Gloria Dei (Old Swedes), Philadelphia. 1700
THE ARCHITECTURE OF
COLONIAL AMERICA
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
ARCHITECTURE is crystallised history. Not only does it represent the life of the past in visible and enduring form, but it also represents one of the most agreeable sides of man’s creative activity. Furthermore, if we read a little between the lines, the buildings of former days tell us what manner of men and women lived in them. Indeed, some ancient structures are so invested with the lingering personality of their erstwhile occupants that it is well nigh impossible to dissociate the two.
But it is rather as a revelation of the social and domestic habits of our forebears that the story of architecture in Colonial America concerns us immediately at this point. As the naturalist can reconstruct the likeness of some extinct animal from a handful of bones or tell 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
SENATE HOUSE, KINGSTON-ON-HUDSON, N. Y.
Exemplifying early Dutch peculiarities. Built 1676.
Copyright, 1912, by Baldwin Coolidge.
WARD HOUSE, NEAR SALEM, MASS.
Characteristic of seventeenth century New England type.
HOUSE AT YORKTOWN, VA.
Showing steep pitch roof and outside chimneys proper to the Southern Colonial style.
EXTERIOR OF THE LEE HOUSE, MARBLEHEAD, MASS.
Representative of the second phase of New England Georgian. Built 1768.
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