“The street doors are generally in the middle of the houses and on both sides are seats, on which, during fair weather the people spend almost the whole day, especially on those which are in the shadow of the houses. In the evening these seats are covered with people of both sexes, but this is rather troublesome, as those who pass by are obliged to greet everybody unless they will shock the politeness of the inhabitants of this town. The streets are broad and some of them are paved; in some parts they are lined with trees. The long streets are almost parallel to the river, and the others intersect them at right angles.”
Rev. Samuel Chandler, chaplain of one of the Massachusetts regiments, stopped several days in Albany in the year 1755. He tells of the streets with rows of small button-trees, of the brick houses curiously flowered with black brick and dated with the same, the Governor’s house having “two black brick-hearts.” The houses one story high with their gable-ends “notched like steps” (he might have said with corbel-steps), were surmounted with vanes, the figures of horses, lions, geese, and sloops. There were window shutters with loop-holes outside the cellars. Smith, the historian of New York, writing at the same time, calls the houses of all the towns, “built of brick in Dutch taste.” Daniel Denton, writing as early as 1670, tells of the “red and black tile (of New York) giving at a distance a pleasing aspect to the Spectators.” All the old sketches of the town which exist, crude as they are, certainly do present a pleasing aspect.
The chief peculiarity of these houses were the high roofs; some were extraordinarily steep and thus afforded a garret, a loft, and a cock-loft. There was reason and economy in this form of roof. The shingle covering was less costly than the walls, and the contraction in size of second-story rooms was not great.
Very few of the steep roofs in the earliest days had eave-troughs, hence the occasional use in early deeds and conveyances of the descriptive term “free-drip.” At a later date troughs were made of sections of the bark of some tree (said to be birch) which the Indians brought into town and sold to house builders. Then came metal spouts projecting several feet, as noted by Kalm. In 1789, when Morse’s Geography was issued, he speaks of the still projecting water-spouts or gutters of Albany, “rendering it almost dangerous to walk the streets on a rainy day;” but in New York more modified fashions obtained long before that time.
The windows were small; some had two panes. When we learn that the ordinary panes of glass imported at that time were in size only six inches by eight inches, we can see that the windows were only loop-holes.
The front doors were usually divided as in Holland, into an upper and lower half. They were in early days hung on strap-hinges, afterwards on heavy iron hinges. In the upper half of the door, or in a sort of transom over the door, were set two round bull’s-eyes of heavy greenish glass, just as are seen in Holland. Often the door held a knocker of brass or of iron. The door usually opened with a latch.
The inventories of the household effects of many of the early citizens of New York might be given, to show the furnishings of these homes. I choose the belongings of Captain Kidd to show that “as he sailed, as he sailed” he left a very comfortable home behind him. He was, when he set up housekeeping with his wife Sarah in 1692, not at all a bad fellow, and certainly lived well. He possessed these handsome and abundant house furnishings:—
- One dozen Turkey work chairs.
- One dozen double-nailed leather chairs.
- Two dozen single-nailed leather chairs.
- One Turkey worked carpet.
- One oval table.
- Three chests of drawers.
- Four looking-glasses.
- Four feather beds, bolsters, and pillows.
- Three suits of curtains and valances.
- Four bedsteads.
- Ten blankets.
- One glass case.
- One dozen drinking-glasses.
- Four tables.
- Five carpets or rugs.
- One screen frame.
- Two stands.
- One desk.
- Two dressing boxes.
- One close stool.
- One warming pan.
- Two bed pans.
- Three pewter tankards.
- Four kettles.
- Two iron pots.
- One skillet.
- Three pairs of fire irons.
- One pair of andirons.
- Three chafing dishes.
- One gridiron.
- One flesh fork.
- One brass skimmer.
- Four brass candlesticks.
- Two pewter candlesticks.
- Four tin candlesticks.
- One brass pestle.
- One iron mortar.
- 2¹⁄₂ dozen pewter plates.
- Five pewter basins.
- Thirteen pewter dishes.
- Five leather buckets.
- One pipe Madeira wine.
- One half-pipe ” ”
- Three barrels pricked cider.
- Two pewter salt-cellars.
- Three boxes smoothing irons.
- Six heaters.
- One pair small andirons.
- Three pairs tongs.
- Two fire shovels.
- Two fenders.
- One spit.
- One jack.
- One clock.
- One coat of arms.
- Three quilts.
- Parcel linen sheets, table cloths, napkins, value thirty dollars.
- One hundred and four ounces silver plate, value three hundred dollars.
The early New Englanders sat in their homes on stools and forms, and very rarely on chairs. It is not so easy to know of Dutch furnishings, for the words stoel and setel and banck, which are found in early inventories, all mean a chair, but also may not have meant in colonial days what we now designate as a chair. A stoel was really a seat of any kind; and stoels there were in plenty among the first settlers. As Cowper says:
“Necessity invented stools,