The Architecture of Colonial America

by Harold Donaldson Eberlein

Where the older meetings have not fallen victims of modern improvement, their interiors, though severe and rigid, possess a degree of charm with their ancient high backed pews, tall pulpits, and seats for the elders of the meeting immediately below them. Their excessive plainness is, of course, proverbial, but although there was a dearth of architectural amenity in their construction, it must be admitted that many of them possessed the charm of unobtrusive simplicity.

The Old South Meeting-house, erected in 1730, is a fair representative of similar structures where more attention was paid to and more allowance made for architectural endeavour. The wonted plan of having the pulpit on one of the long sides was adhered to and the gallery stretched around on the other sides. The double rows of windows are round arched and form the chief point of interest both on the exterior and in the interior. The brick is laid in Flemish bond and there is a slightly projecting base course several feet from the ground. Cornices are plain and the expansive roof is rather flat in pitch. The tower, while graceful enough in proportion, is severely plain. Nevertheless it must be confessed that the attenuated proportions of the spire with the little arcade around its base have a certain charm of their own which it is extremely difficult to analyse.

Of wholly different type is King’s Chapel. Here we find ample evidence of attention to architectural opportunity and enrichment. While the rectangular plan is adhered to, the interior is divided into nave and aisles by the columns which fulfil the double function of supporting the roof and upholding the galleries. The windows in the lower row, underneath the gallery, are of smaller dimensions than those in the upper row which throw their light down over the galleries into the middle of the nave. The windows of the lower row have flat arched tops while those above are round arched. The masonry is of carefully dressed stone and, while there are no buttresses, the front of the building is adorned by pilasters at the corners and by a pillared arcade forming a porch around the square tower. The roof is hipped. Inside the building, far more play is given to architectural elaboration than outside. Here we find the pairs of columns supporting the roof and galleries are fluted from top to bottom and surmounted by elaborately carved Corinthian capitals upon which are imposed sections of frieze and cornice from which again spring the arches of the roof vaulting. While the effect is agreeable enough, it cannot be denied that the arrangement and general method of execution are illogical and capricious.

The old North and Trinity Churches, Newport, also exhibit a somewhat similar and illogical arrangement of the ceiling and its method of support. Trinity, Newport, and the old North are mentioned in addition to King’s Chapel because they all represent the New England type of ecclesiastical edifice erected during the Georgian period which affords an antithesis to the auditorium type represented by the Old South which may be regarded as a logical development of the type exemplified by the Old Ship Meeting-house at Hingham.

It would be an unpardonable oversight to bring this chapter to a close without mentioning buildings like the Park Street Church in Boston with its graceful spire and other buildings of similar type, erected about the same period, whose inspiration we owe partly to former ecclesiastical traditions and partly to the new spirit of the Classic Revival. In Boston, and elsewhere throughout New England, may be found many such churches which illuminate the era in which that master of architectural refinement, Samuel McIntire, wrought so successfully.

The foregoing pages, cursory as the review of ecclesiastical architecture has necessarily been, will show the diversity of styles that prevailed in the Colonies from North to South and incidentally the reader will be enabled to compare the modes of architectural expression with the ideals and habits of the people inhabiting the several sections of the country.

CHAPTER XIII
MATERIALS AND TEXTURES

THE materials of which any structure is built and the way in which those materials are manipulated have quite as much to do with the general aspect as mass or contour. It is of the utmost importance, therefore, that we pay due heed to the material resources at the disposal of builders in the Colonial period. Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that materials to some extent influenced architectural forms while, on the other hand, tradition and hereditary preferences, as we have seen, exerted a powerful influence upon the choice of materials and affected the way in which they were employed.

A very great number of the settlers of New England, as stated in a previous chapter, came from the Danish parts of England where the timber tradition was especially strong. Consequently, despite the abundance of stone in the new land, which they might readily have used, they preferred, in the majority of instances, to build their houses of wood. Of course, some allowance, too, in this respect, must be made for ease and expedition of working and for climatic conditions. In the Middle Colonies and the South, most of the settlers came from the Saxon portions of England where stone and brick traditions had always prevailed and, although there was abundance of good timber and occasionally some lack of other materials, there was a general preference for brick or stone walls notwithstanding any inconvenience incidental to procuring them. The artisans in each section preferred to work with the materials with which they were most familiar and householders also seem to have concurred in the popular choice. It is to be noted that the lack of requisite material—marble or suitable stone—had not a little to do with the common use of white-painted wood for trims and external ornamental features in Georgian buildings whose English prototypes, in many cases, were embellished with pillars, pediments and cornices of the more durable substance.

It now behooves us to see what use was made of the several materials in the various portions of the Colonies. We shall, of course, find brick and stone structures in New England, and frame buildings in the Middle Colonies and the South, but the preponderance numerically displayed the characteristics just mentioned.