The Architecture of Colonial America

by Harold Donaldson Eberlein

The classicism of the Classic Revival, on the other hand, was essentially and unalterably rigid in its adherence to the forms of antiquity and the archæological manner of applying those forms. It was not an adaptation, it was, in very truth, a revival of the modes of two thousand years ago, a gigantic exhibition of architectural archæology. The strength of Georgian architecture lay in the freedom and elasticity of its classicism and its ready flexibility to adaptation. The weakness of the architecture of the Classic Revival was in its rigidity and inflexible resistance to efforts to adapt it to varied modern requirements. In the South, it is true, it showed a few traces of freer interpretation, perhaps because in some cases the artisans were incapable of rendering the accurate reproductions executed by better skilled Northern mechanics but, even with this slight allowance, the stamp of rigidity remained indelible.

Despite a degree of stiffness and pedantry, however, the architecture of the Classic Revival, in its more felicitous manifestations, displayed not a little real excellence, stateliness and grace. Many truly important structures were built during the period of classic ascendancy and to-day, after years of vicissitude in popular taste, their charm of grace and quiet dignity is still fresh and enduring and constantly reminds us of the courtliness of the generation that wisely planned and achieved them. In its less regulated forms, on the contrary, probably due to the ambitious contractor rather than to even an inferior architect, the architecture of the Classic Revival was often unsuitable in its application, uncomfortable and sometimes ridiculous. In the fore part of the nineteenth century, classicism became an obsession among builders whose sole aim seems to have been to transform each city in the land into a second Athens or Rome. Everywhere could be seen buildings that, if not planned on classic lines in their interior divisions or their side elevations, were at least adorned with Greek and Roman orders. This church or bank was embellished with a portico of Corinthian columns, that one across the street had a corresponding portico of severest Doric character while another, perhaps, around the corner rejoiced in graceful Ionic pillars and, doubtless, just beyond was a house whose owner took a proper pride in the impeccable purity of his Tuscan piazza. Sometimes all the orders got inextricably jumbled together on the same edifice and overrun with a veritable forest of acanthus leaves and anthemia, and yet the effect was not wholly bad, however much it might distress a purist, because the builders, in the exuberance and freshness of their vigour, could not help producing some vitality, although they were trying to be scrupulously accurate while expressing themselves in a medium they did not fully understand. These unseemly mix-ups of architectural botany or botanical architecture, whichever one prefers to call it, were not of common occurrence it is pleasant to record. They were the exception, and served to lend point to the really excellent and creditable things that were achieved at a time when a decorous formality went hand in hand with cultivated taste and not a little vigour of thought.

The mutation of architectural style from the Georgian mode to that of the Classic Revival was virtually synchronous and correspondent with the sway of the Empire styles in furniture, the decorative arts and personal attire. The Classic Revival style is altogether post-Colonial in date and its exotic impetus and inspiration, derived from the France of the First Napoleon and grafted upon a Georgian stock, cannot be regarded as essentially a part of the logical process of architectural evolution which had hitherto progressed by gradual and, for the most part, well nigh imperceptible steps from one traditional form to another.

The vigorous classicism of the Georgian period, thanks to its filtration through Renaissance channels, was elastic and appropriate in its application. Even the elegancies and refinements of the Adam school of Georgian expression, though drawn direct from the store of classic antiquity, were judiciously adapted to current needs by masters of the art of discrimination. But the type of classicism exemplified in the Classic Revival was deliberately transplanted bodily and de novo from the ancient world by Napoleonic fiat, in like manner with the designs for furniture and the patterns to dominate the products of the other decorative arts. The transplanters sometimes showed a predilection for heavy Roman forms rather than for the delicacy of Greek refinements, and the transplanting was occasionally done in a clumsy way with little apparent regard for fitness or the principles of sane adaptation. With all the wealth of antiquity to draw from, it would have been strange indeed if the fautors of revived classicism had not produced much that was both exceedingly worthy and beautiful. As pointed out before, whatever defect or weakness characterised the expression of the Classic Revival style, viewed in the aggregate, is not to be attributed to the forms employed but to the manner in which those forms were sometimes misapplied and forced into uses or combinations to which they were ill suited.

This neo-classic inspiration of Napoleonic French contrivance found favour in America, thanks to the strong Francophile sentiment prevailing in the latter part of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth, which even dictated the colour and design of ladies’ gowns and their method of coiffure. In the able hands of such men as Charles Bulfinch, the neo-classic manifestation well merited all the popular approval accorded it. It is scarcely fair, however, to put Bulfinch forth, at least in his earlier period, as a typical exponent of Classic Revival architecture. He was, it is true, imbued with the new influences but he had too much creative instinct and too much sense of fitness ever to descend to mere copying or wholesale borrowing. Besides, he was, one might say, by date of birth and training, a product of the Adam age and, by native bias, in full sympathy with its delicate and refined methods of expression. Indeed, we may properly regard Bulfinch as marking the transition from the Adam or last phase of Georgian architecture to the modes of the Classic Revival for he combined in his work many of the best features of both. He knew how and when to employ Adam delicacy and refinement of detail or Adam exuberance of embellishment without falling into a surfeit of finicky and saccharine over-elaboration; he knew also when and where to use classic boldness and vigour and even classic austerity without sinking from classic grace into any of the heavy Roman forms of brutal vulgarity and military bombast that sometimes marred the work of later exponents of Classic Revival inspiration.

Bulfinch was possessed of consummate good taste, a fine sense of proportion and a genius for judicious adaptation. He was educated while the Adam influence was at its height, had broadened his field by observation and foreign travel and began to practise just before the first fresh impetus of direct classicism was launched. It was, therefore, quite natural that, with his trained perception and happy faculty of selection and combination, he should have picked out the best in each school, and peculiarly appropriate that his work should exemplify the transitional stage by which one was merged into the other for, in the evolutionary process, already alluded to, the purest form of neo-classic design found its analogue in the earlier Adam practice.

Along with Bulfinch, as a representative of the transition stage, must be classed Samuel McIntire, of Salem, whose work both public and domestic has always been justly esteemed. He, too, retained a large share of Adam elegance and wealth of detail which he successfully incorporated with motifs and methods of treatment inspired by the more recent impetus of classicism. To McIntire’s influence may be attributed much of the slender delicacy of proportion and the attenuation of pillars and pilasters—this attenuation had a counterpart in some of the contemporary New York Dutch design—so noticeable in a great deal of New England architecture of this period. He eliminated all grossness and pared down the dimensions of columns while he drew out their length to a degree that had no precedent in ancient practice and would have shocked the French purists under whose auspices the new movement

ANDREW SAFFORD PORCH, SALEM, MASS. Transition to Classic Revival.

INTERIOR DOORWAY, NICHOLS HOUSE, SALEM, MASS.