THE COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE OF THE SOUTH
A close student of the English language, thoroughly conversant with all
the local peculiarities that characterise the speech of the several
parts of our country comprised within the bounds of the original
Thirteen Colonies, knows that different words and expressions, retaining
their seventeenth or eighteenth century significance, have lingered in
different communities. The mountaineers of Kentucky still replenish
their pipes from “pokes” of tobacco; in Virginia and Maryland,
insufficiently baked bread is said not to have “soaked” long enough,
meaning that it has not stayed in the oven as long as it ought; in
Pennsylvania we still “fetch” things when we go for them and bring them
back with us; and the soles of outworn New England shoes are “tapped,”
though they may be “half-soled” in other parts of the country, and New
England nags are “baited” at inn stables. Now all these archaisms, if
one chooses so to call them, are of impeccable English derivation,
though many of them have long since fallen into disuse in England,
and they were of common and correct usage at the time of the
colonists’ emigration to the New World. The Colonies were always
conservative--provincial places usually are--and our very retention of
the virile forms of speech in ordinary use in the England of the Stuarts
and the House of Hanover has contributed not a little to the foundation
of our just boast that the English spoken today in Virginia, Maryland,
parts of the Carolinas, eastern Pennsylvania and New England is better
and purer than most of the English now spoken in England itself. The
only feature of this phenomenon of speech persistence not fully
explicable is the fact that certain parts of linguistic tradition have
been perpetuated in some parts of the country while others are to be
found only in localities far removed so that a Virginian’s allusion to
bread insufficiently “soaked” would be unintelligible in Massachusetts.
If the vitality of usage is so noticeable in a fluid and mutable thing
like language, it is not surprising that architecture, which is visible
and comparatively permanent in its manifestation, should exhibit in a
markedly obvious manner an adherence to traditional forms. Nor is it
surprising, considering the diversity of the speech forms singled out by
chance for perpetuation in different parts of the country, to find a
similar diversity in the retention of local architectural forms, though
all may be of purely English origin.
The greater part of the South, like New England, was wholly English in
blood and the small element of foreign extraction was not sufficient to
exert any appreciable influence upon architectural types. The South had
no numerous Welsh, Swedish or German contingent, such as there was in
Pennsylvania, and no Dutch majority, as in New York, either to create an
exotic bias and modify the expression of its architectural heritage or
to seek independent utterance in the same territory. It was English to
the core and so was the architecture. Only, as in the matter of speech,
we find that traditions somewhat different from those manifested in New
England were chosen for preservation. This was partly due, no doubt, as
has already been pointed out, to the preponderance of the Saxon strain
in the South while New England settlers could trace some of their
hereditary preferences to the fact that so many of them came from the
Danish parts of old England. The traditions transplanted to American
soil by the Southern settlers flourished not only during the period
antecedent to the advent of the Georgian mode but persisted concurrently
with it and their influence is plainly to be detected in houses erected
within the memory of people still living. They are so distinctly
individual and so different from the forms to be seen in the Northern or
the Middle States that they may be readily recognised at a superficial
glance from the windows of a speeding railway carriage. Judging from the
light thrown on the subject by recent research and restorations, it is
not at all improbable that the colonists of the South and the colonists
of New England adhered, at first, to not a few architectural practices
identically the same. As an instance we may refer to the chimney built
to its full height outside the house wall. This feature endured in the
South, while in New England it was practically discontinued at an early
period. The reason is not far to seek. The rigours of New England
winters demanded the conservation of all available heat and it was
simply common sense to enclose the chimney within the house walls, and
let none of the warmth, emanating from the heated stones or bricks of
the chimney breast and flue, escape into the outer air and be wasted.
The more moderate climate of the South did not require such careful
conservation and so the outside chimney retained its old form. So it
doubtless was, also, with other features so that the divergence in local
forms, apart from the matter of hereditary choice of materials and the
modes of craftsmanship thereby involved, already alluded to, soon
became pronounced and created a crystallised type. What were the
distinguishing characteristics of this type, we shall shortly learn. It
will, however, be helpful to our general understanding first to get a
glimpse of the social life of the period when the Southern Colonial
house was in process of evolution.
The earliest settlers in Virginia were, for the most part, gentle born.
They were, in some cases, brothers, nephews or younger sons of peers of
the realm. Such was George Percy, brother to the Earl of Northumberland.
More commonly they were drawn from the families of the lesser nobility
and from the untitled squirearchy of county families or else from the
prosperous mercantile or professional classes. Either they personally or
their relatives, who assisted in establishing them in their venture of
colonisation, were in comfortable circumstances so that they could count
upon having at least a reasonably advantageous start in the new land and
were, therefore, from the outset in a condition soon to improve their
estate by embracing the abundant opportunities fortune offered them.
Besides this politically preponderant class, there were numerous
indentured servants and artisans, many of whom, upon the expiration of
their bonds, acquired land and became prosperous planters. Last of all,
there were the negro slaves who were brought into the colony at an
early period and rapidly increased in numbers. Social distinctions were
quite as sharply defined and rigidly observed in Virginia and the other
Southern colonies as in England and social customs remained unchanged by
transference across the sea. The closest and most affectionate
intercourse that circumstances would permit was maintained with friends
and relatives in the Mother Country. In a word, Virginia was merely a
detached and expanded bit of England and life went on much as though the
Atlantic did not exist, save for the inevitable delay in communication.
As was life in early Virginia, so was it substantially, at least so far
as our present purpose is concerned, in the other Southern colonies, so
that we may regard Virginia conditions as typical.
For all the ease of life, the abundance of creature comforts, the
importation of personal and household luxuries and necessities by every
ship that entered the capes and the general prosperity made possible by
a kindly soil and climate in conjunction with favourable economic
conditions, the measure of affluence, even among the wealthiest, was not
sufficient during the first fifty or seventy-five years of Virginia’s
existence to justify reckless or lavish expenditure upon the fabric of
the dwelling house. The homes of the planters, therefore, though
comfortably and even luxuriously appointed, according to the standards
of the period, were modest in size and unpretentious in character. When
Nicholas Hayward determined to establish one of his children on a
plantation in Virginia and wrote to William Fitzhugh, one of the
wealthiest and most influential planters, desiring information and
advice, the latter replied, pointing out the course pursued by many of
the other planters, that the wisest plan would be to import indentured
bricklayers and carpenters from England who, in the course of the four
or five years for which they were bound, could erect a substantial
house, and, at the same time, by the performance of other labour for
which they might be hired out, earn enough to pay for the cost of
building materials and their keep as well. Fitzhugh also counselled
Hayward not to build a large dwelling and even questioned the
advisability of putting up “an English framed house of the ordinary
size” as the charges for skilled artisans were excessive. He added that
his own dwelling had cost thrice the sum a house of like size would have
cost in London and that it usually took three times as long to complete
the same amount of work as it did in England.
Notwithstanding his inherited preference for stone and brick as building
materials, the early Virginia colonist had perforce to make a virtue of
necessity and build his house of wood. Although, in the majority of
cases, the Virginia colonist took to brick and stone when circumstances
permitted--they were almost universally used so soon as the Georgian
influence began to be felt and the accumulation of wealth conduced
thereto--the necessary dependence upon wood at the outset created a
precedent and launched a Southern tradition that has subsisted to our
own day. In many parts of the Old Dominion there was practically no
stone to be had and it was a difficult matter to secure even enough for
chimneys. Often all dependence for this purpose had to be placed upon
brick and brick was none too easy to come by at first. Good brick clay,
to be sure, was abundant and the manufacture of bricks received
encouragement from the first but there were serious difficulties in the
way of transportation after the bricks were made and by the time these
difficulties were surmounted many of the older houses had been built and
it was hardly to be expected that the planters, after constructing
substantial and comfortable abodes of timber would demolish them and
replace them by others of brick, after brick was more plentiful, merely
to comply with the arbitrary directions issued by the authorities in
England when, in 1637, they instructed Governour Wyatt “to require every
landowner whose plantation was an hundred acres in extent to erect a
dwelling house of brick, to be twenty-four feet in length and sixteen
feet in breadth, with a cellar attached. In the cases where the area of
the grant exceeded five hundred acres, the size of the dwelling house
was to enlarge in proportion.”
The earliest Southern houses in Virginia and elsewhere, after the brief
log-cabin stage had been passed, we may feel assured were of wooden
construction with brick or sometimes stone chimneys. All about was the
greatest abundance of the finest pine, cypress, cedar, oak, chestnut,
hickory, elm and ash timber which fully answered for all structural
needs and the feather-edged plank or clapboard, nailed to the framing of
posts, studs, girts and cills was in common use for building purposes.
It was probably owing to the absence of stone and the comparative
scarcity of bricks at an early date that we do not find evidences of
attempted half-timber construction with clay and brick or clay and stone
pugging as we do in New England at the same period.
It was only at first, however, that there was a scarcity of bricks and
even then the difficulty in obtaining them was more a matter of
transportation than of supply. Brickmakers and bricklayers were among
the first artisans brought over and from the very infancy of the colony,
as just stated, brick-making was encouraged. Indeed, at an early date,
bricks became an important article of export to Bermuda, whence
limestone was fetched back in exchange. There was abundance of brick to
supply the home demand and the obstacle in the way of its wider use by
the first generation or two of planters was the difficulty of getting it
from the kilns to the sites where it was to be used and not, as some
suppose, the necessity of importing it from England. It is pointed out
in another chapter that the so-called “English brick” was merely brick
made according to English dimensions and so termed to distinguish it
from brick fashioned after the Dutch pattern. Very few of the old brick
buildings were constructed of imported material and, under ordinary
circumstances, it would have been the height of folly to send overseas
for it, even though it might come as ballast. In Virginia, bricks were
rated from eight to fifteen shillings a thousand while, in England,
between 1650 and 1700, their price was eighteen shillings and upward a
thousand. As the seventeenth century advanced bricks became increasingly
plentiful in the South. After Sir Thomas Dale’s arrival and the
establishment of his new enterprise at Henrico City, the first-floor
walls of the houses in that place were built of brick burned in the
kilns that were there set up, but when Secretary Kemp, in 1638, built a
brick house at Jamestown, it was probably the first dwelling entirely
constructed of brick in the South. After this, other brick houses were
erected in Jamestown and, subsequently, Governour Berkeley built himself
a brick house at Green Spring, about two miles distant. It was not
usual, however, to employ brick very extensively till towards the end of
the seventeenth century or the beginning of the eighteenth when ample
fortunes had accumulated and transportation possibilities had somewhat
improved. Even then, the use of brick was by no means universal but was
largely dependent upon local conditions, although there was
unquestionably a preference for it over wood when it could readily be
come by.
Whether wood was used or brick, the Southern houses of the seventeenth
century and the fore part of the eighteenth conformed pretty closely to
the same architectural type and even in the more ambitious dwellings,
erected by the very wealthy towards the end of this period, there was
generally no radical departure from the accustomed style. For the most
part, the homes of even the most affluent planters were simple in plan
and plain in appearance. The typical dwelling was an oblong structure
with the house door on one of the long fronts, a steeply-pitched roof, a
chimney at each end, and often had but one full floor with an attic
above it, although a more commodious second floor was by no means
uncommon. In 1679, Major Thomas Chamberlayne, a prominent citizen of
Henrico, contracted with one Gates, a carpenter of the same county, to
build him a frame house, forty feet long by twenty feet wide. The
outside walls were to be boarded and there was to be no cellar, but the
framework was to be supported on cills resting on the ground. Upper and
lower floors were each to be divided by wooden partitions into two
rooms. At each end there was to be a brick chimney. So many descriptions
of similar houses and specifications for their erection occur in
seventeenth-century documents that we are quite justified in regarding
them as typical of the period. The Adam Thoroughgood house, built of
brick in Princess Anne County, Virginia, between 1640 and 1650,
presented the same general contour. The roofs were customarily of
cypress shingles although tiles were subsequently employed to some
extent. The pitch of the roof closely resembled the pitch of some of the
earliest New England roofs but in both the South and North there is
observable, as the years go by, a general tendency to depart from
English precedent and flatten the pitch so far as conditions would
permit. In this connexion it must also be remembered that thatch was a
common roofing material in England and required a steep pitch in order
to shed the rain quickly while the use of shingles
[Illustration:
Copyright, J. B. Lippincott Co.
ADAM THOROUGHGOOD HOUSE, PRINCESS ANNE COUNTY, VA. BUILT _C._ 1640.]
[Illustration: GOVERNOUR EDEN HOUSE, EDENTON, N. C.
Unusual example of overhang in Southern architecture.]
[Illustration: HOUSE AT YORKTOWN, VA.
With typical outside chimneys at ends.]
[Illustration: “HOSPITAL” HOUSE, YORKTOWN, VA.
Of Southern Colonial type.]
permitted a less abrupt angle without impairing the water-shedding
qualities of the roof.
One of the most strongly characteristic features of these houses was
supplied by the outside chimneys at each end. They were of brick or of
stone, when by chance it could be secured, and occasionally, in some of
the later houses built according to this early tradition, they are of
brick and stone combined, the stone being used for the heavy base while
the stack is made of brick. Throughout their whole height, these
chimneys were built outside the house wall, whether the house was of
timber or brick, and were broad at the base narrowing down by successive
stages of sloped weatherings and offsets, in much the same manner as a
Gothic buttress, to the bottom of the stack which rises straight and
slim by comparison with its substructure. The chimney of the
Thoroughgood house is an excellent example of this method of chimney
treatment. The Southern exterior chimneys, in many cases, had the sloped
weatherings and offsets both at sides and back while the few early New
England chimneys of the same type were usually flat at the back and were
graded off only at the sides.
Another noticeable characteristic of the early Southern houses is to be
seen in the long dormers with sharp-peaked gables that often pierced the
roofs, quite in contrast to the comparative rarity of dormers in the
early New England houses of similar date. The same manner of introducing
a sharp-peaked dormer or small gable into the side of a pitch roof is to
be seen over the doors of some of the old Southern barns. The occurrence
of the gambrel is not nearly so frequent as in the North nor do we find
evidences of framing with the overhang. It may be that this last
mentioned point of difference between the South and North can in part be
accounted for on the ground that the overhang in England lingered
longest and met with most favour in towns while in the open country it
was less in evidence. As many of the New England colonists came from
towns while a great proportion of those in the South came from rural
surroundings, it was but natural that both should perpetuate the
features to which they were most accustomed. This hypothesis, of course,
is purely conjectural but it is by no means impossible since very slight
and trifling matters often serve to determine choice. In the smaller and
humbler dwellings of the South were to be found the same general method
of construction and the same features of contour as in their larger
prototypes.
It would be exceedingly difficult to lay down any specific
generalisations regarding the interior plan of the early Southern houses
inasmuch as they varied widely in different instances according to the
individual requirements of the occupants, the size of their families and
the manner in which they saw fit to make additions from time to time as
necessity dictated. We have seen that Major Thomas Chamberlayne’s house
had two rooms upstairs and two rooms down, divided by wooden partitions
which may or may not have been covered with tenacious clay stucco and
whitewashed. In this manner walls were sometimes finished, at others
they were wainscotted. The windows were glazed with small panes set in
lead. In the house of Governour Berkeley at Green Spring were six
apartments while that of William Fitzhugh, which however had undergone
sundry additions, numbered twelve or thirteen. The Stratton house in
Henrico had three chambers above stairs and one below along with a hall,
kitchen, and pantry. In York County we are told of houses that had only
a hall or dining room, a kitchen and a bedchamber which were probably
all on one floor. Then, again, there were houses with a hall and kitchen
on the lower floor and a chamber above, while some of the wealthier
people had commonly three or four rooms on each floor. In all events,
the houses followed the same general plan and where there were many
apartments they were apt to be in the nature of ells or extensions
clustered in a rambling manner about the central core which was of the
type common to the country.
Three features are deserving of particular attention in the plan of the
early Southern house, however varied its internal arrangements might
otherwise be, and the more so because they persisted and found a
recognised place in the plan of the Georgian house as it was developed
in the South. In the first place, the hall, which was also referred to
as the dining hall or parlour hall, was wide and afforded ample space
and circulation of air. It was the place where meals were commonly eaten
and where the family sat. The house door opened directly into it and it
exactly corresponded with and fulfilled the functions of the great hall
in the small manor houses of England. This interior disposition of the
house was suited to the climate and when the Georgian mode rose in the
ascendant the wide hallway, often extending the full depth of the
building and used more or less as a living room, was retained. It was
quite in contrast to the small entry or the narrow stair-hall of New
England houses which the rigours of New England winters made it
desirable to have as a protection for the rest of the house when the
house door was opened. In the second place, the Southern housewife often
found it convenient and desirable in the scheme of her domestic economy
to have the kitchen in a separate building somewhat removed from the
body of the house. There were servants enough to make this arrangement
practicable and the mild climate favoured it also. Besides, this plan
fitted in well with the practice of having the servants’ quarters
outside the house. This feature of detached kitchens was also
perpetuated in the Georgian era and not only was its influence felt in
the South but we find instances of it in Pennsylvania. Such was the
arrangement at Graeme Park, Horsham, near Philadelphia, built in 1722 by
Sir William Keith, whom we know was favourably impressed by the manner
of living in the South where he had visited prior to establishing
himself at Horsham. We also find the detached offices and servants’
quarters at Stenton, the home of James Logan; at Hope Lodge, Whitemarsh
and at Mount Pleasant, the home of that doughty and ingenious old sailor
man and merchant, Captain John Macpherson, afterwards the scene of much
lavish entertainment by Benedict Arnold and his bride when they occupied
it for a brief season. The same arrangement also obtained at Cliveden
and was not improbably suggested to Chief Justice Chew by the
recollection of a similar plan in the homes of his Southern kinsfolk.
This feature of the detached kitchen forms an interesting point of
connexion between the domestic Georgian architecture of the Middle
Colonies and that of the Southern. In the third place, the majority of
the Southern Colonial houses had one or more bedchambers on the ground
floor. This feature proved itself of practical convenience and, like the
other two just enumerated, was often perpetuated in the Georgian mode.
Indeed, the practice has continued in favour to our own day.
In his valuable “Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth
Century”, Philip Bruce gives a graphic pen picture of the ordinary
surroundings of the seventeenth-century Virginia planter’s house, a
picture that may equally well apply to the generality of houses in the
other Southern colonies at the same period. After noting the usual
plainness and simplicity of the environment, he goes on to say:--“The
yard, as it was called, consisted of open ground, overshadowed here and
there by trees. In the immediate vicinity of the house was situated the
garden, devoted partly to vegetables and partly to flowers, thyme,
marjoram and phlox being as abundant there as in England. Many of the
flowers and shrubs had only recently been brought from the mother
country. Byrd is discovered in 1684 writing to his brother in England,
and thanking him for the gooseberry and currant bushes which had just
been received; in the same year he expresses to a second correspondent
his appreciation of a gift of seeds and roots, which had been planted
and had safely flowered [iris, tulip, crocus and anemone]. The summer
houses, arbours and grottoes, which Beverley declares were to be found
near the residences, were doubtless generally situated in the garden,
and were erected to afford a cool place of retreat in the warmest hours
of the summer day; the garden itself was always protected by a paling to
keep out the hogs and cattle which were permitted to wander without
restraint. In the immediate vicinity of the dwellings of the wealthy
landowners, there were, as a rule, grouped the dovecot, stable, barn,
henhouse, cabins for the servants, kitchen and milk-house, the object of
this in the last instances being to remove from the mansion the
operations of cooking, washing and dairying. In many yards, a tall pole
with a toy house at the top was erected, in which the bee martin might
build its nest, this bird bravely attacking the hawk and crow, and thus
serving as a guardian of the poultry.” It would not be difficult to find
the counterpart of these conditions in many a place in the South today,
that is to say, in places patterned after the Colonial tradition, in
which the formal Georgian element has never played an important part nor
led to the laying out of great, symmetrically-planned gardens.
Of the more elegant and substantially built brick houses that
characterised the end of the period when the truly Colonial style still
prevailed, it will sufficiently serve our present purpose if we refer
specifically to two, one in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and the other
on the Cooper River in South Carolina. The first is Cedar Park, on the
shores of the Chesapeake, built about 1692. It consists of one full
floor above whose window-heads project the eaves of the steep-pitched
roof in which is contained a roomy attic or concealed second floor, if
that designation seems more agreeable, lighted by dormer windows. Its
exterior aspect coincides in all particulars with the features
previously noted as characteristic of the Southern Colonial type of
house whether constructed of brick or wood. It is in an excellent state
of preservation and the additions and wings that have been appended in
no wise obscure the contour and identity of the original type. There is
not one feature about the house to suggest Georgian influence or
Georgian formality. The internal arrangement, also, agrees with the plan
of the type common to other domestic structures erected in the South
during the seventeenth century. There is the great central hall into
which the house door opens, a hall through which one could readily drive
a coach and four if there were occasion and there are adjacent
bedchambers on the first floor. The other apartments are grouped about
as convenience has dictated their placing at the times when additions
were made. At the opposite end of the great hall from the house door a
flight of steps descends into an ancient hedged garden, bounded by the
waters of the bay.
The other house is Mulberry Castle, built in 1714. While obviously not
Georgian in its salient characteristics, Mulberry Castle certainly gives
evidence of more ambitious design than was usual at the precise period
of its erection. Certain details, it is true, such as the pillared porch
with its pediment, sheltering the house door, or the cornice beneath the
eaves, show a restrained classic influence which we are accustomed to
associate, quite properly, with the architectural manifestations of the
reign of Queen Anne or the first years of her Hanoverian successor, but
the general contour of the house savours strongly of the one-floor
Colonial type with its steeply-pitched roof. In the case of Mulberry
Castle the attic or second floor has been so expanded that the roof has
assumed approximately the appearance of a modern mansard or perhaps it
would be more logical and truthful to say that it has become a hipped
gambrel with a steep pitch. The internal plan, also, is sufficiently
irregular to warrant its classification with the Colonial type. In
certain interior details, such as the mantels and panelling, later
additions and alterations have evidently been made which add to its
Georgian semblance and emphasise its transitional aspect, but the
unalterable features of mass and arrangement recall us to the
contemplation of well known seventeenth-century peculiarities.
In the study of the great mass of all this truly Colonial architecture
of the South two points strike one forcibly. The first is that it is
wholly different from the typical later architecture of Georgian mode
and is fully entitled to be classified by itself. The second is that
there is much about it, especially in the case of such buildings as
Cedar Park and Mulberry Castle, to command our sincere admiration and
serve as a valuable model for modern emulation.