Assembly room

“ There was a great oaken staircase, with carven handrail and ample landings, leading to the assembly and other large rooms, for the quality folks, on the left of the entrance. Dr. Oliver, in a contribution to a newspaper in 1833, mentions this assembly room as having been used for balls within the memory of old people then living. ”

“ In business session these organizations meet elsewhere, not in the Temple. The room is furnished with the requisite number of chairs, a table, a desk, and an altar.
The Main Assembly Room, which with its vestries and the end corridors occupies the whole of the fourth floor, is one hundred and twenty by eighty feet in area, and thirty-six feet in height. A commodious gallery extends along both sides, and but for the space occupied by the stands, includes the ends. At either end of this great auditorium is a spacious stand,—a terraced platform,—a multiple series of pulpits. ”

“ The department of training and the bureau of planning, with an assembly room, will share the sixteenth. The more purely recreational features, however, the Men's Club and the Community Club and the lounging rooms and library, are placed as low as the accessible eighth floor. The general manager's and employment offices will be as low as the second mezzanine—for obvious reasons of convenience. ”

“ In the interior the rooms are practically counterparts of those already described in connection with other Temples. {230} The main assembly room on the upper floor has a seating capacity for over fifteen hundred persons. ”

“ The guards before whom they pass will draw up, and present their arms: at the palace, where the sittings of the assembly of their high mightinesses are held, they are to be received in a private room by the committee of that assembly, then at the door of the chamber of sittings by the notary, who shall introduce them to the place of the sittings of the assembly, and accompany them to the place destined for them, and which is similiar to that of the members of the assembly. ”

“ In the rear, approached nowadays through the yard of a livery-stable, the old Assembly Rooms where she danced with the élite of the county families of her day, may with some difficulty be found by climbing a crazy staircase and pushing through the accumulated cobwebs of years. ”

“ The large knocker of the outside door would thunder its fearful tones through the loud-resounding hall, chairs would deliberately move across the room, heavy marble-top tables would poise themselves upon two legs, and then fall with their contents to the floor—no person being within six feet of them. ”

“ As he drew the latch-key from his pocket he was thinking of his library, where the firelight fell on cheerful walls and red leathern chairs, and with the closing of the door he crossed the hall and entered the first room on the left.
A red fire burned in the grate, and the furniture reflected the colour until the place seemed pervaded by a visible warmth. The desk in the centre of the room, the shining backs of law books, the crimson rugs, the engravings on the walls, the easy chair drawn up before the hearth, presented to him as he entered now the security of individual isolation. ”

“ It is necessary to premise, that the Committee is desirous that an handsome Room should be included in the Design, together with a staircase leading to it, but that the Committee would be most desirous any Accommodation could be given to the Press in the Building to be erected which did not interfere with those parts which they think should be ornamented. ”

“ If the ground glass of the vestibule door be exposed and staring, the hall floor bare and cold, the hall chair hard and stiff, the doors to the reception or sitting-room all closed, rising black and grim before you, and the hall itself so dark that you can not see even where to lay down your companionable umbrella, does there not come over you a chill, as if you were being repelled by the spirit of inhospitality? ”

“ On the other side of the hall were the living rooms, of heroic proportions and furnished with lovely old mahogany of a style which I have since learned is called Hepplewhite. The chairs, the tables, the sideboard, were all things of beauty; graceful, substantial and right in every way. How those old cabinet-makers must have loved their work, and what pains they took with it!
Up-stairs were the bed-rooms, sewing-rooms, servants’ rooms, what not. We went on and on, through room after room, peering into innumerable closets, opening windows and shutters ”

“ The great hall was the most important part of the establishment. Here the general business of the household was transacted, the meals served, strangers received, audiences granted, and what may be termed the public life of the family carried on. It was also the general rendezvous of the servants and retainers, who lounged about it when duty or pleasure did not call them to the other offices or to the field. In the evening they gathered around the fire, built in an iron grate standing in the middle of the room; for as yet chimneys were a luxury confined to the principal chamber. ”

“ Often the chair or settee is of the most uncomfortable design, conspiring with the narrow quarters to make the visitor's impression of the house and its inmates a very disagreeable one. If space is lacking to make the hall a comfortable and pleasing room, it should be abolished, and the visitor, if a social one, taken at once to the parlor, and if a business one, to the living-room. ”

“ The assembly hall is large enough to accommodate the four hundred and fifty members, but is badly lighted. The windows are all back of the speaker's platform, so that the members sit with their faces towards the light. It would be much better if the light came from above, but it is really surprising that the accommodations are as satisfactory as they are, considering the short time the workmen had to make the necessary changes. ”

“ Morrill, of Pennsylvania, and General Butler, of Massachusetts, who have, as chairmen of their respective committees, offered us the use of their several rooms, in case the threats of a certain gentleman in the House should so terrify you, sir, that you should feel compelled to withdraw your most friendly offer. We have accepted the use of the Committee-room on Agriculture, leaving you, sir, with reluctance, simply because it is larger and more accessible than your room, and one so beautifully adorned by art, that our womanly tastes are daily gratified in its use. ”

“ The arrangement of a vestibule for hat-rack, umbrella-stand, and other conveniences, changes the hall into an available room. Take, for instance, plan No. 16, page 153. At the right, as one enters, is a little closet; in it are hooks. At one side is an umbrella-stand; on the floor is a place for overshoes. Here one may arrange himself before going into the hall or reception-room. This is altogether better than having to pass across to one side of the hall or room, in order to find a place to deposit overshoes, wraps, umbrellas, etc. It saves work. ”

“ Sir Julian rejoined drily, "if the creation of the world were in question."
The committee-room was a long, low annexe to the main body of the building, with the usual green-baize covered table placed lengthways down the middle of the room, mahogany chairs at regular intervals round it, an armchair at the head for the chairman, and on the table the usual disposition of clean blotting-paper, pencils, note-books, and a carafe of water covered with an inverted glass. ”

“ When offering a motion or when desiring the floor for any purpose the speaker, after addressing the chair, should remain standing and silent until recognized by the chair. This recognition is shown by the chairman calling the name of the member, or by some sign of recognition, which signifies to the assembly who has the floor. (For exceptions see Sec. 79) . If more than one member asks the floor at the same time, upon the chair's decision as to which is entitled to the floor, all others should be seated and await another opportunity. ”

“ For instance, the hall, being an intermediate space between in and out of doors, should be coloured and furnished in direct reference to this, and to its common use as a thoroughfare by all members of the family. It is not a place of prolonged occupation, and may therefore properly be without the luxury and ease of lounges and lounging-chairs. But as long as it serves both as entrance-room to the house and for carrying the stairways to the upper floors, it should be treated in such a way as to lead up to and prepare the mind for whatever of inner luxury there may be in the house. ”

“ Wherever there is a large table there is a long sofa or a few big chairs; wherever there is a lone chair there is a small table to hold a reading-light, or flowers, or what not. The great size of the room, the fine English ceiling of modeled plaster, the generous fireplace with its paneled over-mantel, the groups of windows, all these architectural details go far toward making the room a success. ”

“ It should take its keynote for decoration from the hall. If there is a wide doorway connecting the living room with the hall, the color scheme should be the same. As the living room serves as library also, open book shelves, painted the same as the woodwork, are essential, and more substantial than book cases.
The first requisite of such a room is that it shall be restful. Avoid using rocking chairs. Use little bric-a-brac. Nothing which does not contribute to the necessity and beauty of the room should be allowed. ”

“ Running from the top of the house there is in the thickness of the wall, a concealed circular shoot about a couple of feet in diameter, through which a person could lower himself, if necessary, to the ground floor by the aid of a rope. Here also, beneath the floor-boards of a cupboard in one of the bedrooms, is a concealed chamber with a fixed shelf, presumably provided to act as a sort of table for the unfortunate individual who was forced to occupy the narrow limits of the room. ”

“ This entrance was to be made through the doorway that opened from the hall on the second story into the library. To the right of this door, in an angle of two walls, was the cabinet, and on the left, the first of the camp chairs. These had been placed in a semicircle that stretched across the room, and ended at the parlor organ. ”

“ A nice workman, who was famous for little curiosities, undertook to make me two chairs, with backs and frames, of a substance not unlike ivory, and two tables, with a cabinet to put my things in. The room was quilted on all sides, as well as the floor and the ceiling, to prevent any accident from the carelessness of those who carried me, and to break the force of a jolt when I went in a coach. ”

“ As the entrance, or hall, of any well built house ought always to be expressive of the dignity of its possessor, so the furniture ought to be designed in a manner adapted to inform the stranger, or visitant, where they are, and what they may expect on a more general survey of every apartment.
“As the hall is a general, or ought to be a general opening to all the principal apartments, it should be furnished so as not to be mistaken for the most superb division of the structure, or where they may expect to meet the nobler person who resides in it. ”

“ The necessity of additional room is daily growing more apparent. The various divisions are suffering front this cause, some of them lacking the proper space for the desk-room needed for the transaction of business. ”

“ We are in a spacious chamber, not very vast, not very lofty—for there is a false roof of ground glass, for acoustic reasons—and not very handsome. A sufficiency of oaken panelling, and windows veiled with velvet curtains, brilliant but cunningly tempered light—the absolute lamps invisible. Altogether a comfortable, well-to-do-place—say something like an enlarged edition of the coffee-room of a terminus hotel, as they are building terminus hotels now-a-days, or the newspaper-room of a club fitted up for a general meeting of the members. ”

“ A cabinet maker named A. Heppelwhite published in 1789 a large set of designs for every sort of reception room and bedroom furniture. We see in these the mahogany chairs with pierced strapwork backs, library and pedestal tables, mechanical desks and bureaux, which continued in fashion during the early years of this century. Fanciful sashed glass doors closed in the bookcases; interrupted pediments and pedestals provided space for busts round the tops of these cases. Fluted legs, and occasionally lion-headed supports, uphold the tables and chairs. ”

“ Each of these had its place of meeting for the priori—masters or wardens, as we should say, of the company—and many of them a contiguous chapel. The sort of furniture needed for these places was generally a range of seats running round the principal room, a back of wainscoting behind them, a kind of pulpit for those who addressed the meeting, a raised and prominent seat for the "consuls" of the guild, and a large table or writing-desk for the transaction of business. All this, as will be readily perceived, afforded fine opportunities for the display of rich carvings and intarsia ”

“ The threshold theory must not be pushed to a disregard of the clear evidence for a certain amount of interior action. We have already come across examples of shallow recesses, such as a tent, a cave, a bower, a tomb, a shop, a window, within which, or from within which, personages can speak. There are also scenes which must be supposed to take place within a room. In dealing with these, I propose to distinguish between spacious hall scenes and limited chamber scenes. Hall scenes are especially appropriate to palaces. ”