In the sudden renaissance of Palladian detail and Dutch planning, known
under the generic title of Queen Anne, we can distinctly trace the
influence of three systems of construction. First in dignity, as in age,
stands the cottage or old English style, claiming descent from the heavy
Tudor mansions of rude stone, rough hewn timber, and white concrete
filling, usually termed "magpie work," from the startling contrast
between their white panels and tarred timbers. Of these old mansions
numerous examples still remain: they were, for the most part, erected
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but in a few instances a
much earlier date may be assigned. Their construction is of the most
substantial character, and consists in great part of oak frame-work of
large scantling, tenoned and pinned together, the spaces between the
timbers being filled in on both sides with a composition of well-beaten
clay, straw, and chalk, which has become almost as hard as stone.
Embedded in this composition are stout oak laths, held in position by
cross-sticks, to which they are bound by hazel withes, no nail being
used in any part of the work. Second, Queen Anne proper, founded on the
domestic architecture of the Netherlands,--a thoroughly appropriate
system of construction for a country where brick is the vernacular
building-material, and one which perhaps of all others is the most
easily adapted to the requirements of city streets, narrow fronts, and
lofty facades with but little projection to interrupt light and the
various needs of traffic. Third, the style without a name, which during
the last decade has gathered to itself a heterogeneous mass of details,
both English and Continental, combined with picturesque groupings of
parts to form a well-defined and pleasing whole. This system may
certainly be called "free," but, as it appears to be simply a
stepping-stone to something better and more in consonance with the rapid
development of art and the sciences applied to domestic life, it might
perhaps be well termed the Victorian Transition.
The originators of modern Queen Anne were men trained in the Gothic
school, and their watchword was "true construction." This term seems to
be the most elastic and enduring of all the "short and easily-applied
rules" of the profession of architecture. It is, however, applied more
exclusively to the works of revivalists, and is frequently used in
advocacy of new methods and in condemnation of the old. The architects
of the Victorian School had had it impressed upon their minds by Pugin,
Eastlake, and others, that true construction did not exist after the
Middle Ages,--the period of massive timber framing, heavy tables,
mantel-trees, and settles, put together with wooden pins and disdaining
all curves and wavy lines. For a time these professors of artistic truth
were implicitly believed, and architects came to look upon stucco,
plastering, glue, veneers, broken pediments, and applied ornamentation
as monstrous emanations from diseased brains, bewildered and carried off
their balance by the great upheaval of the Renaissance.
The rapidity with which a change of sentiment was achieved is one of the
most remarkable phenomena in architectural history. The worshippers of
"truth" and the rest of the "Seven Lamps," the plaster-ornament-breakers
of 1860, became ten years later the loyal subjects of Queen Anne,
accepting without question the tenets of Stuart and Revett, the Adams,
and even of Nash and Wyatt, who carried the use of stucco and applied
ornamentation to the extremity of extravagance.
In studying the constructive features of the Queen Anne renaissance, we
find many examples of richly-ornamented facades, combined with affected
picturesqueness and quaintness unthought of two hundred years ago. How
are we to account for this change in favor of greater richness and
profusion of detail in a professed revival of the pure and simple forms
of the past, and for the well-established fact, easily recognized by the
student of architecture, that the Queen Anne brick-work of to-day owes
much of its effectiveness, constructively and aesthetically, to the
teaching of an earlier school,--that of the Tudors?
Decorative brick-work, as we find it used in English architecture, is
not simply the outgrowth of the Dutch school, introduced at the
accession of William of Orange. For centuries it had been employed with
success, particularly in Norfolk and other brick-districts. Under the
Tudor sovereigns, moulded and carved brick-work attained a high standard
of excellence. The buildings erected during this period were frequently
enriched with delicately wrought string-moulds, gable-ends, and
cornices, sharp in outline, crisp and spirited in detail. Even under the
Stuarts, Inigo Jones and his great successor Wren executed some noble
works in this material. Unfortunately for art, Parliament in 1625
established the rectangular dimensions of bricks, which thenceforward
were moulded on one dreary model,--a block of clay nine by four by two
and one-half inches. In 1784 Parliament again interfered, and levied
heavy taxes upon all bricks modelled, whether such bricks were spoiled
in the baking or not. This tax was in its action almost prohibitory of
any attempt at establishing a higher grade of workmanship. In the long
interval between 1625 and the repeal of the tax in 1850, workmen in clay
forgot their cunning, and all desire for improvement in design had come
to a stand-still.
The Victorian architects made strenuous efforts to reform so
discreditable a state of things, and, after struggling against the
ignorance of labor and the conservatism of brick-masters, attained their
end, and when, in 1870, the School Board Act went into operation it
found them ready, with well-trained mechanics at their command. In 1850
the revival and expansion of semi-classic architecture wrought in brick
would have been impossible; in 1870 the building world was ripe for the
change. The architects themselves, after receiving their early education
under the leaders of the stucco and plaster school of the later Georgian
reigns, had had their ideas purified and refined by the art-teachings of
the Victorian Gothicists. The result was a spontaneous movement to
develop a new system of construction, with lintelled openings and square
fenestration,--Queen Anne modified and elevated by mediaeval teachings
and traditions. A traditional manner, but a sensible one; a sudden
fashion, if you will; a craze, but a craze upon which the architects of
the future will probably look back with satisfaction, as a bold and
successful step toward the solution of the vexed problem of domestic
architecture,--how to make every man's house his proper dwelling, how to
combine Sir Henry Wotton's three conditions of the art of well
building,--"Commodity, Firmness, and Delight."
Leaving England, with its highly-developed and well-understood systems
of construction as they existed in the seventeenth century, let us turn
to the colonial work of the early settlers of America, keeping in mind
the difficulties which surrounded them, and which not only influenced,
but determined by absolute necessities, many of the constructive
peculiarities which we note in their domestic buildings.
In the English colonies of North America we find, between the first
settlement and the opening of the Revolution, three distinct periods or
types of domestic building following each other in regular and
clearly-defined sequence, from rude and massive structures of stone and
timber to carefully-constructed and artistically-designed mansions.
The first period of colonial architecture embraces the greater part of
the seventeenth century. Numerous edifices of this period may still be
seen in Providence and Newport, Rhode Island, as well as in the western
portions of the State. In Newport County I may instance the Governor
Henry Bull house, built in 1639, the Sueton Grant house, built about
1650, the Governor Coddington house, erected in 1647, and the "Captain
Kid" house, so called, on Conanicut Island. These houses show all the
peculiarities of the constructive science of their day, which aimed
simply to attain solidity and protection from the elements. The chimneys
and end-walls were generally built of stone, laid up as random rubble,
with mortar composed of shell lime, sand, and gravel, and flakes of
broken slate pounded fine. The sides of these buildings, and the ends
above the line of roof-plate, were of frame construction, made of heavy
oak timber, rudely squared, put together with treenails and boarded
with oak, usually at an angle of forty-five degrees, thus making of
every board a separate brace. This boarding was sometimes covered with
coarse stucco, as on the Bull house, or with split shingles, as on the
Governor Coddington house, put on with wrought nails.
"Whitehall," the home of Bishop Berkeley, and a group of old houses on
Thames Street at Newport, may be said to represent the second period of
our colonial architecture,--_i.e._, the first quarter of the eighteenth
century. They are entirely of frame construction, covered over the
boarding with thick clap-boards, with beaded edges, put on with wrought
nails, and the roofs covered with split shingles of a better class than
those previously used. In houses of this period brick began to take the
place of stone for chimneys, and the gambrel roof--a form of
construction whose history so far has eluded the researches of the
student--seems to have originated in the colonies: it continued in favor
for a hundred years or more, and gradually developed into a
well-proportioned architectural structure, with richly-moulded cornice
and well-designed dormers. It had many advantages: the framing was
simple and strong, and the attic rooms possessed all the height and
floor-space obtainable in the modern French roof, so called, while
avoiding the disagreeable box-like appearance of the latter. The
window-frames of these early eighteenth-century houses were made of
plank, mortised and pinned together, the sills and caps being often
moulded and a bead run around the inner edge of the frames. The sashes
were heavy and glazed, with small squares of very inferior glass set in
wide muntins.
In one of these old houses we find an attempt to modify the gambrel into
the hipped roof, a type which became highly developed in the latter half
of the eighteenth century. In the earlier examples this roof, instead of
being truncated and hipped in all around, with a railing above the crown
moulding, was simply hipped in on the lower part, being turned up at the
ends, forming small gables. The dwellings of this class form a
connecting-link between the second and third periods, which may be said
to have commenced about 1730, when the growing commercial importance of
the seaport towns and the rapid accumulation of wealth induced a more
lavish and elegant style of living.
Prominent among the buildings of this period may be noted in Newport the
Hazard house on Queen Street, now Washington Square, the Vernon house
(Rochambeau's head-quarters), the Ayrault house on Thames Street, the old
Hazard house on Broad Street, and the Gibbs house on Mill Street. But
these are only a few representative buildings taken from the many of the
same class to be found scattered through the seaboard States. The
interior arrangements were extremely simple, but the architectural
details and ornamentation are often rich and marked by great delicacy
and refinement in treatment, the _motif_ being based upon the Free
Classic of the Queen Anne and Georgian reigns. The framing of these
buildings is more systematically put together than in the earlier
examples. The great beams crossing the ceilings, and the
supporting-posts and hanging knees, are surfaced and beaded, instead of
being rough-hewn with an axe. The fireplaces are often surrounded with
Dutch tiles held in place by brass bands. The locks and door-trimmings
are of brass. The window-glass is larger and clearer, and is set in
well-made sashes with light muntins carefully wrought by hand. The
truncated roof is fully developed, with moulded cornices of good
section, the modillions being frequently carved with acanthus-leaves.
The entrance door-ways became the central architectural features, and
are often richly carved and moulded, with pilasters surmounted with
Corinthian capitals, and pediments wrought with a wealth of Palladian
detail, cut with much feeling, the muntins in the headlights being often
carved into quaint and fantastic interfacings. In a number of instances
I have found that when glass panels were required in doors the glass was
set as a panel and the doors framed and built around it, the moulding
being wrought on the stiles and rails. Fortunately, the old crown glass
of the period was of the toughest description, and much of it still
remains. The crystal sheets of the present day would not be equal to
such rough usage and the cross-strains of warping wood-work, even if
they did not break in the putting together. The old Hazard house shows
one of the best examples of a moulded and panelled chimney with which I
am familiar. The roof is of a most peculiar section when viewed from the
gable-end, and the cornice is heavily coved with stucco still in good
preservation.
The public buildings of the colonial period were mostly erected during
the era of commercial prosperity between 1730 and the passage of the
Stamp Act and the Boston Port Bill. Well-known examples are the Newport
City Hall, the Redwood Library, and the Jewish Synagogue, all designed
by Harrison; the State-House, by Munday; Trinity Church, the oldest of
all, built in 1724-25, and the Seventh-Day Baptist Church, built in
1729. These buildings bear the stamp of the best English work of the
time, and evince the cultivated taste of their projectors and the skill
and professional knowledge of their architects. With the exception of
the Seventh-Day Baptist Church, they are still in good condition. The
lines in some places have become curved where they were originally
straight, roofs have become hollowed, and floors have settled; but the
white-oak frames bid fair to outlive several generations of the more
ambitious but more slightly constructed edifices of to-day.
The colonial buildings of Providence, like those of Newport, Salem, and
other New-England towns, are mostly of frame construction and of one
general character. A few edifices of brick, showing the details of
Free-Classicism, may occasionally be met with, but the latter material
seems never to have become popular or to have been generally used in
ordinary street-architecture. Among the more characteristic buildings
of Providence and its vicinity may be enumerated, as belonging to the
first period, the Caesar house and Green's stone castle,--the latter, at
East Greenwich, having been erected in 1660. In the Caesar house the
peculiar section of the roof recalls the Hazard house at Newport,
although the latter clearly belongs to the intermediate stage between
the second and third periods. The Witch house at Salem, 1690, recalls
the Sueton Grant house at Newport, notably in the overhanging of the
front at the line of the second floor. The Baptist Church at Providence,
erected in 1774, and the Congregational Church, erected in 1816, are of
the third period. The latter edifice is post-colonial in date, but, like
many other buildings of its class, shows the conservative methods of the
early builders and their immediate followers trained under their
instruction and example.
With the early domestic edifices of Providence I am not familiar enough
to allude to them by name. Many of these houses are extremely rich in
semi-classic detail both exterior and interior. The old John Brown
house, built of brick in 1786, and now owned by Professor Gammell, is a
fine specimen of the dignified and aristocratic type of the Georgian
school. The panelling, mantel-pieces, carvings, etc., are of the richest
colonial character, and are wrought with much feeling, and the doors are
crowned with pediments, a feature not generally adopted in the colonies,
although frequently met with in contemporary English work.
We should naturally look to New York for representative works of the
Dutch William and Queen Anne schools, but the march of improvement and
demolition has been so universal in that city that few examples remain
of the domestic architecture of New Amsterdam. Philadelphia will,
however, supply us with much valuable material to reward our
investigations. In the latter city the Dutch-English school became
firmly established. Many of the old buildings of the colonial period
still remain, and our attention is frequently drawn to some interesting
example while strolling through that portion of the city lying to the
east of Tenth Street. These edifices, both public and domestic, are
generally of brick construction, showing all the marked peculiarities of
English work of the period. The bricks are in nearly every instance laid
up with the Flemish bond. The gable-ends are stepped, as in the
Netherlands; string-moulds and base-courses made of moulded bricks of
good section are often met with; while the whole character and aspect of
their facades are in unison with the conservatism and early training of
the mechanics who erected them. This conservatism and respect for the
ways of their predecessors still exert a powerful influence upon the
building-industries of Philadelphia. The masons of that city still cling
with reverence to the Flemish system of bonding,--the strongest known to
the bricklayer. The planning of the dwelling-houses is different, so far
as I am conversant with them, from the system in vogue in any other
American city. The varied levels of floors in the "front" and "back"
buildings has been tenaciously adhered to by the designers of each
generation. This variety in levels gives a rambling, homely effect which
is very pleasing, and which is capable of being developed into the
highest expression of domestic convenience and artistic elegance of
which our modern Queen Anne is capable.
Of the public buildings, Christ Church, St. Peter's Church, Independence
Hall, Carpenters' Hall, and some others, represent, I think, the best
type of Queen Anne or Georgian architecture to be met with in colonial
work. Their designers seem to have been thoroughly in earnest, and the
details are marked by conscientious adherence to the established
precedents of the time. It was this thorough knowledge of precedent as
applied to mass and detail which enabled their designers to grasp boldly
the problems before them, and, while not departing from the academic
system in which they had been trained, to infuse into each separate
building which they erected a dignity and an individuality of its own.