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
PINGREE OR WHITE PORTICO. SALEM, MASS.
Showing the delicate detail and attenuation that came with the last Georgian phase.
Copyright. J. B. Lippincott Co.
LAUREL HILL, FAIRMOUNT PARK, PHILADELPHIA.
Belonging to the second type of Middle Colonies Georgian. Built 1762.
TYPICAL HOUSES. OLD HURLEY, N. Y.
With thick walls and small eaves.
ELMENDORF HOUSE, OLD HURLEY, N. Y.
Early Dutch type before local modification.
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