THE ARCHITECTURE OF
COLONIAL AMERICA

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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.

CHAPTER II

THE DUTCH COLONIAL TYPE

1613-1820

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 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 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.

Old Hurley near Kingston-on-Hudson—to

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 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:

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 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 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 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 pleasantly 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 covered 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 circumstances 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 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 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 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 prototype 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 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 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 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 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.

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, 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 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 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.

CHAPTER III

THE COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE OF NEW ENGLAND

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 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 difficulty 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