Harold Donaldson Eberlein

“ The wide muntins of the small paned windows, the well spaced string courses, and the oblong panels of blue marble beneath the windows of the upper floor, diversify the surface and impart a grace that quite prevents the impression of dumpy stodginess that less carefully managed Georgian façades sometimes give. A white balustrade, running the length of the building and set where the pitch of the roof breaks into a much flattened gambrel to form a deck, affords an additional note of grace and lightness comporting well with the triple chimneys with arch-joined tops at each gable end. ”

“ To the carpenter-architects of the seventeenth century we owe a great debt of gratitude for their faithful preservation of time-honoured tradition in plan and manner of building so that we may easily trace our architectural lineage, for the intrinsic excellence of the structures they erected and the lessons they can still teach us in craftsmanship but, most of all, for the honesty and sincerity of the vernacular forms they developed, forms created by ready ingenuity in response to local needs and void of all pretence and hollow affectation. ”

“ Grotesque heads and faces as ornaments for keystones were not very extensively used in our Colonial Georgian architecture, but over the windows on three sides of the uppermost brick stage of the tower are faces that for pathos of expression can quite match those on the tower of Christ Church that lift their seemingly sightless eyes alike to sun and snow and blinding rain. Though noticed by few among the thousands that daily pass by, they are worthy of attention. ”

“ Indeed, judging from the exterior of many a house, one is wholly unprepared to find the exquisite and rich panelled and carved adornments that confront the visitor, once the threshold is passed. This shearing off or repression of outward architectural graces makes it exceedingly difficult sometimes to tell at first glance whether a house belongs in the Georgian category or not, especially when there is nothing peculiarly distinctive about the contour of the mass to serve as an indication. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century there had been a marked increase in the wealth of the country. A reasonable security from the wild alarums of Indian warfare and an orderly and uninterrupted course of civil life left the well-to-do more time to pay to the amenities of existence, and the general growth of material prosperity provided the means to indulge the taste for larger, better and, in a word, more pretentious domestic environment that accorded with the affluence and important social position of the prominent citizens. ”

“ From whatever source his inspiration came, Christ Church is a peculiarly beautiful and graceful structure, well meriting all the praise that has been bestowed upon it and incidentally affording a striking instance of what might be achieved by the amateur architects of the eighteenth century who believed that a knowledge of architecture was an essential part of every gentleman’s education and who were willing to put aside their own professional vocations for a time in order to plan and superintend the erection of some public structure as a kind of public duty. ”

“ 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 warm tone of the walls is especially pleasing. Years and weather, yes, and dirt, have imparted an exceedingly mellow tinge to the hard burned brick laid in courses of Flemish bond, and although the glazed black headers, found in so many old houses, are of rare occurrence, the hue of the Colonial bricks is peculiarly rich. Relieved as the masonry is by trimmings of native bluish marble and pencilled by weathered mortar joints, the walls have a wonderful quality of texture and colour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On looking at such noble examples of the architecture of a past generation, one cannot but regret that the ruthless sweep of commercial progress has brushed aside and demolished so many monuments of the New York of Colonial days. ”

“ The masonry is of carefully dressed stone and, while there are no buttresses, the front of the building is adorned by pilasters at the corners and by a pillared arcade forming a porch around the square tower. The roof is hipped. Inside the building, far more play is given to architectural elaboration than outside. Here we find the pairs of columns supporting the roof and galleries are fluted from top to bottom and surmounted by elaborately carved Corinthian capitals upon which are imposed sections of frieze and cornice from which again spring the arches of the roof vaulting. ”

“ It is no wonder that people who were able to live in the manner indicated by such lists of personal effects wished to have houses in keeping with their means and looked with favour upon architectural designs of elegant proportions and details. Unlike many of the fine Georgian houses of New England, which exhibited a comparatively plain and simple exterior, the houses of the same date in Pennsylvania and the Middle Colonies displayed a degree of outside elaboration to correspond with the interior embellishments. ”

“ We shall not be far wrong in ascribing seventeenth century buildings, almost without exception, to the capable and resourceful craftsman who not only preserved conscientiously the traditions he had learned as an apprentice or journeyman in the Mother Country and faithfully perpetuated them by his practice as a master carpenter or joiner in a new land but also showed himself possessed of ready wit and keen perceptive faculties by the alacrity with which he modified and adapted traditional methods and precedents to new conditions and requirements of climate and environment. ”

“ Room seems to open out from room in a miraculous manner, and there is apparently no end to the space that can be made within the four walls. At times, baffling despair fills the mind at the attempt to master the anatomical intricacies of the Dutch abode. The early Dutch house is practically all upon the ground floor, but the attic, occasionally, is almost as complex in its mysterious arrangement. The Dutchmen and their wives were past masters in ordering the economy of space. The bulk of household gear they could stow away in compact style always excites our wondering admiration. ”

“ In the felicity of its local adaptations, in the dignity it imparted to the visible side of public life, in its virile development manifested in the churches and other public buildings, the Georgian architecture of New England has given us numerous patterns worthy of emulation in toto or in part and has left an indelible and beneficial impress upon the nation’s artistic consciousness. ”

“ Furthermore, these early workmen showed an all-round mastery of their own craft, an intelligent understanding of related crafts and a thorough knowledge of the properties and uses of materials that their modern successors would do well to emulate. They respected their calling and took a proper pride in the excellence of their craftsmanship. Hence the work of their hands, however plain and simple, still possesses a dignity and honest beauty that plainly proclaim how they put their hearts into what they were doing and, at the same time, command our reverence and admiration. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The panelling in many of the old Colonial houses, and for that matter the same thing may be said with perfect truth of much of the panelling to be found in houses of the Georgian type, exhibits marked irregularities. Although the almost mediæval methods of the early craftsmen were gradually supplanted by other ways of treating the material, there was always a delightful personal element of originality and lack of symmetry in the panelling and woodwork generally. It is this very originality that gives it its charm and interest. It is precisely like the features of the human face. ”

“ Rich in historic memories, of which, perhaps, the Boston Massacre stands forth most vividly, it is deservedly cherished with civic pride as the ancient centre of Provincial life and it is gratifying to see how punctiliously and accurately it has been restored to its pristine condition under the able direction of Joseph Everett Chandler, to whose enthusiasm are due many other faithful restorations of seventeenth and eighteenth century New England architectural treasures. ”

“ The roof is hipped, or would be a perfectly hipped roof were it not truncated at the top and finished with a balustrade and a belfry with a small pointed spire. The exterior is so devoid of all architectural amenity that one can scarcely speak of the structure as having any architecture at all. The walls are clapboarded and the cornice is of the simplest contour. The interior is plain and, owing to modernisation, has been made unattractive and prosaic. For our purpose this building is valuable as marking the four-square type of meeting house so often met with. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Elsewhere the third Georgian phase was forsaken all too soon for the newer glamour of the Classic Revival for which, in a manner, it prepared the way. In New England, under the influence of such men as Charles Bulfinch and Samuel McIntire, the delicate proportions and fascinatingly refined details brought into English architecture by the Brothers Adam remained in favour until well into the nineteenth century and exercised a beneficial effect that has not yet lost its force. ”

“ If the houses and churches of the Colonial{183} period in America reflect the social and religious life of our forefathers, no less truly do the public buildings reflect the civic and political side of their existence. To be sure, the public buildings are not without their interest and power to shed light on the social and economic conditions, but it is especially in their civic and political capacity that their appeal to us is strongest. ”

“ 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{2} 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All these types of Colonial architecture possess an healthy, indigenous flavour that smacks of the manly vigour and robust hardihood of{9} 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. ”