The Architecture of Colonial America

by Harold Donaldson Eberlein

If “pigs is pigs”, doubtless, by the same token, “bricks is bricks” and also “mortar is mortar.” Notwithstanding the profundity of this truism, it is just as well to remember that there are bricks and bricks and that there is mortar and mortar, too, and that both, when brought together in a wall, mutually interact and are susceptible of large diversity of treatment. This very possibility of different combination afforded the Colonial builder a field for the exercise of not a little ingenuity.

For the benefit of readers not accustomed to technical terms it will, perhaps, be well to explain exactly what is meant by the words “bond” and “texture” which are necessarily used in speaking of brick masonry.

The term “bond” simply means the way of laying or the manner of binding and denotes the position in which the bricks are laid in their courses and the appearance created by the relative position of the units. In the walls of the houses built during the Colonial and post-Colonial periods, four varieties of bond are found, two bonds sometimes being used in conjunction for the sake of variety. They are English or Liverpool bond, Flemish bond, Dutch cross bond and running bond. English or Liverpool bond has alternate rows of stretchers (bricks so laid that the long side is exposed to view) and headers (bricks so laid that only the ends appear). The courses are arranged so that headers and stretchers break joints. Flemish bond consists of alternate headers and stretchers in every course, all joints being broken. It is the strongest and best-locked of all bonds. Dutch cross bond, like English bond, consists of alternate courses of headers and stretchers but with this difference: in English bond, the headers and stretchers in alternate layers are placed directly one above the other while, in Dutch cross bond, they break joints. Running bond consists entirely of stretchers and is a kind of degenerate Dutch cross bond with all the headers left out or introduced only at intervals of seven or eight courses to tie the face of the wall together. English or Liverpool, Flemish and running bonds were all in the common heritage of English building tradition.

For the sake of historical accuracy it is important to correct a popular error occasioned by the terms “English” and “Dutch” brick. It is commonly stated of many old buildings that they were built of brick fetched overseas from England or Holland. No doubt some few were but most of them were not. George Cary Eggleston set forth the whole matter in a very clear light when he wrote that “nearly all these bricks, whether English or Dutch, were made in America, as later scholarly research has conclusively proved. The only difference between English and Dutch bricks was one of dimensions. The small bricks, moulded upon a Dutch model, were known as Holland bricks. The much larger ones, moulded upon an English model, were called English bricks. The very learned and scholarly historian of South Carolina, Mr. McCrady, has conclusively proved that the so-called English bricks used in the construction of Carolina houses could not have been imported from England. By simple arithmetical calculation he has shown that all the ships landing in the Carolinas during the seventeenth century—even if all of them had been loaded exclusively with bricks—could not have brought in enough bricks to build one half or one fourth the ‘English brick’ houses of that part of the country.” There was abundant clay in the Colonies and the colonists, usually so resourceful and self-dependent, were scarcely likely to ignore an opportunity under their very noses and depend upon an imported commodity, even though they could have afforded the cost. Indeed, bricks were exported from some of the Colonies.

To be sure, one record shows that ten thousand bricks were imported into Massachusetts Bay in 1628, and we know that some bricks were imported into the New Haven Colony at an early date and likewise that, during the demolition of some very old Connecticut houses, bricks were found with the name “London” impressed upon them. Then, too, several instances can be cited in both the Middle and Southern Colonies, where bricks were imported and used for certain specified buildings and there are a few well authenticated cases of brick importation from Holland. But against this meagre certitude of a few cargoes of bricks from overseas there is the abundant evidence of extensive brick-making in the Colonies from a very early date. There is one reference in official records to a brick kiln in Connecticut in 1635 and there were doubtless other brick kilns in operation both there and elsewhere at the same time or even prior to that year.

The bricks in early Colonial use were of various sizes. As a rule, the older the bricks the larger they are. They afterwards became smaller and now, in our own time, they are large again. Some of the bricks were four inches by eight and a quarter and two and five eighths inches thick, others were two and a half by four inches and eight inches long. The “Dutch” bricks were thinner than the “English.” Most of the seventeenth and eighteenth century bricks were roughly moulded and not a few were underburned while others were extremely hard burned and had much pleasing variation of colour. The ends of arch bricks in the kiln were often burned till they acquired a bluish black and almost vitreous glaze. These were used for headers and to them is due much of the colour and pattern interest of old walls. The large bricks used for “pugging” the openings between the timbers in the early timber built houses are scarcely more than sun-dried and readily crumble and go to pieces upon exposure to the weather.

In speaking of the “texture” of a wall, we must take into consideration the kind of bricks used, their shape and size, their colour, their bond devised to give a distinctive pattern to the wall face, the mortar joints and, finally, the kind of mortar used. It need scarcely be said that the results possible with the old brick of slightly irregular shape and varied colour in English or Flemish bond—Flemish bond was exceedingly popular among eighteenth century builders—were infinitely more satisfactory than any that could be attained through the use of the later “faultily faultless” pressed brick of monotonously uniform shape and size, with a surface “like cut cheese and a colour like a firecracker” and a great deal of the charm of the old work is due to agreeable texture. While there is some exceedingly pleasing brickwork in New England and especially in the Connecticut Valley, brick excellence is much more common in the Middle States and the South where brick building was always more in vogue. Occasionally in New England, and very frequently farther south, a goodly degree of interest was achieved by the combination of different bonds, by herring-bone panels, by projecting courses on wall faces, at cornices or about chimney tops and by diaper patterns, dates and initials wrought in blue headers on end walls and in gables. Specially moulded capping bricks for base courses and for the tops of walls were used to good effect.

Both field stone and local quarried stone were used in New England and masonry was usually of the rubble type although occasionally the stones were carefully squared and dressed. The same may be said of stone work in New York. Sometimes the walls were of stone with brick door and window trims, as at the Manor House at Croton-on-Hudson. In the Dutch part of northern New Jersey the native reddish brown stone was employed with excellent effect both in rubble masonry and for cut work. In both cases it was often pointed with white mortar joints which gave a peculiar and striking contrast.

In Pennsylvania we find masonry of singular excellence and beauty where, again, both field stone and quarried stone were made use of. The Pennsylvania rubble masonry, laid by workmen who were merely perpetuating the traditions they had brought with them from England and Wales, has always commanded admiration and, in the vicinity of Philadelphia, the same inherited masonry traditions are still flourishing vigorously. These rubble walls were sometimes laid with stones of random sizes, sometimes with stones of comparatively uniform dimensions. In a few instances, notably in the neighbourhood of Kingsessing, Philadelphia, and in the walls of Belmont, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, once the home of the witty Judge Peters of Revolutionary fame, the old English custom of galleting the wide, white mortar joints with little spawls was practised. It was not infrequently the case that houses would have walls of dressed and squared stone in front with rubble walls at the sides and rear. Some few, such as Cliveden in Germantown, Philadelphia, and Whitby Hall, Kingsessing, Philadelphia, were built of cut stone all the way about. Whitby Hall and a few other houses also furnish interesting examples of brick door and window trims that project slightly beyond the face of the stone wall. This Pennsylvania stone work displayed practically no attempts at carving and the one instance where it has been carved is found in the window trims and Ionic capitals of the river front of the Bartram house, Kingsessing, Philadelphia.

In connexion with Colonial stonework must be mentioned the coating of walls with stucco and roughcast which were either allowed to remain their natural colour or whitewashed, as at Wyck, Germantown, Philadelphia. The very early houses were not stuccoed at first and the stucco seems to have been added later as a protection, partly, against the weather where porous stone had been used for the walls, such as some of the grey stone quarried in the neighbourhood of the Whitemarsh Valley. The mica stone, so abundant in Pennsylvania, after a few years’ exposure, becomes impervious to moisture and never needs stucco protection. Oftentimes stucco or roughcast were applied from choice and not from necessity, especially among the German colonists who seem to have been chiefly responsible for the introduction of the practice. For the sake of finish, contrast and cleanly appearance the stucco or roughcast coat was often whitewashed or yellow washed.