We have learned in recent years to appreciate the felicities of
eighteenth-century colonial architecture, and even the earlier
seventeenth-century style is now coming into its own, in the sense that
it is being imitated by architects who have an eye for picturesque
effects; but we lose our perspective altogether if we think that the
charm of an old New England house can be recaptured by designing
overhanging second stories or panelled interiors. The just design,
the careful execution, the fine style that brings all the houses
into harmony no matter how diverse the purposes they served--for the
farmhouse shares its characteristics with the mill, and the mill with
the meeting-house--was the outcome of a common spirit, nourished by
men who had divided the land fairly and who shared adversity and good
fortune together. When the frame of the house is to be raised, a man’s
neighbors will lend him a hand; if the harvest is in danger, every man
goes out into the fields, even if his own crop is not at stake; if a
whale founders on the beach, even the smallest boy bears a hand, and
gets a share of the reward. All these practices were not without their
subtle effect upon craftsmanship.
Schooled in the traditions of his guild, the medieval carpenter pours
his all into the work. Since sale does not enter into the bargain, it
is both to his patron’s advantage to give him the best materials, and
to his own advantage to make the most of them. If at first, in the
haste of settlement, the colonists are content with makeshifts, they
are nevertheless done in the traditional fashion--not the log cabins
of later days, but, more probably, wattle and daub huts like those
of the charcoal burners in the English forests. In some points, the
prevailing English tradition does not fit the raw climate of the north,
and presently the half-timbered houses of some of the earlier settlers
would be covered by clapboards for greater warmth, as in the eighteenth
century their interiors were lined with panelled pine or oak, instead
of the rough plaster. No matter what the material or mode, the
carpenter works not simply for hire, but for dear life’s sake, and as
a baker’s dozen numbers thirteen, so a piece of handicraft contains not
merely the workmanship itself, but a bit of the worker’s soul, for good
measure. The new invention of the gambrel roof, which gave additional
room to the second story without raising the roof-tree, is a product of
this system; and the variation in its length and pitch in New England,
New Jersey, and New York is a witness to the freedom of design that
prevailed throughout the work.
These seventeenth-century houses, built at first with one or two
rooms, and then as luxury increased and family needs multiplied with
as many as four, would doubtless seem unspeakably crude and mean to
the resident of Floral Heights; indeed, if our present requirements
for housing were so simple it would not be quite so difficult to meet
our perpetual shortage. As a matter of fact, however, these early
provincial houses were well up to the standards for a similar homestead
in England; and in some ways were a distinct advance. Just as all the
separate courses on a restaurant menu were a few hundred years ago
cooked in the same pot, so the different subdivisions of the modern
house were originally combined into a single room, which was not
merely kitchen, workroom, and living quarters, but which also, at least
in winter, served as a stable for the more delicate members of the
barnyard. By the time America was settled the division into rooms had
just commenced among the better sort of farmer: the barn had split off
from the rest of the house, and the bedchamber was becoming a separate
apartment. As the seventeenth century lengthened, this division of
functions became more familiar in the provincial house.
Let us take a brief look at one of these seventeenth-century buildings;
let us say, the John Ward house in Salem which still survives as a
relic. As one approaches the village on some November day, when the
leaves are no longer on the trees to obscure the vista, one feels
the dynamic quality of medieval architecture--a quality altogether
different from the prudent regularities of the later Georgian mode.
It is not merely a matter of painted gables, leaded, diamond-paned
windows, overhanging second stories, much as these would perhaps remind
us of a medieval European town. What would attract one is the feeling,
not of formal abstract design, but of growth: the house has developed
as the family within it has prospered, and brought forth children; as
sons and daughters have married, as children have become more numerous,
there have been additions: by a lean-to at one end the kitchen has
achieved a separate existence, for instance; and these unpainted,
weathered oaken masses pile up with a cumulative richness of effect.
Every step that brings one nearer to the house alters the relation of
the planes formed by the gable ends; and so one must have got the same
effect in these old village streets as one gets today when one skirts
around, let us say, Notre Dame in Paris, now overwhelmed by the towers
at the front, and now seeing them reduced to nothing by the tall spire
in the rear. So the building seems in motion, as well as the spectator;
and this quality delights the eye quite as much as formal decoration,
which the architecture of the seventeenth century in America almost
completely lacked.
The Puritan had his failings; and this lack of decoration was perhaps
the most important one in architecture. In his devotion to books and
in his love for music, even psalm-music, the Puritan was not immune to
art; but he was suspicious of the image, and one is tempted to read
into his idol-breaking a positive visual defect, akin to the Daltonism
or color blindness of the Quakers. Whereas medieval architecture
had cherished the sculptor and the painter, even in the commonest
vernacular work, the Puritans looked upon every diversion of the eye
as a diversion from the Lord, and, by forbidding a respectable union
between the artist and the useful arts, they finally turned the artist
out on the streets, to pander to the first fine gentleman who would
give him a kind word or a coin. Whereas Puritan buildings in the
seventeenth century were straightforward and honestly bent to fulfill
their functions, the Puritan did not see that ornament itself may be
functional, too, when it expresses some positive gesture of the spirit.
The bareness of the seventeenth century paved the way for the finicking
graces of the eighteenth.