MATERIALS AND TEXTURES
The materials of which any structure is built and the way in which those
materials are manipulated have quite as much to do with the general
aspect as mass or contour. It is of the utmost importance, therefore,
that we pay due heed to the material resources at the disposal of
builders in the Colonial period. Furthermore, it must be borne in mind
that materials to some extent influenced architectural forms while, on
the other hand, tradition and hereditary preferences, as we have seen,
exerted a powerful influence upon the choice of materials and affected
the way in which they were employed.
A very great number of the settlers of New England, as stated in a
previous chapter, came from the Danish parts of England where the timber
tradition was especially strong. Consequently, despite the abundance of
stone in the new land, which they might readily have used, they
preferred, in the majority of instances, to build their houses of wood.
Of course, some allowance, too, in this respect, must be made for ease
and expedition of working and for climatic conditions. In the Middle
Colonies and the South, most of the settlers came from the Saxon
portions of England where stone and brick traditions had always
prevailed and, although there was abundance of good timber and
occasionally some lack of other materials, there was a general
preference for brick or stone walls notwithstanding any inconvenience
incidental to procuring them. The artisans in each section preferred to
work with the materials with which they were most familiar and
householders also seem to have concurred in the popular choice. It is to
be noted that the lack of requisite material--marble or suitable
stone--had not a little to do with the common use of white-painted wood
for trims and external ornamental features in Georgian buildings whose
English prototypes, in many cases, were embellished with pillars,
pediments and cornices of the more durable substance.
It now behooves us to see what use was made of the several materials in
the various portions of the Colonies. We shall, of course, find brick
and stone structures in New England, and frame buildings in the Middle
Colonies and the South, but the preponderance numerically displayed the
characteristics just mentioned.
If “pigs is pigs”, doubtless, by the same token, “bricks is bricks” and
also “mortar is mortar.” Notwithstanding the profundity of this truism,
it is just as well to remember that there are bricks and bricks and that
there is mortar and mortar, too, and that both, when brought together in
a wall, mutually interact and are susceptible of large diversity of
treatment. This very possibility of different combination afforded the
Colonial builder a field for the exercise of not a little ingenuity.
For the benefit of readers not accustomed to technical terms it will,
perhaps, be well to explain exactly what is meant by the words “bond”
and “texture” which are necessarily used in speaking of brick masonry.
The term “bond” simply means the way of laying or the manner of binding
and denotes the position in which the bricks are laid in their courses
and the appearance created by the relative position of the units. In the
walls of the houses built during the Colonial and post-Colonial periods,
four varieties of bond are found, two bonds sometimes being used in
conjunction for the sake of variety. They are English or Liverpool bond,
Flemish bond, Dutch cross bond and running bond. English or Liverpool
bond has alternate rows of stretchers (bricks so laid that the long side
is exposed to view) and headers (bricks so laid that only the ends
appear). The courses are arranged so that headers and stretchers break
joints. Flemish bond consists of alternate headers and stretchers in
every course, all joints being broken. It is the strongest and
best-locked of all bonds. Dutch cross bond, like English bond, consists
of alternate courses of headers and stretchers but with this difference:
in English bond, the headers and stretchers in alternate layers are
placed directly one above the other while, in Dutch cross bond, they
break joints. Running bond consists entirely of stretchers and is a kind
of degenerate Dutch cross bond with all the headers left out or
introduced only at intervals of seven or eight courses to tie the face
of the wall together. English or Liverpool, Flemish and running bonds
were all in the common heritage of English building tradition.
For the sake of historical accuracy it is important to correct a popular
error occasioned by the terms “English” and “Dutch” brick. It is
commonly stated of many old buildings that they were built of brick
fetched overseas from England or Holland. No doubt some few were but
most of them were not. George Cary Eggleston set forth the whole matter
in a very clear light when he wrote that “nearly all these bricks,
whether English or Dutch, were made in America, as later scholarly
research has conclusively proved. The only difference between English
and Dutch bricks was one of dimensions. The small bricks, moulded upon
a Dutch model, were known as Holland bricks. The much larger ones,
moulded upon an English model, were called English bricks. The very
learned and scholarly historian of South Carolina, Mr. McCrady, has
conclusively proved that the so-called English bricks used in the
construction of Carolina houses could not have been imported from
England. By simple arithmetical calculation he has shown that all the
ships landing in the Carolinas during the seventeenth century--even if
all of them had been loaded exclusively with bricks--could not have
brought in enough bricks to build one half or one fourth the ‘English
brick’ houses of that part of the country.” There was abundant clay in
the Colonies and the colonists, usually so resourceful and
self-dependent, were scarcely likely to ignore an opportunity under
their very noses and depend upon an imported commodity, even though they
could have afforded the cost. Indeed, bricks were _exported_ from some
of the Colonies.
To be sure, one record shows that ten thousand bricks were imported into
Massachusetts Bay in 1628, and we know that some bricks were imported
into the New Haven Colony at an early date and likewise that, during the
demolition of some very old Connecticut houses, bricks were found with
the name “London” impressed upon them. Then, too, several instances can
be cited in both the Middle and Southern Colonies, where bricks were
imported and used for certain specified buildings and there are a few
well authenticated cases of brick importation from Holland. But against
this meagre certitude of a few cargoes of bricks from overseas there is
the abundant evidence of extensive brick-making in the Colonies from a
very early date. There is one reference in official records to a brick
kiln in Connecticut in 1635 and there were doubtless other brick kilns
in operation both there and elsewhere at the same time or even prior to
that year.
The bricks in early Colonial use were of various sizes. As a rule, the
older the bricks the larger they are. They afterwards became smaller and
now, in our own time, they are large again. Some of the bricks were four
inches by eight and a quarter and two and five eighths inches thick,
others were two and a half by four inches and eight inches long. The
“Dutch” bricks were thinner than the “English.” Most of the seventeenth
and eighteenth century bricks were roughly moulded and not a few were
underburned while others were extremely hard burned and had much
pleasing variation of colour. The ends of arch bricks in the kiln were
often burned till they acquired a bluish black and almost vitreous
glaze. These were used for headers and to them is due much of the
colour and pattern interest of old walls. The large bricks used for
“pugging” the openings between the timbers in the early timber built
houses are scarcely more than sun-dried and readily crumble and go to
pieces upon exposure to the weather.
In speaking of the “texture” of a wall, we must take into consideration
the kind of bricks used, their shape and size, their colour, their bond
devised to give a distinctive pattern to the wall face, the mortar
joints and, finally, the kind of mortar used. It need scarcely be said
that the results possible with the old brick of slightly irregular shape
and varied colour in English or Flemish bond--Flemish bond was
exceedingly popular among eighteenth century builders--were infinitely
more satisfactory than any that could be attained through the use of the
later “faultily faultless” pressed brick of monotonously uniform shape
and size, with a surface “like cut cheese and a colour like a
firecracker” and a great deal of the charm of the old work is due to
agreeable texture. While there is some exceedingly pleasing brickwork in
New England and especially in the Connecticut Valley, brick excellence
is much more common in the Middle States and the South where brick
building was always more in vogue. Occasionally in New England, and very
frequently farther south, a goodly degree of interest was achieved by
the combination of different bonds, by herring-bone panels, by
projecting courses on wall faces, at cornices or about chimney tops and
by diaper patterns, dates and initials wrought in blue headers on end
walls and in gables. Specially moulded capping bricks for base courses
and for the tops of walls were used to good effect.
Both field stone and local quarried stone were used in New England and
masonry was usually of the rubble type although occasionally the stones
were carefully squared and dressed. The same may be said of stone work
in New York. Sometimes the walls were of stone with brick door and
window trims, as at the Manor House at Croton-on-Hudson. In the Dutch
part of northern New Jersey the native reddish brown stone was employed
with excellent effect both in rubble masonry and for cut work. In both
cases it was often pointed with white mortar joints which gave a
peculiar and striking contrast.
In Pennsylvania we find masonry of singular excellence and beauty where,
again, both field stone and quarried stone were made use of. The
Pennsylvania rubble masonry, laid by workmen who were merely
perpetuating the traditions they had brought with them from England and
Wales, has always commanded admiration and, in the vicinity of
Philadelphia, the same inherited masonry traditions are still
flourishing vigorously. These rubble walls were sometimes laid with
stones of random sizes, sometimes with stones of comparatively uniform
dimensions. In a few instances, notably in the neighbourhood of
Kingsessing, Philadelphia, and in the walls of Belmont, Fairmount Park,
Philadelphia, once the home of the witty Judge Peters of Revolutionary
fame, the old English custom of galleting the wide, white mortar joints
with little spawls was practised. It was not infrequently the case that
houses would have walls of dressed and squared stone in front with
rubble walls at the sides and rear. Some few, such as Cliveden in
Germantown, Philadelphia, and Whitby Hall, Kingsessing, Philadelphia,
were built of cut stone all the way about. Whitby Hall and a few other
houses also furnish interesting examples of brick door and window trims
that project slightly beyond the face of the stone wall. This
Pennsylvania stone work displayed practically no attempts at carving and
the one instance where it has been carved is found in the window trims
and Ionic capitals of the river front of the Bartram house, Kingsessing,
Philadelphia.
In connexion with Colonial stonework must be mentioned the coating of
walls with stucco and roughcast which were either allowed to remain
their natural colour or whitewashed, as at Wyck, Germantown,
Philadelphia. The very early houses were not stuccoed at first and the
stucco seems to have been added later as a protection, partly, against
the weather where porous stone had been used for the walls, such as some
of the grey stone quarried in the neighbourhood of the Whitemarsh
Valley. The mica stone, so abundant in Pennsylvania, after a few years’
exposure, becomes impervious to moisture and never needs stucco
protection. Oftentimes stucco or roughcast were applied from choice and
not from necessity, especially among the German colonists who seem to
have been chiefly responsible for the introduction of the practice. For
the sake of finish, contrast and cleanly appearance the stucco or
roughcast coat was often whitewashed or yellow washed.
Much of the mortar in the early Colonial period was of poor quality and
rapidly disintegrated. Lime, however, was soon to be had. In some cases
it was imported, in others it was burned wherever limestone or oyster
shells were to be had and the quality of the mortar was very generally
improved throughout the Colonies. Some of it was exceptionally fine and
to-day is as hard as the bricks or stone it binds together.
The oaken timbers for the framing of houses were riven and hewn into
shape and dressed down with an adz. Rafters and joists were sometimes
treated thus and in other cases were sawn. The great summer beams and
oftentimes the studs, too, were finished with stopped chamfers along the
edges. The spaces between the studs, as noted in Chapter III, were at
first filled with “pugging” of stone or brick and clay mixed with
chopped straw and then plastered over in the manner of the “black and
white” or half timber work in England. Whether the wall spaces between
the studs were ever stopped with “wattle and dab”--an old English
filling of clay, plastered over a kind of loose basketwork of interwoven
wattles or withes--the writer is unable to say with certainty. It is not
at all improbable that the stud spaces were sometimes so filled and it
is quite certain that some of the early Connecticut chimneys were
constructed in this manner. The survival of “wattle and dab” work in New
England in any form is an interesting instance of the persistence and
continuity of craft traditions.
Clapboards were made chiefly of oak or pine and were nailed horizontally
to the outside of the studs. They were usually feather edged and lapped,
the upper over the lower. Although it is not impossible that there was
some precedent in England for the use of clapboards nailed horizontally
on the outside of the studding, it is highly probable that the practice
of applying them in this manner in New England was first dictated by
climatic necessity as a remedy and afterwards became incorporated as an
essential part of frame construction. In some parts of New England,
especially in Rhode Island and portions of Connecticut, studs between
the posts were dispensed with and vertical boarding of oak or pine,
usually more than an inch thick, was nailed to the cills and girts. This
vertical boarding, for which, also, there seems to have been an English
precedent, was generally, though not invariably, covered outside either
with horizontal clapboards or with long shingles.
Shingles of pine were made both in the sizes common to-day and also of
much larger dimensions, the latter being used for the outer sheathing of
walls that had first been boarded. Roof shingles were sometimes laid on
boarding, sometimes on “lathing” or small strips, nailed like purlins on
the rafters. Shingles afforded the usual roofing material not only in
New England but throughout the Colonies, although slate was not unknown
and on some of the larger buildings copper and lead were occasionally
used. In dry weather the danger to shingle roofs from sparking chimneys
and the additional source of danger, at all times, from defective or
uncleaned flues, led our forebears to adopt some rather curious and
interesting methods of fire prevention. In early New England there were
the chimney viewers whose duty it was to inspect the chimneys and compel
the householders, by fines or other means, to keep their chimneys in
repair and have them swept with sufficient frequency. This was a
precaution of the utmost importance in communities where most of the
houses were built of wood.
In Philadelphia, in Colonial times, the sight of a blazing chimney was
enough to throw the whole community into an uproar and blazing chimneys
were the subject of legislation by the Provincial Assembly of 1775,
which enacted that “Every person whose Chimney shall take Fire and blaze
out at the Top, not having been swept within one Calendar Month, shall
forfeit and pay the sum of Twenty Shillings; but if swept within that
Time and taking Fire and blazing out at the Top, the Person who swept
the same, either by himself, his Servants or Negroes, shall forfeit and
pay Twenty Shillings.”
Glass for windows in the beginning of the Colonial period was a luxury
enjoyed by only a few of the more well-to-do settlers and even oiled
paper was not always easy to come by so that oftentimes the humbler
houses had only shutters to close window apertures and afford protection
from the weather. Window glass, however, was imported at an early date
and at an early date, also, glass in small panes was manufactured in
the Colonies.
The earliest windows were filled with small diamond shaped panes leaded
into the casements and the casement window was universally used. In the
fore part of the eighteenth century, double or single hung sash windows
became the fashion and were very generally substituted for the older
casements by alterations made in the manner alluded to in Chapter III,
although, quite frequently, particularly in the Middle and Southern
Colonies, no change in the shape or dimensions of the window openings
was considered desirable or necessary. The lights for the sashes were
universally small and it was not until the end of the eighteenth century
that they increased appreciably in size. It should be remembered that a
great deal of the charm and individuality of fenestration during both
the early Colonial and Georgian periods was due to the manifold
divisions of the lights--with lead in the first instance and with heavy
muntins in the second. A good many of the old leaded casements that had
endured, despite the favour of the new styles, till the outbreak of the
Revolutionary War disappeared at that time, the lead being melted to
make bullets. This is said to have been the fate of the original windows
in the Church of St. David at Radnor.
Paint, in the first years of colonisation during the seventeenth
century, though not unknown, was not in common use and it must be
admitted that the old woodwork, whether oak or pine, took on a
delightful tone in the course of a few years from the combined agency of
the atmosphere and the smoke of wood fires. In Pennsylvania and the
neighbourhood, paint both inside and out seems to have been used from
the first. It should be remembered, particularly in this connexion, that
paint for either exterior or interior use in the Colonial and Georgian
periods was not invariably white. Colours were frequently used and
specific reference has been made in Chapter VIII to the employment of
paint of various colours for panelling and other interior woodwork.
The panelling in many of the old Colonial houses, and for that matter
the same thing may be said with perfect truth of much of the panelling
to be found in houses of the Georgian type, exhibits marked
irregularities. Although the almost mediæval methods of the early
craftsmen were gradually supplanted by other ways of treating the
material, there was always a delightful personal element of originality
and lack of symmetry in the panelling and woodwork generally. It is this
very originality that gives it its charm and interest. It is precisely
like the features of the human face. If all the features of any human
face were absolutely symmetrical and regular, so that both sides were
precisely alike in every measurement, the countenance would be truly
imbecile in expression. It is the irregularity which causes the outward
indications of character and gives whatever beauty or the opposite
quality there may be. The early craftsmen had no compunction in making
one panel deeper than another, being governed therein by expediency, the
width of the piece they were using, or the distance to be covered. It
was not that they did not do their work well and in a workmanlike
manner, but they saw no reason why they should be tied down by a slavish
exactitude in the exercise of their craft, and they accordingly took
liberties for which we in our slavishly mechanical days may be truly
thankful, and from which we may learn a valuable lesson if we will only
use our eyes and not be afraid to act with a little independence.