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 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 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 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. 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 evidences 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

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 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 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 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 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 quilling, 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 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 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 misleading 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.

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 refinements 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 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 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 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 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 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 decorative 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.

CHAPTER X

THE POST-COLONIAL PERIOD AND THE CLASSIC REVIVAL

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 substance, 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 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 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 domestic 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 flexibility 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 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 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 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 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 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