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VIRGINIA ARCHITECTURE IN
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
By
HENRY CHANDLEE FORMAN
Ph.D. (Fine Arts), A.I.A.
With Drawings and Photographs by the Author
VIRGINIA 350TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION CORPORATION
WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
1957
COPYRIGHT(C), 1957 BY HENRY CHANDLEE FORMAN
Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet, Number 11
Dedicated to Singleton Peabody Moorehead
INTRODUCTION
In the green, southern land which today comprises the Commonwealth of
Virginia, there flourished three centuries ago the fine art of
architecture, and it is with that subject--the art of building in good
design, with sound construction, and for the proper use--that this brief
essay is concerned. But it is deplorable for one interested in the
subject of historic preservation to have to relate what time and man
have done to seventeenth-century Virginia architecture; there is so very
little left compared to what formerly existed. If it has not been man
himself with his so-called "improvements," his neglect, and his
vandalism, it has been fire, the weather, and the insects which have
caused widespread obliteration--almost a clean sweep--of the structures
of those times.
Nevertheless, by means of careful studies of a few existing buildings,
of several foundations under the ground, of artifacts and manuscripts,
of old prints and photographs--and even of relevant material found in
Britain,--we possess today enough data to make a goodly outline of the
subject. Set forth here are the principal styles of architecture in
Virginia between 1600 and 1700, with some account of their origins and
their development.
[Illustration: PUNCHED BRASS KEY ESCUTCHEON
2-5/8" long, from the "Bin House," Jamestown]
The writer has endeavored to approach this task with understanding and
sympathy, for which he is qualified. He has lived on the Jamestown road
in Williamsburg and has Jamestown in his blood; he has written and
lectured much on Virginia; is currently a registered architect in that
Commonwealth; and on both sides of his family traces his descent back
to the seventeenth-century Chews, Brents, Ayres, and Skipwiths, who,
living along the banks of the James River, saw much of the architecture
described herein. In the preparation for this little work, two incidents
stand out as being important and essential: in 1936 he was a house guest
of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities and
lived in its "Malvern Hill" reproduction at Jamestown while he made
studies of the ruins on that property; and in 1940 he stayed several
nights on the Pamunkey Indian Reservation, near West Point, as guest of
those Virginia Indians, while he made a study in art and archaeology in
part preparation for the doctorate.
This work is protected under the copyright law of the United States of
America, and no part of this work may be taken or used in any
fashion--whether text or illustration--without written permission from
the publishers and the author.
We commence the fascinating story of the early architecture of Virginia
by describing the first architectural style which ever flourished
there--a style about which most people know little and most school
children nothing.
VIRGINIA ARCHITECTURE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
I
FIRST IN VIRGINIA: AMERICAN INDIAN ARCHITECTURE
When the first English colonists arrived before Jamestown Island,
Virginia, on May 13, 1607, there was already in existence an indigenous
architecture which had been flourishing in that land for hundreds of
years. It is true that that particular kind of architecture, American
Indian, was, by and large, a perishable wooden one; nevertheless, the
subject may not be ignored by stating that it did not exist. This Indian
art of building forms an important chapter in the early history of
Virginia.
For thousands of years the Indian--a light-brown man, with brown or
black eyes, and straight, blue-black hair--was the owner of what is now
the United States of America. That he roamed the country which is now
called Virginia for "countless centuries" is proven by the ancient
Folsom spear points--one of red jasper--discovered among the Peaks of
Otter, near the Skyline Drive, Bedford County, Virginia. And the Indians
who made those spear points lived thirteen thousand or more years ago.
The Indian tribes who settled east of the Mississippi River became
skilful in mound-building, sculpture, and other accomplishments. They
were generally clever and dexterous peoples. In the areas covered by
Virginia and the other southeastern states the life of the natives had
an exotic flavor. Their graceful and courtly manner was noted by the
first European explorers.
At the time of the white settlement in 1607, the land of Virginia was
occupied by three main linguistic groups: first, the _Algonquian_, which
included the Powhatan Confederacy in tidewater north of the James River,
and the gentle Accowmacks and Accohannocks on the Eastern Shore; second,
the _Siouan_, located in Piedmont Virginia above the falls of the James,
that is, west of Richmond--a group of Indians which included the
Monacan and Manahoac Confederacies; third, the _Iroquoian_, which
included the Cherokees and the Nottaways, both tribes of which lived
south and southeast of the James River.
In 1607 there were altogether about 17,000 Indians in Virginia between
the mountains and the sea. It has been estimated that they lived in
about two hundred settlements, called "towns," and in some four thousand
dwelling-houses.
Their architecture, as has been mentioned, was for the most part a
perishable one. At this time, three hundred and fifty years after 1607,
not one American Indian wooden structure has remained above Virginia
ground. By such complete destruction we and our descendants are forever
deprived of the physical background which would continuously remind us
of the Indian past, in the way that the city of Rome reminds Italians of
their Roman past.
i. THE TOWNS
In the Old Dominion, Indian towns were small, usually covering about an
acre of ground and containing ten or twelve buildings--seldom more than
thirty. They were always built on or near a river or other body of
water. One of these settlements by the name of "Kecoughtan," the present
Hampton, possessed in 1607 only eighteen Indian buildings.
The towns themselves may be grouped into three kinds: open, fortified,
and partially fortified.
The first group, the open towns, comprised those settlements which were
laid out irregularly, with the buildings generally arranged loosely on
either side of a central avenue or cleared space. Footpaths
criss-crossed this open area.
The fortified or walled towns were, as far as is known, built on two
designs, round and square. The chief constructional method of
fortification was the palisade-and-moat, or to put it another way, the
stockade-and-ditch. This architectural arrangement, it may be mentioned,
was employed by some of the peoples of prehistoric Europe, and by the
Romans, and Anglo-Saxons, and others abroad. But the American Indian
developed the method entirely independently of Europeans.
The palisades thus built by the Indians in Virginia usually were tree
trunks or heavy timbers, from five inches to eight in diameter.
Sometimes, as at "Patawomeke" or "Potomac" village, the posts were only
three to four inches across. Corner posts were generally larger, being
ten inches thick or thereabouts. The timbers, usually with the branches
uncut, were for the most part set vertically in the bank of earth thrown
up by excavating the moat or trench. They reached two or three feet
underground, and rose seven to twelve feet above the earth. At times,
the posts leaned outward to make scaling them more difficult. The ditch
was usually outside the palisade.
Often these heavy timbers were set close enough to touch each other,
when they are called "palisading." At other times, they were placed in
the ground a little apart from one another, the interstices being filled
with branches and the bark of trees interwoven, and with bullrush mats,
to make the fortification spear-and-arrow proof. This method of
construction we call puncheoning. In other words, the stockade comprised
"puncheons" which were matted and "wattled"--"wattling" being the term
for the basketry type of weaving of branches and bark strips. When the
posts of a fort were wattled six inches apart, it was comparatively easy
for the defenders to shoot through cracks in the wattling.
A variation of the palisade method was the twisting and interweaving of
the top branches of the tree-posts into a tight mass, in order to
discourage climbers. For observation and defense, loopholes at a
convenient distance from each other were usually inserted in the walls.
Not all Indian palisades were substantial. Perhaps some became too
ancient for their own good. Great storms might blow them down on a dark
night. At one Siouan village, "the first Puff blew down all the
Palisadoes that fortified the town." As a result, some fortifications
had their palisades doubled or trebled for strength. Other fortified
settlements were erected like a nest of walls, one within the other.
[Illustration: Shapes of Indian Fortified Towns in Virginia]
Circular towns, like Paski, in Southampton County, Virginia, usually had
in the center a ceremonial space firebed. Separate buildings were
grouped about that area. In order to protect the inhabitants against
attack, the usual entrance in the walls was narrow, so that only one man
at a time could enter. Often measuring two-and-a-half feet wide, such a
gateway was formed, snail-shell-like, by the overlapping of the ends of
the palisade. When the English in Virginia saw such gates, they called
them "turnpikes," possibly because the gates carried spears or sharp
projections, vaguely resembling the spiked entrances of medieval
England.
The plan of another circular settlement, "Patawomeke" or "Potomac," in
Stafford County, Virginia, is of interest because there were two rings
of palisaded posts, not concentric, but with the rings touching each
other at one point. The inner ring was about one hundred seventy-five
feet in diameter, and the outer two hundred and eighty.
Square towns, like the Nottaway settlement, also in Southampton County,
usually measured from two hundred to three hundred feet on a side, and
had more than one palisaded entrance. Though not yet proven, it is
believed that when the Indians employed "flankers," which are side or
corner projections, or bastions, in their walls, as they did upon
occasion, they copied them from the English settlers.
The third class of town, the partially fortified, was very common. The
chief building and a few structures would be enclosed, leaving the
remainder unprotected outside the walls.
ii. THE MOUNDS
The Indian earth mounds in the land of Virginia have not perished as
rapidly as the wooden buildings, with the result that many mounds have
survived in one fashion or another. They are of at least three kinds:
the burial mound, the platform mound, and the effigy mound. But it must
be admitted that to this date, as far as research has disclosed,
examples of the last two categories have not yet been identified.
By far the greater number of mounds were located in Piedmont Virginia,
above the Falls of the James. Unlike the Siouan and the Iroquoian, the
Algonquian tribes of tidewater Virginia, such as the Powhatans, did not
erect earth mounds--at least, as far as present evidence indicates. The
earliest white American to have explored scientifically a Virginia mound
was Thomas Jefferson. A few years before the American Revolution, he
excavated and examined a burial mound on the Rivanna River in Albemarle
County, and found it to be a communal grave with an estimated one
thousand skeletons laid in distinct strata. The structure was spheroidal
in shape, and about forty feet in diameter. Its original height was
thought to be twice the height of a man.
Such a burial mound was made gradually by covering with earth and stone
one skeleton lying on the ground, then placing a second skeleton on top
and again covering with earth and stone, until in that manner a thousand
burials had been made. A similar mound, but larger, was found beside the
Rapidan River, in Orange County. Many earth mounds have been found west
of the Shenandoah River.
Within this burial mound classification may be included the "cairn," a
Gaelic name meaning "the heap," and comprising a grave under a small
pile of stones. The largest of such rock heaps is said to be fifteen
feet in diameter and three feet high. Several small cairns have been
located on the banks of the Rivanna.
As for platform mounds, it was the custom of the Cherokee tribe to erect
such elevated earth forms as sub-structures or bases for wooden temples
or council chambers. As has been already indicated, some Cherokees lived
in the land of Virginia, notably in the vicinity of the Peaks of Otter,
in Bedford County. Further south, as far away as Georgia, some platform
mounds are immense, man-made hills, formerly covered with smooth,
polished, hard clay, which at times reflected the rays of the sun. Great
buildings once stood upon the summits of those mounds. Because none have
hitherto been discovered in the Cherokee area of Virginia does not mean
that none existed. And the same can be said of the Cherokee effigy
mounds.
An effigy mound is one built for religious purposes, generally in the
shape or silhouette of an animal or bird; but as yet, none has been
discovered in Virginia. The probability that there were effigy mounds is
strong.
iii. DWELLING-HOUSES
Contrary to popular belief, the Indians of Virginia were not a tent
people. They lived in wigwams, which are _houses_. Tents belonged to the
natives of the Great Plains, like the Sioux Indians.
Among the various types of wigwams there are two chief kinds: the
circular or "beehive" dwelling, and the rectangular or "arbor" house.
Both of these names were given by the English settlers because the
buildings resembled constructions in their own homeland across the sea.
The round house had a domed roof. On the other hand, the "arbor" abode
resembled, in the words of the English, "the arbories in our gardens in
England." The roofs of such habitations were arched in the form of a
tunnel vault.
[Illustration: Indian dwellings in Va.]
The construction of the wigwam was generally a framework of saplings or
young trees spaced nearly vertically in the ground at regular intervals,
and bowed at the top, to make the dome or tunnel vault, as the case
might be. Although the saplings were usually tied securely at the top
with "withes"--which are flexible twigs,--and with roots, vines, reeds,
or bark strips, some dwellings had young trees long enough to have both
ends stuck in the ground, so that nothing had to be tied at the top.
Ordinarily for strength the walls of such homes were battered or sloped
inward at the top.
At all events, cross pieces of small poles, running horizontally, were
fastened to the saplings in order to serve as braces and as supports for
the various kinds of curtain material employed by the Indians--materials
like woven-grass mats, bark, and skins.
One of the curious features of some of these arbor houses which the
writer does not believe to have been elsewhere described before, is the
use of a kind of "lunette" or half-moon window, of multiple lights, on
the long side of a domicile. Such a feature gave additional ceiling
space and more headroom. If lunettes were employed opposite each other
on each side of a wigwam roof, for which arrangement we have no
evidence, the roof must have resembled what we call a "cross-vault." It
is interesting that lunettes and cross-vaults of masonry were employed
by the Romans and the Goths of Europe. That the Indian had lunettes and
probably had cross-vaults was a mere coincidence.
It seems that most of the arbor houses averaged twelve feet wide and
eighteen long, according to finds made in excavations. Even so, many
lodgings were longer. Some were over seventy feet, and were divided into
separate compartments by interior partitions of saplings and mats.
[Illustration: Two arbor-houses in Va.
Garden
Listening post
Framing detail
Path Border]
For wigwams the covering mats were woven with long rushes or grasses,
and for the most part extended from the top of the house to the ground.
They were usually three or four feet wide and in length eight or ten
feet, and were stitched together or to the framework of the dwelling.
Furthermore, mats were not the only covering employed. Bark of cedar,
oak, or hickory was used, and made a thicker and better insulated
material than mats, which in summer permitted the interiors to heat up
like stoves. The bark was stripped off the tree in great flakes, and was
laid so closely together that no rain could enter. Some wigwams had a
combination of mat and bark, like mat walls and bark roofs. And
sometimes animal skins were used as coverings.
As for house entrances, the beehive had one doorway, the arbor abode
usually one at each end. The "doors" were usually mats, which could be
rolled up neatly in hot weather. Often in winter curtains of bear skins
would cover the doorways.
The Indians anticipated the present outdoor-, glass-wall-, and
barbecue-loving age by arranging their wigwams so that in warm weather
the sidewall mats could be rolled up on the sapling framework, much as
the flaps of a circus tent can be raised. Consequently, in the Indian
dwelling one or more whole sides could be opened to balmy breezes,
throwing the whole interior construction open to outside gaze.
The place for the fire was the firebed, and it stood in the ground in
the center of the wigwam. When the lodging was long, there was usually a
fireplace for each compartment. Flues there were none. The smoke from
the fire, winding its way leisurely around the interior, finally found
its way through an outlet or louvre in the roof or through windows at
the eaves level. In wet weather a mat flap or piece of bark would cover
the louvre. On the other hand, in the summer time, the Indian enjoyed
cooking over an outdoor firebed in true barbecue style.
The wigwam windows were merely apertures without glass--true
"wind-holes." They comprised single, double, triple, or quadruple
lights, sometimes arranged in "lunette" fashion, as has been indicated.
To keep out bad weather, these openings had moveable covers, like bark
shutters; but the prevailing method seems to have been to run long mats,
either lengthwise or crosswise, over the arbor roof, so that the ends of
the mats formed covering flaps.
It is interesting to note that the Indian knew that smoky rooms were
undesirable, so that when he could obtain them, logs of pine were
burned, a process which cut down the amount of smoke. On rare occasions
when the fire went out, he lit pine splinter "candles," of which he
generally kept a large stock on hand.
When he went journeying apace, he rolled heavy logs against the doorways
to keep out wild beasts and marauders.
Possibly because the American Indian was a descendant of Orientals, he
was accustomed to little in the way of furniture. Chairs and tables he
appears to have had none. The ground was stable and permanent. An
important chief might have, however, a low earth bench covered with
skins, for comfort. But the rest of the people sat on the ground or upon
their "beds." It should be written here that the whites were not the
first on this side of the Atlantic to use built-in furniture. The Indian
invented built-in beds, which were turned into benches in the daytime.
They were made by thrusting forked sticks into the ground, about a foot
or two in height, to support a horizontal framework of small poles, tied
to the saplings of the wigwam itself. Over that framework were stretched
skins, furs, coarse mats, and sometimes soft white grass mats of
excellent quality and handsome patterns. Great men, like the "Emperor"
Powhatan, had leather pillows, a real luxury. In their arrangement the
built-in beds were in the arbor houses placed generally end-to-end along
two or three sides. Again, if there were plenty of space, the beds were
separated one from another, but still abutted the walls. In the beehive
dwellings the beds circled the fire.
One feature which we today remember in our old-fashioned homes is the
pantry or buttery; but the Indian habitation was not even "modern"
enough for that. There was no native pantry. Food contained in woven
sacks, gourds, and like receptacles, was hung from the cross-beams high
above the heads of the occupants of the wigwam.
iv. KING'S HOUSES, TREASURE HOUSES, AND TEMPLES
The lodging of a "werowance" or chief, or of an "emperor," who was head
of many chiefs, was called by the English a "King's House" or "Palace."
It was commonly an enlarged arbor house, "broad and long," sometimes
with winding interior passages. The principal residence of Powhatan was
at Portan or Powhatan Bay, on York River, and was of the arbor variety
and very long. Another King's House, dating about 1649, on the Eastern
Shore of Virginia, had a framework of great locust posts sunk in the
ground at the corners and at the partitions, and the arched roof was
tied to the framework by vines and roots. In breadth this "Palace" was
some sixty feet long and eighteen or twenty wide. The bed platforms,
each about six feet long, were placed on the long sides of the edifice,
and were separated from each other by some five feet. In the center was
the customary firebed. The Eastern Shore potentate himself sat upon a
bank of earth adorned with finely-dressed deer skins, and with the very
best otter and beaver skins which could be found in that region.
As in the ordinary dwelling-house, the entire wall of mats and coverings
could be rolled up as high as the King should desire.
In size, the Treasure House of Powhatan, at a place called Orapaks, was
one of the largest known structures in seventeenth-century Virginia.
According to accounts, it reached somewhere between one hundred fifty
and one hundred eighty feet in length.
That some of these immense buildings were not without ornament is proven
by the description of the sculptured corner posts of the Orapaks
Treasure House. There were figures resembling a bear, leopard, dragon,
and giant man. Another popular architectural sculpture was the bird,
such as eagle, which was set upon great Indian edifices.
The "Mortuary Temple," sometimes called by the English the "Temple,"
"Temple-Tomb," or "Bone-House," seems to have been the most interesting
of their known wooden edifices. To the Indians such a structure was a
"Quacasum House," because it contained idols or "quioccos." Some of
those images of their gods were ornate, being hand-carved and painted,
dressed with beads, copper, and necklaces, and adorned with skins.
Sometimes the idols were placed under a matted canopy in the same way
that the Madonnas of some of the Old Masters abroad sat under canopies
with "cloths of honor" behind them.
[Illustration: A Central Type of Indian Temple in Virginia]
The interior of the Mortuary Temple was dark and mysterious. The only
light, it seems, came through a single doorway. Some of these sanctums
were arbor-like, but others were built on a central plan: round,
hexagonal, or octagonal. We know that the roof of at least one Temple
was an ogee-pointed, "gored" dome. An ogee is a line of double
curvature, and the silhouette of such a dome was curved in that manner.
At Pamunkey, Virginia, Powhatan possessed three Temples, situated on top
of red sandy hills--which, by the way, may have been artificial platform
mounds. Each structure was built arbor-wise, and reached nearly sixty
feet in length. Others of the same ilk extended in length as much as one
hundred feet. Like the treasure houses, they had a circle of carved
posts surrounding them, upon which the native sculptors could make
ornate and colorful carvings.
The chief function of the Temple was a temporary storage place for the
important dead, before permanent burial in ossuaries or mounds. The
bodies were stuffed mummies with bones and skin still intact, and were
laid out side by side upon a scaffolding of vertical poles about nine or
ten feet high, well lined with mats, and roofed with a matted tunnel
vault. Such a scaffolding under the temple roof formed a kind of
miniature arbor home for the deceased. As in ordinary dwellings, the
mats of the scaffolding could be rolled up at will. Beneath the platform
lived priests, who had charge of the dead and who were reported to have
spent their time mumbling incantations night and day.
It seems to have been customary to orient the temple doorway, that is,
to place it on the eastern side, and to build, as in the king's houses,
dark and labyrinthine passageways, located in the west end of the
sanctum, where stood two or three "black" idols, facing eastward.
v. BATH HOUSES AND OTHER BUILDINGS
The English called the Indian bath house by the names of "Bagnio" and
"Sweating House." Such fabrics were generally circular, like the outdoor
ovens used by the Indians, and had no windows. The Siouan tribes of
Virginia built some of their bath houses of stone; but throughout
Virginia the common material for such structures was wood. As in the
ordinary dwelling, regularly-spaced saplings were thrust into the
ground and bowed overhead. Then the interstices were closely woven with
branches--that is, wattled,--and were plastered with mud.
The Indian took what amounted to a Turkish bath, a method still in use
in Finland, Mexico, and other parts of the world. But in Virginia the
bath went like this: the bather heated ten or twelve small or "pebble"
stones in a fire. When they had become red hot, they were placed in a
firebed inside the "Bagnio." The bather then stripped, grabbed a
blanket, and shut the door. Slowly pouring water upon the hot stones, he
caused steam to rise so thick you could cut it with a knife. He sat on a
bench until he could no longer stand the intense heat, at which moment
he rushed out of the bath house and jumped into the river, over his head
and ears. If the bather happened to be ill, he was supposed to be washed
clean of sickness. At any rate that was the way of taking the Saturday
night bath on the James, the York, the Pamunkey, the Rivanna, and
elsewhere in the Old Dominion.
* * * * *
Other structures known to have been built by the Indian in Virginia were
hunting houses, platforms, fences, landings, and outdoor ceremonial
centers.
Many were the weeks that the Indian left logs rolled in front of his
house door and was off hunting or foraging. On long trips he erected
"hunting houses," temporary shelters also known as "camping stations."
These were probably simplified wigwams, which could be easily taken down
and reerected in another place.
In every town there stood "scaffolding" or raised platforms, where the
inhabitants frequently sat and conversed, and which served somewhat the
same purpose as our own outdoor summerhouses of olden times. But the
Indian platforms had a loft made of hurdles, upon which the women of the
settlement placed their maize, fish, and other foods to dry.
There was another kind of platform, constructed in their tilled fields,
to serve as scarecrows to their crops of beans, pompions, tomatoes,
squash, corn, and the like. Upon the platform was built a small cabin or
cottage, sometimes arranged in the shape of a half-dome, like a "round
chair," in which an Indian sat to watch the fields. Such listening posts
anticipated our own radar warning installations.
The usual fence was a row of irregular pales, but sometimes it was made
of wattles. A rarer kind, it seems, was a low fence to border paths
which comprised overlapping semi-circles of tree branches. We today have
the same kind of staggered semi-circles for our park paths, but they are
usually made of iron, which the Indian did not possess.
Nothing appears to be known of the form of the Indian dock or wharf,
like the "Indian Landing" of 1654 on the Harmanson tract in Accomack
County; but their bridges were generally simple constructions comprising
forked stakes with poles laid across them for a footway. Because there
were no wheeled vehicles, footpaths and foot bridges for land travel
were sufficient. For that matter, the main highway was the water.
In this connection, the oldest "road" in Virginia, called by the English
"the Greate Road," which ran from James City to Middle Plantation, now
Williamsburg, was at first--at least in the Jamestown-Pasbyhayes section
of it--an Indian pathway. In the beginning the English called it a
"bridle" path.
The open-air ceremonial centers, to which the English gave the name of
"Dancing Grounds," played an important part in Indian life. To the
native the art of dancing was essential to his religion. The usual large
space was layed out for dances and bounded by a circle of wooden posts,
sculptured with painted heads. At one center the English likened such
carven figures to the faces of veiled nuns. Other posts sometimes had
men's countenances upon them.
vi. UNUSUAL CONSTRUCTIONS
At the native town of Sapponey, Brunswick County, Virginia, there was an
interesting variation of the usual town plan. The dwellings were row
houses, adjoining one another in the form of a circle. The individual
home had palisaded walls, made of large, squared timbers, set two feet
deep in the earth and rising seven feet above it. The back walls of such
habitations formed the town wall, and there were three entrances into
the settlement, formed by leaving passageways about six feet wide
between certain pairs of buildings. But the most unusual feature was
that the abodes possessed pitched or gable roofs, built with rafters.
Upon the rafters hickory bark strips were set so closely together that
no rain could penetrate.
Another Indian habitation with pitched roof and palisaded walls once
stood in a spot north of the present Pamunkey Indian Reservation, near
West Point, Virginia. Still another native homestead, it seems, had
puncheoned walls with a low-pitched roof of unusual construction: each
half of the roof was hinged at the ridge and could be raised like a flap
in order to obtain better ventilation.
Perhaps the Indian obtained the idea of a pitched roof from the whites,
but that theory is open to question. We know that, among other good
qualities, the native had an inventive mind. It is difficult for some of
us to realize that some Virginia Indians employed plastered ceilings in
their dwelling-houses, but that is exactly how the Cherokees of Virginia
constructed their ceilings--the plaster being the usual combination of
clay and straw.
* * * * *
The first chapter in Virginia's architectural history--the Indian
chapter--is one of which we may be proud, because, in spite of its
widespread perishable nature, the architecture was well-designed,
beautifully ornamented, and often of great size and dignity. It, too,
sometimes revealed the native's inventive tendencies. No one can
relegate with justice the status of Indian architecture to a lower place
when the Orapaks Treasure House of Powhatan had a larger floor area than
that of the greatest mansion of all Virginia in the seventeenth
century--Sir William Berkeley's home, "The Green Spring," near
Jamestown--which is shown in our diagram without the "ell" addition.
Even with the "ell" included, the Orapaks Treasure House was larger.
Moreover, this Treasure House was more extensive in ground space than
the largest English house of its time in the American colonies--Lord
Baltimore's "Governor's Castle," St. Mary's City, Maryland, of 1639.
[Illustration: Comparative Floor Areas
3,000 sq. ft. + Powhatan's Orapaks Treasure H.
2,413 sq. ft. "The Green Spring," Va. c. 1646
2,934 sq. ft. "The Governor's Castle" Md., 1639]
The Cherokees of Virginia may have had, and probably did have, council
chambers larger than the Orapaks Treasure House, similar to the great
town house holding five hundred persons, which the Cherokees constructed
at Chote in Tennessee.
Of this fact we may be sure: the Cherokees were great builders. They
comprised a nation extending from Virginia to Georgia, and only a
century and a half ago they possessed their own written language, their
own dictionary, and their own printed newspaper. It was from that
Cherokee nation that Will Rogers descended, and it was Rogers' great
uncle, Chief Joseph Vann, who built for himself in 1803 in the Georgia
mountains a large brick mansion, with a handsome hanging staircase and
tall panelled mantels and richly-carved cornices with rosettes. It is a
manor house after the English fashion; but in the attic are two
incipient, rounded, Indian council chambers with sapling
partitions--because an Indian is always an Indian. It has been this
writer's good fortune to restore Vann's mansion for the State. But how
could a mere Indian, our school children will say, build a manor equal
to that of a white man? The Cherokees could.
* * * * *
Thirty-seven years before the English established Jamestown, a Spanish
Jesuit and other missionaries from Florida erected (1570), according to
the best authority, a hut and small chapel in the James-York region of
what later became Virginia. These buildings may have resembled the crude
St. Augustine mission of 1566, the earliest Spanish church in this
country, which was constructed of vertical plank walls and with a gable
roof. No trace of these two structures has ever been found, but they
constitute a short Spanish chapter in the history of early Virginia
architecture.
II
THE ENGLISH VERNACULAR AT A GLANCE
As we have seen, the first English colonists, arriving in 1607 from
across the sea, to construct James Fort in Virginia, encountered a
native architecture flourishing about them. In establishing that outpost
in the New World, which was to become the first permanent English
settlement on this side of the Atlantic, as well as the beginning of the
British Empire--now the Commonwealth,--they brought with them a
knowledge of, and skill in, English architecture. At that time, the
beginning of the seventeenth century, architecture in Britain had
reached a very high level of culture--witness the great minsters, like
Lincoln and York, or the great castles, like Windsor and Hampton Court.
Without an elementary knowledge of the English vernacular, no one can
fully understand the early English architecture of Virginia. Besides,
contrary to popular belief up to this very day, Virginia architecture
was much more English than has been supposed.
The Britain of 1600 was a country of fortified manors, battlemented
castles, thatched and wattled farmhouses, picturesque chimneystacks,
half-timber work, winding tower staircases, and tracery-windowed abbeys,
minsters, and little parish churches. For the most part the spirit of
this building work was informal, romantic, and naive; it partook of
things not according to rule; it breathed Chaucer.
In short, Britain at that period was a land where _medieval
architecture_ flourished almost everywhere.
Now what is this Medieval Style which lasted in England more than a
thousand years? It comprises three chief divisions: Anglo-Saxon, Norman,
and Gothic. Yet the great English Gothic Style is itself subdivided into
styles based on window tracery which are called "Early English,"
"Decorated," "Perpendicular," and "Tudor." Of main concern to us in this
essay is that last subdivision, the "Tudor,"--also called "Late Gothic"
or "Late Medieval",--which was chiefly centered around the Court of King
Henry VIII (1509-1547). It may be necessary to remind the reader that
Henry, wife-lover and neck-chopper, was an enthusiastic builder, who
initiated in England a domestic architecture in which the desire for
comfort was paramount. No better homes have been built in England than
at the height of Tudor influence.
Most authorities date medieval architecture as terminating in England in
1558 with the accession of Elizabeth to the throne. But it was not as
simple as that. On the contrary, the vast majority of British buildings
after 1558 continued to be built in the Tudor or Late Medieval manner,
even as late as Queen Anne and the year 1702 or thereabouts. It was this
long and widespread persistence of the traditional manner of building
which greatly influenced Virginia architecture in the seventeenth
century.
[Illustration: A Medieval House in England
. Pyramid Chimney .
. Crow-steps .
. Half-timber Work .
. Lattice Casements .]
Furthermore, there came upon the English scene in Elizabeth's time, an
architecture called "Early Renaissance," comprising two styles, the
Elizabethan (1558-1603) and the Jacobean (1603-1625). The "Early
Renaissance" was followed by the "High Renaissance" in architecture, a
subject which has little to do with this essay, but which has much to do
with Williamsburg.
But in spite of the penetrating wedge of the "Early Renaissance" into
the great mass of English medieval construction, Britain remained a
place where medieval building traditions, especially in the rural
areas, remained powerful and overwhelmingly popular throughout the
seventeenth century. The situation was, for all purposes, like a grain
of Renaissance sand in a medieval bucket. _That_ we should remember when
we survey the early architecture of Virginia.
The significant aspect of the transposition of the English Medieval
Style to Virginia was that the "lag"--meaning the delay caused at that
period by an architectural style crossing an ocean--served only to bring
Virginia closer to the heart of medievalism. This lag in fact gave a new
lease on life to the Medieval Style flourishing within the Old Dominion.
[Illustration: A BRANDING IRON FROM JAMESTOWN.
This implement for marking cattle or hogsheads with the initials
_R L N_ came to light in the ruins of the First State House. On the
right is shown the side view, with most of the twelve-inch handle
excluded.]
III
THE ENGLISH STYLES OF ARCHITECTURE IN VIRGINIA
For many years after the founding of James Fort in Virginia, the Indian
continued to build in his traditional manner along side the
newly-blossoming English architecture. In what year the last, authentic,
wooden structure of Indian style was constructed in Virginia by a native
Indian is not known, but it probably was in the first quarter of the
nineteenth century. However that may be, in eighteenth-century Virginia
Indian construction was a dying art, of which the skills, it seems, have
been completely lost. Even if you gave the present-day Indians in the
Old Dominion the tools to build them with, those natives would not know
how to erect the great wigwams and temples of their ancestors. Such a
statement is no minimization, because this writer once resided as a
guest in the Pamunkey Indian Reservation near West Point, Virginia, and
he found the natives there, who are descendants of the oldest and most
powerful clan in Virginia, who possess the oldest Indian reservation in
the United States, living in clapboard houses of the kind we call
"shacks." With all their inherited courtly bearing and good manners,
they had even forgotten how to make their own pottery, with its
indigenous designs based on the scroll, the swastika, and the like.
Instead, they sold to tourists and visitors to the reservation imported
Southwestern or Pueblo pottery, of step-designs. To that favor they had
come at last, three centuries after Jamestown.
The fact that a large percent of the people who settled Jamestown, and
other English settlements of Virginia in the seventeenth century were
lowly fishermen, farmers and laborers who were not adjusted to new
national economic conditions, unsuccessful tradesmen, unemployed
craftsmen, and such folk, has a direct bearing on the style of
architecture introduced from Britain into Virginia. Because there were
few bluebloods, and because most were of the humbler classes, the
average Virginian came from the overwrought farms on remote and secluded
roads, the little small-town shops, in narrow streets, the peasant
dwellings of sod or wattle, far out on the fens and moors of Britain.
The real point is, architecturally speaking, it was in these very rural
districts of England the Medieval Style was the most entrenched.
[Illustration: The First English Architecture in Va. was at James Fort
(1607) now washed away, off this point below Orchard Run]
It can not be said that the yeomen, the sawyers, the joiners, the
hog-raisers, the merchants, or the carpenters of Jamestown Island--and
we know many by name and exactly where they lived there--were interested
in the continental, classical or Renaissance ideas in architecture which
were commencing to be fashionable among the rich and affluent. It was,
on the contrary, those very same poorer classes, ill-affording and not
understanding the Renaissance fads, who were the most reactionary of all
in their approach to building methods. They loved medieval architecture.
They doted on their Gothic heritage, whether it were a diamond-pane
casement or a stock floor plan for a traditional house.
By the year 1615--eight years after the founding of James Fort--the
great English architect, Inigo Jones, had taken home from Italy a number
of books by Palladio, distinguished Italian architect in the classical
manner, and by 1622 had completed the important banqueting hall at
"White Hall," London, replete with rows of classical pilasters. But the
Virginia settlers--probably at least ninety-five percent of them--knew
nothing of Inigo Jones and Palladio, because, in their arts and crafts
thinking, the colonists were overwhelmingly medieval.
We come, now, to the three English styles of architecture prevalent in
Virginia in the seventeenth century: the Medieval, the Jacobean, and the
Transitional. The first two were common throughout that hundred years,
but the third, the Transitional, began about 1680 and extended about
one-third of the way into the eighteenth century.
i. THE MEDIEVAL STYLE
[Illustration: Medieval One-Bay Dwelling (c. 1670) in Va.
Restoration by Author]
The buildings represented by this first style should be spoken of as
"Virginia Medieval Architecture," because that is what the style is.
"Colonial" and "Early Colonial" are technically not correct names for
the style. This particular manifestation in architecture belonged to the
style, English Medieval; it was the direct product, not an "afterglow,"
of the Middle Ages.
The Old Dominion at this time was full of medieval structures, of which
there were hundreds of kinds of every description: windmills, water
mills, taverns, guest houses, coffee houses, churches, mansions,
dwellings, hovels, state houses, glebes, brew-houses, warehouses,
furnaces, stores, shops, tanneries, market houses, guard houses,
blockhouses, tenements, silk factories, and countless outhouses. Taken
as a whole, these buildings possessed Tudor features identical to those
which we find in the medieval architecture of Britain: steeply-pointed
roofs, half-timber work, the huge "pyramid" chimney, "black-diapered"
brickwork patterns of glazed brick, and casements on hinges. Others are:
separate or grouped chimney stacks, overhanging storeys, beamed
ceilings, buttresses, stair towers, and "outshuts"--wart-like additions.
These are a few of the Tudor motifs; there are many more. Generally the
overall building designs were marked by informality and naivete. Some of
these medieval Virginia buildings, such as the "Thoroughgood House" (c.
1640), and the "One-Bay Dwelling" (c. 1670), of which we present several
illustrations, are still extant.
ii. THE JACOBEAN STYLE
Although only a little wedge at first, when it came upon the English
scene, the Early Renaissance Style of architecture slowly and gradually
developed and expanded. As we have noted, it combined two phases, first
the Elizabethan Style, and then the Jacobean, much of which was based
either directly or indirectly upon Dutch, Flemish, and German
architecture. On the other hand, in Virginia these two styles,
Elizabethan and Jacobean, are for practical purposes combined into one
style, called "Jacobean."
[Illustration: Medieval One-Bay House, with "Pyramid" Chimney]
At the same time, this Virginia Jacobean was never an important and
widespread manner of building. To all intents and purposes it was a
minor style, dominated by, or grafted upon, the Medieval Style. You may
think of it as a kind of window dressing upon the Medieval. Its chief
example extant in the Old Dominion is "Bacon's Castle" (c. 1650), in
Surry County.
[Illustration: 2nd Bruton, Williamsb'g. 1683
A Jacobean Church in Virginia Author's Restoration.]
For the most part you may recognize the Jacobean by Cupid's bow lines in
house gables, door heads, window heads, and stair balusters. Such lines
reveal the decorative and exuberant curves loved much by the Low
Countrymen and by the Englishmen who took over the curves. All in all,
Virginia saw relatively little of the Jacobean because it was a minor
style.
iii. THE TRANSITIONAL STYLE
More complicated than either of the first two styles is the
Transitional--an architectural style identified and named by this writer
to include all experimental examples which formed the transitional link
between the Medieval of the seventeenth century and the Georgian of the
eighteenth. This style of the Transition prevailed in England, but as
far as we know has not been identified or labelled as such.
It seems that in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, that is,
from about 1680, Virginians generally were becoming weary of their dark
medieval cottages, mostly one room in depth, with a loft above, and with
the only daylight entering through small casements of opaque glass.
These people began to look toward a goal which may have been vaguely
defined in their minds: a handsome and shipshape residence, preferably
of brick, of two rooms deep and two storeys-and-garret high, with wings
or separate dependencies to balance; a neat and orderly mansion, without
steep gables, but with one cornice line for the whole building. This
goal, of course, was the Georgian mansion of the eighteenth century.
At any rate, between 1680 and 1730 change permeated the air of Virginia,
and a whole host of experimental buildings sprang up which we loosely
label as "Transitional."
In the first place, the sash or "guillotine" window is one of the
barometers indicating the Transitional stage to Georgian. No doubt by
the 1680s such windows, comprising crude, vertically-sliding sash, which
often fell suddenly on wrist or neck, like a French _guillotine_, were
introduced into Virginia. But not until 1699 do the records reveal their
existence, at which time they were specified for the Capitol in
Williamsburg. Notwithstanding, such sash before 1700 was a rarity,
because the casement window was still fashionable.
[Illustration: Early Cell Types of Transitional Houses
"Fen's Point," Va.
"Belmont" Lanc. Co. Va.]
Other first signs of the Transition are the diagonal or catercornered
fireplace, the hipped or "pyramid" roof, the gambrel roof, and the
open-well stairs, which mount up the sides of a room--an arrangement
which Britons at home complained of as "wasters of space." In short, it
may be said that while these features may earmark a building as of the
Transition, they are only thus _when_ combined with certain house-forms
and floor plans. A diagonal fireplace by itself is no criterion of a
building being Transitional.
[Illustration: A Transitional House Early "Cell" Type
Towles Pt. c. 1711]