The Architecture of Colonial America

by Harold Donaldson Eberlein

Pennsylvania Colonial type with German influence apparent.

It was the writer’s privilege to see the old Bake House in Salem just after it had been rescued by private generosity from impending demolition and moved to its present site hard by the House of the Seven Gables. In the course of making necessary repairs and restorations, the clapboard casing had been entirely removed and it was possible to see fully the whole structural scheme. The timbers and pugging were as just noted. Although the windows were, at that time, of the sash type, with small panes, the traces were clearly visible of alterations that had been made at an earlier date, probably somewhere about 1720, when the sash window rose into high favour and was generally substituted for the leaded casement with small diamond-shaped panes. The timbers gave unmistakable evidence that the window apertures in the sides of the house had originally been wide enough to accommodate a range of casements and that they had been neither so high nor so low as the sash or double hung windows that took their places. In other words, the timbers showed that the apertures had been narrowed to a considerable extent and, at the same time, extended both upwards and downwards.

Inside the house, the heavy oak studs, when the laths and plaster were torn off, showed chamfered corners, usually stopped at the ends with a stop that was thoroughly mediæval in character and might be found duplicated in the beams of trussed roofs in any old building in England dating from the sixteenth century or earlier. The tops of the studs, in some cases, showed a peculiar splay outward at the sides and rough notching by way of ornament. Surely here were touches of mediæval English workmanship that had been perpetuated in the new land by a workman who had served his apprenticeship in an English village where all the old joinery traditions were preserved intact.

The overhang on the second floor projecting some distance beyond the walls of the first is another striking instance of the survival of half-timber building traditions in not a few of the old houses. We see it in the House of the Seven Gables, in the Bake House, in the Paul Revere house in Boston, in more than one old house in Marblehead, and in plenty of other ancient dwellings, some of them recently restored, throughout the land, where restorations have been intelligently undertaken and carried out. It has almost invariably proved the case either that the pendants were intact beneath the clapboards, or that the stumps of them were there, clearly showing the existence of the feature. In not a few cases the overhang has disappeared because the clapboard casing has been carried down flush with the outside of the upper storey. This was the case with the House of the Seven Gables, and it was only when the clapboard casing, in which it had been jacketed for many years, was removed that the overhang once more came to light and the stumps of the original pendants were forthwith restored. The finding of such pendants and such overhangs coupled with the frequent occurrence of such features as just noted in the case of the Bake House afford us irrefutable evidence of the perpetuation of the English half-timber building traditions. It has been fondly supposed by some that the overhang was meant for purposes of defence. It may have been turned to that use when occasion required, but defence was certainly not the original idea, for in that case the projection would doubtless have been carried all the way around the wall, as it was in the case of the block houses, where, of course, this feature was meant primarily to facilitate defence and cover the occupants as they dropped boiling oil, hot lead, or other missiles on the heads of their assailants whenever they approached near enough.

From the early New England houses, that embodied so many old English architectural traditions, was gradually evolved, under stress of local expediency, a type that met the needs of the colonists. That type was not only intensely practical in its characteristics but its simplicity and straightforwardness gave it a vital artistic interest that still commends it to our favourable consideration.

CHAPTER IV
PRE-GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES
English, Welsh, Swedish and German Influences

FROM the very outset, Pennsylvania was the most polyglot and conglomerate of all the English colonies or provinces in America. West Jersey and Delaware, which latter State was originally a part of Pennsylvania and known as “the three lower counties on Delaware,” in some degree shared this miscellaneous character, and together the three formed a practically distinct unit in the Middle Colonies, peculiar in composition and without parallel elsewhere. The diversity in nationality and speech among the early settlers was directly reflected in architectural manifestations and the variant types were never wholly welded together into one distinct style and, even long after the advent and almost universal prevalence of the Georgian mode, they continued in use concurrently. Just as similar phenomena were to be detected in the several parts of New England, they displayed local peculiarities of artisanship attributable to the different traditions obtaining in the respective parts of the Old World from which the individual artisans had come. The two most noticeable features in the early population of Pennsylvania were the diversity of elements and the clannishness and consequent isolation of the people who composed the several distinct parts of the colony. These elements remained distinct from each other both from preference and interest, and natural conditions favoured this division.

First of all in date of settlement on the shores of the Delaware were the Swedes, whose successful efforts at colonisation began in 1638. The Dutch, it is true, had previously made some slight attempts at settlement. In 1616, in pursuit of the exploration essayed but abandoned by Hudson in 1609, Captain Hendrickson, in the “Onrust” (“Restless”), had sailed up the Delaware to the mouth of the Schuylkill and, in 1623, under Captain Cornelius Mey, Fort Nassau was built at what is now Gloucester Point, nearly opposite Philadelphia. In the main, however, the Dutch preferred to stay down the bay and, in 1650, Fort Nassau was abandoned. They were traders rather than settlers, so far as their connexion with the Delaware was concerned, and the first real settlements, therefore, are to be credited to the Swedes who were home-loving, industrious farmers, proud of their homesteads and capable in the management of their dairies but possessed of little inclination towards commercial activity. The Swedish foundation was permanent and, though the Swedish population was eventually absorbed by the more numerous elements brought hither a few years later by Penn’s “holy experiment,” it left an indelible and significant mark upon the corporate composition of the colony and the traces of Swedish influence are still distinct and unmistakable, not only in much of the local architecture, in the names of places and persons, and in the strong strain of Swedish blood in many Pennsylvania families but in humbler and less obvious matters as well. As an instance of the latter may be mentioned the common strain of red cattle to be seen everywhere on the hills and in the valleys of eastern Pennsylvania. These same red cattle are the descendants of the Swedish kine, brought hither nearly three hundred years ago by the hardy colonists who planted their farmsteads along the waters of the Delaware and its lower tributaries.

Attracted by the prospect of religious liberty, by the liberal inducements offered them, and by the fatness of the land, a great variety of settlers, following in the wake of Penn’s pioneers, flocked to the colony on the Delaware and found there a safe and happy refuge after the troublous existence many of them had led before their departure from their old homes. Besides the English, who were almost altogether Quakers, there were, in this second wave of immigration, both Welsh and Germans. Later still, a small Dutch element was added and then came the Scotch-Irish. Each of these elements naturally perpetuated its own peculiar architectural traditions, and why those traditions continued so long a time distinct in their expression we shall presently see.