To the first Colonial revivalists the true merit of the Colonial houses was entirely latent in them, though
THE H. A. C. TAYLOR HOUSE, NEWPORT, R. I. EPOCH, 1885.
(From a sketch by the Author.)
influenced by it as by a magnet: and I regret that the cleverest architects to-day are still working upon the fallacious formula of symmetry, restfulness and good proportion while they often garble American history with much interpolated foreign material and anachronism. I do not want the reader to suppose that the ultra-fashionable Colonial house herein illustrated ([Plate LXIV]), was the work of the cleverest architect in America, but I needed to make clear this point about interpolated material, and so have selected a most unblushing example of it.
On page 129 I submit a hurriedly executed sketch of one of our earliest adaptations of a Colonial house of the Grand Epoch. This house was designed in 1885 by some of our cleverest architects indeed, though it is extremely doubtful if they had any deeper purpose in it than to exploit a fashionable dwelling for Newport at the time. To-day, these same architects would do it very differently. On no account would they put two Palladian windows with huge sheets of plate glass in such close conjunction as is seen in the sketch imposing triplet windows with cornices, elaborated by
DOORWAY AT SHARON, CONN.