But the handsomest features of this upper hall are the Palladian windows, admitting a flood of light at each end, with their rectangular sashes each side of a higher, round-arched central window and a delightful arrangement of curved sash bars at the top. The many small panes lend a pleasing sense of scale, while the architectural treatment of the frames adds to the charm of the interior woodwork quite as materially as to the exterior façade. In working out the scheme, the entire Ionic order is utilized on a small scale. Both the casings and the mullions take the form of fluted square columns with typical carved capitals. These support two complete entablatures forming the lintels of the rectangular windows and being carried around into the embrasure of the central window, the keyed[165] arch of which springs from the entablatures. It is a design which has never been improved upon.
The hall and staircase at Cliveden combine distinctive characteristics of the halls at Stenton and Mount Pleasant. As at Stenton, the hall itself consists of a large reception room centrally located, and about which the other principal rooms of the house are grouped. Through an archway at the rear is a slightly narrower though spacious staircase hall extending through to the back of the house, where the broken staircase rises to a broad landing and the direction of the run reverses. The architecture is as pure Doric as at Mount Pleasant, but of the denticulated rather than the mutulary order, and altogether more satisfactory for interior trim in wood. The cornice only is carried around the room at the ceiling, and in the staircase hall only the cymatium and corona of the cornice; but over the archway, supported by a colonnade of four fluted round columns, a complete entablature with nicely worked classic detail is employed and given added emphasis by several inches' projection into the reception hall. The columns are spaced so as to form a wide central archway flanked by two narrow ones, the effect being a staircase vista unexcelled in the domestic architecture of Philadelphia. The picture is enriched by a heavily paneled wainscot and handsome, deeply embrasured doorways with architrave casings, paneled jambs and soffits.[166]
Except for the single, simple turned newel, the staircase is much like that at Mount Pleasant. There is the similar ramped balustrade and paneled wainscot with ramped surbase and dark wood cap rail along the wall opposite. Little pilasters likewise support this rail, but they are paneled rather than fluted. There are similar scroll-pattern stair ends and paneling under the stairs. In this instance the under side of the upper run is paneled in wood rather than plastered. The turned balusters are slightly more elaborate than at Mount Pleasant, but are used in the same manner, three to the stair.
Not built until nearly the dawn of the nineteenth century, Upsala belongs to a later period than most of the notable houses in Philadelphia. The lighter grace of Adam design had begun to dominate American building and is to be seen in the staircase as well as in the mantels and other interior woodwork at Upsala. The staircase combines features of the broken flight with a midway landing, such as the foregoing examples, and of the later development in long halls where the direction of the flight was reversed by a curved portion of the run instead of a landing. The breadth and length of the hall made landings possible and desirable, but instead of one wide midway landing between the upper and lower runs of the flight, there were two square landings separated by three steps, the stair stringers, balustrade and wainscot swinging upward in broad-sweeping[167] curves. The wainscot consists of a charmingly varied paneling, while the balustrade is lighter in treatment than was usually the case. A simple dark wood handrail, slender, square molded balusters and stairs having a low rise and broad treads lend grace of appearance rarely equaled. Jig-sawed outline brackets of unusually harmonious scroll pattern placed under the molded overhang of the treads provide additional ornamentation of a refined character. The spiral newel is but a simpler form of those already alluded to. Altogether it is a staircase that charms the eye through its unaffected simplicity, a quality that never loses its power of appeal whether found inside the house or out.
Two other stairways with balustrades of slender grace are worthy of note, especially as instances of a single, small turned newel on the lower step, the handrail terminating in a round cap on the top. The simpler of these is at Roxborough and has balusters of unique contour standing not on the stair treads but on the cased-up stair stringer. The staircase in the Gowen house, Mount Airy, has a balustrade with three slender, but more or less conventional, balusters on each step, the treads, like the handrail and newel, being painted dark. A graceful jig-sawed bracket of scroll pattern adorns each stair end under the overhang of the tread, and the space under the stairs is closed in by well-spaced molded and raised paneling.[168]
Another distinctive scroll outline bracket for stair ends forms the principal feature of a graceful staircase in the Carpenter house, Third and Spruce streets. The pattern manifests great refinement and has excellent proportion. In contrast with these lighter designs for domestic architecture, it is interesting to examine the stair-end treatment in Independence Hall, which is equally pleasing as an example of heavier, richer detail for public work. The brackets are solid, of evolute spiral outline and beautifully hand carved.[169]