TYPICAL HOUSES. OLD HURLEY, N. Y.
With thick walls and small eaves.
ELMENDORF HOUSE, OLD HURLEY, N. Y.
Early Dutch type before local modification.
in the Middle Colonies or the South. Notwithstanding their minor differences, however, the specimens of Georgian work in America all bear an unmistakable family resemblance which proclaims their common ancestry from a British classic origin. The later Georgian work in America followed the later phases of the style as they developed in England and hence we find a great many variations attributable to differences in date as well as to differences in locality, but in all its divers manifestations, whether temporal or local, American Georgian is true to the spirit and traditions of its strongly individual parent stock of inspiration.
Economic and social conditions made possible the introduction and development of the Georgian style in America and the same conditions nurtured and kept it alive so long as its influence continued to dominate the public taste. When its latest phase passed over into the forms of the Classic Revival, a new order of society, actuated by different ideals, had arisen. An era of general peace and growing prosperity in the early years of the eighteenth century permitted and encouraged the colonists to pay more heed to the material amenities of life than had previously been their wont and it was but natural that, with favourable domestic conditions, they should seek to emulate the luxury and more polished manner of life obtaining in the mother country, and the adoption of contemporary British architectural modes was one way in which that filial emulation found expression. When the period of Georgian influence came to an end and the Classic Revival type held the first place in popular esteem, new economic, social and political circumstances existed with which the prevailing architectural mode was more in keeping. Widely distributed affluence, coupled with a general spirit of independent self-sufficiency and a disposition to follow French inspiration, found fit environment in the pomposity of neo-classic settings whose vogue is mainly attributable to influences that arose in the train of the French Revolution, the same influences that gave us the Empire type of furniture so largely copied in both England and America.