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Title: Old New England houses
Author: Albert G. Robinson
Release date: September 2, 2026 [eBook #79502]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79502
Credits: Steve Mattern and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD NEW ENGLAND HOUSES ***
OLD NEW ENGLAND
HOUSES
[Illustration: _Concord, Massachusetts The “Old Manse”_]
OLD NEW ENGLAND
HOUSES
BY
ALBERT G. ROBINSON
AUTHOR OF “OLD NEW ENGLAND DOORWAYS”
WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM THE AUTHOR’S UNIQUE COLLECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHS
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Published September, 1920
THE SCRIBNER PRESS
PLATES
Concord, Massachusetts--The “Old Manse.” (_Frontispiece_).
Providence, Rhode Island--Ives House, 1799.
Providence, Rhode Island--Gammell House, 1786.
Lexington, Massachusetts--The house in which Samuel Adams and
John Hancock were asleep when aroused by Paul Revere.
Ipswich, Massachusetts--Brown House.
Ipswich, Massachusetts--Whipple House.
Winchendon, Massachusetts.
Concord, Massachusetts--The Orchard House, Home of the Alcotts.
Monson, Massachusetts.
Newbury, Massachusetts--Short House, 1717.
Andover, Massachusetts--Abbott House, 1685.
Quincy, Massachusetts--Dorothy Q. House.
Chelmsford, Massachusetts--Spaulding House.
Boxford, Massachusetts.
Lexington, Massachusetts--Munroe Tavern, 1695.
Acushnet, Massachusetts.
Hadley, Massachusetts--Dickinson House.
Dedham, Massachusetts--Fairbanks House, 1636.
Salem, Massachusetts--Ropes House, 1719.
Southwick, Massachusetts.
Salem, Massachusetts--Dodge-Shreve House, 1817.
North Woburn, Massachusetts--Birthplace of Count Rumford.
Billerica, Massachusetts--Manning Manse, 1696.
Colrain, Massachusetts.
Shrewsbury, Massachusetts--Judge Artemas Ward House.
Bedford, Massachusetts.
Ipswich, Massachusetts--Caldwell House, High Street, before 1650.
Deerfield, Massachusetts.
Portland, Maine.
Wiscasset, Maine.
Edgecomb, Maine--Rufus Sewall House.
Concord, New Hampshire.
Nashua, New Hampshire--Woods House, 1658.
Stratford, New Hampshire.
Norwich Town, Connecticut.
Guilford, Connecticut.
Windsor, Connecticut.
Windsor, Connecticut--Judge Oliver Ellsworth House.
East Windsor Hill, Connecticut.
Clinton, Connecticut, 1789.
Old Mystic, Connecticut.
Litchfield, Connecticut.
Litchfield, Connecticut--Tallmadge House, 1775.
Rocky Hill, Connecticut.
South Windham, Connecticut.
Southbury, Connecticut, 1785.
Hadlyme, Connecticut.
South Lyme, Connecticut.
East Lyme, Connecticut.
East Lyme, Connecticut.
South Lyme, Connecticut.
Middletown, Connecticut.
Norwich Town, Connecticut.
Nut Plains, Connecticut.
Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
Middlesex County, Massachusetts.
North Woburn, Massachusetts--Laommi Baldwin House.
Hadley, Massachusetts--Porter House, 1713.
Pembroke, Massachusetts, 1766.
Wells, Maine.
Danvers, Massachusetts--Rebecca Nourse House, 1636, front.
Danvers, Massachusetts--Rebecca Nourse House, 1636, rear.
Tyngsboro, Massachusetts.
Lincoln, Massachusetts--Hartwell House, 1639.
Southampton, Massachusetts.
South Windsor, Connecticut.
Westminster, Massachusetts.
Georgetown, Massachusetts.
Deerfield, Massachusetts--Nims House, north end and west front.
Deerfield, Massachusetts--Nims House, rear from the southeast.
Deerfield, Massachusetts--Allen House, north end.
Deerfield, Massachusetts--Allen House, south end.
Deerfield, Massachusetts--Samson-Frary House, west front.
Deerfield, Massachusetts--Samson-Frary House, south front.
Ipswich, Massachusetts--Emerson House, 1648.
Groton, Massachusetts.
Newbury, Massachusetts--Tappan House, 1697, south front.
Newbury, Massachusetts--Tappan House, 1697, west end.
Westport, Massachusetts.
Georgetown, Massachusetts.
Fryeburg, Maine.
Stratford, New Hampshire.
Lyme, Connecticut.
New Bedford, Massachusetts.
South Windsor, Connecticut.
Southampton, Massachusetts.
Madison, Connecticut--East front.
Madison, Connecticut--South front.
Woodbury, Connecticut.
Middlebury, Connecticut.
Niantic, Connecticut--Lee House, west end.
Niantic, Connecticut--Lee House, east end.
Essex, Connecticut--South end.
Essex, Connecticut--West front.
Byfield, Massachusetts--Dummer House, 1715.
East Windsor Hill, Connecticut.
Southington, Connecticut.
Georgetown, Massachusetts--Brockelbank House, 1670.
OLD NEW ENGLAND HOUSES
The homes of the earliest settlers in New England were log huts small
in size and rude in construction--
“Of such materials as around,
The workman’s hand had readiest found;
Lopp’d of their boughs, their hoar trunks bared,
And with the hatchet rudely squared.”
SCOTT, _Lady of the Lake_.
The chinks between the logs, due to the uneven surfacing, were filled
with clay or mud. The roofs were thatch. The floor was the little
section of the earth’s surface enclosed within the walls or, at best,
the flat side of split logs, rudely dressed, known as puncheons. Most
of the furniture was only what the occupant could fashion with axe
and saw. The fireplace, as a writer has cleverly described it, “sent
half the smoke into the apartment and half the heat up the chimney.”
For a short time one room, in many cases, served for all purposes.
These simple structures afforded the necessary shelter, but the New
England colonists were not of a class content to live in so rude a
manner. Lumber, both hand-sawed and mill-sawed, was produced soon after
their arrival. The earliest mill of which I find record was erected
in the vicinity of Portsmouth in 1631 by a man named Gibbons. But the
output of the little mills of the early days was limited in quantity,
and a number of generations passed before the log hut disappeared. As
the pioneers pushed their way, year after year, into the interior,
northward and westward, they built in western Massachusetts, in Maine,
New Hampshire, and Vermont, log cabins such as were built in an earlier
day in the coast settlements and along the valleys of the larger
rivers. For them, as for the first settlers, shelter was a requirement
second only to food, and the readiest means of meeting the necessity
was the cutting, hewing, and piling of logs from the surrounding
forest. Even after the operation of sawmills, much of the heavier
framing timber was hewn from logs. This is often revealed when the old
houses are torn down or altered.
Several houses whose erection is credibly reported as prior to 1640 are
still standing. Some are one story and some are two stories in height.
The destruction a few years ago of the old house in St. Augustine
doubtless leaves some ancient New England structure as “the oldest
house in the United States.” It is perhaps impossible to determine
which one of the several claimants is rightfully entitled to the
distinction. The claim has been made for the Fairbanks house in Dedham,
Mass., a part of which was built in 1636. The genealogist of the
Caldwell family claims 1633 as the date of the Caldwell homestead which
stands on High Street in Ipswich. Some have claimed 1633 for the old
Whipple house in the same town. Again, the oldest house may be still
standing with no record to prove its antiquity. Errors in the matter of
dates are frequent enough. A date quite impossible, as proven by the
architectural type or the character of the workmanship, is often given,
in all honesty, by the occupant of a house. In some instances the date
given is that of the erection of a more modest structure that has given
place to the present building or that serves as an ell or extension to
the newer part. It is not unusual to find a really old house with an
older structure attached, the date of all being given as that of the
oldest part.
Year by year the number of these old-time homes lessens. They burn
down, fall down, or are torn down. Some are “improved” by the addition
of a veranda, a bay window, a modern door, or by the substitution of
large window-panes for the old diamond panes or the much more common
but less ancient six-by-eight panes. There are still many of the
real “old-timers” to be found, but more and more, from year to year,
it becomes necessary to hunt for them. Some, though only a fraction
of them, are more or less well known, and have been used repeatedly
as illustrations. But the tendency of illustrators has been to
show a limited number of selected “mansion houses” rather than the
homes in which a far greater number of people lived their quiet and
inconspicuous lives. In the selected group are the stately homes in
Salem and in Portsmouth, the Lee house in Marblehead, the Royall house
in Medford, the Dummer house in Byfield, the “Lindens” in Danvers,
the Longfellow and Lowell houses in Cambridge, and a few others of
particularly interesting history or of special architectural merit.
In another group of selected structures appear the familiar Fairbanks
house in Dedham, the Frary house in Deerfield, the Whipple house in
Ipswich, the Tallmadge house in Litchfield, the Wayside Inn, and a few
others. All of these, in both groups, are excellent for the purposes
for which they are used, but they present, after all, only a few out
of the many old houses that still remain widely scattered through the
southern half of New England.
The hunt for these old structures resolves itself into a somewhat
general and elastic system, a location of areas in which the hunt is
likely to prove fruitful or otherwise. Thus, in some of the oldest
settlements little remains in the way of the oldest architecture. This
is particularly true of the larger cities, of Boston, Providence,
Newport, Hartford, New Haven, and Springfield. On the sites of the
homes of the people of the seventeenth century, and of a large part of
the eighteenth, stand the brick and the stone piles of the nineteenth
and the twentieth centuries. The old has given place to the new. In the
vicinity of those cities there is a fair hunting-field although “modern
improvement” has in many instances converted charming old houses
into architectural jumbles seldom pleasing and often little short of
offensive. Very much the same is true of a number of smaller cities
such as Northampton, Holyoke, New London, and Haverhill. A somewhat
larger restriction appears in the distinction between the northern and
southern portions of the region. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode
Island had a long start, more than a hundred years, over Vermont and
all except a small area of New Hampshire and of Maine. It was not until
after the French and Indian War, finally terminated by the Treaty of
Paris in 1763, that more than a mere corner of those States was safe
for settlers.
On the other hand, certain places are found to be of notable
fruitfulness. Connecticut has several such centres, including Guilford,
Farmington, Windsor, Litchfield, and Wethersfield. Rhode Island has
Warren, Bristol, Wickford, and others. Massachusetts has Concord and
Lexington, Ipswich, Deerfield and Hadley, and a few more. With the
exception of Farmington and Litchfield, in both of which the “mansion
house,” or “near mansion house,” type is prominent, the old-time houses
in these places were the homes of those of comparatively limited but
still comfortable income. It is the hunt for houses of that class that
really affords the greatest pleasure and interest. The hunter never
knows where he may come upon a building that will make a notable
addition to his collection. As a matter of fact, however, only a part
of them are worth collecting. Age may not be the only determining
factor in the hunter’s interest. Without a second glance, I have
passed many houses that were undoubtedly well along toward the end of
their second century. What is the hunter’s test for his collection?
Naturally, that varies with the individual taste or special purpose of
the hunter. Not long ago I made an excursion through a fruitful region
with an architect. Had time permitted, he would have spent hours,
with rule and note-book, measuring and recording details of houses at
which I did not care to point a camera. Mere age might be the standard
for some; grace of line and charm of proportion for others; while for
others, perhaps including myself, selection would be determined mainly
by what may be called the “picture quality.” To those of the latter
class appeal might be made by a house of no particular architectural
merit, but of respectable age, if it stood under the shade of a
sweeping elm or was flanked by noble maples. To others the history of a
house may be the feature of interest. Did Washington or Lafayette sleep
in it? Was it the birthplace or the sometime home of a distinguished
soldier in the Revolutionary War? Did any notable person ever live in
it or stay in it? Just that is the charm of hunting for old houses. The
search presents so many sides, so many different lines of interest. Not
the least of these is in being outdoors in a land of hills and valleys
and running streams, of singing birds and wayside flowers.
How old must a house be to come properly into the class of “old
houses”? As a rule, not less than a hundred years. Of course, nothing
in this country except the country itself is really old. The term is
distinctly relative. The houses that we call “old” are old only in
comparison with those of more recent construction. Asking for old
houses in some neighborhood then being hunted over, my attention has
often been called to houses built about the middle of the nineteenth
century, houses with the mansard roof and square tower that prevailed
in what has been called the “Iron Dog Period of American Architecture.”
Happily, most of the iron dogs, the Dianas, the Apollo Belvederes,
and the other cast-iron monstrosities, at one time supposed to be
highly effective lawn decorations, have gone to the scrap-heap. No
hard and fast rule of age limit can be applied properly, but a century
may be adopted as a general standard for another reason than that of
time. During the latter part of the first quarter of the nineteenth
century there came a marked change in public taste in the matter of
architectural style. As that which may be called the Colonial period of
American architecture was followed by the several stages of Georgian,
so were they, about 1820, followed by an enthusiasm for the Classic.
While this is most clearly shown in a number of familiar public
buildings, its influence extended to private residences and is easily
recognized. The transition from the later Georgian to the Classic
produced some of the best designs in the entire range of American
architecture, represented, in part, by the work of such men as Bulfinch
and McIntire. Following them, though with more leaning to the Classic
and less to the Georgian, came Latrobe, Hoban, Strickland, and others,
whose work stands to-day distinguished for its combination of grace and
dignity.
But all this matter of styles and periods has little to do with the
homes in which the great majority of the early New Englanders spent
their lives. The extent of exterior decoration, for most of them,
went no further than a more or less elaborate front doorway, and
many had not even that. Throughout New England may be found to-day
hundreds of houses, plain, one or two-story rectangular boxes with
sloping covers. They vary in size, in the proportions of height to
width in both front and side elevations, and in the angle of the roof.
Some have passed their second century--and show it. Many are well
preserved and, as far as their physical appearance is concerned, give
no sign of their antiquity except to the trained eye, and even that is
sometimes deceived. They are rejuvenated, in outward show, by shingles,
clapboards, paint, new doors, and new window-sashes. Not infrequently,
they look quite as modern as their fifty-year-old neighbors. Sometimes,
too, even the fairly expert eye is misled by a modern house built in
imitation of an old one. Still more deceptive are those that have been
skilfully restored during recent years. For the increasing number of
these expert restorations, let us be properly thankful. They include
not only recovery from dilapidation, and even from wreck, but, as
well, the displacement of the various abominations attached, notably
within the last hundred years, with a lamentably mistaken notion of
“improving the property.”
Brick and stone, for house-building, came into use in a limited way at
an early date. There is a fairly supported account of a brick house
built in Boston in 1638, and there seems to be no reason to doubt that
bricks were made in Salem as early as 1629, about a year after the
arrival of Endicott. The two-story stone house, known as the Whitfield
house, in Guilford, Conn., dates from 1639. This structure has been
bought by the State and “restored.” Somewhat unfortunately, perhaps,
its restoration and the concealment of its walls and lines behind a
mass of vines rob it of the external evidences of its age.
Many of the old two-story houses show the second-story “overhang”
that Doctor Holmes said was a device that enabled the occupants of
the house to shoot directly down at Indians who might be “knocking at
the front door with their tomahawks.” That is a picturesque but quite
inaccurate explanation of that particular feature of early New England
architecture. It may, at times, have served for that purpose, but it
was, in fact, merely a transplanted system of house carpentry common
enough in the England from which came the builders, who naturally
followed in the new land the methods with which they were familiar in
the old land. That the custom was of mechanical and not of military
origin has been amply proven by architects and antiquarians. This
“overhang” varies in width but in the majority of cases is only a
few inches. Sometimes it appears only on the front of the house, the
projection at the rear being hidden by the roof line of the “lean-to.”
Somewhat less frequently it appears at the ends of the house as well
as on the front. Not infrequently, on two-story houses, a second
“overhang” appears at the eaves line on the end of the house. Here and
there a house shows a wide overhang ornamented with pendants, as in the
case of the Whitman house in Farmington, Conn., and the Brown house in
Hamilton, Mass. The old bakery in Salem, the Porter house in Hadley,
and a number of others have brackets under the overhang.
These old houses may be divided, broadly, into four groups, the
difference being marked by the roof. One group includes the buildings,
whether of one or two stories, with sloping roof of equal length
in front and back, mere rectangular boxes of varying size and
proportions, with a doubly sloping cover. These are commonly known as
“gable” or “pitch” roof houses. Not a few of this type show an attached
ell, but in most cases, if not in all, this is a later addition. A
second group shows the “lean-to” with the extension of the roof line
in the rear. While much more common to houses of two stories in front,
the long back roof appears occasionally on houses of a single story.
A third group includes the “gambrels.” In his poem, “Parson Turell’s
Legacy,” Doctor Holmes gives the origin of the term:
“‘Gambrel?--Gambrel?’ Let me beg
You’ll look at a horse’s hinder leg,--
First great angle above the hoof,--
That’s the gambrel; hence gambrel-roof.”
I am not prepared to say whether this is reliable information or a
product of the genial autocrat’s fertile imagination. But old houses
with gambrel-roof are abundant in New England. The form is used in
quaint cottages and in stately mansions like the “Dorothy Q” house
in Quincy and a number of others. The design appears to have been
borrowed from the Dutch, but it was used in New England as early as
the last quarter of the seventeenth century. While the use of the
dormer-window, common enough in the South, was unusual in the North, it
is of frequent occurrence on houses with the gambrel roof, both one and
two-storied. But there is a material and not fully explained difference
between the New England gambrel and its prototype. The latter is quite
the more graceful. Its upper slope is much shorter and its lower slope
less steep than is the New England roof. While grace is lost, the New
Englander gained in area of headroom in what was, in effect, a second
story. The fourth group consists of the pyramidal type or “hip” roof,
usually square boxes with the roof sloping from the four sides to a
common centre. This also shows variations in roof angle as related to
the wall of the house. Also, while in many cases the four slopes met at
a central peak, or stopped at the walls of a large central chimney, in
many other cases they terminated at the edge of a flat platform around
which, frequently if not usually, a low railing or fencing was built.
In all of these general groups there are variations and modifications.
There is occasionally found, in the first group, a variation that
is sometimes called the “sliced gable” in which the sharp angle of
the gable is cut away diagonally and a short roof slope takes its
place. This type belongs properly in the hip-roof class. I recall no
such exception in the “lean-to” group, but in the other three there
are variations in which the upper part of the roof would seem to
have been cut away and its place taken by the flat platform, usually
railed. This is generally known as the “captain’s walk.” It is most
common in the coast cities, and its origin is said to be found in the
use of the platform as a lookout over the harbor by shipmasters or
ship-owners occupying the house. Occasionally one will see a house, one
or two-storied, of the conventional sloping-roof type, with one or more
dormer-windows. It is probable, however, that in most cases these were
of later addition.
One of the variations in the hip-roof type appears in what is sometimes
called the “monitor,” a windowed superstructure of much too great an
area to be regarded as a cupola. A variation of the gable roof is
occasionally encountered in southeastern Massachusetts. It is known as
the “rainbow.” The roof, from ridge-pole to eaves, instead of following
a straight line, is slightly convex, thus making a few additional
inches of headroom inside. An interesting variation of type, unusual
rather than rare, is the so-called “jut-by,” in which the rear half
of the house, sometimes of gable type and sometimes of the gambrel,
extends several feet beyond the front half.
In most of the books dealing with early American architecture there
appears an effort to classify the structures by periods. To most of us
any house a hundred or more years old is “Colonial,” and any house of
later date, if it has an ornamental doorway, or columns or pilasters
from ground to eaves, is of “Colonial” design. Some specialists employ
a specific political grouping, thus: the Colonial, from the beginning
until 1692; the Provincial, from 1692 until the Revolution; and the
Federal, from that time until the Classic period, about 1820. Others
divide by groups marked by distinct features of technical details.
Still others use, broadly: the Colonial from the beginning until the
Revolution; then the Georgian until the Classic. For all the purposes
of that vast majority of the inexpert, it seems to me desirable only
that we do not confuse the Colonial type with the Georgian, and there
is no date at which we may fix, even approximately, a dividing line.
The strictly Colonial type, represented by all except a very small
number of the houses of the seventeenth century, persisted throughout
the eighteenth and well into the nineteenth. It was the oblong
building, of one or two stories, with gable roof, with or without the
lean-to. It was of the utmost simplicity. Very few of the seventeenth
century houses had even an ornamental doorway. The porch, portico,
veranda, and bay window were all devices of a much later period. Few,
if any, were even painted.
The so-called Georgian period had its beginning, broadly, about the end
of the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Although the French,
from Canada, with their Indian allies raided York, Maine, in 1691,
Haverhill in 1697 and again in 1708, and Deerfield in 1704, while
in 1675 and 1676 the Wampanoags and the Narragansetts swept through
Massachusetts, leaving thirteen towns in ashes, and bringing fire and
slaughter to forty other towns, it was felt that there was no longer
serious danger of further attack, particularly in the larger coast
towns. By that time, also, there were a considerable number of men who
were, for their time, wealthy. Such, naturally, desired something more
commodious and more ornate in the matter of residences. To that the
simple Colonial type did not readily lend itself. My investigations
lead me to a belief that elaboration in house architecture began
with gambrel-roofed houses of much larger size than those formerly
erected, and that this was followed by and largely gave place to the
imposing and dignified “three-deckers” of Salem, Portsmouth, Portland,
and Providence, where the best types of Georgian architecture in New
England are to be found. A few good examples can be seen elsewhere, but
there is nothing better than those in the cities mentioned.
In referring to houses of the strictly Colonial type, I have once or
twice used the term “rectangular boxes with variously sloping covers.”
They were no more than that. Wherein, then, lies their charm? for
charm they undoubtedly have in many cases. It is to be sought in two
directions, in accuracy of proportions and in the setting of the
house. The proportions are determined by an almost exact relation of
height to width and of relation of door and window openings to each
other and to the house as a whole. A proper adjustment of height
to width was possible because the occupants were content with low
ceilings. High ceilings came somewhat later in the cities and still
later in the country, but they came in larger houses in which the
relation of height to width could be and was maintained. No finer
proportions in house construction can be found than those of many an
old “three-decker” in Salem, Providence, and elsewhere, or in stately
gambrel-roofed houses that may be seen scattered through the country.
The old-time cottages were low, measuring from ground to eaves, but
they suggest coseyness and comfort rather than “squattiness.” Put one
of those little houses under an overshadowing elm, run a vine about
its entrance, plant a few shrubs and flowers in its front yard, and
it nestles there challenging attention and admiration. The elms and
the maples, as external house decorations, supplemented by roses and
lilacs, are distinct features in the New England landscape.
In a class quite distinct from that referred to in the foregoing
comment stand the more imposing houses, the best types of which are to
be found in or not far from the coast cities. Among those who came to
the new land were some who, for the period, might be regarded as rich.
They and others made money after they came. They were, most of them,
ship-builders, ship-owners, and merchants engaged in oversea commerce.
In the last quarter of the seventeenth century a few of these wealthy
citizens built houses on what was then, in this country, a colossal
scale. All, I believe, are now gone, but they were represented by such
houses as that built in Boston in 1679 by Peter Sergeant, merchant. The
building was afterward known as the Province House, having been bought
in 1716 by the Province of Massachusetts Bay as an official residence
for the royal governors.[A] Years afterward it became a tavern and
later on a theatre. Others of this class were the Cotton Mather house
on Hanover Street and the Foster-Hutchinson house on Garden Court. All
of these were in Boston.
[A] See Hawthorne’s _Legends of the Province House_.
At the end of the first hundred years of settlement and activity
there were in New England a considerable number of men possessed of
substantial fortunes. Others were rapidly acquiring fortunes. Some
of them did as do men of wealth to-day--they built large and more or
less elaborately ornate houses. Andrew Faneuil built one in Boston in
1709, and in the same place William Clark built about the year 1713
and Thomas Hancock built in 1737. All of these are gone. Survivals
of the period, however, may be found in the Dummer house (1715) in
Byfield, the Warner house (1723) in Portsmouth, and the Royall house
(1732) in Medford. Most of the houses of this class were three-storied,
flat-topped structures if in the city, while those in the country were
largely of the two-storied and gambrel-roofed type. But the gable roof,
as shown by the Dummer house, was also represented. More and more of
the “mansion houses” came in the last half of the eighteenth century,
and many remain for our admiration to-day.
Not all of these “mansion” or “semi-mansion” houses were built of
brick, nor were all located in the coast cities. There were three-story
wooden houses and, of the same material, large two-story houses
surmounted by gambrel roofs with dormer-windows. In the latter group
are several houses in Litchfield, the Ropes house in Salem, the
Dickinson house in Hadley, and numerous others variously located. As
already stated, the best in American house architecture remains from
the successive stages of the so-called Georgian period. But it is
represented only in part by the “mansion” type and only in part by the
buildings along the coast. The inland cities and towns have their many
homes of a comfortable, well-to-do group of farmers and traders. I
know of no larger or better field for buildings of this class than the
Naugatuck valley, in Connecticut, and its immediate neighborhood. There
were still the many who built their little one-story houses with gable
roof or gambrel and others who could afford a larger house, plain and
substantial, usually of timber construction, although stone or brick
structures are not infrequent.
Broadly, then, the era of development in American architecture had
its beginning in the early years of the eighteenth century. Prior
to that the type was simple and the building plain. The development
was slow in its beginning, here and there a house that exceeded its
neighbors in size and in the building of which some attention was
given to ornamentation by doorway and window trim. The change from
the simple type of the seventeenth century had its origin at the top.
A wealthy man built a mansion. His well-to-do neighbor followed and
built according to his means. A pace was set for all classes. The much
greater wealth and the greater number of the wealthy made possible
in the last half and more particularly in the last quarter of the
eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth the erection
of houses that in grace and grandeur somewhat overshadowed the
efforts of the earlier generations. As the Dummer house and the Warner
house outclassed their neighbors in their day, so the Dodge-Shreve
(1817) and the Andrew-Safford (1818) houses in Salem, the Ives
(1799) and the Gammell (1786) houses in Providence, the Lee house in
Marblehead, and various others, outclassed the Dummer and the Warner
buildings. Architecturally, there was an upward movement all through
the eighteenth century. Yet, while we may look with all respect and
admiration upon the stately mansions of Salem, Providence, and other
cities, it is, after all, the old-time house or cottage, with its bit
of shrubbery and garden and its flanking elms and maples, that most
pleases our eyes and most warms our hearts.
Every old house has its history. In most cases it is not a history of
public men or public events. It is only a record of generation after
generation of simple human lives with their joys and sorrows, their
little romances and little tragedies. Probably, few of us ever see the
inside of these old houses. Usually, in a quiet and unostentatious
fashion, the occupants are very proud of their possessions. Often the
house has been kept in the family generation after generation, each
adding to the collection of furniture, crockery, silverware and pewter,
portraits and house equipment. My evident interest in the outside of
some old house has repeatedly led to an invitation to inspect its
interior, and many a pleasant hour has been so spent. Not infrequently
the elaborate beauty of an interior trim, of mantels and door-casing,
does not correspond with the simplicity of the exterior. Writing upon
that point, an observer has declared that this lack of correspondence
between the external and the internal “reflects the outward reserve
and restraint of New England character, a reserve, however, that often
melts into cordial geniality under the favoring auspices of a close
acquaintance.” I recall a delightful hour with a dear old soul, of
perhaps seventy-five years of age, who, somewhat stiffly at first,
asked me to come in. In a few minutes she had warmed herself and roused
me to a fair pitch of enthusiasm over her old house, with furniture
that had come down from father, grandfather, and great-grandfather,
with old family portraits, with mantels of beautiful design and
carving, and a general assortment of old, family treasures. So do I
recall another delightful hour with a charming young chatelaine whose
house, with all its contents, including herself, I would gladly have
carried away bodily had it been possible.
Too frequently the old equipment of the old house is divided among
heirs, until the place is almost stripped and the rooms left bare
and desolate, tenanted, perhaps, only by a maiden aunt or by some
thriftless descendant with a dowdy wife. This stripping by division
is common enough, but the occupants of the country houses are usually
of good New England stock, and there is at least comfort and an air
of home in the best meaning of the word. A few potted plants on
the window-sill, and a cat of the kind described by Mark Twain, in
_Pudd’nhead Wilson_, as “a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered
cat,” are simple but effective contributions to the making of a country
home. The value of the cat, as a feature in home-making, is enhanced if
there is a braided rug for it to lie upon in front of the fireplace.
Somehow, the braided rug, made from cast-off garments, seems to fit
admirably into the scheme of the interior of the old-time house,
although it usually looks out of place elsewhere. It harmonizes with
its environment and so fulfils a fundamental law of decoration.
It is to the taste and skill of carpenters, rather than to architects,
that we are indebted for the grace and the charm of these old-time
dwellings. Mr. Eberlein, an architect-author, in his book on _The
Architecture of Colonial America_, says of them that “we shall not
be far wrong in ascribing seventeenth century buildings, almost
without exception, to the capable and resourceful craftsman who not
only preserved conscientiously the traditions he had learned as
an apprentice or journeyman in the mother country, and faithfully
perpetuated them by his practice as a master carpenter or joiner in
a new land, but also showed himself possessed of ready wit and keen
perceptive faculties by the alacrity with which he modified and adapted
traditional methods and precedents to new conditions and requirements
of climate and environment. Furthermore, these early workmen showed
an all-round mastery of their craft. They respected their calling and
took a proper pride in the excellence of their craftsmanship. Hence,
the work of their hands, however plain and simple, still possesses a
dignity and honest beauty that plainly proclaim how they put their
hearts into what they were doing and, at the same time, commands our
reverence and admiration.”
Of the same class in the eighteenth century, to whom we owe much of
the work of that period, the same writer says: “The master carpenter
of the eighteenth century was infinitely more capable than the
average artisan of like rank to-day. He was not only a skilled master
mechanic, competent to translate rough drafts and sketches into
carefully prepared working drawings, but he was also a person of some
architectural education and taste and endowed with a nice perception of
architectural merits and proprieties.”
These were the men who, for the first two hundred years of life in New
England, built the homes of the people. Little of their work remains
in the cities, but much still stands in the villages and in country
regions, monuments to an instructive past and charming features in a
picturesque landscape.
PLATES
[Illustration: _Providence, Rhode Island Ives House, 1799_]
[Illustration: _Providence, Rhode Island Gammell House, 1786_]
[Illustration: _Lexington, Massachusetts. The house in which Samuel
Adams and John Hancock were asleep when aroused by Paul Revere_]
[Illustration: _Ipswich, Massachusetts Brown House_]
[Illustration: _Ipswich, Massachusetts Whipple House_]
[Illustration: _Winchendon, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Concord, Massachusetts The Orchard House, Home of the
Alcotts_]
[Illustration: _Monson, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Newbury, Massachusetts Short House, 1717_]
[Illustration: _Andover, Massachusetts Abbott House, 1685_]
[Illustration: _Quincy, Massachusetts Dorothy Q. House_]
[Illustration: _Chelmsford, Massachusetts Spaulding House_]
[Illustration: _Boxford, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Lexington, Massachusetts Munroe Tavern, 1695_]
[Illustration: _Acushnet, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Hadley, Massachusetts Dickinson House_]
[Illustration: _Dedham, Massachusetts Fairbanks House, 1636_]
[Illustration: _Salem, Massachusetts Ropes House, 1719_]
[Illustration: _Southwick, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Salem, Massachusetts Dodge-Shreve House, 1817_]
[Illustration: _North Woburn, Massachusetts Birthplace of Count
Rumford_]
[Illustration: _Billerica, Massachusetts Manning Manse, 1696_]
[Illustration: _Colrain, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Shrewsbury, Massachusetts Judge Artemas Ward House_]
[Illustration: _Bedford, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Ipswich, Massachusetts Caldwell House, High Street,
before 1650_]
[Illustration: _Deerfield, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Portland, Maine_]
[Illustration: _Wiscasset, Maine_]
[Illustration: _Edgecomb, Maine Rufus Sewall House_]
[Illustration: _Concord, New Hampshire_]
[Illustration: _Nashua, New Hampshire Woods House, 1658_]
[Illustration: _Stratford, New Hampshire_]
[Illustration: _Norwich Town, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Guilford, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Windsor, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Windsor, Connecticut Judge Oliver Ellsworth House_]
[Illustration: _East Windsor Hill, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Clinton, Connecticut, 1789_]
[Illustration: _Old Mystic, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Litchfield, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Litchfield, Connecticut Tallmadge House, 1775_]
[Illustration: _Rocky Hill, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _South Windham, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Southbury, Connecticut, 1785_]
[Illustration: _Hadlyme, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _South Lyme, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _East Lyme, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _East Lyme, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _South Lyme, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Middletown, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Norwich Town, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Nut Plains, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Chelmsford, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Middlesex County, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _North Woburn, Massachusetts Laommi Baldwin House_]
[Illustration: _Hadley, Massachusetts Porter House, 1713_]
[Illustration: _Pembroke, Massachusetts, 1766_]
[Illustration: _Wells, Maine_]
[Illustration: _Danvers, Massachusetts Rebecca Nourse House, 1636,
front_]
[Illustration: _Danvers, Massachusetts Rebecca Nourse House, 1636,
rear_]
[Illustration: _Tyngsboro, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Lincoln, Massachusetts Hartwell House, 1639_]
[Illustration: _Southampton, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _South Windsor, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Westminster, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Georgetown, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Deerfield, Massachusetts Nims House, north end and west
front_]
[Illustration: _Deerfield, Massachusetts Nims House, rear from the
southeast_]
[Illustration: _Deerfield, Massachusetts Allen House, north end_]
[Illustration: _Deerfield, Massachusetts Allen House, south end_]
[Illustration: _Deerfield, Massachusetts Samson-Frary House, west
front_]
[Illustration: _Deerfield, Massachusetts Samson-Frary House, south
front_]
[Illustration: _Ipswich, Massachusetts Emerson House, 1648_]
[Illustration: _Groton, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Newbury, Massachusetts Tappan House, 1697, south front_]
[Illustration: _Newbury, Massachusetts Tappan House, 1697, west end_]
[Illustration: _Westport, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Georgetown, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Fryeburg, Maine_]
[Illustration: _Stratford, New Hampshire_]
[Illustration: _Lyme, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _New Bedford, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _South Windsor, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Southampton, Massachusetts_]
[Illustration: _Madison, Connecticut East front_]
[Illustration: _Madison, Connecticut South front_]
[Illustration: _Woodbury, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Middlebury, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Niantic, Connecticut Lee House, west end_]
[Illustration: _Niantic, Connecticut Lee House, east end_]
[Illustration: _Essex, Connecticut South end_]
[Illustration: _Essex, Connecticut West front_]
[Illustration: _Byfield, Massachusetts Dummer House, 1715_]
[Illustration: _East Windsor Hill, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Southington, Connecticut_]
[Illustration: _Georgetown, Massachusetts Brockelbank House_]
Transcriber’s Notes
Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.
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