How to Study Architecture by Charles H. Caffin (free reads .txt) 📕

ANOTHER SOUTHERN COLONIAL EXAMPLE, MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA P. 432

It was Adam’s idea that the architect should be responsible also for the interior decorations and furniture, thus making each room and its furnishings a unified design. Indeed, that everything outside as well as inside the house, summer-houses, terraces and so-forth, should unite in a single ensemble. In the style of furniture that has been associated with his name he showed a rare taste in blending classical motives with elements of his own fancy; exhibiting a particular skill in the graceful use of curvilinear forms, in which he had a partiality for ovals, and in modelling details that, while very delicate, were neither weak nor petty. As the result of his influence the Georgian interior presented an appropriately dainty setting to the costumes and manners of society, which had abandoned the stiff ostentation of the earlier Georgian period for the graceful elegance of the later mode.

Naturally it was from the Mother-Country that the American Colonies derived the models of their earliest architecture. The date at which increased population and prosperity encouraged buildings of a more permanent character, distinguished by their appearance as well as by their immediate utility, is placed at about 1725. From this time the rigour of life in New England, and particularly in Massachusetts, began to be considerably abated. The theocratic form of government, in which the clergy were the arbiters of moral and social conventions, had given way to the active participation of laymen in public affairs. The manners as well as the costumes of society became elegant and the pleasures of life were no longer frowned upon. The change which thus came over social life is reflected in the contrast presented by Copley’s portraits and those of his predecessor, Smibert.

A corresponding advance in the amenities of life was represented also in New York and Philadelphia; while, as to the Southern States, which had been colonised by Royalists rather than by Puritans, the tradition of elegant life had always been maintained and the change at this period was only in the increased opportunity of realising it.

English Influences, Modified.—The edifices which began to be erected comprise churches and meeting-houses, mansions, and a few public halls; the last being of historical rather than architectural interest. The places of worship represent an adaptation of the Wren-Gibbs type, while the domestic designs are based on Queen Anne and Georgian styles. In a few cases the prototype was fairly reproduced; notable examples being Christ Church, Philadelphia (1727-35); Old South Church, Boston, now used as a museum (1730-82), and S. Paul’s, New York (1766). The last named is one of the few instances of stone building at this period; the usual material being either brick imported from England or, far more usually, wood. This affected the use which was made of the drawings of Gibbs, Adam, and others, from which the Colonial church-builders derived their designs. Brick did not permit of carved enrichment. Mouldings were, in consequence, of extreme simplicity and such embellishments as columns, pediments, and cornices were constructed of wood. The character of the design was still further modified in the New England States, since wood was used also for the main structure.

Colonial Style Developed.—Thus there was developed a skill of design in the use of wood alone and of wood in combination with brick that is distinguishable as a distinct style, to which the term “Colonial” has been applied. It is a style in no sense monumental, even when it includes spires, columns and porticoes. On the contrary, it is characterised by simplicity and reserve but is saved from insignificance by the quiet dignity of the whole and the refinement of the details. The wooden spires of the innumerable meeting-houses distributed over New England, many of which were designed by the almost forgotten worthies, Ascher Benjamin and Ithiel Town, present a type of their own, distinguished by extreme sensitiveness of outline and aspiring grace and airiness. These are veritable creations, growing logically out of the wood construction. And even in the porticoes, although their columns are structurally shams, being mere shells enclosing a post, the feeling of woodwork is so frankly retained, that in association with the wooden walls they seem quite reasonable.

A corresponding unity of effect is achieved in the best examples of wooden domestic buildings, such as the Craigie House, Longfellow’s home in Cambridge; the Sherburn House, Portsmouth, and innumerable other examples throughout New England. They are characterised by the choice proportions and distribution of the windows, by the pilasters running up through two stories, to a well-designed cornice, broken in the centre by a pediment that serves as a porch. The roofs vary. Some are flat; some slope up from front and rear, with a gable at each end. In other cases, the continuous slope is broken by a gambrel into two slopes, forming an obtuse angle, as in the Mansard roof. While again, the roof may be hipped, sloping up, that is to say, from all four sides, the four planes meeting in hips or ridges.

While similar styles of roofs and windows reappear in the Southern Colonial type of house the latter is distinguished by the addition of a verandah. It may take the form of a pedimented portico, composed of colossal columns, carried up to the cornice, or of a colonnade extending along the entire front and frequently consisting of two stories; the floor beams of the upper one being let into the columns—a device that violates structural propriety but may be overlooked in the comfortable dignity of the whole design. The latter in some cases covers an extended, symmetrical plan, as, for example, in Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, where the main block is connected by curving colonnades with the kitchen wing on one side and offices on the other, while the slave-quarters were in detached buildings,