Above the second floor the hipped roof springs, pierced east and west by two graceful dormers and crowned by a well turned balustrade that traverses nearly the whole distance between the chimneys. The fan light over the door has remarkably heavy, fluted mullions and much of the detail throughout the house, though highly wrought, is heavy. The two flanking outbuildings, set 30 or 40 feet distant from the northeast and southeast corners of the house, designed for servants’ quarters and domestic offices, give Mount Pleasant a peculiarly striking appearance. Without them it would be only an unusually handsome Georgian country house, with them it at once takes on the manorial port of one of the old Virginia mansions. The interior woodwork, both upstairs and down, is rich in elaboration of detail, and the door frames, with their heavily moulded pediments, are exceptionally fine.
Cliveden, the third member of the second group, was built in 1761 by Chief Justice Chew. Its solid and heavy masonry is of carefully dressed Germantown stone, and at the peaks of the gables and corners of the roof are great stone urns. Back of the house are two wings, one semi-detached and the other entirely so, used for servants’ quarters and domestic offices. All the features and detail about Cliveden are thoroughly in keeping with the same characteristics as in the other two houses already described.
The windows are broad and fill a great part of the wall space in the façade, and the doorway is an essential feature that has been made the most of by the architect. Both indoors and out the strongly classic feeling has been emphasised in pillar and pediment, pilaster and entablature. Triglyphs, guttæ and every other detail of classic embellishment have been wrought with the nice precision due a worthy subject.
Comparing Whitby, Mount Pleasant and Cliveden with the former houses of the first Georgian type, certain differences at once strike us. The whole aspect is changed by the greater breadth of windows and doors. The houses look wider awake. This change in the size of the windows means, of course, that the rooms within in most cases were lighter and more cheerful than before. Then, too, the Palladian window has appeared. Both Mount Pleasant and Cliveden afford good examples of it, Cliveden’s being placed at the side while at Mount Pleasant it forms an important feature in both the east and west fronts.
At Mount Pleasant and Cliveden we see, too, that the door has become a subject for elaborate treatment, quite in contrast to the extremely simple and unassuming manner of dealing with the same feature in the earlier houses. At Mount Pleasant the severity of the roof line is tempered by a balustrade and the effective management of the chimneys while, at Whitby and Cliveden, urns embellish the peaks and corners. Within we find that acanthus leaves and thistles have begun to grow, the rose has blossomed, other conventional flowers and foliage have budded and egg and dart mouldings have appeared. In other words, carving as a mode of embellishment has attained an established vogue. The moulding profiles have lost some of their trenchant boldness and, though the ornamental detail, both indoors and out, is still vigorous, and at times massive, there is generally visible an air of delicacy and refinement not present before.
The Woodlands, the Highlands, and Upsala exemplify for us the third type of Georgian. William Hamilton built the Woodlands about 1770. Anthony Morris finished the Highlands in 1796, and Norton Johnson began Upsala in 1798 and completed it three years later. Across the north front of the Woodlands, at regular intervals, are six Ionic pilasters above whose tops runs an elaborately ornamented entablature with pateræ and flutings, the whole surmounted by a pediment. Before the house is a low and broad paved terrace filling the space between the semi-circular bays that project from the ends of the building. Between the two middle pilasters, a round arched doorway with a fan light opens into the hall. On the south or river front a flight of steps ascends to a lofty white pillared portico from which a door opens directly into the oval shaped ballroom.
In another respect the whole exterior aspect of the Woodlands is different from the houses of the second type. Window treatment is always a most important item in determining architectural character and it is just here that a significant change is to be noted. The size of the opening is, in some cases, the same, in others it is larger but, more noticeable still, the muntins are far smaller and we lose the bold, trenchant barring of white that emphasises the aspect of windows of the earlier buildings.
The interior is finished with all the delicacy that one might expect judging from the evidences of Adam influence without. One highly significant feature of interior treatment in houses of the third type is the change made in the arrangement of the mantels. We have seen that in houses of the first type, such as Graeme Park and in houses of the second type, such as Whitby Hall or Mount Pleasant, the overmantel panelling and embellishment were accorded much care and elaboration. The chimney breast often extended a considerable distance into the room and the ornamental superstructure above the fireplace reached all the way to the ceiling.
Although these ornate overmantels reaching to the ceiling had begun to fall into disfavour in England a little after the middle of the eighteenth century, when houses of the second Georgian type were being erected in the Philadelphia neighbourhood, Colonial conservatism disregarded the newer style and clung to the mode approved by time-honoured precedent. The fireplace with its setting has always held a position of such exalted honour as the centre of family life that the following extract from Clouston’s Treatise on Chippendale is particularly illuminating in this connexion. In speaking of the influence exerted by Sir William Chambers on architecture as well as on furniture, he says:—“When he returned to England in 1755, [from the Continent] he was