Palladian Windows
The earliest hallways in old Salem houses, as we have seen, whether at front or rear, were not hallways in any real sense of the term, but were entries, tiny and dark, receiving a dim illumination from the bull’s-eye or square-paned windows in the upper panels of the door, or from the narrow horizontal transom which was later placed above it. There was little of convenience, and still less of hospitality, in these cramped spaces, which were usually just large enough for the door to swing back against the wall, while the entering guest squeezed by into the room opening at the side.
But with enlarging ideas of comfort and convenience, the entry gradually developed into a hallway proper, leading right through the house, the staircase no longer a meager Jacob’s ladder screwing its way upward, but now a wide and handsome ascent of noble proportions, with carved balusters and newel-posts.
Up such a staircase the guest would pass, pausing on the broad landing to admire the beautifully laid out garden which graced the yard of the fine estate, and resting for a few moments upon the cushioned seat which commanded the charming view, framed as it was in a large ornamental window set in the house-wall at the head of the stairs.
These Palladian windows—so-called after Andrea Palladio, an Italian architect of the sixteenth century—consist of a central opening, usually in scale with the other windows of the house, and having the same number of panes, but with an arched top, circular or elliptical, sometimes resembling a fanlight, rarely a solid segment of wood embellished with carved ornaments. Flanking this central opening are side-lights, of plain or tastefully leaded glass, and as most often in Salem houses the Palladian window is placed directly above the main entrance, the pattern of these side-lights, as also the architectural motif of frame and entablature, echo those of the doorway and porch below.
The original use of the Palladian window in Old Salem was an interior one—to furnish light to hallway and stairs; but later, as increasing attention was paid to the exterior appearance of the house, especially in the period when brick was mostly used in construction, it became an adjunct of front doorway and porch, continuing at the level of the second floor the structural idea which began at the first, in sympathy with the order and proportions of the rest, and repeating upon a reduced scale the columns, pilasters, and ornamentation of the major portion of the work.
It is this use of the Palladian window which in many old Salem houses prevents the porch itself from appearing stubby and squat; for the window continues the idea begun in the porch itself, and leads the eye gently and unconsciously upward until it rests satisfied—the entire center of the façade, though the greater part of its height, being thus occupied by forms of grace and beauty, to which the plain character of the remainder of the structure lends itself as an agreeable foil.
Interesting and handsome examples of the Palladian window abound on old Salem buildings, both public and private, and are repeated also in modern houses which are reproductions of the Colonial type.
Hamilton Hall, built from designs by McIntire in 1805 and still standing at the corner of Cambridge and Chestnut Streets, has an entire row of these windows, five on a side along its second story. The Market House on Derby Street has all windows of this type, that above the entrance more elaborate in design. The Custom-House affords another example. But by far the most beautiful and interesting are to be found on the private houses of Salem citizens erected at the period when beauty and appropriateness of exterior construction began to be recognized as the true counterpart of beauty and appropriateness within. Interiors had long been elaborately and expensively prepared, while the outside of the house had been ignored; but with the advent of the classic and handsome entrance-porch and its almost necessary adjunct, the Palladian window, this neglect began at last to be repaired.
