LEE HOUSE. STAIRWAY.
circumstance of surroundings for its proper existence. The formal note of classicism had come into English architecture in the reign of Henry VIII, had flourished apace under Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren, and blossomed richly in domestic forms during the reigns of William and Mary and Queen Anne. With the Queen Anne developments, however, we have little direct concern in America. It was not until after the first George had been some years on the throne that a marked change became evident in the domestic architecture of the American Colonies.
By the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century there had been a marked increase in the wealth of the country. A reasonable security from the wild alarums of Indian warfare and an orderly and uninterrupted course of civil life left the well-to-do more time to pay to the amenities of existence, and the general growth of material prosperity provided the means to indulge the taste for larger, better and, in a word, more pretentious domestic environment that accorded with the affluence and important social position of the prominent citizens. When the worthies of the early eighteenth century were thus minded and encouraged to build anew for themselves and erect substantial and more commodious homes for their own use and the enrichment of their posterity, nothing was more natural than that they should turn to the mother country for a suitable style and pattern to direct them in their new undertaking. They were always most punctilious to follow the styles of London in their clothing and prided themselves upon the accuracy with which they kept pace with all the changing fashions in apparel on the other side of the sea. In like manner, also, they looked to the current architectural fashions in England for inspiration to guide them in so momentous a matter as the establishment of a dwelling suited to their estate and fit to be the domicile of succeeding generations of their name.
It is quite true that certain peculiarities characteristic of the English architecture of Queen Anne’s time had occasionally made their appearance in New England before this general efflorescence of the earliest phase of the Georgian mode and even considerably afterwards they were not wholly wanting—specific reference will be made to them in a subsequent paragraph—but the prevailing architectural tone from 1720 or 1725 onward was unmistakably Georgian. Certain modifications were made, to be sure, as expediency suggested or necessity demanded, but despite all local adaptations, which will be pointed out as they occur in the examination of sundry examples, the strong family resemblance to the contemporary domestic structures of England could not be overlooked.
The most notable piece of local adaptation, to which not even the uninterested or superficial observer can be blind, was the wholesale grafting of the New England wooden or clapboard tradition, which by this time had become ineradicably established, upon a mode of architectural expression that had been hitherto almost invariably—and always in England—interpreted in brick or stone, as it was elsewhere in the American Colonies. Even when the fabric was virtually built of brick, as in the case of the Royall house at Medford or the Lee house at Marblehead, it was encased in an outer shell of wood, sometimes grooved, bevelled, painted and sanded to present the appearance of cut stone.
Another marked peculiarity of the New England Georgian work, a peculiarity perhaps invited and intensified by this almost universal predilection for a wood casing, at least so far as domestic structures were concerned, is the comparative plainness and absence of architectural embellishment from a great many exteriors in strong contrast with the wealth of elaborate carved and moulded detail to be found within. In a way, they seem to have assimilated or, perhaps, it would be truer and more accurate to say that they reflect the outward reserve and restraint of New England character, a reserve, however, that often melts into cordial geniality under the favouring auspices of a closer acquaintance. Indeed, judging from the exterior of many a house, one is wholly unprepared to find the exquisite and rich panelled and carved adornments that confront the visitor, once the threshold is passed. This shearing off or repression of outward architectural graces makes it exceedingly difficult sometimes to tell at first glance whether a house belongs in the Georgian category or not, especially when there is nothing peculiarly distinctive about the contour of the mass to serve as an indication. In this connexion, too, it must be explicitly stated that not a few of these square, roomy old clapboarded houses, of a general farmhouse type gradually evolved from the earlier and truly Colonial mode, discussed in a previous chapter, assumed occasional Georgian features in the way of a door or the setting of a window whose promise was not borne out by any further evidence of architectural pretension either inside or out.
In studying architectural history and examining the architectural characteristics of a certain given territory, the mind is constantly impelled to seek analogies and points of resemblance and relationship with the contemporary
