PRE-GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES
ENGLISH, WELSH, SWEDISH AND GERMAN INFLUENCES
From the very outset, Pennsylvania was the most polyglot and
conglomerate of all the English colonies or provinces in America. West
Jersey and Delaware, which latter State was originally a part of
Pennsylvania and known as “the three lower counties on Delaware,” in
some degree shared this miscellaneous character, and together the three
formed a practically distinct unit in the Middle Colonies, peculiar in
composition and without parallel elsewhere. The diversity in nationality
and speech among the early settlers was directly reflected in
architectural manifestations and the variant types were never wholly
welded together into one distinct style and, even long after the advent
and almost universal prevalence of the Georgian mode, they continued in
use concurrently. Just as similar phenomena were to be detected in the
several parts of New England, they displayed local peculiarities of
artisanship attributable to the different traditions obtaining in the
respective parts of the Old World from which the individual artisans had
come. The two most noticeable features in the early population of
Pennsylvania were the diversity of elements and the clannishness and
consequent isolation of the people who composed the several distinct
parts of the colony. These elements remained distinct from each other
both from preference and interest, and natural conditions favoured this
division.
First of all in date of settlement on the shores of the Delaware were
the Swedes, whose successful efforts at colonisation began in 1638. The
Dutch, it is true, had previously made some slight attempts at
settlement. In 1616, in pursuit of the exploration essayed but abandoned
by Hudson in 1609, Captain Hendrickson, in the “Onrust” (“Restless”),
had sailed up the Delaware to the mouth of the Schuylkill and, in 1623,
under Captain Cornelius Mey, Fort Nassau was built at what is now
Gloucester Point, nearly opposite Philadelphia. In the main, however,
the Dutch preferred to stay down the bay and, in 1650, Fort Nassau was
abandoned. They were traders rather than settlers, so far as their
connexion with the Delaware was concerned, and the first real
settlements, therefore, are to be credited to the Swedes who were
home-loving, industrious farmers, proud of their homesteads and capable
in the management of their dairies but possessed of little inclination
towards commercial activity. The Swedish foundation was permanent and,
though the Swedish population was eventually absorbed by the more
numerous elements brought hither a few years later by Penn’s “holy
experiment,” it left an indelible and significant mark upon the
corporate composition of the colony and the traces of Swedish influence
are still distinct and unmistakable, not only in much of the local
architecture, in the names of places and persons, and in the strong
strain of Swedish blood in many Pennsylvania families but in humbler and
less obvious matters as well. As an instance of the latter may be
mentioned the common strain of red cattle to be seen everywhere on the
hills and in the valleys of eastern Pennsylvania. These same red cattle
are the descendants of the Swedish kine, brought hither nearly three
hundred years ago by the hardy colonists who planted their farmsteads
along the waters of the Delaware and its lower tributaries.
Attracted by the prospect of religious liberty, by the liberal
inducements offered them, and by the fatness of the land, a great
variety of settlers, following in the wake of Penn’s pioneers, flocked
to the colony on the Delaware and found there a safe and happy refuge
after the troublous existence many of them had led before their
departure from their old homes. Besides the English, who were almost
altogether Quakers, there were, in this second wave of immigration, both
Welsh and Germans. Later still, a small Dutch element was added and then
came the Scotch-Irish. Each of these elements naturally perpetuated its
own peculiar architectural traditions, and why those traditions
continued so long a time distinct in their expression we shall presently
see.
While the English Quakers were numerically preponderant, counting the
neighbourhood of Philadelphia and West Jersey as a unit of population,
and were politically in supreme control until late in the eighteenth
century, the Welsh and Germans dwelt close beside them and were accorded
so large a measure of practical independence in the management of their
own affairs that their communities were virtually _imperia in imperio_.
For twenty or thirty years after the founding of Pennsylvania, “the
Welsh were the most numerous class of immigrants” and in place names, in
blood, in local history, and in architecture their enduring influence is
plainly discernible. Before they migrated from the land of their birth,
they had entered into an agreement with Penn by which he promised them
“a tract of forty thousand acres, where
[Illustration: LITTLE TAVERN AT IONIC AND AMERICAN STREETS,
PHILADELPHIA. 1692.]
[Illustration: WILLIAM PENN HOUSE, FAIRMOUNT PARK, PHILADELPHIA.
Formerly in Letitia Court.]
[Illustration: GLORIA DEI GLEBE HOUSE.
Built for clergymen of Weceaco and Kingsessing parishes.]
[Illustration: OLDEST HOUSE IN DOVER, DELA.
Showing strong Swedish influence in contour of roof.]
they could have a little government of their own and live by
themselves.” Accordingly, upon their arrival, this tract was surveyed
for them in the high, rolling lands embraced chiefly within the present
bounds of Montgomery and Delaware Counties, a section that more nearly
resembled in character their beloved Wales than did any other part of
this new country of their adoption. The tract was called the Welsh
Barony for the sturdy, “red-haired, freckle-faced descendants of the
ancient Britons insisted that this territory, specially set apart for
them, was a barony or county palatine and, in very truth, it was a manor
with the right of court baron.” These Owens and Joneses, Evanses and
Wynnes, Powells and Pughs and all their kith and kin, managed their
affairs according to their own notions and, at first, dispensed with the
usual system of township and county organisation. Civil authority was
vested in the Quaker meetings until, in 1690, the three townships of
Merion, Haverford and Radnor were formed and the civil jurisdiction of
the meetings superseded. Welsh was the official language of the courts
and records and Welsh was the daily tongue of all the people in the
barony and very few of them understood English, so that when William
Penn preached at Haverford, in 1701, his hearers could not have been
much edified, so far as his words were concerned. Closely bound
together by the tie of language and separated by the same means from the
other colonists who spoke English, Swedish or German, these Welsh gentry
and yeomen held aloof from outside affairs, content with a mode of life
that was “unusual on a provincial frontier” for its “amount of enjoyment
and expenditure for dress and entertainment.” Local independence and
self-sufficiency were only broken down when the barony was thrown open
to outside settlers because the Welsh occupants refused to pay
quit-rents on more land than they actually used or held. Their strong
feeling of nationality, however, remained and nothing could have been
more natural than that the architecture for which they were responsible
should have had, as it did, a characteristic local flavour.
The earliest German community was Germantown and, though it is now a
part of Philadelphia, in 1683 and for more than a hundred years
afterward, Penn’s “greene country towne” and the village of the Germans
were separated by a long stretch of open country and the highroad
between the two was oftentimes so bad that it was an obstacle rather
than an aid to communication. The German settlers spoke their own
language, printed their own books, pursued their own industries,
worshipped in their own way, built their own schools and managed their
own affairs of internal organisation without either interference or
assistance from the powers in Philadelphia. As did the earliest settlers
in Germantown, so also did their countrymen, who continued to come to
America in ever-increasing numbers and travelled farther and farther
into the interior of the land where the richness of the soil and the
opportunity to follow their own inclinations without let or hindrance
from interfering or antagonistic neighbours invited them.
Besides keeping aloof, during most of the early period, from the
settlers of other nationality, the Germans were also subdivided among
themselves. There were the Pietists or Rosicrucians, who had their
settlement or community on the banks of the Wissahickon. Although they
maintained some intercourse with the other German settlers, they
nevertheless led a distinct existence. The people in Germantown,
likewise, formed a complete community in themselves and the industries
in which they engaged at an early date, namely, the operation of paper
and knitting mills, are still flourishing in the neighbourhood, in some
instances on the original sites. Again, the settlers in the Skippack
region were far removed from those in Germantown and developed
peculiarities of their own. The Moravians, in their turn, pushed still
farther into the northern part of the province and founded settlements
quite distinct from all other colonisation enterprises. Their ancient
buildings are deeply interesting and have preserved permanently the
traditions of the country whence the Moravians originally came. An
examination will clearly show a similarity in many points to the Suabian
modes of architectural expression, as one might expect from the close
ties of kinship.
The isolation of the several elements of population in the colony was
still further favoured by the fact that, at first, the Pennsylvania, New
Jersey and Delaware colonists who followed Penn resembled their Swedish
predecessors and were not commercial in their instincts like the Dutch,
who were aggressively mercantile with their fur trade. What they needed
for home consumption the early Pennsylvanians made for themselves, so
far as they could, and in every way were essentially agricultural and
diametrically opposed to the Dutch. For some years after the founding of
the colony, Swedes, English, Welsh, and Germans alike turned their eyes
inland. We might say that their policy of colonisation was introspective
rather than expansive.
This introspective policy of colonisation did not tend toward the
expansion or the prosperity of the colony and, while the colonists led
lives of comfort in their own preferred seclusion, it was not until
they turned their eyes to the sea and engaged in commerce that the
prosperity of Philadelphia, and of the colony generally, increased by
leaps and bounds. The roads, for the most part, were extremely bad and,
in the winter and spring, were hopelessly miry. Where the settlers did
not follow the course of the streams for the spread of their area of
colonisation, they followed the Indian trails, and most of the old roads
leading out from Philadelphia, the old arteries of traffic along which
the colonists made their homesteads, and from which they pushed farther
and farther into the interior, were originally the pathways worn by the
red men through the forest.
While the Swedes chose the streams to determine their course of
colonisation, the Germans usually stuck to the Indian trails which, in
time, became the highroads to their various communities. In the earliest
times, the German lads and lasses forded the streams and came on
horseback along these roads, carrying their goods for market in the city
in panniers. It was not long, however, before sufficient improvement was
made in the condition of the highways to allow the great four, six, and
eight horse wains to be driven to the city periodically from the more
remote settlements. In these wains were contained the products of the
six months’ or year’s labour on the farms and, with the money from what
they sold, the farmers bought materials which they took home to be
manufactured into the various articles of necessity or comfort required
by the different members of their households.
Not until they learned, in the course of time, to appreciate the
fundamental liberalism that characterised the principles of the colony
as established by the Founder, and not until the gradual development of
commercial industries tended to bring them more together had the
different groups of colonists any common ground upon which they might
meet without bringing their diversity of principles and prejudices into
conflict. In the meanwhile, the architectural course of the province had
fallen into several well-defined separate channels that are still easily
recognisable. That these divers phases of Colonial architecture should
retain their individuality side by side is not to be wondered at when we
consider the early diversity and isolation of the various racial
elements of the province, explained at length in the foregoing pages,
and when we consider, also, the tenacity with which the people clung to
their distinguishing racial peculiarities of every sort long after the
barriers of antagonism or isolation had been broken down.
It is always well to be explicit, and it is easier to make the basis of
contention clear when a
[Illustration: QUAKER ALMS HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA.
Built early in eighteenth century. Said to have been the place of
Evangeline’s death.]
[Illustration: LONDON (BRADFORD’S) COFFEE HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA. BUILT
1702.
From an old engraving.]
[Illustration: OLD PHILADELPHIA COURT HOUSE. BUILT 1707.]
definite instance is cited. We shall, therefore, use certain specified
houses for the sake of example. The first of these to claim our
attention is Wynnestay, shown in one of the accompanying illustrations,
the ancient home of the Wynne family, on the borders of the Welsh
Barony. When built in 1689, it was in deep country; now it is surrounded
by a suburban growth. Practically the only alteration that Wynnestay has
ever undergone was raising the ridgepole of the roof, on the oldest
part, to the line of the 1700 addition at a time when it was found
necessary to make some repairs. Save this, and what has been built at
the back to meet increased domestic needs, Wynnestay remains to-day in
its pristine state and is, therefore, valuable as a well-preserved
example of Welsh Colonial work. Doors and windows are low, but of
generous breadth, and capped by heavy stone lintels made of thick,
oblong slabs that must have cost no ordinary exertion and energy to set
them in place. The two dormers have the same sharply-pointed peaks that
we shall see in another Colonial example. As might be expected, the
walls are thick and everything about the building is of the most solid
construction.
When Wynnestay was built, the colonists had had no time to evolve new
architectural forms, so we may be sure that in erecting their dwellings
they followed as closely as they were able all traditions and precedents
with which they had been familiar in the old country. That Wynnestay and
its contemporaries faithfully represent the farmhouses and small manor
houses of Wales and England we may feel the more certain because capable
artisans, both house carpenters and stone masons, accompanied the
earlier settlers and by this time had arrived in considerable numbers in
the colony, and of course were working by the principles instilled into
them in their apprentice days.
The masonry of the Pennsylvania Colonial type has been highly admired
time and time again by architects in all sections of the country. The
same sort of masonry work is being done by local stone masons today, and
so individual and characteristic is it that they are sometimes sent for
to erect walls at a great distance from their own locality, because no
other masons can be found to put quite the same touch into the face of
the wall or lay the stones in quite the same way. But the charm for
which their handiwork is justly famed is due to the fact that they are
merely following the tradition handed down to them by the old Welsh and
English masons who came over with the first settlers. The tradition has
been faithfully perpetuated ever since. We find it in strong evidence in
all the old houses of that type, in fact in all the old buildings. It
will be adverted to, in the chapter on old Colonial churches, in
connexion with St. David’s, Radnor. Again we see it in such a building
as Waynesborough, which, by the way, is particularly interesting as
marking the transition from the early Colonial type to the early
Georgian.
Although Waynesborough was not built until a few years after Graeme Park
or Hope Lodge, those striking examples of the first phase of the Middle
Colonies’ Georgian, it has, nevertheless, retained in certain features a
strong resemblance to the early Colonial Welsh type. The masonry is
precisely the same, but more noticeable even than this are the lintels
of the doors and windows, constructed of a number of stones vertically
set in a flattened or elliptical arch. This form is to be seen in much
of the early Welsh work concurrently with the great slabs noted at
Wynnestay.
In general character Wynnestay is similar to the other Welsh houses near
by, such as Pencoyd, at Bala, built in 1633, or Harriton, built a little
later, but it has suffered less change in the lapse of years than its
near neighbours in Lower Merion township or other sections in which the
Welsh influence was felt, and it is better fitted to represent the type.
The house is built of native grey fieldstone of varied sizes--some of
the stones were probably turned up in the course of clearing the fields
round about--lined with white mortar and presents an interesting feature
in the bold moulding of the cornices. A continuation of the cornice from
the eaves, following the same horizontal line, traverses the face of the
wall at each gable end, making, with the gable cornice, a complete
triangle. This arrangement of the cornice as a string course across the
gable ends gives the roof a downright, positive appearance. The cornice
in this arrangement is not dissimilar from the penthouse so often used
on structures of this date between the first and second floors.
Wynnestay was built at two different periods. The first part, built in
1689, has a penthouse along the front with a triangular hood; the later
addition, built in 1700, has the penthouse between the first and second
floors, but without the triangular hood above the door. Still another
feature showing the close connexion of Waynesborough with the early
Colonial type, as exemplified by Wynnestay, is the hood over the house
door. Although the penthouses have disappeared the hood has remained,
and indicates very plainly a certain line of descent.
Wynnestay and other old houses just like it were the forerunners of a
type of structure that has come to be known as the Pennsylvania Colonial
farmhouse type; very worthy the type is, truly comfortable, homelike
and sensible, and deserving the popularity accorded it, so long as it
sticks closely to its severe simplicity and avoids all attempt at
pretence. The very moment, however, we depart from time-honoured
tradition and attempt to begaud this sort of building with Georgian
embellishments and furbelows--a thing far too often done--it looks
unseemly and ludicrous. Before leaving the subject one should add that
the Pennsylvania Colonial farmhouse is found in roughcast as well as
stone, and that the buildings erected by the English settlers, though
similar, were apt to be somewhat higher than the old, squat dwellings of
the Welsh, whose natural predilection for “stumpiness” is well
exemplified by the towers of their churches.
Our next Colonial example is Wyck in Germantown, at the corner of Walnut
Lane and Germantown Road. Like Wynnestay, Wyck has undergone scarcely
any change since its staunch walls were reared. Furthermore, Wyck has
never been sold, but has passed from owner to owner by inheritance, and
as its possessors have always been careful to maintain everything in its
original condition, it can readily be seen that a more trustworthy
example of Pennsylvania Colonial architecture could not be chosen. Wyck
represents the German influence in Colonial architecture. The structure
is really two houses joined together. The first was built about 1690 or
earlier; the second, though built somewhat later, nevertheless dates
also from an early period. Through the first part of the connecting
portion, that links the two houses into one, ran a passage or waggon
way. This passage was afterward closed in and now forms a great hallway
from which open outwards big double doors almost as wide as barn doors,
with a long transom of little lights above them.
The whole long south front of the house is whitewashed. Trellises cover
the face of the wall, and the vines, with their masses of thick foliage,
stand out in sharp contrast to the gleaming brightness of their
background. At Wyck the windows are higher and not so wide in proportion
as at Wynnestay, and the same may be said of the dimensions of the
doors. The proportions are excellent and the measurements of sash-bars,
muntins, and panes have been duplicated by architects again and again,
with most satisfactory results. The dormerheads have the same sharp
angularity as those at Wynnestay. At Wyck, however, the cornice runs
only beneath the eaves, and does not extend across the wall at the gable
end. This extension of the cornice as a string course was more apt to
occur in houses of Welsh or English build, while the Germans, one of
whom built Wyck, usually left their gable ends unadorned. In fact,
there is no cornice at all at the gable ends of Wyck, and the junction
of wall and roof is marked only by plain barge-boards, beyond which the
roof edge scarcely projects. At Wyck the pitch of the roof is not so
steep as at Wynnestay, and it may be remarked that the flatter pitch was
generally found on Colonial houses built by the Germans, and also in the
later English Colonial houses.
Both Wynnestay and Wyck, different as they may be in national tradition,
are alike in their thoroughgoing staunchness, their straightforward
simplicity of expression and detail and their utter lack of all
conscious attempt at adornment. It is true, both houses have distinct
elements of charm and embellishment, arising from such details as the
trellises and long transoms with little lights at Wyck, or the hoods
above the doors and the extension of the cornice across the gable-end
walls at Wynnestay, but the effect is wholly fortuitous and not the
result of design. Both houses are thoroughly typical of most of the
contemporary dwellings, and because of their escape from damaging
alterations no part of their charm has been impaired. Both, too, well
exemplify architectural modes that have continued uninterruptedly in use
to our own day. In the portions of the country where the English
element predominates, the little peculiarities of English tradition are
still plainly observable in modern work, while in the parts of the
country where the Pennsylvania German element is most numerous, it is
easy to trace, even in small matters, the enduring influence of German
architectural tradition, introduced by the early German settlers.
Indeed, we may very properly compare the persistence of architectural
minutiæ to the persistence of family traits and features in the human
race. So much, then, for worthy specimens of Pennsylvania styles that
are truly Colonial. The instances given are by no means isolated, but
stand as representatives of a numerous class of buildings to be found
not only in Pennsylvania, but in Delaware and New Jersey.
Before leaving the subject it should be noted that the brick farmhouses
of New Jersey, while often following closely the type noted in
Pennsylvania, occasionally assumed, as the period wore on, much more
bulky proportions than the dwellings of the early settlers, the roof
rising to a considerable height, and the body of the structure assuming
great depth as well as breadth. Some of these great brick structures
date from a comparatively early period, and may be attributed to the
rapidly increasing prosperity of the West Jersey planters, who had the
advantage of the Pennsylvania settlers
[Illustration: MERION MEETING HOUSE, PENNSYLVANIA.
Built by Welsh settlers, 1695.]
[Illustration: MORAVIAN SISTERS’ HOUSE, BETHLEHEM, PA. 1748.]
[Illustration: THE SAAL, EPHRATA, PA.
Strong German influence.]
through their considerably earlier settlement. The oldest houses were
usually built on points of land stretching out into the numerous creeks
by which a part of the country is intersected, so that their
communication by water was always assured when the roads were bad, as
they frequently were. In this respect they resembled many of the old
houses of Virginia and Maryland. The walls of some of these early Jersey
houses are made of thick planks, tightly grooved together with a sliding
tongue, and stand today as staunch and true as when they were first
built. Stone was not a popular building material in Jersey, but brick
was generally used instead, and for brick was sometimes substituted a
kind of adobe or large block of sun-baked marl.
It is interesting to note that the long narrow transom of small lights
which we so often find over house doors in the Colonial period and the
first phase of the Georgian, seems to be a remnant of Queen Anne
tradition that got into English architecture from Dutch sources,
probably in the reign of William and Mary when such a large importation
of Dutch ideas and Dutch practices came into England.
While noting foreign influences in Colonial architecture we must not
forget to include the tendency to steep pitch and also gambrel forms in
roofs shown by the Swedish colonists. Nor should we forget to chronicle
two exceedingly interesting specimens of wholly foreign appearance that
were erected in Pennsylvania at an early date. One is the Moravian
Sisters’ House, at Bethlehem, erected about 1748 and the other is the
Saal or great hall of the monastery at Ephrata, built by the Seventh Day
Baptists about the same time. The tiny dormers are exact replicas of the
dormers to be seen on the towering and seemingly boundless roofs of any
old German town while the small, irregularly placed windows and steeply
pitched, high roof of the Ephrata Saal make the building look as though
it might have been transplanted bodily from Nürnberg or Rothenburg.