The Architecture of Colonial America

by Harold Donaldson Eberlein

Contrasting the Woodlands, the Highlands and Upsala with the houses illustrating the second Georgian type, we find still further evidences of architectural evolution. During the prevalence of the second type individual features were singled out for decorative emphasis, but in the days of the third type the entire front of the house or sometimes the whole exterior was regarded from a decorative point of view. At Cliveden the treatment of the doorway and the urns on the roof are the features relied upon for the embellishment of the façade. At Mount Pleasant the doorways of the east and west fronts, the Palladian windows above them, the balustrade on the roof and the treatment of the chimneys supply a fuller and more ornate decorative effect. But when we reach the third period we see that the architect has considered carefully the decorative element in both the proportions and detail of the whole building. It would be hard to believe that the designer of the Woodlands, in drawing his plans, had not carefully aimed at the pleasing ensemble of the masses. The effect of the rounded ends is agreeable and a marked departure from the straightforward rectangularity of most of the houses of preceding types. The lofty portico of the Woodlands south or river front had no precedent in Philadelphia. Vaux Hill or Fatland, erected about the same time, and Loudoun, a few years later, had the same motif, and even John Bartram, in his last addition to his house, adopted the same treatment. Neither was there a precedent for the method of dealing with the north front, so we see that the Woodlands struck two new notes in local architecture.

At the Woodlands and the Highlands we find pilasters carried the full height of the walls—a new feature. The fenestration is arranged with more regard to outward appearance and not solely from a utilitarian point of view. We find that the high panelled overmantels, which constituted an important architectural feature, had given place to the low and elaborately adorned mantel that ought to be regarded rather as a piece of furniture than as an architectural entity. Fireplaces had grown smaller, fan lights above doors had become common and were enriched with beautiful and sometimes intricate metal tracery. The comparison between these later fan lights with their airy grace, and the earlier fan lights of Mount Pleasant, with their ponderous mouldings, is instructive. In the detail of all ornament heaviness has vanished and the polished elegance of Adam influence has taken its place. Everywhere we find pateræ, drops and swags, fluting and quilling, oval fans and dainty urns and vases with delicate leaf and flower treatment.

Regarding the texture of stone walls, we ought also to note that in the second and third types we find neatly squared and dressed stones used to a considerable extent. At Cliveden, the Highlands and Upsala the fronts alone are of cut stone while at Whitby Hall the walls on all sides are treated with the same formal precision.

Briefly summing up, then, it is clear that three distinct types exist. The first has Queen Anne affinities but is Georgian in time and much of its feeling. Ornamental detail is simple and bold and at times a trifle heavy. The profiles of mouldings are strong and in high relief. Simplicity and strength, combined with grace, give the prevailing note in every instance. The second type is lighter and more ornate, but with characteristic conservatism and abhorrence of the new fangled whims of Sir William Chambers and the Brothers Adam, Philadelphia adhered to the modes in vogue in England from twenty to twenty-five years before and kept Ware in countenance who, in 1750, was still crowning his buildings with heavy Queen Anne urns.

Notwithstanding the staunch adherence to conservative architectural principles, however, a new feeling is everywhere perceptible. Though the overmantel decorations still extended all the way to the ceiling, the character of the ornamentation employed was vastly more elaborate and graceful than anything to be found in buildings of the first type. If the profiles of mouldings were not so bold and insistent they were, nevertheless, quite as graceful. With the advent of floriated and foliated motifs in the carving, we naturally find a closer care to detail of all kinds. At the same time there is to be seen a more punctilious heed to all the little niceties and characteristic distinctions between the classic orders.

By the time our third Georgian type appears, Adam influence has become paramount and put to flight all mid-Georgian ponderosity. Even in the case of manifestly “carpenter built” houses of the period, where, quite unlike the three excellent examples here chosen to represent their particular classes, no especial architectural merit is to be looked for, we find no heaviness of line, and the character of ornamentation employed is distinctly either a copy or an echo of Adam motifs and, in not a few cases, has caught much of their spirit.

It must be understood that the houses used for illustration have been chosen because they represent their many contemporaries in the same neighbourhood, all of which display the same characteristics according to the date at which they were built. The foregoing analysis does not pretend to be complete—it would take far more space to trace all the subtleties of the subject—but aims only to direct attention to certain facts that may conduce to our clearer understanding of American Georgian and its resources in supplying our present needs.

In considering the variations between the Georgian types of the Philadelphia neighbourhood it must be borne in mind that they ought not to be judged too straitly by contemporary work in England. Such comparison would only be misleading and unfair for several reasons. In the first place, at the beginning of the Georgian period, local conditions forbade the lavish display of carved ornamentation that marked so many houses of the same date in England. At that time there were few craftsmen in the Colonies capable of executing the elaborate carving in vogue on the other side of the Atlantic. The builders of mansions, therefore, must perforce content themselves by a close adherence to line and proportion and do without the highly wrought carved embellishment. Then, too, besides this difficulty, many of the builders of these early houses belonged to the Society of Friends, most of whom from their religious principles were averse to a wealth of ornament. In the second place, judging by contemporary English standards would be misleading because at the time the second Philadelphia Georgian type began to flourish, and the means and inclination for elaborate ornament were both present, Colonial conservatism had become an important factor in the dictation of style, and however closely Philadelphians might copy the current modes of London in matters of dress, in their manners and architecture they chose to cling to well established precedent and had always remained thenceforward from twenty to thirty years back of their British cousins in the method of their architectural expression. Hence, for instance, the overmantels reaching to the ceiling built as late as 1765. In all its phases, however, Philadelphia Georgian, whatever minor differences there might have been, was true to the traditions of the great English architects, and because of its purity of style is worthy of close study today for the vital inspiration it can supply.

CHAPTER IX
THE GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE OF THE SOUTH

IF ever the architecture of a region or period truly reflected the personality and manner of life of the people, it was surely the Georgian architecture of the South in the eighteenth century. The planters of that region were affluent and highly cultured and so eminently gifted with the social instinct that the manor houses and mansions could not fail to indicate by their material aspect the lavish hospitality and splendid estate that it was the wont of their owners to maintain. The great Georgian houses, surrounded by broad plantations, that dotted the whole land, could have been erected only in a society possessed of abundant wealth. And the South was opulent. Blessed by nature, as the country was, with a genial climate and fruitful soil, and favoured by exceptional economic conditions, great fortunes had accumulated which permitted the existence of a large leisure class and encouraged a profound regard for all the comforts and refinements of physical environment. In New England we have seen that the architectural riches of the Georgian style were chiefly reserved for interior embellishment, while the majority of exteriors were allowed to go comparatively unadorned, with a few notable exceptions. In the South, on the other hand, the exuberance of nature and the seductive charm of the climate invited the builder of a house to expand his plans and take full advantage of impressive physical settings. Consequently we have the amplitude of aspect so typical of the Southern mansion, an amplitude that is also in some measure due to the extensive domestic entourage and made possible by the abundant means of the occupants.