muntined sashes and small panes of glass. It was found at an early date that the side walls were being pushed over by the thrust of the roof and to brace them the transepts, which do not appear in the interior plan, were built about 1703, giving the building its cruciform appearance. The south transept is a vestibule or porch while the north transept is used as a sacristy. The ceiling is vaulted. North and south galleries date from an early period but were built somewhat later than the rest of the structure. The details of panelling and woodwork are of distinctly pre-Georgian affinities.

St. David’s, Radnor, was built in 1714 and seems to have been the result of the efforts of local artisans without much attempt at architectural direction or planning. It is extremely simple in every way. In plan it is rectangular with a later addition at one side to accommodate the vestry room. The organ gallery is at one end and is reached by an outside enclosed stone{226} stairway. The roof is of steep pitch and the cornices are severely plain. The round headed windows are now filled with small panes set in broad muntins but, if we may believe tradition, they were originally filled with diamond paned leaded casements. Perhaps the most interesting architectural feature of St. David’s is the texture of the stone work in its rubble walls which are built of random sized native field stone and pointed with white mortar. This masonry is thoroughly representative of the traditional manner of building stone walls which the Welsh artisans seem to have brought with them from their Cambrian home and which has left such a strong impress upon the stone work of so many of the old houses in Pennsylvania. It is one of the clearest instances of the survival in America of methods of craftsmanship brought from specific localities in the old world.

Trinity Church, Oxford, was built in 1711 and is mentioned here chiefly because it exhibits a more ambitious plan in its original design, having transepts in the interior which greatly add to its seating capacity and carry out the cruciform idea both within and without. Its details of design, masonry and woodwork display an affinity with the earliest phase of Georgian work.

Christ Church, Philadelphia, to which we now{227} come, stands for all that is best in church architecture of the Colonial period in America. The present building was erected in 1727 from plans prepared by Dr. John Kearsley who seems to have drawn his inspiration largely from St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, London. From whatever source his inspiration came, Christ Church is a peculiarly beautiful and graceful structure, well meriting all the praise that has been bestowed upon it and incidentally affording a striking instance of what might be achieved by the amateur architects of the eighteenth century who believed that a knowledge of architecture was an essential part of every gentleman’s education and who were willing to put aside their own professional vocations for a time in order to plan and superintend the erection of some public structure as a kind of public duty.

In every respect the building is thoroughly representative of the best Georgian traditions. In outline the plan is rectangular with nave and aisles. The round headed windows of the lower stage are separated from each other by pilasters whose capitals support the projecting cornice-like string course. Superimposed above this member are the bases of other pilasters separating the windows of the upper tier and while their capitals come immediately below the wooden frieze of the cornice, the roof is surrounded by a heavily carved balustrade{228} whose posts are capped by well proportioned urns. At the eastern end of the church, a great Palladian window lights the chancel. The tower, at the western end, is a massive structure of brick and is surmounted by a wooden spire of singularly graceful proportions and beautiful detail, inspired by some of the masterly creations of Sir Christopher Wren. For all the proportions are massive, the structure presents a light and graceful appearance, attributable in large measure to the manner in which the side walls are pierced with many windows and the wall spaces broken by graceful architectural adornments such as the pilasters and string courses. In this general lightening effect the triglyphs of the cornice frieze and the spindles of the surmounting balustrade must not be forgotten.

Within, the woodwork is thoroughly typical of the best Georgian traditions with its fluted pillars, its carefully carved triglyphs and guttæ and the nicety of the panelling. The aisles are now paved with tile but fortunately the ancient tombstones fill most of the aisle space so that the modern tiling is not obstrusive. The ancient pews have been replaced by modern seats but historic locations are carefully noted by small brass tablets.

St. Peter’s Church, Philadelphia, built in 1761, is peculiarly interesting because it has never{229} undergone profanation at the hands of improvers or restorers. The old pews remain in their original condition as does also the paving of small, square blocks of stone in the north and south aisles. The exterior of St. Peter’s is less ornate than the exterior of Christ Church but it preserves the same interesting feature of having doors approximately at the four corners, the tower in both cases either serving or having served at one time or another as a vestry room. St. Peter’s exhibits at its eastern end a large Palladian window of more expansive dimensions than that of Christ Church which, however, was fully in accordance with the tendency of the times as Palladian windows seem to have expanded their dimensions as the Georgian period progressed. The pediments over the four doors are peculiarly interesting at St. Peter’s and the cornice shows considerable refinement.

The galleries within are supported on Tuscan pillars and the other woodwork, while of excellent proportions, is exceedingly simple and dignified. It is of interest to note that the pulpit is accessible only by climbing up through the tower; the clerks’ seats are immediately beneath it. The organ gallery is built above the chancel which is at the east end of the church while the pulpit and the clerks’ desk are at the west end so that frequent processions of the{230} clergy during the course of the service are sometimes necessary.

In the same class with Christ Church and St. Peter’s must be mentioned St. Michael’s Church, Charleston, S.C., and St. Paul’s Chapel, New York City. St. Michael’s was built in 1742 from plans, it is believed, furnished by James Gibbs, the famous English architect, while St. Paul’s is of native American design. Both churches show the strong influence of Wren feeling which persisted in the ecclesiastical architecture of the Georgian era.

While speaking of ecclesiastical architecture of the Middle Colonies we must not omit to mention the Quaker meeting houses which were ordinarily of brick or stone and sometimes covered with a coating of roughcast. They are rectangular in form with pitch roofs and usually display two rows of square windows. The cornices are simple and severe and all the woodwork is extremely plain. As a rule there are four doors, two on each of the longer sides. The woodwork within is not infrequently devoid of paint and has acquired a wonderfully rich colour from age. In many of the meeting houses there are galleries although the gallery is by no means a universal feature. The smaller and older meeting houses are generally of one storey in height but those of later date are frequently of two storeys and in that case ordina{231}rily have galleries. All the details of woodwork are so exceedingly simple that one can scarcely say they show a marked affinity with Georgian models although they belong, for the most part, to the Georgian period.

Nor must we forget the meeting houses erected to accommodate the various German sects. These buildings generally displayed architectural affinities of Teutonic character. As an example of this we might mention the old Trappe Meeting House on the Perkiomen, or some of the Moravian churches and Reformed churches in the interior of Pennsylvania.

It will be unnecessary to make any further mention of the Georgian churches of New York as they are, in the main, similar to those that have been mentioned in an earlier part of this chapter. Some note, however, should be made of the little Dutch churches one occasionally finds such as that at Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson. Here we see the same persistence of Dutch ecclesiastical traditions as was noted in Pennsylvania in the case of German traditions exemplified in the structures like the Trappe Meeting House. The general form of the building and the method of its execution might readily be paralleled in Holland.

We now come to the New England Meeting House as the next type demanding examination and for this we can find no more fitting example{232} than the Old Ship Meeting-house at Hingham, Massachusetts. This building was erected in 1680 and it is said to have been framed by ship’s carpenters. It is a spacious square building of extreme severity of line. The roof is hipped, or would be a perfectly hipped roof were it not truncated at the top and finished with a balustrade and a belfry with a small pointed spire. The exterior is so devoid of all architectural amenity that one can scarcely speak of the structure as having any architecture at all. The walls are clapboarded and the cornice is of the simplest contour. The interior is plain and, owing to modernisation, has been made unattractive and prosaic. For our purpose this building is valuable as marking the four-square type of meeting house so often met with.

Where the older meetings have not fallen victims of modern improvement, their interiors, though severe and rigid, possess a degree of charm with their ancient high backed pews, tall pulpits, and seats for the elders of the meeting immediately below them. Their excessive plainness is, of course, proverbial, but although there was a dearth of architectural amenity in their construction, it must be admitted that many of them possessed the charm of unobtrusive simplicity.

The Old South Meeting-house, erected in 1730, is a fair representative of similar struc{233}tures where more attention was paid to and more allowance made for architectural endeavour. The wonted plan of having the pulpit on one of the long sides was adhered to and the gallery stretched around on the other sides. The double rows of windows are round arched and form the chief point of interest both on the exterior and in the interior. The brick is laid in Flemish bond and there is a slightly projecting base course several feet from the ground. Cornices are plain and the expansive roof is rather flat in pitch. The tower, while graceful enough in proportion, is severely plain. Nevertheless it must be confessed that the attenuated proportions of the spire with the little arcade around its base have a certain charm of their own which it is extremely difficult to analyse.

Of wholly different type is King’s Chapel. Here we find ample evidence of attention to architectural opportunity and enrichment. While the rectangular plan is adhered to, the interior is divided into nave and aisles by the columns which fulfil the double function of supporting the roof and upholding the galleries. The windows in the lower row, underneath the gallery, are of smaller dimensions than those in the upper row which throw their light down over the galleries into the middle of the nave. The windows of the lower row have flat arched tops{234} while those above are round arched. The masonry is of carefully dressed stone and, while there are no buttresses, the front of the building is adorned by pilasters at the corners and by a pillared arcade forming a porch around the square tower. The roof is hipped. Inside the building, far more play is given to architectural elaboration than outside. Here we find the pairs of columns supporting the roof and galleries are fluted from top to bottom and surmounted by elaborately carved Corinthian capitals upon which are imposed sections of frieze and cornice from which again spring the arches of the roof vaulting. While the effect is agreeable enough, it cannot be denied that the arrangement and general method of execution are illogical and capricious.

The old North and Trinity Churches, Newport, also exhibit a somewhat similar and illogical arrangement of the ceiling and its method of support. Trinity, Newport, and the old North are mentioned in addition to King’s Chapel because they all represent the New England type of ecclesiastical edifice erected during the Georgian period which affords an antithesis to the auditorium type represented by the Old South which may be regarded as a logical development of the type exemplified by the Old Ship Meeting-house at Hingham.

It would be an unpardonable oversight to{235} bring this chapter to a close without mentioning buildings like the Park Street Church in Boston with its graceful spire and other buildings of similar type, erected about the same period, whose inspiration we owe partly to former ecclesiastical traditions and partly to the new spirit of the Classic Revival. In Boston, and elsewhere throughout New England, may be found many such churches which illuminate the era in which that master of architectural refinement, Samuel McIntire, wrought so successfully.

The foregoing pages, cursory as the review of ecclesiastical architecture has necessarily been, will show the diversity of styles that prevailed in the Colonies from North to South and incidentally the reader will be enabled to compare the modes of architectural expression with the ideals and habits of the people inhabiting the several sections of the country.{236}

CHAPTER XIII

MATERIALS AND TEXTURES

THE materials of which any structure is built and the way in which those materials are manipulated have quite as much to do with the general aspect as mass or contour. It is of the utmost importance, therefore, that we pay due heed to the material resources at the disposal of builders in the Colonial period. Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that materials to some extent influenced architectural forms while, on the other hand, tradition and hereditary preferences, as we have seen, exerted a powerful influence upon the choice of materials and affected the way in which they were employed.

A very great number of the settlers of New England, as stated in a previous chapter, came from the Danish parts of England where the timber tradition was especially strong. Consequently, despite the abundance of stone in the new land, which they might readily have used, they preferred, in the majority of instances, to build their houses of wood. Of course, some{237} allowance, too, in this respect, must be made for ease and expedition of working and for climatic conditions. In the Middle Colonies and the South, most of the settlers came from the Saxon portions of England where stone and brick traditions had always prevailed and, although there was abundance of good timber and occasionally some lack of other materials, there was a general preference for brick or stone walls notwithstanding any inconvenience incidental to procuring them. The artisans in each section preferred to work with the materials with which they were most familiar and householders also seem to have concurred in the popular choice. It is to be noted that the lack of requisite material—marble or suitable stone—had not a little to do with the common use of white-painted wood for trims and external ornamental features in Georgian buildings whose English prototypes, in many cases, were embellished with pillars, pediments and cornices of the more durable substance.

It now behooves us to see what use was made of the several materials in the various portions of the Colonies. We shall, of course, find brick and stone structures in New England, and frame buildings in the Middle Colonies and the South, but the preponderance numerically displayed the characteristics just mentioned.

If “pigs is pigs”, doubtless, by the same{238} token, “bricks is bricks” and also “mortar is mortar.” Notwithstanding the profundity of this truism, it is just as well to remember that there are bricks and bricks and that there is mortar and mortar, too, and that both, when brought together in a wall, mutually interact and are susceptible of large diversity of treatment. This very possibility of different combination afforded the Colonial builder a field for the exercise of not a little ingenuity.

For the benefit of readers not accustomed to technical terms it will, perhaps, be well to explain exactly what is meant by the words “bond” and “texture” which are necessarily used in speaking of brick masonry.

The term “bond” simply means the way of laying or the manner of binding and denotes the position in which the bricks are laid in their courses and the appearance created by the relative position of the units. In the walls of the houses built during the Colonial and post-Colonial periods, four varieties of bond are found, two bonds sometimes being used in conjunction for the sake of variety. They are English or Liverpool bond, Flemish bond, Dutch cross bond and running bond. English or Liverpool bond has alternate rows of stretchers (bricks so laid that the long side is exposed to view) and headers (bricks so laid that only the ends appear). The courses are arranged so that{239} headers and stretchers break joints. Flemish bond consists of alternate headers and stretchers in every course, all joints being broken. It is the strongest and best-locked of all bonds. Dutch cross bond, like English bond, consists of alternate courses of headers and stretchers but with this difference: in English bond, the headers and stretchers in alternate layers are placed directly one above the other while, in Dutch cross bond, they break joints. Running bond consists entirely of stretchers and is a kind of degenerate Dutch cross bond with all the headers left out or introduced only at intervals of seven or eight courses to tie the face of the wall together. English or Liverpool, Flemish and running bonds were all in the common heritage of English building tradition.

For the sake of historical accuracy it is important to correct a popular error occasioned by the terms “English” and “Dutch” brick. It is commonly stated of many old buildings that they were built of brick fetched overseas from England or Holland. No doubt some few were but most of them were not. George Cary Eggleston set forth the whole matter in a very clear light when he wrote that “nearly all these bricks, whether English or Dutch, were made in America, as later scholarly research has conclusively proved. The only difference between English and Dutch bricks was one of dimensions.{240} The small bricks, moulded upon a Dutch model, were known as Holland bricks. The much larger ones, moulded upon an English model, were called English bricks. The very learned and scholarly historian of South Carolina, Mr. McCrady, has conclusively proved that the so-called English bricks used in the construction of Carolina houses could not have been imported from England. By simple arithmetical calculation he has shown that all the ships landing in the Carolinas during the seventeenth century—even if all of them had been loaded exclusively with bricks—could not have brought in enough bricks to build one half or one fourth the ‘English brick’ houses of that part of the country.” There was abundant clay in the Colonies and the colonists, usually so resourceful and self-dependent, were scarcely likely to ignore an opportunity under their very noses and depend upon an imported commodity, even though they could have afforded the cost. Indeed, bricks were exported from some of the Colonies.

To be sure, one record shows that ten thousand bricks were imported into Massachusetts Bay in 1628, and we know that some bricks were imported into the New Haven Colony at an early date and likewise that, during the demolition of some very old Connecticut houses, bricks were found with the name “London” impressed{241} upon them. Then, too, several instances can be cited in both the Middle and Southern Colonies, where bricks were imported and used for certain specified buildings and there are a few well authenticated cases of brick importation from Holland. But against this meagre certitude of a few cargoes of bricks from overseas there is the abundant evidence of extensive brick-making in the Colonies from a very early date. There is one reference in official records to a brick kiln in Connecticut in 1635 and there were doubtless other brick kilns in operation both there and elsewhere at the same time or even prior to that year.

The bricks in early Colonial use were of various sizes. As a rule, the older the bricks the larger they are. They afterwards became smaller and now, in our own time, they are large again. Some of the bricks were four inches by eight and a quarter and two and five eighths inches thick, others were two and a half by four inches and eight inches long. The “Dutch” bricks were thinner than the “English.” Most of the seventeenth and eighteenth century bricks were roughly moulded and not a few were underburned while others were extremely hard burned and had much pleasing variation of colour. The ends of arch bricks in the kiln were often burned till they acquired a bluish black and almost vitreous glaze. These were{242} used for headers and to them is due much of the colour and pattern interest of old walls. The large bricks used for “pugging” the openings between the timbers in the early timber built houses are scarcely more than sun-dried and readily crumble and go to pieces upon exposure to the weather.

In speaking of the “texture” of a wall, we must take into consideration the kind of bricks used, their shape and size, their colour, their bond devised to give a distinctive pattern to the wall face, the mortar joints and, finally, the kind of mortar used. It need scarcely be said that the results possible with the old brick of slightly irregular shape and varied colour in English or Flemish bond—Flemish bond was exceedingly popular among eighteenth century builders—were infinitely more satisfactory than any that could be attained through the use of the later “faultily faultless” pressed brick of monotonously uniform shape and size, with a surface “like cut cheese and a colour like a firecracker” and a great deal of the charm of the old work is due to agreeable texture. While there is some exceedingly pleasing brickwork in New England and especially in the Connecticut Valley, brick excellence is much more common in the Middle States and the South where brick building was always more in vogue. Occasionally in New England, and very frequently farther south, a{243} goodly degree of interest was achieved by the combination of different bonds, by herring-bone panels, by projecting courses on wall faces, at cornices or about chimney tops and by diaper patterns, dates and initials wrought in blue headers on end walls and in gables. Specially moulded capping bricks for base courses and for the tops of walls were used to good effect.

Both field stone and local quarried stone were used in New England and masonry was usually of the rubble type although occasionally the stones were carefully squared and dressed. The same may be said of stone work in New York. Sometimes the walls were of stone with brick door and window trims, as at the Manor House at Croton-on-Hudson. In the Dutch part of northern New Jersey the native reddish brown stone was employed with excellent effect both in rubble masonry and for cut work. In both cases it was often pointed with white mortar joints which gave a peculiar and striking contrast.

In Pennsylvania we find masonry of singular excellence and beauty where, again, both field stone and quarried stone were made use of. The Pennsylvania rubble masonry, laid by workmen who were merely perpetuating the traditions they had brought with them from England and Wales, has always commanded admiration and, in the vicinity of Philadelphia,{244} the same inherited masonry traditions are still flourishing vigorously. These rubble walls were sometimes laid with stones of random sizes, sometimes with stones of comparatively uniform dimensions. In a few instances, notably in the neighbourhood of Kingsessing, Philadelphia, and in the walls of Belmont, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, once the home of the witty Judge Peters of Revolutionary fame, the old English custom of galleting the wide, white mortar joints with little spawls was practised. It was not infrequently the case that houses would have walls of dressed and squared stone in front with rubble walls at the sides and rear. Some few, such as Cliveden in Germantown, Philadelphia, and Whitby Hall, Kingsessing, Philadelphia, were built of cut stone all the way about. Whitby Hall and a few other houses also furnish interesting examples of brick door and window trims that project slightly beyond the face of the stone wall. This Pennsylvania stone work displayed practically no attempts at carving and the one instance where it has been carved is found in the window trims and Ionic capitals of the river front of the Bartram house, Kingsessing, Philadelphia.

In connexion with Colonial stonework must be mentioned the coating of walls with stucco and roughcast which were either allowed to remain their natural colour or whitewashed, as{245} at Wyck, Germantown, Philadelphia. The very early houses were not stuccoed at first and the stucco seems to have been added later as a protection, partly, against the weather where porous stone had been used for the walls, such as some of the grey stone quarried in the neighbourhood of the Whitemarsh Valley. The mica stone, so abundant in Pennsylvania, after a few years’ exposure, becomes impervious to moisture and never needs stucco protection. Oftentimes stucco or roughcast were applied from choice and not from necessity, especially among the German colonists who seem to have been chiefly responsible for the introduction of the practice. For the sake of finish, contrast and cleanly appearance the stucco or roughcast coat was often whitewashed or yellow washed.

Much of the mortar in the early Colonial period was of poor quality and rapidly disintegrated. Lime, however, was soon to be had. In some cases it was imported, in others it was burned wherever limestone or oyster shells were to be had and the quality of the mortar was very generally improved throughout the Colonies. Some of it was exceptionally fine and to-day is as hard as the bricks or stone it binds together.

The oaken timbers for the framing of houses were riven and hewn into shape and dressed down with an adz. Rafters and joists were{246} sometimes treated thus and in other cases were sawn. The great summer beams and oftentimes the studs, too, were finished with stopped chamfers along the edges. The spaces between the studs, as noted in Chapter III, were at first filled with “pugging” of stone or brick and clay mixed with chopped straw and then plastered over in the manner of the “black and white” or half timber work in England. Whether the wall spaces between the studs were ever stopped with “wattle and dab”—an old English filling of clay, plastered over a kind of loose basketwork of interwoven wattles or withes—the writer is unable to say with certainty. It is not at all improbable that the stud spaces were sometimes so filled and it is quite certain that some of the early Connecticut chimneys were constructed in this manner. The survival of “wattle and dab” work in New England in any form is an interesting instance of the persistence and continuity of craft traditions.

Clapboards were made chiefly of oak or pine and were nailed horizontally to the outside of the studs. They were usually feather edged and lapped, the upper over the lower. Although it is not impossible that there was some precedent in England for the use of clapboards nailed horizontally on the outside of the studding, it is highly probable that the practice of{247} applying them in this manner in New England was first dictated by climatic necessity as a remedy and afterwards became incorporated as an essential part of frame construction. In some parts of New England, especially in Rhode Island and portions of Connecticut, studs between the posts were dispensed with and vertical boarding of oak or pine, usually more than an inch thick, was nailed to the cills and girts. This vertical boarding, for which, also, there seems to have been an English precedent, was generally, though not invariably, covered outside either with horizontal clapboards or with long shingles.

Shingles of pine were made both in the sizes common to-day and also of much larger dimensions, the latter being used for the outer sheathing of walls that had first been boarded. Roof shingles were sometimes laid on boarding, sometimes on “lathing” or small strips, nailed like purlins on the rafters. Shingles afforded the usual roofing material not only in New England but throughout the Colonies, although slate was not unknown and on some of the larger buildings copper and lead were occasionally used. In dry weather the danger to shingle roofs from sparking chimneys and the additional source of danger, at all times, from defective or uncleaned flues, led our forebears to adopt some rather curious and interesting methods of fire{248} prevention. In early New England there were the chimney viewers whose duty it was to inspect the chimneys and compel the householders, by fines or other means, to keep their chimneys in repair and have them swept with sufficient frequency. This was a precaution of the utmost importance in communities where most of the houses were built of wood.

In Philadelphia, in Colonial times, the sight of a blazing chimney was enough to throw the whole community into an uproar and blazing chimneys were the subject of legislation by the Provincial Assembly of 1775, which enacted that “Every person whose Chimney shall take Fire and blaze out at the Top, not having been swept within one Calendar Month, shall forfeit and pay the sum of Twenty Shillings; but if swept within that Time and taking Fire and blazing out at the Top, the Person who swept the same, either by himself, his Servants or Negroes, shall forfeit and pay Twenty Shillings.”

Glass for windows in the beginning of the Colonial period was a luxury enjoyed by only a few of the more well-to-do settlers and even oiled paper was not always easy to come by so that oftentimes the humbler houses had only shutters to close window apertures and afford protection from the weather. Window glass, however, was imported at an early date and at{249} an early date, also, glass in small panes was manufactured in the Colonies.

The earliest windows were filled with small diamond shaped panes leaded into the casements and the casement window was universally used. In the fore part of the eighteenth century, double or single hung sash windows became the fashion and were very generally substituted for the older casements by alterations made in the manner alluded to in Chapter III, although, quite frequently, particularly in the Middle and Southern Colonies, no change in the shape or dimensions of the window openings was considered desirable or necessary. The lights for the sashes were universally small and it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that they increased appreciably in size. It should be remembered that a great deal of the charm and individuality of fenestration during both the early Colonial and Georgian periods was due to the manifold divisions of the lights—with lead in the first instance and with heavy muntins in the second. A good many of the old leaded casements that had endured, despite the favour of the new styles, till the outbreak of the Revolutionary War disappeared at that time, the lead being melted to make bullets. This is said to have been the fate of the original windows in the Church of St. David at Radnor.

Paint, in the first years of colonisation during{250} the seventeenth century, though not unknown, was not in common use and it must be admitted that the old woodwork, whether oak or pine, took on a delightful tone in the course of a few years from the combined agency of the atmosphere and the smoke of wood fires. In Pennsylvania and the neighbourhood, paint both inside and out seems to have been used from the first. It should be remembered, particularly in this connexion, that paint for either exterior or interior use in the Colonial and Georgian periods was not invariably white. Colours were frequently used and specific reference has been made in Chapter VIII to the employment of paint of various colours for panelling and other interior woodwork.

The panelling in many of the old Colonial houses, and for that matter the same thing may be said with perfect truth of much of the panelling to be found in houses of the Georgian type, exhibits marked irregularities. Although the almost mediæval methods of the early craftsmen were gradually supplanted by other ways of treating the material, there was always a delightful personal element of originality and lack of symmetry in the panelling and woodwork generally. It is this very originality that gives it its charm and interest. It is precisely like the features of the human face. If all the features of any human face were absolutely{251} symmetrical and regular, so that both sides were precisely alike in every measurement, the countenance would be truly imbecile in expression. It is the irregularity which causes the outward indications of character and gives whatever beauty or the opposite quality there may be. The early craftsmen had no compunction in making one panel deeper than another, being governed therein by expediency, the width of the piece they were using, or the distance to be covered. It was not that they did not do their work well and in a workmanlike manner, but they saw no reason why they should be tied down by a slavish exactitude in the exercise of their craft, and they accordingly took liberties for which we in our slavishly mechanical days may be truly thankful, and from which we may learn a valuable lesson if we will only use our eyes and not be afraid to act with a little independence.{252}

CHAPTER XIV

EARLY AMERICAN ARCHITECTS AND THEIR RESOURCES

WHO lived in our old houses and what manner of men they were, we fortunately know. At any rate it is an easy matter to find out. Who planned and built those houses we do not, as a rule, know nor will the most careful search and enquiry always bring to light even the name of the architect or, if they do succeed in doing so much, the information gained is generally so meagre that it does but whet the appetite for more. However, regardless of what we may or may not be able to learn of the designer of this or that house or public building, we shall be quite safe in attributing the design of early American structures to the agency of one or the other of three classes of men. This triple division consisted, first, of amateur architects; second, of carpenter architects and, last of all, of professional architects. In this grouping, the professional architect is given the last place because he was least frequently represented. The first and{253} second classes were by far the most numerous and some of our best eighteenth century buildings, houses, churches and other public structures alike, are the results of collaboration between them.

We shall not be far wrong in ascribing seventeenth century buildings, almost without exception, to the capable and resourceful craftsman who not only preserved conscientiously the traditions he had learned as an apprentice or journeyman in the Mother Country and faithfully perpetuated them by his practice as a master carpenter or joiner in a new land but also showed himself possessed of ready wit and keen perceptive faculties by the alacrity with which he modified and adapted traditional methods and precedents to new conditions and requirements of climate and environment. So far as he could consistently do so, he held by preference to tradition in plan, methods of construction and choice of materials. When necessity or common sense, however, dictated a departure from established usage he was quick enough to follow the promptings of expediency and devise satisfactory substitutes for the deficiencies of past practice. Hence were originated local types without any conscious attempt on the part of the agents to be original.

The methods followed by the seventeenth century American builder showed a close rela{254}tionship with the practices of mediæval joiners and masons. Furthermore, these early workmen showed an all-round mastery of their own craft, an intelligent understanding of related crafts and a thorough knowledge of the properties and uses of materials that their modern successors would do well to emulate. They respected their calling and took a proper pride in the excellence of their craftsmanship. Hence the work of their hands, however plain and simple, still possesses a dignity and honest beauty that plainly proclaim how they put their hearts into what they were doing and, at the same time, command our reverence and admiration. The old buildings have lasted so well and assumed such an atmosphere of grace because the artisans acted upon the principle that what was worth doing at all was worth doing well and set much store by honest workmanship instead of regarding their occupation as a job to be got through with at a maximum of wage for a minimum of time spent in labour. They got the best out of their materials because they knew and respected the peculiar qualities of their materials. Whether English or Dutch, Welsh or Swedish, the handiwork of these seventeenth century builders, wholly without pretence as it was, expressed faithfully the aggregate of the contemporary phases of the domestic architecture in the countries whence they came{255} and also evidences both the beginnings and development of our own several vernacular manifestations, all of which, to a certain degree, were obscured and discounted by the expansion and increasing popularity of eighteenth century Georgian modes. To the carpenter-architects of the seventeenth century we owe a great debt of gratitude for their faithful preservation of time-honoured tradition in plan and manner of building so that we may easily trace our architectural lineage, for the intrinsic excellence of the structures they erected and the lessons they can still teach us in craftsmanship but, most of all, for the honesty and sincerity of the vernacular forms they developed, forms created by ready ingenuity in response to local needs and void of all pretence and hollow affectation. These forms, one and all, are full of vitality. Their very fitness for the conditions they were designed to meet in the neighbourhoods where they were evolved and the successful event of their application to modern demands for characteristic and informal domestic architecture drive home the extent of our present debt to the forgotten and nameless architect-carpenters of a by-gone generation.

With the dawn of the eighteenth century it becomes easier to connect buildings and the names and personalities of those that designed them. When we are not able to say with cer{256}tainty that such a structure was designed by such a man, we know, at least, that there were then living in the different cities men of acknowledged architectural attainments, that their work is to be seen in this house or that church as a matter of indubitable record and that there is a strong presumption that their influence is to be traced in the design of houses or public edifices where there is no documentary evidence to support attribution to an individual architect.

One of the earliest personalities known to us in a distinctly architectural connexion is James Portius “whom William Penn induced to come to his new city to ‘design and execute his Proprietary buildings.’” He was “among the most active of the Carpenters’ Company and, at his death, in 1736, gave his choice collection of architectural works to his fellow members, thus laying the foundation of their present valuable library.” This Carpenters’ Company of Philadelphia was the organisation that, at a later date, erected its gild house, known as Carpenters’ Hall, where the Continental Congress for a time held its sessions. It is still in an excellent state of preservation and still houses the collection alluded to. The skill of the resident artisans of early Philadelphia was of no mean order, as their handiwork amply attests to-day, and, in 1724, the master car{257}penters of the city “composed a gild large and prosperous enough to be patterned after ‘The Worshipful Company of Carpenters of London,’” an organisation founded in 1477. Unfortunately we cannot with certainty ascribe any buildings now standing to the plans of James Portius. We can only make conjectures. It is highly probable that Penn’s house, which originally stood in Letitia Court until its removal to a site in Fairmount Park, was designed and erected by the Proprietary’s architect. The Manor House at Pennsbury was also, in all likelihood, designed by him or at least carried out under his superintendence. It is a source of never ending regret that it was allowed to fall into a state of utter decay and was then demolished. Had it been preserved, we should now have an invaluable addition to the architectural treasures of our country and an interesting commentary upon the work of one of the earliest architects known to have practised his profession in the Colonies.

It is most important to remember that some considerable degree of architectural knowledge or, at the very least, some substantial cultivation of architectural taste and discrimination seems to have been considered an indispensable part of every gentleman’s education in the eighteenth century. Consequently it is not surprising to find that some of our native ama{258}teur architects possessed knowledge and ability by no means contemptible. Architectural appreciation was favoured by the fact that not a few of the sons of the wealthy and well-to-do were sent to England to complete their education and usually spent some time afterwards in travel on the Continent. Such broadening influences naturally tended to stimulate and aid the development of architectural taste and, as a certain amount of dexterity in drawing was highly esteemed and practised as a polite masculine accomplishment, a considerable number of men were fitted, to a far greater degree than the majority of so-called well educated people nowadays, to translate their architectural preferences into a form sufficiently intelligible for the master-carpenter to work from in putting an idea into a tangible shape.

It is not to be inferred from the foregoing that a large number of men of substance and leisure for the cultivation of polite accomplishments were capable of producing a set of measured drawings, such as professional architects prepare, to turn over to a contractor for execution. They were not. But the division of functions was altogether different. The client, as he would now be termed, showed a more intelligent and constructive appreciation of architectural principles in a proportionately larger number of cases than he does at the present{259} day. He formed a definite conception of what he wished and was capable of conveying his desires lucidly by means of drawings or rough sketches to the head workman charged with the actual task of construction. As the average client was better informed and thought more clearly upon matters architectural than the client of later times, so, on the other hand, the master-carpenter of the eighteenth century was infinitely more capable than the average artisan of like rank to-day. He was not only a skilled master-mechanic, competent to translate rough draughts and sketches into carefully prepared working drawings, but he was also a person of some architectural education and taste and endowed with a nice perception and valuation of architectural merits and proprieties. He was materially aided in his work by a number of valuable and explicit architectural books with measured drawings of whose assistance he did not hesitate freely to avail himself. Furthermore, he still retained a sympathetic respect for his materials and a conscientious appreciation of worthy craftsmanship, inherited by tradition from his mediæval predecessors and wholly apart from modern commercialism. Pride in his calling impelled him to the closest personal supervision and painstaking interest. He would be content with nothing short of the best.

The amateur architects were no mere dabbling{260} dilettanti, flirting with a polite and amiable penchant for architectural amenities. The best of them, and those that left the most impressive memorials of their talent and skill, were, as we shall presently see, busy men of large affairs and serious interests. They, as well as the master-carpenters, were thoroughly conversant with the best architectural books of the period and often had a fair showing of them on the shelves of their own libraries. More than one of them left standing orders with their London booksellers to send them, upon publication, such volumes as were most worth while. Another factor of their fitness is also to be reckoned. It was not unusual for them to possess training and experience as surveyors. Indeed, it was almost imperatively necessary for large landowners to have a knowledge of surveying in order to look properly after their interests. This training gave them an insight into the practice of making accurate measurements and draughting and the effect of such practical and exact education was not without its weight when they addressed themselves to designing buildings.

One of the most striking and eminent figures among the eighteenth century amateur architects was the Honourable Andrew Hamilton, “the day-star of the American Revolution,” as Gouverneur Morris styled him, sometime{261} Attorney-General of the Province of Pennsylvania, Provincial Councillor, Speaker of the Provincial Assembly from 1729 and for a number of successive years afterward and, above all, illustrious jurist and pleader, whose defence of Peter Zenger, the New York printer, in 1735, redounded to his fame both in England and throughout the Colonies. He was a man of exceptional and varied attainments, of catholic cultivation and outlook and endowed with remarkable elegancy of taste. Amid all the distractions and pressing concerns of an exacting legal and public career and the many demands involved in the successful management of a large private estate, he nevertheless found time to devote a good measure of attention to architectural diversions and left an enduring monument to his talents in that direction in the State House in Philadelphia.

The history of the plan for the State House is peculiarly interesting for the light it sheds on contemporary conditions. Determined to erect the State House, a committee of three was appointed by the Assembly, in 1729, to procure suitable plans. Two members of this committee prepared plans for the new building, namely Andrew Hamilton and Dr. John Kearsley, to whom further reference will be made in a following paragraph. Dr. Kearsley, it is true, had achieved considerable reputation{262} as an architect by the plans that he had devised for Christ Church, but Hamilton was not supposed to have any aptitude in that direction. He was a lawyer, much occupied in the public business of the Province. It seems, however, that he had mastered some architectural knowledge while in London where, like so many other illustrious lawyers of the Middle and Southern Colonies, he received his training in the Inns of Court. Being a man of remarkable and sterling ability, combining with his wide versatility and breadth of view a fund of initiative and force, he generally pushed to a successful completion any matter to which he addressed himself. His plan, a rough draught on parchment, which is still to be seen in the collection of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, was submitted to the Assembly and chosen. For assurance of the excellence and soundness of his judgment, one has only to turn their eyes to the fabric of the State House.

In the construction of public edifices, the trials and tribulations of the eighteenth century architects could well compare with the difficulties encountered in some instances by their twentieth century successors. Work on the State House was indeed begun and vigorously pushed forward by Hamilton so far as he was able, but there were all sorts of obstructions to be surmounted and drawbacks and hin{263}drances to be set aside. There were grumbles and growls from influential people who were either wholly opposed to the undertaking or else dissatisfied with the site. There were hostile criticisms of the plan adopted, there were strikes among the workmen, there was, at times, a lack of competent labour, there were wranglings about the necessary funds to pay the costs—everything, in short, combined to retard progress and Judge Hamilton died in 1741 before his plans were fully executed. Although the date of the erection of the State House is given as 1733—the greatest portion of it was built then—its completion, as just stated, was not achieved till eight years later.

Another amateur architect of the period, deserving of mention, was Joseph Brown who was born in Providence in 1733 and died there in 1785. After acquiring a comfortable fortune in a manufacturing business, he devoted himself to the pursuits towards which his tastes for science inclined him. He was particularly interested in electricity and had a comprehensive knowledge of the subject; he was likewise proficient in mechanics and astronomy and held a professorship in Brown University, of which institution he was also a trustee. Of his ability in the architectural field, the First Baptist Church in Providence, erected in 1775, and various houses bear witness.{264}

John Smibert, whose name we always associate with early New England portraiture, also extended his activities into the realm of architecture and designed Faneuil Hall whose evidence is a sufficient guarantee of his skill. John Greene, of Providence, Captain Isaac Damon, of Northampton, and many more might readily be added to a list that is dignified by the great names of Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Washington is said to have designed Pohick Church, Virginia, of which parish he was a vestryman. It is certain, at any rate, that he was deeply interested in the supervision of its erection as he also was in the erection of Christ Church, Alexandria, where he was likewise a vestryman. His architectural taste is still further to be seen in the fabric of Mount Vernon. In this connexion it ought to be borne in mind how lively an interest he manifested in the laying-out of the Federal City and the planning of its public buildings according to a worthy and comprehensive scheme. Jefferson’s skill as an architect is evidenced in Monticello and in the buildings of the University of Virginia which are chiefly, if not altogether, attributable to him as their designer.

Dr. John Kearsley and Dr. William Thornton were two busy and intensely active eighteenth century physicians who found time to acquit themselves most creditably in the field{265} of architectural endeavour as well as to do their full share in the discharge of sundry public duties which their fellow citizens entrusted to them. Dr. Kearsley, arriving in Philadelphia in 1711, soon built up an extensive practice and, at the same time, undertook the instruction of a younger generation of medical men whom he is said to have enrolled as apprentices for a seven years’ term of tutelage, a relation that the “apprentice” students apparently found “both onerous and exacting, as it seemed to include the duties of a servant, coachman, messenger-boy, prescription clerk, nurse and assistant surgeon.” Apart from his labours as a physician, he was engaged in civic and Provincial activities of the first order and long occupied a seat in the Assembly of the Province. As an architect, he is entitled to the highest praise for the masterly and surpassingly beautiful design of Christ Church, erected from his plans in 1727, and inspired to some extent, so it appears, by Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, in London.

Dr. William Thornton is to be remembered as the designer of the first Capitol at Washington whose erection he likewise superintended. When Latrobe restored the building, after its partial demolition by the British troops in the War of 1812, he adhered very largely to Dr. Thornton’s plan. During a long residence{266} in Philadelphia, he took an active part in public affairs, was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society and designed the old Philadelphia Library, which was completed in 1790. Many houses are also to be ascribed to Dr. Thornton’s agency. His connexion with the federal buildings necessitated his removal to Washington where he continued to live for the remainder of his life, occupying a position as first head of the Patent Office.

Interesting as it might be to prolong this biographical chronicle of amateur architects of the eighteenth century, it is necessary to pass on to a consideration of the carpenter-architect. Samuel Rhoads, sometime Mayor of Philadelphia, the designer of the Pennsylvania Hospital, a structure of which any architect in any century might well feel proud, occupies a middle ground between the amateur and the carpenter-architect and his history throws valuable light on conditions affecting the methods and practice of both. According to the Quaker theory that every boy should be brought up to a trade, no matter what calling he might afterward intend to pursue, Rhoads “became a carpenter and builder, though he did not confine his attention exclusively to this business, but appears to have branched out into mercantile adventures, speculations in real estate” and the like. “He was an early member of The Carpenters’ Com{267}pany of Philadelphia, and from 1780 until his decease” was its master. He was exceedingly public-spirited and took an active part in all enterprises for civic betterment. For a number of years he sat in the Provincial Assembly where he served on numerous important committees and was chosen one of the Pennsylvania delegates to the First Continental Congress. A contemporary writer, in describing the members of that body, said of him that “he was a respectable merchant of Philadelphia, belonging to the Society of Friends—without the talent of speaking in public, he possessed much acuteness of mind, his judgment was sound, and his practical information extensive.” In October, 1774, he became Mayor of Philadelphia. When Benjamin Franklin reorganised the American Philosophical Society, in 1743, Rhoads was one of the officers and for several years served as one of the vice-presidents.

From the foregoing memoranda it may be seen what manner of man Samuel Rhoads was and in what esteem he was held by his fellow-citizens. But what chiefly concerns our present purpose is his connexion, in the capacity of “carpenter and builder”, with the designing of an exceptionally fine piece of eighteenth century architecture. When the Assembly of Pennsylvania, in 1751, passed an act founding the Pennsylvania Hospital, he was elected a man{268}ager by the contributors and continued on the board for thirty successive years. Ground was secured and “this purchase being made, a complete plan of the buildings was directed to be so prepared that a part might be erected, which could be occupied the ensuing season. [1755.] Samuel Rhoads, one of the managers, was very zealous in the work and, after consulting the physicians in regard to the situation of the cells and other conveniences, he presented a design of the whole building, in such form that one third might first alone be erected with tolerable symmetry. After due consideration,” the plan was adopted and, not many years afterward, the whole design of this carpenter-architect became an accomplished fact to the lasting satisfaction of succeeding generations.

One of the worthiest of the carpenter-architects was Asher Benjamin of Massachusetts. Although his work was almost wholly domestic and many of his commissions would nowadays be classified as “unimportant”, he nevertheless exerted a markedly beneficial influence upon the architecture of his day, an influence for which we have reason to be grateful. He seems to have begun his career as a carpenter in Greenfield, Deerfield and neighbouring Massachusetts towns. While working in Greenfield, he published “The Country Builder’s Assistant{269}”, 1796, a book of “simple and practical” scope, containing much suggestive and useful material. Afterwards, removing to Boston, he published, partly in collaboration with one D. Raynerd, and partly by himself, several architectural works of a more ambitious nature. The trade of carpenter-architect and builder was likewise creditably represented by numerous other eighteenth century mechanics in New England and the other parts of the country who, although they did not essay to publish technical books, were nevertheless far more than mere commercial-minded artisans perfunctrily “doing the jobs” appointed them and they achieved the commissions they were entrusted with in a manner to merit the praise and emulation of modern designers. Nor may we forget the earlier carpenter-architects of the seventeenth century who created standards of excellence as a precedent for their successors of the eighteenth century. Chief among them must be named John Allis of Braintree, born in 1642, who both designed and executed many houses and churches in Massachusetts in the latter part of the seventeenth century; likewise, due acknowledgment must be made to John Elderkin, a contemporary of Allis, who left a deep and beneficial impress upon the architecture of southeastern Connecticut.

It is exceedingly difficult to draw a sharp line{270} of distinction between the carpenter-architects and the earliest representatives of the professionally trained architects whose occupation consisted mainly in designing buildings and supervising their erection. During the greater part of the eighteenth century, the many able amateur architects and the capacity of the carpenter-architects to translate and embody acceptably in tangible form the conceptions supplied by their employers would naturally militate against the success of a numerous class of men whose sole occupation was to design and supervise. It is not at all improbable, therefore, that some of the men, whom we should be disposed to regard as the early representatives of the professional architect class, judging from the importance and visible evidence of the structures attributed to them, played the rôle of contractors as well for the erection of the buildings they designed, even though they did not share in the manual labour. We know, for example, that Richard Munday first appears in active career as the partner of one Wyatt in a building or contracting business. His capacity, however, shown by the Town House or State House in Newport, built from his plans in 1743, entitles him to a high rank among early American architects.

While some of the early professional architects—the term is not altogether felicitous but{271} seems necessary for the sake of differentiating them from the other two classes—were doubtless self-trained to a great degree, a few appear to have had instruction in England under competent masters. Notable among them was Peter Harrison, the architect of the Market or City Hall of Newport, built in 1760, who was sometime an assistant to Sir John Vanbrugh and is said to have been a pupil of James Gibbs. McBean, the designer of St. Paul’s Chapel of Trinity Parish, New York, erected in 1764, is also thought by some to have been a pupil of Gibbs, although there seems to be no trustworthy base for such a supposition.

Charles Bulfinch, so deservedly revered in Boston and other New England cities for the graceful and enduring memorials of his skill there to be seen on every hand, will always occupy an exalted position among our early American architects. Probably no one man ever left a stronger impress upon the architecture of the community in which he lived. His influence in Boston and the vicinity is quite comparable to the influence of Sir Christopher Wren upon the appearance of London and we can readily understand this when we remember that during a half century of practice he designed in the neighbourhood of forty churches, libraries, theatres and other public structures in New England, besides his contributions to domestic work.{272} A discussion of the characteristics of his individual style is to be found in Chapter X of this volume. Suffice it here to say that he represented and upheld all the best traditions and ideals that enter into the making of a worthy architect’s career. He was fortunate in his environment and made the utmost use of his opportunities. Born in Boston, in 1763, the son of Dr. Thomas Bulfinch, an eminent physician, he was educated in the city of his birth, graduating from Harvard in 1781. He afterwards travelled in Europe, pursuing, as he went, the study of architecture. This course he was well calculated to profit by to the fullest extent from naturally keen powers of observation and discriminating taste. In 1786 he returned to Boston and thereafter devoted himself to the practice of his profession. As elsewhere noted, the old Boston Library, the first Boston theatre, (1793), and the State House on Beacon Hill were among his early contributions of importance to architecture in his own city but the scope of his professional activities was not confined to Boston or New England for, in 1817, he was called to be supervising architect for the rebuilding of the national Capitol in Washington and retained that post until its completion in 1830. As one of the fathers of American architecture, Charles Bulfinch will always stand in a preeminently honourable place.{273}

Another of the “fathers of architecture in the United States” was Benjamin Latrobe, a man of extraordinary mental endowments, an accomplished linguist and scholar, an eminent engineer and architect, a gallant soldier and a typical gentleman of the old school with all the best that such a designation implies. Born in 1767, the son of an English Moravian clergyman in Yorkshire, he was educated in England and achieved a promising position in his profession, being at one time Surveyor of Public Offices of the City of London. In 1796, on the eve of his coming to America, he was offered the post of a Crown Surveyor at the annual salary of £1000 but, fortunately for American architecture, he preferred to migrate. During the course of his professional career, he carried many important engineering projects to a successful issue and executed many notable architectural commissions. In this connexion he is perhaps best known as the designer of the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Baltimore, the Bank of the United States in Philadelphia and by his work upon the Capitol building at Washington which he was called upon in 1803 to complete and which James Madison, in 1815, asked him to rebuild after its partial demolition by the British troops in the War of 1812. His pupil William Strickland of Philadelphia, by structures of his own designing which included{274} the old Maritime Exchange, the old Mint and the Philadelphia Naval Asylum, buildings full of substantial dignity and grace, paid a fitting tribute to Latrobe’s mastership and inspiration.

In the honourable roll of early American architects we must also remember Major L’Enfant who so ably laid out the plan for the City of Washington; James Hoban, whose Dublin training and youthful familiarity with the best of English and Irish Georgian work peculiarly fitted him for success in his treatment of the old State House at Charleston, South Carolina, and the White House in Washington; John McComb, among whose best known works are the City Hall of New York and St. John’s Chapel, Varick street, and many more designers whose names and individual achievements one would gladly recall did space permit. The reader, however, notwithstanding the lack of further specific reference, cannot fail to recognise from the memoranda already set forth how worthy has been our architectural past, how able were the men to whom we are indebted for it, how they worked and how fit are the examples they have left for our study and emulation.{275}

INDEX

A
Adam, Brothers, 111, 152, 170;
creations, 179;
elegance, 176;
influence, 105, 111, 119, 146, 151, 175;
mantel, 148, 149;
mode, 179;
motifs, 153;
oval, 148;
phase, 168, 170;
school, 173;
type, 164.
Adams, John, 123, 189.
Alexandria, Va., 159, 221.
Allis, John, 269.
Alterations, 39.
American Philosophical Society, 266.
André, Major, 200.
Annapolis, Md., 203, 209.
Anne Arundel Co., Md., 96, 162, 163.
Architect, carpenter, 252, 255;
early American, 252 et seq.
Architectural, books, 135;
continuity, 42;
evolution, 42.
Architectural Record, 35.
Architecture, Colonial, definition of, 7, 8;
Georgian, definition of, 7, 8.
Armorial bearings, 211.
Arnold, Benedict, 93, 141.

B
“Bait,” horses, 77.
Bake House, Salem, Mass., 53, 54, 55.
Bala, Pa., 69.
Baltimore, Md., 273.
Baluster spindles, 110, 165.
Balustrade, 185.
Barge-board, 73.
Bartram house, 244.
Bartram, John, 132, 133, 151.
Beacon Hill, Boston, 177.
Bedchamber, 91;
groundfloor, 94, 96.
Beds, truckle or trundle, 45;
“let down,” 45.
Bells, church, 216.
Belmont, Fairmount Park, Phila., 134, 244.
Belvoir, Anne Arundel Co., Md., 162.
Benjamin, Asher, 268.
Bergen County, N.J., 15.
Berkeley, Governour, 87, 91.
Bermuda, 86.
Bethlehem, Pa., 76.
Beverley, 95.
Bond, 238;
Dutch cross, 238;
English, 238;
{278} Flemish, 137, 186, 221, 222, 223, 225, 238;
Liverpool, 238;
running, 238.
Boston, Mass., 52, 54, 209, 271;
Library, 272;
Massacre, 190;
State House at, 177.
Boyd, John, T. Jr., 35.
Braintree, Mass., 269.
Brick, 23, 88, 137, 219, 221, 223, 225, 233;
building regulations, 84;
Dutch, 86, 241, 242;
English, 86, 239, 240;
imported, 240;
making in Virginia, 84, 85;
New Haven Colony, 240;
prices of, in Virginia, 86;
use of, in Virginia, 87.
Bricklayers, 83.
Brickwork, 185, 196.
Brown, Joseph, 263.
Brown University, 263.
Bruce, Philip, 94.
Bruton Parish Church, Williamsburg, Va., 209, 220.
Bulfinch, Charles, 105, 111, 174, 175, 176, 201, 271, 272;
influence of, 271;
Statehouse, 191.
Bulfinch, Dr. Thomas, 272.
Burials, 211.
Byfield, Mass., 107.
Byrd, 94.
Byrd, William, 157.
Byrd, Col. William, 158, 159.

C
Capital, 188, 227;
carved, 106;
Corinthian, 234;
Ionic, 244.
“Captains’ walks,” 2.
Carolina.
See South Carolina.
Carpenter, architect, 179.
Carpenters’ Company of London.
See Worshipful Company of Carpenters.
Carpenters’ Company of Phila., 256, 266.
Carpenters’ Hall, Phila., 202, 256.
Carpentry, books on, 135.
Carter, Robert, 208, 221.
Carters’ Grove, Va., 162, 163.
Casement, leaded, 53.
Cathedral, Baltimore, Md., 273.
Catskills, 19.
Cedar Grove, Harrogate, Phila., 134.
Cedar Park, Anne Arundel Co., Md., 96, 98.
Cellar, 88.
Chamberlayne, Major Thomas, 88, 91.
Chambers, Sir William, 146, 148, 152.
Chandler, Joseph Everett, 52, 190.
Charleston, S.C., 230.
Chesapeake Bay, 96.
Chester, Pa., 195.
Chew, Chief Justice, 93, 123, 124, 143.
Chimney, 20, 87, 144, 247, 248;
breast, 146;
brick, 88;
{279}brick and stone, 89;
central, 49;
clay, 52;
exterior Southern, 89;
exterior New England, 89;
offsets, 89;
outside, 80, 89;
pieces continued, 148;
quadruple, 142;
sloped weatherings, 89;
stone, 49.
Chippendale, Treatise on, 146.
Christ Church, Alexandria, Va., 159, 221, 223, 224, 264;
Lancaster Co., Va., 208, 221, 222;
Philadelphia, Pa., 119, 125, 186, 210, 211, 216, 226, 227, 229, 230, 262.
Church, bells, 216;
city, 209;
“Court”, 209;
Colonial period, 205 et seq.
Church of England, 207.
Cipriani, 147.
City Hall, Newport, R.I., 192;
New York, 274.
Clapboard, 23, 246, 247;
casing, 50;
first use of, 50;
tradition, grafting of, 103;
in gable ends, 28.
Classic, element, 99;
formality, 101;
Revival, 11, 12, 105, 111, 112, 115, 116, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, 173-175, 177-180, 191, 201, 203, 235.
Classicism, 101, 169, 171, 173;
Renaissance, 128;
revived, 203.
Climate, 252;
influence of, on architecture, 80.
Climatic conditions, 237.
Cliveden, Germantown, Phila., 93, 124, 143, 144, 150, 152, 244.
Clothing, 214.
Clouston, Treatise on Chippendale, 146.
Coffee houses, 196;
London, Phila., 196, 197;
Bradford’s, Phila., 196, 197.
Colonial architecture, definition of, 7, 8.
Colour, contrasting, 202;
of interior paint, 149;
Dutch 36.
Column, 178; Corinthian, 172.
Congress Hall, Phila., 189.
Connecticut, 49, 269.
Cooper River, S.C., 96.
Cornice, 72, 108, 138, 233.
Coultas, Col. James, 139, 141.
“Country Builder’s Assistant”, 268, 269.
Country seats, 132.
Court House, Phila., 193, 194.
Craftsmanship, methods of, 80.
Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., 24, 29, 243.
Croton River, 118.
Custom House, Salem, Mass., 192.

D
Dale, Sir Thomas, 86.
{280}Damon, Capt. Isaac, 264.
Danish strain, 79.
Declaration of Independence, 183, 186.
Deerfield, Mass., 107, 268.
DeLancey, 116.
Delaware, 4, 8, 74, 161, 195;
County, Pa., 61;
Georgian, 120, 121.
Door, 138, 143;
batten, 30;
divided, 30;
Dutch, 30;
house, 92, 96, 97.
Doorway, 140, 163, 169, 185;
Dutch, 35;
elaborate, 106;
plain, 106;
round arched, 109.
Dormer, 76;
sharp peaked, 89;
long, 89.
Drinker, Elizabeth, 196.
Dummer house, Byfield, Mass., 107, 108.
Dutch, brick, 86;
Colonial type, 12 et seq., 29, 31, 115;
Colonial tradition, 115;
houses, characteristics of, 24 et seq.;
houses in New Jersey and Long Island, 28;
of Hudson Valley, 21;
settlers on Delaware, 58.

E
“E” Plan, 48.
Earle, Alice Morse, 45, 210, 214.
Eaton, Governour Theophilus, 47;
house, 47;
inventory, 47.
Eaves, 27, 96, 138, 139;
flaring, 27.
Economic conditions and architecture, 101.
Eggleston, Edward, 9, 39.
Eggleston George Cary, 239.
Elderkin, John, 269.
Ellsworth, Oliver, 189.
Embury, Aymar, 28.
Empire, style, 12.
England, 100.
English, brick, 86;
spoken in America, 78.
Entablature, 108.
Entry, New England, 92.
Environment, 252.
Ephrata, Pa., 76.
Episcopalians, 125.
Esopus River, N.Y., 19.
Essex County, N.J., 15.

F
Fairfax County, Va., 221.
Fair Hill, Phila., 134.
Fairmount Park, Phila., 131, 141, 257.
Faneuil Hall, Boston, 183, 189, 190, 264.
Fan light, 142, 145.
Farm, buildings, 161;
houses, brick, 74;
houses, Dutch, 21.
Fatland, Montgomery Co., Pa., 151.
Field stone, 69.
Fireplace, 138, 146, 151;
Dutch, 34.
First Baptist, Providence, R.I., 263, 264.
{281}Fitzhugh, William, 83, 91.
Flemish, bond, 137, 186, 221, 222, 225, 233;
scroll, 110, 186.
Forbes, General, 211.
Fort Nassau, N.J., 58.
Framing, 245.
Fraunce’s Tavern, N. Y. City, 116, 117, 192.
French, influence of, 166.
French Revolution, 12.
Frieze, 108.

G
Gable, 89, 139, 143, 163.
Galleting, 244.
Gallery, 209, 224, 225, 229, 230.
Gambrel, 97;
roof, 25, 26, 27, 75;
Southern, 90.
Gardens, Philadelphia, 128.
Georgian, architecture, definition of, 7, 8;
American phase, 154;
buildings, 220;
churches, 221;
churches of N. Y., 231;
influence, 10;
local adaptations, 102, 103;
Middle Colonies types, 146, 188;
mode, beginning, 102;
mode, character of, 99, 100, 103, 105, 106, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114;
New England, 157;
period, 120;
Philadelphia, 128, 129, 130, 154;
Southern, 156;
Southern, character of, 162;
tradition, 190, 228;
types, 149.
German, principalities, 100;
sects, 207.
Germans, 60;
character of settlers, 63;
influence of, 71, 72;
as farmers, 65, 66;
settlers, 62, 63;
Pennsylvania, 74.
Germantown, Phila., 63, 148;
Road, 71;
stone, 143.
Gibbon, Grinling, 110.
Gibbs, James, 119, 148, 230, 271.
Glass, 249.
Gloria Dei, Phila., 224.
Gloucester Point, N.J., 58.
Graeme Park, Horsham, Pa., 69, 93, 106, 126, 135-138, 146, 149, 188.
Grange, the, Montgomery Co., Pa., 134.
Greek Revival, v. Classic Revival, 165.
Greene, John, 264.
Greenfield, Mass., 268.
Green Spring, Va., 87, 91.
Grosvenor Road, Westminster, London, 106.
Grumblethorpe, Germantown, Phila., 134.
Gunston Hall, Va., 162.

H
Hadley, Mass., 107.
Half-timber, 85;
methods, 51.
Hall, 91, 92, 138, 140;
central, 96;
great, 92.
{282}Hamilton, Honourable Andrew, 134, 260, 262.
Hamilton, William, 145.
Harrison, Peter, 192, 271.
Harriton, Bryn Mawr, Pa., 69.
Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass., 191, 272.
Hatfield, Mass., 107.
Haverford, Pa., 61.
Hayward, Nicholas, 83.
Hempstead, L.I., 16.
Henrico, Va., 86, 88, 91.
Henry VIII, 101.
Highlands, the, Whitemarsh Valley, Pa., 134, 144, 148, 150-152.
Hingham, Mass., 232, 234.
Hoban, James, 177, 274.
Hoffmann house, Kingston-on-Hudson, N.Y., 25.
Holland, 16, 22, 100, 148.
Hood, overdoor, 70.
Hope Lodge, Whitemarsh Valley, Pa., 69, 93, 106, 135, 137, 188.
Horsham, Pa., 93, 126, 135.
Hospital, Pennsylvania, Phila., 201.
House, bedchambers in early New England, 44;
character of early New England, 44;
Dutch Colonial, 28, 32, 33;
plan of early New England, 50;
sleeping arrangements in early New England, 45.
House of Burgesses, Va., 209.
House of Seven Gables, Salem, Mass., 53-55.
Howe, Lord, 200.
Hudson, Hendrick, 58.
Hudson River, 2, 16;
Valley of, 15, 22, 115.
Hurley, N.Y., 16, 17, 19;
cheeses, 18.

I
Independence Hall v. State House, Phila., 183.
Indian trails, 65.
Inn yards, 195.
Irving, Washington, 21.

J
James River, Va., 162.
Jamestown, Va., 86, 87, 205, 206, 207, 209, 218.
Jay, John, 189.
Jefferson, Thomas, 159, 160, 164, 177, 203, 264.
Johnson, Norton, 145.
Joinery, 52.
Jones, Inigo, 101, 128.
Jumel Mansion, New York, 118, 119.

K
Kearsley, Dr. John, 134, 227, 261, 264, 265.
“Keeping-room”, 47.
Keith, Sir William, 93, 106, 126, 135.
Kemp, Secretary, 86.
Kenmore, Va., 160.
Kent, 148.
Kentucky, 77.
Keyblock, 109.
{283}King’s Chapel, Boston, Mass., 213, 214, 233, 234.
King’s College, N.Y., 192.
Kingsessing, Phila., 139, 244.
Kingston-on-Hudson, N.Y., 16, 25.
Kitchen, early New England, 45, 46;
detached, 93, 139, 162.

L
Lambert, Edward E., 48.
Language, vitality of old forms, 78.
Latrobe, Benjamin, 177, 265, 273.
Lean-to, 49;
additions, 47.
Lee house, Marblehead, Mass., 103, 109.
L’Enfant, Major, 174, 177.
“Lie-on-your-stomach” windows, 30.
Logan, James, 93.
Log-cabin, 43.
London, 83, 151, 271;
fashions 102, 155.
London Coffee House, Philadelphia, 196, 197.
Long Island, N.Y., 15, 22.
Loyalists, 167, 212.

M
Macphaedris-Warner House, Portsmouth, N.H., 107, 108.
Macpherson, Captain John, 93, 141.
Madison, James, 273.
Manor House, Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., 24, 29, 243.
Mantels, 98.
Marble, Pennsylvania, 185, 186;
Scotch, 138.
Marblehead, Mass., 54, 103, 109.
Maritime Exchange, Phila., 274.
Maryland, 3, 4, 8, 75, 77, 96, 162, 163, 207.
Masonry, 226;
English and Welsh traditions, 68, 243;
Phila., 243;
rubble, 243.
Masques, 186;
grotesque, 118.
Massachusetts, 49, 107, 214, 232, 268, 269.
Materials, 23, 83-85, 103, 127, 236;
choice of, 252.
McBean, 271.
McComb, John, 177, 274.
McIntire, Samuel, 105, 111, 176, 235.
Medford, Mass., 103.
Mediæval, characteristics, 42;
survivals, 54, 100.
Meeting house, New England, 231;
Old Ship, Hingham, Mass., 232, 234;
Old South, Boston, 232;
Quaker, 207, 230.
Merion, Pa., 61;
Lower, 69.
Mey, Captain Cornelius, 58.
Middle Colonies, 11, 22;
architectural diversity, 66;
church architecture, 230;
churches, 207;
clannishness and isolation, 58;
diversity in nationality and speech, 57;
{284} early types, 57, 80;
Georgian forms, 120, 127, 184;
roads, 65;
trading, 64.
Montgomery Co., Pa., 61.
Monticello, Va., 161, 164, 165, 264.
Moore Hall, Chester Co., Pa., 212.
Moore, Judge, of Moore Hall, 212.
Moravians, 76;
buildings, 63, 64;
churches, 231.
Morris, Anthony, 145.
Mortar, 28, 245.
Mouldings, 108, 151, 222;
Dutch, 36;
profiles, 144, 152, 153.
Mount Pleasant, Phila., 93, 141, 142, 143, 144, 146, 150, 151, 264.
Mount Vernon, Va., 264.
Mulberry Castle, S.C., 97, 98.
Munday, Richard, 192, 270.
Music, New England, 216.

N
Nassau, Fort, N.J., 58.
Naval Asylum, Philadelphia, 274.
Netherfield, Phila., 134.
New England, 4, 5, 10, 77, 88;
Colonial type, 38;
Georgian, 99, 103, 106, 107, 109, 111, 112;
survivals of Queen Anne influence, 102.
New Hampshire, 107.
New Haven, Conn., 47.
New Jersey, 8, 16, 74, 120 et seq.
New Kent Co., Va., 218, 219.
New Netherlands, 16, 17, 20, 21.
Newport, R.I., City Hall, 271;
State House, 270.
New York City, 114, 209, 230;
City Hall, 274;
of Colonial Days, 193.
New York, Georgian, 113.
New York State, 8.
Nieuw Dorp, N.Y., 19.
Northampton, Mass., 264.
North Church, Boston, 234.

O
Old Dominion, 84, 218.
Old Ship Meeting House, 234.
Old South Meeting House, Boston, Mass., 232.
Old State House, Boston, Mass., 119.
Old Swedes Church, Philadelphia, Pa., 224.
Old York Road, Pa., 135.
Overhang, 54, 55; in South, 90;
in New England, 90.
Overmantel, 108, 110, 141, 146, 147, 151, 188;
decorations, 153, 155.
Oxford, Pa., 224.

P
Paint, 249, 250;
colour of in XVIII^th century, 149, 150.
{285}Palladian window, 109, 142, 144, 150, 185.
Panel, bevel flush, 141;
overmantel, 141;
34, 98, 108, 119, 138, 147, 250, 251.
Park Street Church, Boston, Mass., 235.
Parlour, 92, 141.
“Parson Williams’s” house, Deerfield Mass., 107.
Pediment, 97, 140, 142, 143, 164, 188, 222;
segmental, 108;
Swan’s neck, 108.
Pencoyd, Bala, Pa., 69.
Penn, John, 211.
Penn, William, 59, 61, 135, 211, 256, 257.
Pennsbury Manor House, Bucks, Pa., 257.
Pennsylvania, 3, 8, 74, 76, 77, 93, 106, 161, 195, 243;
Colonial types, 67-76;
gardens, 133;
Georgian, 107;
Georgian characteristics, 121, 152-155;
Georgian houses, 120, 127, 130-152.
Pennsylvania Historical Society, 262.
Pennsylvania Hospital, 266, 267.
Penthouse, 28, 70, 139, 196.
Peters, Judge, 244.
Pews, 210, 211, 212, 213, 232;
family, 208;
Royal Governours’, 210.
Philadelphia, Pa., 3, 58, 93, 177, 209, 210, 271;
commercial prosperity, 130;
Colonial metropolis, 121;
Country houses, 122;
fox-hunting, 122;
Georgian types, 128-155;
life, 122;
“Republican Court”, 125;
seat of national government, 189;
XVIII^th Century architects of, 134.
Philadelphia Library, 135, 266.
Philadelphia Naval Home, 274.
Philipse house, near Tarrytown, N.Y., 116.
Philipse Manor House, Yonkers, N.Y., 117.
Pilaster, 63, 106, 111, 138, 169;
Ionic, 145, 148.
Pillar, 111, 145, 164, 201;
attenuation of, 176;
Tuscan, 229.
Pine Street Market, Phila., 194.
Plan, balanced, 99.
Pohick Church, Va., 159, 221-224, 264.
“Pokes” of tobacco, 77.
Pompeian refinements, 111.
Porch, origin of, 28, 29.
Portico, 145, 150, 164, 172, 201, 223.
Portius, James, 135, 256, 257.
Portsmouth, N.H., 107.
Post-Colonial types, 166-181.
Powel house, Phila., 124.
Precedent, English, 88.
Preferences, hereditary, 80, 83.
Presbyterians, 125.
Providence, R.I., First Baptist Church, 263, 264.
Public buildings, 182-204.
Pugging, 52, 246.
{286}

Q
Quaker, 60;
hostility to theatre, 200;
influence, 122;
predilections, 106;
scruples, 107.
Queen Anne, 101, 107, 116;
New England affinities, 107;
Middle Colonies Georgian affinities, 152;
tradition, 75;
urns, 152.
Queen Anne’s Gate, Westminster, London, 106.
Quoin, 24, 219, 223;
brick, 141.

R
Radnor, Pa., 61, 212, 224, 225.
Raynerd, D., 269.
Renaissance, 100, 170, 173;
classicism, 128;
feeling, 220.
Restorations, 52, 53, 190.
Revere, Paul, house of, Boston, 54;
household, 44, 45.
Rhoads, Samuel, 266-268.
Rhode Island, 49.
Roof, 76, 87, 89, 119, 139, 140, 143, 224, 226, 230;
gambrel, 25, 26, 75, 138;
Dutch gambrel, 26;
New England gambrel, 26;
hip, 142, 186, 232, 234;
hipped gambrel, 97, 138;
jerkin-head, 196, 197;
mansard, 97;
pitch, 88, 96, 97.
Rosicrucians, 63.
Roughcast, 244.
Royall house, Medford, Mass., 103, 107.
Rubble, 23.
Rutledge, John, 189.

S
Saint Anne’s, Annapolis, Md., 209.
Saint David’s, Radnor, Pa., 69, 212, 213, 224-226.
Saint John’s Chapel, Varick St., N.Y., 274.
Saint Luke’s, Smithfield, Va., 218, 219.
Saint Martin’s-in-the-Fields, London, 227.
Saint Michael’s, Charleston, S.C., 230.
Saint Paul’s Chapel, N.Y., 230, 271.
Saint Peters, New Kent Co., Va., 218, 219;
Phila., 228-230.
Salem, Mass., 176, 192.
Saxon, strain of, 79.
Schuyler house, Albany, N.Y., 118.
Schuylkill River, 58, 131.
Scroll, 147;
Flemish, 110, 186;
Ionic, 132.
Seating, in churches, 209, 210, 211.
Servants’ quarters, 92, 93, 139, 143.
Seventh Day Baptists, 76.
Shingles, 247;
cypress, 88.
{287}Shutters, Dutch, 36.
Skippack Creek, Pa., 63.
“Slawbank,” 45.
Smibert, John, 264.
Smith, Capt. John, 205.
Smithfield, Va., 218.
“Soaked” bread, 77.
Society of Friends, 122, 154.
South Carolina, 8, 96, 164, 274.
Southern Colonial, 162;
characteristics, 79;
house plan, 90, 91, 92;
house surroundings, 94, 95;
type, 77, 96;
type, brick houses, 96;
type, plan, 87;
type, materials, 85.
Southern Georgian, 156, 159;
characteristics, 162;
peculiarities, 161.
Southern planters, 157.
Southwark, Phila., 199, 200.
Staircase, 110;
winding, 49.
Stairway, 139, 140, 226;
Dutch Colonial, 33.
State House, Annapolis, Md., 203;
Bulfinch, Boston, Mass., 189, 191, 272;
Charleston, S.C., 274;
Newport, R.I., 192, 270;
Old, Boston, Mass., 183, 189, 190;
Philadelphia, Pa. (Independence Hall), 119, 183, 184, 186, 189, 198, 261, 262, 263.
Stenton, Phila., 93, 106, 137, 138, 149, 163, 188.
Stone, 23, 152;
cut, 127;
dressed, 23, 127;
field, 243;
quarried, 243.
Stonework, 244;
Welsh, 226.
Stratton house, Va., 91.
Strickland, William, 177, 273.
String course, 72.
Stucco, 23, 24, 91, 244, 245.
Stuyvesant, Peter, 17.
Sweden, 100.
Swedes, character of, 59;
settlements of, 58, 59, 65;
influence of, in Pennsylvania, 59.

T
Textures, of Walls, 236.
Theatre, first Philadelphia, 199, 200;
American Company, 200;
first, Boston, 272;
“New,” Phila., 201.
Thornton, Dr. William, 177, 264, 265, 266.
Thoroughgood, Adam, house, 88, 89.
Torus, 108.
Town Hall, Chester, Pa., 195;
Newcastle, Del., 195.
Tradition, force of, 39; half-timber, 52;
identity of, 40;
persistence of architectural, 42, 78, 79;
preservation of, 252;
Southern, 84.
Transom, 75, 138;
small light, 106.
Trappe Meeting House, Pa., 231.
Trims, brick, 140;
door and window, 24, 141, 149;
{288} wood, 237.
Trinity Church, Newport, R.I., 234;
Oxford, Pa., 224, 226.
Trinity Parish, N. Y. City, 271.
Tuckahoe, Va., 162, 163.
Tulip Hill, West River, Md., 163.
Tympanum, countersunk, 108.

U
Upsala, Germantown, Phila., 144, 145, 148, 150, 152.
Urn, 140, 144, 152.
Ury House, Fox Chase, Phila., 134.

V
Vanbrugh, Sir John, 192, 271.
Van Cortlandt, 116;
Park, N. Y. City, 118;
Manor House, Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., 118;
house, N. Y. City, 119.
Van Rensselaer house, 118.
Varick Street, N. Y. City, 274.
Vaux Hill, Montgomery Co., Pa., 151.
Virginia, 3, 4, 8, 75, 77;
brick-making and export, 85, 86;
churches, 220;
church architecture, 218;
Economic Hist, of in XVIII^th cent., 94;
families, 81;
flowers and bushes imported, 94;
manner of life in early, 82, 83;
settlers’ characteristics, 82;
social distinctions, 82;
University of, 203, 264.

W
Wainscot, 138.
Wales, 100.
Walls, 75, 139;
texture of, 152.
Warder, diary of Anne, 123.
Ware, 148.
Washington, city of 274;
capitol at, 177.
Washington, George, 159, 200, 221, 264, 272;
equipage of, 125;
leave-taking of army, 116;
second inauguration, 189.
“Wattle and dab,” 52.
Wayne, Anthony, 213.
Wayne Isaac, 213.
Waynesborough, Paoli, Pa., 69.
Welsh, architectural peculiarities, 68;
as immigrants, 60, 61;
influence of, 61, 62;
masonry, 67, 68.
Welsh Barony, Pa., 61, 67, 213.
Wemyss, Lady Williamina, of Moore Hall, Pa., 212.
Westminster, London, 107.
Westover, Va., 157.
West River, Md., 163.
{289}Whitby Hall, Kingsessing, Phila., 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 146, 152.
White House, Washington, 274.
Whitemarsh Valley, Pa., 93, 135, 148.
William and Mary, 101.
Williamsburg, Va., 209, 220.
Wilton, 147.
Window, 143, 233;
basement, 141;
casing, 108;
church, 221, 230;
circular, 163;
diamond-paned, 48;
dormer, 72, 142;
double hung sash, 53;
early forms of, 108;
elliptical, 222;
glazing, 91;
heads, 137;
“lie-on-your-stomach,” 30;
leaded, 249;
Palladian, 109, 142, 144, 150, 185, 223, 228, 229;
treatment of, 145.
Wissahickon Creek, Phila., 63.
Woodlands, Phila., 133, 144, 145, 148, 150, 151.
Woodwork, 127, 138, 141, 163, 188, 228.
Workmen, 83.
Worshipful Company of Carpenters, London, 135, 257.
Wren, Sir Christopher, 101, 129, 221, 228, 272;
feeling, 230.
Wren, James, 221.
Wyatt, Governour, 84.
Wyck, Germantown, Phila., 71, 72, 73, 245.
Wynnestay, Phila., 67, 68, 69, 72, 73.

Y
Yonkers, N.Y., 116.
York County, Va., 91.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] It should be plainly stated that Mr. Chandler, in the course of his investigations and restorations, feels that he has discovered no evidence sufficiently convincing to warrant an assertion, positive beyond all peradventure, that clapboards were applied to the oldest houses at a date subsequent to their original construction and as a remedy for the structural shortcomings of half-timber methods when subjected to the rigours of the New England climate. Clapboards, it is true, were used at a very early date and may, perhaps, have been employed from the first as a coating over an underlying half-timber base. Of one thing, however, there can be no question—the existence of half-timber construction beneath the clapboards in many of the oldest buildings. In view of this assured fact and the early settlers’ habitual fidelity to traditional practices, it seems a not unwarrantable presumption that half-timber work antedated the use of clapboards by some years until the poor quality of the pugging and the warping of unseasoned timbers compelled the adoption of some satisfactory remedy.

CHAPTER		PAGE
I.	Introductory	1
II.	The Dutch Colonial Type, 1613-1820	14
III.	The Colonial Architecture of New England	38
IV.	Pre-Georgian Architecture in the Middle Colonies	57
V.	The Colonial Architecture of the South	77
VI.	The Georgian Mode in New England	99
VII.	Georgian Architecture in New York	113
VIII.	Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware Georgian, 1720-1805	120
IX.	The Georgian Architecture of the South	156
X.	The Post-Colonial Period and the Classic Revival	166
XI.	Public Buildings of the Colonial and Post-Colonial Periods	182
XII.	Churches of the Colonial Period	205
XIII.	Materials and Textures	236
XIV.	Early American Architects and Their Resources	252
	Index: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y.	275

Doorway of Wyck, Germantown, Philadelphia. 1690	Frontispiece
	Facing Page
Senate House, Kingston-on-Hudson, N.Y. 1676	4
Ward House, near Salem, Mass.	4
House at Yorktown, Va.	5
Exterior of the Lee House, Marblehead, Mass. 1768	5
Laurel Hill, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. 1762	10
Pingree or White Portico, Salem, Mass.	10
Typical Houses, Old Hurley, N.Y.	11
Elmendorf House, Old Hurley, N.Y.	11
Van Deusen House, Old Hurley, N.Y.	16
Hallway, Van Deusen House	16
Hoffman House, Kingston-on-Hudson, N.Y.	17
Characteristic Old Dutch House, Kingston-on-Hudson, N.Y.	17
Ackerman (Brinckerhoff) House, Hackensack, N.J. 1704	24
Verplanck House, near Fishkill Landing, N.Y.	24
Hall, Bowne House, Flushing, Long Island, N.Y.	25
Dining Room, Van Cortlandt Manor House, Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.	25
House of Seven Gables, Salem, Mass. 1669	40
Fairbanks House, Dedham, Mass. 1636	40
Whipple House, Ipswich, Mass.{xii}	41
Whipple House, Ipswich, Mass.	41
Paul Revere House, Street Front, after Restoration. 1676	46
Paul Revere House. Great Room, Ground Floor	47
Doten House, Plymouth, Mass. 1640	52
Narbonne House, Salem, Mass.	52
Wynnestay, Philadelphia. 1689	53
South Front of Wyck, Germantown, Philadelphia. 1690	53
Little Tavern at Ionic and American Streets, Philadelphia. 1692	60
William Penn House, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia	60
Gloria Dei Glebe House	61
Oldest House in Dover, Dela.	61
Quaker Alms House, Philadelphia	66
London (Bradford’s) Coffee House, Philadelphia. 1702	66
Old Philadelphia Court House. 1707	67
Merion Meeting House, Pennsylvania. 1695	74
Moravian Sisters’ House, Bethlehem, Pa. c. 1748	75
The Saal, Ephrata, Pa.	75
Adam Thoroughgood House, Princess Anne County, Va. c. 1740	88
Governour Eden House, Edenton, N.C.	88
House at Yorktown, Va.	89
“Hospital” House, Yorktown, Va.	89
House of Hon. John Blair, Williamsburg, Va.	98
Carey House, Williamsburg, Va.	98
Royall House, Medford, Mass. 1732	99
Lee House, Marblehead, Mass. 1768	99
Royall House. West Doorway	100
Royall House. Doorway in West Parlour	100
Lee House. Banquet Room	101
Lee House. Stairway	101
Lee House. Fireplace{xiii}	104
Lee House. Wall Paper	104
Macphaedris-Warner House, Portsmouth, N.H. 1723	105
Dummer Mansion, Byfield, Mass. c. 1715	105
Doorway, Dummer House	108
The Lindens. Stair and Hall. c. 1770	109
Wentworth House. Hall and Stair	109
Parson Williams House, Deerfield, Mass. 1707	112
Van Cortlandt House, Van Cortlandt Park, N.Y.	113
Philipse Manor House, Yonkers, N.Y. 1683	116
Fraunce’s Tavern, Broad Street, New York City	117
Window Detail, Van Cortlandt House	118
Philipse House, near Tarrytown, N.Y.	118
Waynesborough, Paoli, Pa. 1724	119
Graeme Park, Horsham, Pa. 1721	119
Graeme Park, South Front	120
Hope Lodge, Whitemarsh Valley. 1723	120
Great Parlour, Graeme Park	121
Hallway, Hope Lodge	121
Whitby Hall, North Front, Kingsessing, Philadelphia. 1754	128
Stairway, Whitby Hall	128
Whitby Hall, South Front	129
Mantel Detail, Whitby Hall	129
Cliveden, Germantown, Philadelphia. 1761	140
Mantel in Parlour, Mount Pleasant, Philadelphia. 1761	141
The Woodlands, South Front. Philadelphia, c. 1770	141
The Woodlands, North Front	146
The Highlands, Whitemarsh Valley, Pa. 1796	146
Homewood, near Baltimore	147
Harwood, Annapolis. 1774	160
Brice House, Annapolis. 1740	160
Shirley, James River, Va.{xiv}	161
Westover, James River, Va.	161
Carter’s Grove, Va. 1728	164
Andalusia on the Delaware, Pennsylvania. 1794-1832	165
Old Maritime Exchange, Philadelphia	165
Andrew Safford Porch, Salem, Mass.	176
Interior Doorway, Nichols House, Salem, Mass.	176
The Capitol at Washington	177
Girard College, Philadelphia	177
Window Detail, House in Philadelphia	180
Door Detail, House in Philadelphia	180
State House, Philadelphia, South Front. 1733	181
Hallway, State House, Philadelphia	181
Faneuil Hall, Boston. 1741	188
Independence Room, State House, Philadelphia	188
Old State House, Boston	189
Bulfinch State House, Boston	194
New York City Hall	194
Old Pine Street Market, Philadelphia	195
Carpenters’ Hall, Philadelphia	195
Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia	204
Black Horse Inn Yard, Philadelphia	204
Bruton Parish Church, Williamsburg, Va. 1714	205
Old South Church, Boston. 1730	210
King’s Chapel, Boston	210
Christ Church, Philadelphia. 1727	211
St. Peter’s Church, Philadelphia. 1761	211
Gloria Dei (Old Swedes), Philadelphia. 1700	220
St. Luke’s Church, Smithfield, Va. 1632	220
Old Ship Church, Hingham, Mass.	221
Sleepy Hollow Church, Irvington, N.Y.	221

THE ARCHITECTURE OF COLONIAL AMERICA

FOREWORD

CONTENTS

LIST OF PLATES

THE ARCHITECTURE OF COLONIAL AMERICA

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER II THE DUTCH COLONIAL TYPE 1613-1820

CHAPTER III THE COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE OF NEW ENGLAND

CHAPTER IV PRE-GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES English, Welsh, Swedish and German Influences

CHAPTER V THE COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE OF THE SOUTH

CHAPTER VI THE GEORGIAN MODE IN NEW ENGLAND

CHAPTER VII GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE IN NEW YORK

CHAPTER VIII PENNSYLVANIA, NEW JERSEY AND DELAWARE GEORGIAN 1720-1805

CHAPTER IX THE GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE OF THE SOUTH

CHAPTER X THE POST-COLONIAL PERIOD AND THE CLASSIC REVIVAL

CHAPTER XI PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF THE COLONIAL AND POST-COLONIAL PERIODS

CHAPTER XII CHURCHES OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD

CHAPTER XIII MATERIALS AND TEXTURES

CHAPTER XIV EARLY AMERICAN ARCHITECTS AND THEIR RESOURCES

INDEX

THE ARCHITECTURE OF
COLONIAL AMERICA

THE ARCHITECTURE OF
COLONIAL AMERICA

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER II

THE DUTCH COLONIAL TYPE

1613-1820

CHAPTER III

THE COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE OF NEW ENGLAND

CHAPTER IV

PRE-GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

English, Welsh, Swedish and German Influences

CHAPTER V

THE COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE OF THE SOUTH

CHAPTER VI

THE GEORGIAN MODE IN NEW ENGLAND

CHAPTER VII

GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE IN NEW YORK

CHAPTER VIII

PENNSYLVANIA, NEW JERSEY AND DELAWARE GEORGIAN

1720-1805

CHAPTER IX

THE GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE OF THE SOUTH

CHAPTER X

THE POST-COLONIAL PERIOD AND THE CLASSIC REVIVAL

CHAPTER XI

PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF THE COLONIAL AND POST-COLONIAL PERIODS

CHAPTER XII

CHURCHES OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD

CHAPTER XIII

MATERIALS AND TEXTURES

CHAPTER XIV

EARLY AMERICAN ARCHITECTS AND THEIR RESOURCES