alt="[Image unavailable.]"/>
VERPLANCK HOUSE, NEAR FISHKILL LANDING, N. Y.
Showing genesis of porch from eave extension.
HALL, BOWNE HOUSE, FLUSHING, LONG ISLAND, N. Y.
With typical woodwork.
DINING ROOM, VAN CORTLANDT MANOR HOUSE, CROTON-ON-HUDSON, N. Y.
With Dutch interpretation of Georgian motifs on mantel.
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