The Architecture of Colonial America

by Harold Donaldson Eberlein

WESTOVER, JAMES RIVER, VA.

Southern Georgian, first phase.

often to be found in the actual rôle of workman. When he began the operations at Monticello, about 1770, that left it in its present form, he not only planned and supervised the work, “but was personally responsible for such practical phases as heating, ventilation, plumbing and drainage. He planned the farm buildings and the laying out of all the roads and bridle paths about the place. In addition, he trained all his own workmen and even made experts of several of his slaves, whom he later set free to earn their living at the trades he had taught them.”

In the South, as in New England and the Middle Colonies, we may without much difficulty discern three phases of the Georgian modes of expression, all of them with characteristics more or less clearly defined. In view of the extended analysis of those phases made in the chapter devoted to the Georgian period in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, it will be unnecessary to dwell at length upon the corresponding characteristics to be found in the domestic architecture of the South, a course that would merely involve bootless repetition. As occasion arises, therefore, in considering typical examples of Southern building, attention will be directed chiefly to points of divergence and local peculiarities and modifications. The practices of building kitchens and offices in structures apart from the body of the house; of planning bedchambers on the ground floor and of making the hall of ample enough proportions to be used as a living-room, when so desired, have already been adverted to in the chapter on the Southern Colonial style. All three practices were developed during the seventeenth century and by practical usage proved their excellence so that they were retained when a new and more elegant architectural mode supplanted the fashion of an earlier day.

In several instances, such as Tuckahoe, erected about 1707, Belvoir in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, built about the same date, and Gunston Hall, finished after the middle of the eighteenth century, we may trace a transitional form, retained from seventeenth century precedents. The general contour of these houses exhibits strong affinities with the truly Southern Colonial type of dwelling but in the manner of execution and the employment of ornamental detail we are on the Georgian side of the boundary.

For the first Georgian phase, we cannot do better than study such houses as Carter’s Grove on the James River, built about 1737, and Westover, finished several years prior to that date. In both places we find many of the characteristics that we should be disposed to look for after a careful perusal of the notes on the earliest type of Georgian houses given in Chapter VIII. In general contour and the treatment of the roof, Carter’s Grove is not unlike Stenton. In addition, however, to the particulars alluded to in Chapter VIII, we find at Carter’s Grove the exceptionally broad hallway peculiar to the South, twenty-eight feet wide. It is to be noted also that there and at other places, too, in the South, are to be seen richly wrought baluster spindles, spiral turned or carved, just as in some of the finer houses in New England. In this connexion it is important to remember that at Tuckahoe, in addition to the spiral turned balusters, there is some unusually fine carving on the staircase executed in a more expansive and flowing style than the carving of the middle or end of the century. The rich pilasters and pediment of the doorway at Westover also show kinship to an earlier tradition just as do some of the adornments of contemporary doorways in New England.

Tulip Hill at West River, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, offers an excellent example of the Southern Georgian house erected about the middle of the eighteenth century. In point of detail it has the usual earmarks of the date of its erection which it is unnecessary to revert to. Several other points, however, are to be noted. Decorative panels in relief at each side of the circular window in the front gable and a decorative device in the pediment of the portico are touches of embellishment of a kind not frequently found in the North and they have their counterpart in many similar ornaments to be found on other Southern houses built about this period. It is to be noted, too, that the portico or porch is beginning to have a recognised architectural place in the South. A few years later it assumed more imposing proportions in the shape of the great white pillars, two storeys in height, supporting a massive pediment carried forward as an integral part of the roof. While speaking of porches it must not be forgotten that credit is due the South Carolina type of Georgian house for the double-decked or two storey porch so frequently met with in that state.

The necessity or desirability of developing the porch feature may have hastened the welcome of the Classic Revival in the South because of the opportunity it gave of constructing that architectural adjunct in an imposing and thoroughly well-mannered and congruous method. At all events, the Classic Revival seems to have met with earlier favour in the South than elsewhere and its vogue was practically synchronous with the third or Adam type of Georgian expression. As a case in point, there is Monticello but it should be observed that Jefferson’s conception of the Classic Revival