The Architecture of Colonial America. Harold Donaldson Eberlein

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