THE DUTCH COLONIAL TYPE
1613-1820
The Dutch Colonial house is at once a mystery and a paradox. It is a
mystery because it seems to defy the law of physics about two bodies
occupying the same space at the same time. It is a paradox because,
despite its apparent simplicity, it is most complex in its texture and
varied in its modes and expression.
We have all heard it said of the Dutchman’s breeches that they could be
made to contain whatever objects could be forced through the pocket
apertures, and the number of things that the Dutchman could stow away in
the baggy recesses of his nether garments has always been a source of
wonder to the foreigner. It is precisely the same with his house. It
really seems to be elastic. Viewed from the outside, it gives the
observer the impression that its extent is small and that the space
within must necessarily be limited. On stepping across the threshhold,
however, a surprise awaits one. Room seems to open out from room in a
miraculous manner, and there is apparently no end to the space that can
be made within the four walls. At times, baffling despair fills the mind
at the attempt to master the anatomical intricacies of the Dutch abode.
The early Dutch house is practically all upon the ground floor, but the
attic, occasionally, is almost as complex in its mysterious arrangement.
The Dutchmen and their wives were past masters in ordering the economy
of space. The bulk of household gear they could stow away in compact
style always excites our wondering admiration. Perhaps their familiarity
with canal boat life, and the attendant necessity of compressing their
belongings within strait limits, suggested many of their household
arrangements. At any rate, the Dutch houses are a standing example
showing how much can be done within closely restricted bounds.
The Dutch house in America is to be found in the valley of the Hudson,
in Long Island, and in the counties of northern New Jersey, particularly
Bergen and Essex, settled at an early period by the Dutch. The purest
forms of the early type are to be found along the Hudson. In Long
Island, certain modifying influences began to work at an early time and
in portions of Long Island, especially in the neighbourhood of
Hempstead and towards the Eastern end of the Island, where settlements
were made about the middle of the seventeenth century by New England
colonists, we find a curious combination of Dutch and English
characteristics in the local architecture. In northern New Jersey, while
the type is thoroughly Dutch, the majority of houses are of a somewhat
later date than those along the Hudson and exhibit features not to be
found in the houses erected by the first colonists of New Netherlands.
Notwithstanding certain minor differences that will be brought to our
notice by comparison, there is an unquestionable continuity of type that
differentiates the houses of Dutch architecture from all the other
structural creations of the American colonists. The style of the first
Dutch houses contained within itself the seeds of development, and while
the earliest expression of Dutch Colonial architecture was practically
the same as that in vogue in Holland at the time of the colonists’
emigration, the later examples disclosed new features which local
necessity and native ingenuity had suggested and achieved. By this very
flexibility and elasticity the Dutch colonial style has shown its
adaptability to varying conditions, and in that adaptability lies no
small share of its fitness as a resource for present-day needs.
Old Hurley near Kingston-on-Hudson--to
[Illustration: VAN DEUSEN HOUSE, OLD HURLEY, N. Y.
Built early in eighteenth century.]
[Illustration: HALLWAY, VAN DEUSEN HOUSE.]
[Illustration: HOFFMAN HOUSE, KINGSTON-ON-HUDSON, N. Y.
Built shortly after middle of seventeenth century.]
[Illustration: CHARACTERISTIC OLD DUTCH HOUSE, KINGSTON-ON-HUDSON, N.
Y.]
select a striking concrete example--discloses the style in its earliest
form. Although Hurley was not settled until about 1660, the houses
erected there showed practically no departure from the styles with which
the settlers were familiar in Holland before their emigration. To show
their absolute fidelity to the traditional type of Dutch house, we may
refer to the amazement created in the mind of a Dutch diplomat who, when
taken to visit Hurley two or three years ago, declared that it was more
Dutch than almost anything left in Holland. Ever since its foundation,
Hurley has slumbered peacefully on, disturbed only at times by Indian
raids and the alarums of war. Physically it has changed scarcely at all
since the founders settled on the rich lands by the Esopus. It is one of
the backwaters of our civilisation that has preserved intact the
exterior aspect and much of the inward character of the date of its
settlement. The lapse of time has wrought little change in its fabric
and the swirling eddies of feverish American progress have raced past
it, heedless of its presence, so that it has preserved for us a
refreshing bit of the days and ways of the New Netherlands of Peter
Stuyvesant and his sturdy colleagues.
Old Hurley is just as Dutch as Dutch can be; Dutch in its people, Dutch
in its houses, Dutch in its looks, Dutch in everything but name, and
that was Dutch for the first few years of its history when it was known
as Nieuw Dorp, that is, New Village. To understand, therefore, the mode
of life and the comfortable, easy-going informality with which the
architectural style fitted in, we cannot do better than take a brief
survey of this picturesque community.
Hurley cheeses and Kingston refugees have given Hurley most of its
renown in the outside world. So plentiful and so famous, at one time,
were the former, that Hurley was popularly credited with having “cheese
mines.” The following old Dutch jingle, done into English by a local
antiquary, tells of plenty at Hurley, not only of cheese but of many
other kinds of foodstuffs as well:
What shall we with the wheat bread do?
Eat it with the cheese from Hurley.
What shall we with the pancakes do?
Dip them in the syrup of Hurley.
What shall we with the cornmeal do
That comes from round about Hurley?
Johnnycake bake, both sweet and brown,
With green cream cheese from Hurley.
Does not this reflect the reign of peace, plenty and contentment? The
old Dutch, indeed, is truly realistic as the question comes “Wat zullen
wij met die pannekoeken doen?”, and at the answer, “Doop het met die
stroop van Horley,” one involuntarily licks his chops over the dripping
sweetness of “die stroop.” The very mention of cheese and cheese making
brings to the mind visions of fat farming country with sleek kine
feeding, knee-deep in pastures of heavy-matted clover, from whose
blossoms the bees are distilling their next winter’s store. Such a
mental picture for Hurley town is not far amiss. Lying in comfortable
contentment in the rich bottoms along the banks of the Esopus, its
horizons both near and far bounded by the Catskills and their
foot-hills, it approaches the ideal of bucolic felicity, and one freely
admits that “Nieuw Dorp exists a pastoral or else Nieuw Dorp is not.”
Comfort, solid comfort, is the keynote of Hurley, indoors and out. Its
houses, built along the one village street, their farm lands stretching
back beyond them, have an aspect of substantial prosperity and cheer.
Long, low buildings they are, with thick stone walls, whose roofs
jutting just above the windows of the first floor, begin their climb to
the ridge pole, enclosing with their shingled sides great, roomy garrets
that seem like very Noah’s arks, with everything under the sun stowed
away in their recesses. Such portion of this second floor as the old
Dutchmen saw fit to spare from storage purposes, they made into chambers
for their families, and pierced the roof slope with tiny dormers.
Oftentimes, however, the only light came in at the gable ends, through
windows on each side of the massive chimneys. It was not at all unusual
to give over the whole upper floor to the storage of grain and other
food supplies, while the family lived altogether below on the ground
floor. The cellars were not one whit behind the garrets in holding
supplies. The people of New Netherland were valiant trenchermen before
whose eyes the pleasures of the table loomed large, and they used up an
amazing lot of victuals. Such overflowing store of potatoes and carrots,
turnips, pumpkins and apples as went into those cavernous bins!
Rolliches and headcheeses were there a-many, with sausages, scrapple,
pickles and preserves, to say nothing of barrels of cyder. These all
contributed their share to the odour of plenty that rose up through the
chinks and pervaded the rooms above. Only those who have met them face
to face, in all their substantial corporeality, can realise the
indescribable cellar smells of old Dutch farmhouses. Everywhere economy
of space was practised, and things were tucked away in all sorts of odd
corners. Some of the bedchambers were scarcely as large as a steamer
stateroom, and these ofttimes had little pantry closets beside the
bed--a truly convenient arrangement for those disposed to midnight
pantry raids. Tradition says that the good people of Hurley even took
their cheeses to bed with them that the heat of their bodies might help
to ripen them.
Hurley’s gardens were, and are, a source of genuine delight. They are
charmingly inconsequent and unconventional. There is not a jot of plan
or pretence about them. Hurley vegetables grow side by side with gentle
flowers in a most democratic promiscuity. Cabbages and cucumbers rub
elbows with roses and lilies. Plebeian sunflowers and four-o’clocks
stand unabashed beside patrician boxwood and blooms of high degree,
while onions and lavender, in sweet accord, send their roots into the
common ground within a foot of each other. The Dutch gardens, if not
grand, are, at least, comfortable and useful, and have an air of
sociability about them that puts one immediately at ease.
What the people were in Holland, that were they in New Netherland, and
what they were elsewhere in New Netherland, that were they in Hurley
only, perhaps, somewhat more conservative and tenacious of old customs
and ideas, as is apt to be the case in places remote from the active
scene of events. The Dutch of the Hudson were not the slow, stupid,
fat-witted louts that Washington Irving and his copyists pourtray,
although, to us of English blood, many of their ways seem strange, and
some amusing. They were broad-minded, alert, wholesome, human people who
took life pleasantly and got whole-souled enjoyment in their frequent
festivals. They were incapable of stiff formality, and the architecture
of their houses was exactly suited to their mode of life.
When we remember how tenaciously the English settlers clung to tradition
in selecting the materials for their houses, those in New England
holding by the timber tradition while the stone and brick tradition
prevailed in the Middle Colonies and the South, one might expect to find
among the Dutch colonists the same adherence to Dutch traditions in the
case of materials, especially as the early Dutch houses so closely
followed their prototypes in Holland. In this respect, however, the
Dutchman made a virtue of necessity and quickly learned to be governed
by expediency, using with good effect whatever materials the locality
most readily provided. Although brick was in most cases the hereditary
material which Dutchmen might have been expected to prefer, with natural
thrift and common sense they used stone when bricks were not to be had,
or wood when they could not get stone. Thus, for instance, we find the
early Dutch houses of the Hudson Valley built of stone. Those in
northern New Jersey were likewise built of stone of different colour and
character from that found in the Hudson region. Again, in Long Island,
where stone was not available, they built of wood and covered their
houses with shingles, often leaving as much as fourteen inches to the
weather. Dutch quickness in utilising readily available material is also
seen in the willingness to use field stone for walls, while the New
Englander, despite the abundance of the same material, merely used it
for the divisions between his fields.
Furthermore, the Dutchman did not restrict himself to any one material
for the whole fabric of his house. He was not in the least averse to
using a variety of materials in the same building and this he often did
with excellent effect. It is no unusual thing to find two or three
materials used for several parts of the same small building, and it is
not a hard matter to find instances in which stone, brick, stucco,
clapboards and shingles all occur in the one structure and the result is
usually felicitous, possibly, perhaps, because of the _naïveté_ with
which the several materials are employed, necessity and common sense
being obviously the causes dictating their presence.
The stone used was sometimes carefully squared and dressed and, at
others, the walls were of rubble construction without any attempt at
careful arrangement. Occasionally the front of the house would be of
dressed stone laid in orderly courses while the sides and back showed
rubble walls. Then, again, where circumstances permitted, brick quoins
and window and door trims, as in the Manor House at Croton-on-Hudson,
might be used while the body of the walls was rubble. In this connexion
it should be stated that the walls were carefully laid so that the
stonework would hold together without much dependence being placed on
the mortar, for the earliest mortar was of rather poor quality. In this
respect the masonwork approached the ideal of a good wall construction.
When stucco was used it was generally plastered over a rough stone
surface and whitewashed or washed with some colour. When this stucco is
removed it will often be found that the wall underneath is of admirable
rubble construction and that the stucco coating was apparently added as
a ground work for white or coloured wash. Some years ago, the stucco
coat was removed from the walls of the Manor House at Croton-on-Hudson,
and the stone walls beneath presented a far more interesting surface
than the plaster, which seems to have been added at a date considerably
subsequent to that of original construction.
An examination in detail of the characteristics of the earliest Dutch
houses discloses the following features of importance. As previously
stated, almost all the houses were low, the eaves coming down to within
a few feet of the tops
[Illustration: ACKERMAN (BRINCKERHOFF) HOUSE, HACKENSACK, N. J. 1704.
Local adaptations have begun to develop.]
[Illustration: VERPLANCK HOUSE, NEAR FISHKILL LANDING, N. Y.
Showing genesis of porch from eave extension.]
[Illustration: HALL, BOWNE HOUSE, FLUSHING, LONG ISLAND, N. Y.
With typical woodwork.]
[Illustration: DINING ROOM, VAN CORTLANDT MANOR HOUSE, CROTON-ON-HUDSON,
N. Y.
With Dutch interpretation of Georgian _motifs_ on mantel.]
of the first-floor windows. In many instances, the roofs were unbroken
by dormers as the garrets were used largely for storage purposes and the
bedchambers were on the ground floor. If families were large, one or two
bedrooms would be partitioned off in the garret, the major part,
however, being reserved for the storage of grains, household effects,
and various supplies. Even then, the roofs were not interrupted by
windows but the light would come from windows in the gable ends beside
the chimneys. In many cases the stone walls at the gable ends did not
rise above the line of the eaves and the portion above that would be
hung with clapboards. Of course there were instances in which houses
rose to a greater height and contained second floors as a visible part
of the plan. Such was the old Hoffman House in Kingston-on-Hudson, built
not long after the middle of the seventeenth century. It is to be noted,
also, that, in that case, the stonework in the gable ends was continued
to the top of the gable and there was no wall of overlapping clapboards.
The earliest houses were covered with roofs of the ordinary ridge type
and presented the appearance outwardly of one-storey buildings, though
in effect they often contained two floors. The gambrel roof of the Dutch
houses was of later evolution and was probably suggested by force of
circumstances. The gambrel construction made it possible to give more
room in the garrets so that chambers could be accommodated with greater
ease and there would not be so much waste room just inside the eaves, as
the slope of the roof was at a steeper angle. It has been suggested that
the gambrel roof came into being as an ingenious method of beating the
devil around the bush, when a tax was laid upon houses of more than one
storey in height. Technically and legally the gambrel roof house _was_
but one storey high although, as a matter of fact, the gambrel made it
possible to have an additional storey in the roof which served all
practical purposes quite as fully as though the walls had been carried
up to enclose a second floor. In the older Dutch houses with gambrel
roofs, the pitch is never steep and the contour presents somewhat the
lines of a flaring bell.
Although the gambrel roof was known in New England as early perhaps as
1670 and was, in all probability, borrowed from the Dutch, there is a
wide difference in appearance between New England and Dutch gambrels.
Generally speaking, the New England gambrels have the pitch from the
eaves much steeper and shorter while the top pitch is longer than in the
Dutch houses. In the Dutch gambrel roof, on the other hand, the steeper
slope usually makes an angle of forty-five degrees, or less, and is by
far the longer, while the top slope is quite short and has an angle of
about 25 degrees. This difference in angle gives the Dutch gambrel roofs
a rarely beautiful quality, especially when the lower end of the long
slope just above the eaves was made with a kickup to avoid darkening the
windows or possibly to throw the rain-water farther away from the walls.
Whatever may be the origin of the gambrel,--and many ingenious theories
have been suggested--whether it originated as previously suggested, to
avoid the tax on two-storeyed dwellings, or whether the desire to
increase the breadth of the span, by piecing out rafters, was the
underlying cause, it is an exceptionally agreeable form of house
covering and so closely associated with the dwellings of the Dutch
Colonial period that we may properly identify it as a characteristic
feature of that style.
Before leaving the subject of roofs, the development of the
wide-projecting eaves, as we find them in the New Jersey and some of the
Dutch Long Island houses of the eighteenth century, must be considered.
The earliest Dutch houses as, for example, those at Kingston or Hurley
had not the flaring eaves. Neither had the earliest Dutch houses in New
Jersey. It has been ingeniously suggested that the projection was
evolved to protect the walls and prevent the rain from disintegrating
the mortar which, in the early part of the Colonial period, was
frequently not of as good quality as it was later. This theory would
seem to explain, to some extent, the habit of carrying the masonry at
the gable ends only to the height of the first floor joists, filling in
the space between that line and the peak of the gable with clapboards.
In such cases, where the mortar of the exposed gable walls was damaged
by the weather, it was an easy matter to re-point. Mr. Embury has still
further suggested, coincidentally with this theory, that the desire to
protect the masonry suggested the penthouses on two-storeyed structures.
There is something to be said both for and against this hypothesis, but
as the discussion does not materially affect the subject immediately
before us it must be reserved for another place.
To the Dutch Colonial house may probably be attributed the origin of
that essentially American institution, the porch, or at least one form
of the porch as we now have it. “The porch has been evolved and
developed in response to a distinct and manifest need in our mode of
life imposed by climatic conditions. It falls in with our habits bred of
love of outdoors; our seasons invite, nay even, at times, compel its
use. True, the porch has its prototype in certain architectural
features found in England and on the Continent (especially in some of
the Southern countries), but, as we now have it, it is a peculiarly
national affair and its evolution has been due to American ingenuity in
an effort to meet the demands of local requirements. The earliest
American houses, from New England to the Southern Colonies, faithful to
prevailing precedent and tradition, had no porches, porches, that is, as
we ordinarily understand the term. It was only as our domestic
architecture developed along lines marked out and prompted by peculiarly
American conditions and needs that precedents were forsaken, adaptations
made, and porches appeared, at first in a rudimentary and tentative form
and then finally, after the lapse of years, reached the full fruition of
their growth in the form familiar to us. That growth varied widely in
the course it followed, according to the several sections of the country
and consequent diverse requirements and preferences,” but one form at
least may be traced to the growth of plans in the houses of the Dutch
Colonial type. This growth started with the projecting eaves at the
front which, eventually, were carried out long enough to make a porch
roof and supported at their edge by pillars or columns. An excellent
example of this may be seen in the piazza of the Manor House at
Croton-on-Hudson where the flaring slope of the roof is thus carried
out and forms a porch covering. The same process may be traced in some
of the later Dutch houses of New Jersey and Long Island.
Almost synchronously with the development of the porch as a distinct
feature, we find a tendency to carry the walls a trifle higher and
pierce them with a row of small, low windows above the porch roof and
immediately below the line of the eaves which have now become distinct,
the porch roof being cut off and made an independent member. These low
windows, which were usually on a line a few inches above the floor
inside have been rather facetiously called “lie-on-your-stomach
windows.”
The doorway of the early Dutch houses was not a feature of any
architectural pretension. It was approached by one or two steps only, as
the houses were close to the ground, and sometimes a small platform, or
a stoop with settles on either side, gave an inviting appearance
indicative of the hospitality within. The doorway was rectangular
without attempt at adornment further than occasionally a narrow transom
with small, square lights. Even this was often lacking. The Dutch door
divided in the middle shared the honours with solid, undivided batten
doors. Both types were in common use, although preference was given the
Dutch or divided door for the main entrance and the corresponding back
entrance at the opposite end of the hall.
As the Dutch Colonial style developed in the eighteenth century more
attention was paid to the adornment of the entrance and about the time
of the Revolutionary War, which made the Colonists more fully aware of
each other’s presence and served to spread and popularise ideas, we find
that Georgian _motifs_ were borrowed and adapted to local needs with a
broad freedom of treatment that imparted a good deal of individuality to
them and removed them at times almost altogether from the Georgian
category from which the first inspiration had sprung. Up to this time
the Dutch Colonial type had been singularly free from the working of
outside influences and had developed independently along lines suggested
by its inherent qualities. But even after this infusion of Georgian
feeling the treatment was so typical and original that the newly
introduced and adapted _motifs_ were perfectly congruous with the parent
stock upon which they had been engrafted.
Finally, in making the survey of the distinctive exterior features of
the Dutch Colonial style, it should be remembered that the dormers,
which so frequently appear, were not characteristic of the earliest
dwellings but were a later development dictated by expediency when it
was found desirable to use more fully the attics for sleeping rooms
than was customary in the earliest houses, where all the light necessary
was admitted from the gable ends and where the attics were storerooms
and workshops for domestic operations such as weaving and spinning,
often carried on by the slaves.
Ordinarily the Dutch house in ground plan was a long rectangle with an
ell extension at one end. Oftentimes the roof of this ell extension
swept down to within a few feet of the ground. There was no attempt at
symmetry of plan in the arrangement of these houses but the walls were
pierced with doors and windows wherever convenience dictated their
presence. The Dutch house was almost invariably set close to the ground
and it is this fact, together with their restful roof lines, that gives
so many of the old Dutch dwellings their aspect of thorough repose. As
stated before, the Dutch preferred to live downstairs and only used the
attic for bedchambers when force of circumstances made it necessary. The
two chief rooms of the house were the kitchen and the best parlour. In
the one, not only was the cooking done but all the ordinary household
life of the establishment was concentrated and there the family both
played and worked. In the other the household gods were stored away and
the best furniture and china of all sorts were displayed in proud array.
Ordinarily a wide hall ran through the house from front door to back
door and the rooms were on either side of this. Small bedrooms were
tucked away back of the parlour and kitchen, while sometimes a great
living room took the place of the kitchen on one side of the hall and
the kitchen was pushed into the ell extension at the rear. Thanks to the
lack of formality in the plan of the Dutch house, it was capable of
indefinite growth and in that respect the architecture was profoundly
affected by the mode of life of the occupants. It not infrequently
happened that a larger addition was built to the old houses and this
addition was again added to by another smaller addition when a married
son or daughter came home to live and share the protection of the
paternal rooftree.
The stairway in the majority of Dutch Colonial houses was not an
important feature and was not made much of. It merely led to the attic
where some of the children or servants slept, if there was not room
enough below stairs, and where all sorts of materials and provisions
were stored or where spinning and weaving were done. Consequently,
little decoration was bestowed upon it. The hand-rail might or might not
be of mahogany and supported on straight, slender spindles. It was often
boxed in to prevent the heat from rising to the attic and thus being
lost.
The chief feature in the old Dutch rooms was the fireplace, and many of
these old fireplaces are of cavernous proportions. The chimney breast
almost invariably extended well into the room and the spaces on either
side were often filled with built-in cupboards, or else with deeply
embayed window seats. Very little attempt at decoration was made in the
panelling of the over-mantels and indeed there was often no panelling at
all but the rough plaster of the wall was whitewashed. The walls were
exceedingly thick, often two feet or more, and this gave deep reveals to
the windows. All the woodwork in the earlier houses was ordinarily plain
and was usually painted a spotless white as it so often was in Holland
and this made a striking background for the hinges, latches, bolts and
other hardware whose decorative value the Dutch thoroughly appreciated
and which they accordingly fashioned in graceful shapes. It was not
until a later period, towards the middle of the eighteenth century and
later, that any attempt was made to embellish the woodwork by carving or
turning and even then the adornment often consisted of only simple but
well-proportioned mouldings. Towards the end of the eighteenth century
when the Georgian influence, particularly in its Adam phase, began to be
strongly felt, one finds adaptations of current _motifs_ such as oval
fans, swags, drops, flutings, reedings, sunbursts and divers other
decorative forms in vogue at the period. All of them however were
handled with a surprising degree of freedom and independent of English
precedents and the manner in which they were used seems to be thoroughly
original. It is at this period of elaborated woodwork that we also find
the doorway assuming importance as a decorative feature of the house.
Slender turned columns--some of them ought rather to be called
spindles--were added at the sides, occasionally there were glass side
lights with leaded tracery and fanlights in elliptical door heads or
tracery in square transoms were all used to add a note of state to the
doorway that had hitherto been very plain and unpretentious. In the
fanlights, as well as in the side lights, it was not unusual for the
tracery to be formed in delicately-moulded lead work. In a very able
study of ornamental detail of the older Dutch houses by John T. Boyd,
Jr., published in _The Architectural Record_, the author says: “The
first thing one notices about these details is their freedom. It is an
architecture absolutely without orders. In some rare cases, there are
mantels with little Tuscan columns, but they are not among the finest
examples and are found side by side with freer forms. The over-mantels
often ... show a very rare use of fluted pilasters.
“A freer and very exquisite channelling was often used, which is found
in many houses with slight variations. The theory of all these Dutch
mouldings is a series of many fine parallel lines and shadows made by
hollows, beads, and fillets, beautifully varied in proportion, all very
delicate in scale.”
It has been stated that the interior woodwork was generally painted
white and that the rough walls were ordinarily whitewashed, but while
speaking of the paint it should not be forgotten that the Dutch had a
wonderful eye for colour and, though the interiors of their houses
presented an aspect of spotless white, the exteriors rejoiced in
chromatic brilliancy that at times was positively dazzling and, even in
its weatherworn stages, presented a lively appearance that could not
fail to attract the attention of the most unobservant. Greens, blues,
and reds were used with the greatest freedom and, just as in Holland
to-day, gave a touch of kaleidoscopic interest that served to throw all
the delightfully intimate and fanciful details of the Dutch house into
strong relief.
The shutters of the earlier Dutch houses were usually of the batten type
and at the top often presented the curious saw cuts intended to admit a
ray of light or for ventilation. These saw cuts were made in almost any
pattern from that of a half moon or a five pointed star to a heart or a
pot of flowers. This same conceit of decorative saw cuts has been
perpetuated in the shutters of modern houses patterned after old Dutch
models. Shutters of a later period were pannelled.
Of all the types of domestic architecture that have been either evolved
or modified in America during the Colonial period, none more generally
commends itself to the favourable consideration of the modern home
builder than that which the Dutch settlers of Manhattan, North Jersey
and Long Island worked out as the most satisfactory solution for their
needs. Although the body was sturdy and stout, the ornamental details,
which were developed in the later period, were often extremely graceful,
the proportions throughout the type are agreeable and in every instance,
whether early or late, we find the omnipresent charm of domesticity,
which in the long run is more valued by the majority of people than a
stately formality which sacrifices a measure of comfort to the exacting
purity of proportion.