The Project Gutenberg EBook of Virginia Architecture in the Seventeenth
Century, by Henry Chandlee Forman
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Virginia Architecture in the Seventeenth Century
Author: Henry Chandlee Forman
Release Date: September 1, 2011 [EBook #37288]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIRGINIA ARCHITECTURE IN 17TH CENTURY ***
Produced by Mark C. Orton, David E. Brown and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
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©, 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 reërected 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 naïve; 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 naïveté. 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]
Many of the dwellings of this Style were "cell" houses. That is, there
was a "cell" or "aisle" at the rear of the narrow Tudor cottage, one
room deep. In the same way, the English parish church of single nave
sometimes sprouted a side aisle in order to make more space for
parishioners. In the Old Dominion such elongated warts or "outshuts" at
the rear of the homestead afforded additional bedroom space over and
beyond the cramped garret, but at the same time unfortunately threw
off-center the steep medieval gable, thereby causing what the English
have called a "catslide." A catslide roof is one in which the slope at
the rear extends nearly the whole way to the ground. In New England the
"cell" addition became the "lean-to." For such fabrics in Virginia we
have coined the term, the _Early Cell_ type, one which was well
represented by the destroyed "Towles Point," in Lancaster County.
Even so, the Virginian did not long relish an "ugly," though perhaps
picturesque, catslide gable; therefore, he once more began to build
symmetrically, at the same time keeping his little back "cells." When
such gables became symmetrical, we may assign the examples to the _Late
Cell_ type.
[Illustration: A "Late Cell" Transitional House
Richardson House Jas. Cy. Co. Va.]
We find, moreover, that not all Transitional structures had "cells."
Sometimes the mark of experimentation is shown by other building forms,
such as the one-room deep cottage mushrooming upward into a full second
storey and garret; at other times the settler, dissatisfied with his
"knock-head" bed chambers, experimented with the gambrel roof,
frequently but mistakenly called the "Dutch roof." The gambrel, to the
best of our knowledge, was introduced from England into the American
Colonies in the 1680s; but it did not become widespread for almost half
a century. Likewise Transitional are certain early Virginia homes with
hip roofs, perhaps the best example being the brick "Abingdon Glebe" (c.
1700) in Gloucester County, where the one-and-a-half-storey main block
of the house is exactly balanced by low end pavilions--each surmounted
by a hipped roof.
There were other Virginia building experiments in the period covered by
the Transition, but the foregoing is sufficient to summarize the Style,
which paved the way for the Georgian in the eighteenth century.
IV
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE IN VIRGINIA.
i. THE COTTAGE PERIOD
The thirteen years between the founding of James Fort in 1607 and the
landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock on Christmas Day, 1620,
have been designated by this writer, for the sake of convenience, as the
"Cottage" Period of Virginia architecture. It was in the "Cradle of the
Republic," on James River, that we find the English styles taking root
and flourishing mightily. As a result, the United States of America
became characterized more by these same English styles than by any other
foreign style, such as French or Spanish.
For the most part--though not entirely--these first thirteen years of
English settlement in Virginia were marked by rough shelters, temporary
huts or booths, and fragile buildings. As a case in point, the first
fortification thrown together upon the day of first landing upon
Jamestown Island was of the skimpiest construction: boughs of trees cast
together in the form of a half-moon. The first settlement at that time
was frankly a bivouac, where a tented church was set up, and the
customary lodging was a tent cover or a hole in the ground. Secretary
Strachey wrote home to England about the ill-lodged colonists, of whom
the poorer slept on the ground and the more fortunate had such miserable
cottages that the sun pierced through them and made them hot as stoves.
All these fragile shelters have disappeared, but types of them have in
later years been described. In 1621, for example, a servant by the name
of Richard Chelsey was to have a new house built for him, in length,
fourteen feet, and in breadth, twelve feet. In Northampton County one
John Alford squeezed himself into a hut only five and a half feet high,
with a doorway only four feet, nine inches and a quarter in height. Big
enough for children! Some habitations did not bother about wood for
walls; they were of earth or clay mixed with straw. This last type was
represented in later years by some of the outhouses at "Four Mile Tree"
plantation, Virginia, which were made of red clay held together by
chopped straw.
Such abbreviated buildings had waxed paper or curtains to cover their
"wind-holes," sliding-panel windows, hinged shutters without glass, or
tiny casements.
In addition to these frail and temporary shelters were more substantial
edifices, which may be classified, according to present knowledge, as
illustrating at least five chief methods of English Medieval
construction. These may be listed as follows:
1. The palisade
2. The puncheon
3. The cruck
4. Timber framing, including half-timber work
5. Brick
Now the first of these, _palisading_, was common in England for two
thousand years and more, and, as we have already seen, was employed by
the Virginia Indian, who invented it entirely independently of European
contact. The first palisade on the James River, that of James Fort of
1607, comprised strong planks and posts placed close together four feet
deep in the earth. They rose above ground about fourteen feet. But there
was nothing, to our knowledge, which was unusual about that palisading,
except, perhaps, its triangular shape. Most forts of that kind were
square, but on Jamestown Island the fort was a triangle, supposedly
forced into that configuration by the topography. At any rate, the
customary bulwarks or watchtowers rose at the three corners of the
fortification, and there was the usual moat and drawbridge.
English forts of this kind, with stockades and ditches, were common to
Virginia, as for example, at Sir Walter Raleigh's Roanoke Fort of 1585
in North Carolina, formerly Virginia; at Old Point Comfort in 1609; in
City of Henrico in 1611; at Claiborne's Kent Island trading post of
1621--now in Maryland; and at the "Town" on the Eastern Shore in 1623.
One of the longest palisades in all Virginia in the seventeenth century
was Dale's "Dutch Gap" on the James. Its two-mile-long moat was lined by
palisaded walls accented by towers.
After the Massacre of 1622, the Colony of Virginia ordered (1624-25) all
dwellings and plantations to be palisaded in, that is, to be enclosed by
"Park-pales," as the English called them. Ordinarily walls about seven
and a half feet high were tall enough for protection from sudden attack.
Even churches were palisaded in, as for example, the first church on the
Eastern shore. In the 1630s one Stephen Charleton threatened to kick the
Reverend Cotton over the paled fence--the "Pallyzados"--around that
sacred edifice.
The second medieval method is _puncheoning_. It seems that the English
made puncheons or "quarters" pretty much like the Indians, that is, they
fashioned upright timbers or posts, set apart in the ground so that the
space between them was the same as the thickness of the timber or post.
Then they filled the interstices with "wattle-and-daub," a basketwork of
branches, twigs, and roots, coated on both sides with loam and lime,
mixed with straw. Back home in England, this filling of the spaces was
named "post and pan." On James River there is record of the Berkeley
settlement of 1619 having most of the dwellings built of "punches" set
in the earth and with boards for the roofs. Other huts were flimsy
shelters merely "covered with boards," so that one spark could easily
set them off. But when the English employed thin turf or sod for their
roofs, the structures were safer from fire.
[Illustration: A Puncheoned Cot with wattle filling and clapboard
roof]
In connection with this wattling and daubing of Virginia buildings, the
two early churches on Eastern Shore are believed to have been puncheoned
edifices. The second church (c. 1638), near Fishing Creek was described
as "of insignificant dimensions" and constructed of two materials:
"roughly riled logs"--that is, vertical timbers, since log cabins as we
know them were virtually unknown in the English colonies before 1660;
and "wattles." A reference to "daubing" the first church (c. 1623), on
King's Creek, leads us to believe that it also was built on "punches"
and was woven with wattles.
Now, about the third construction type, the _cruck_. No one has seen
today an original cruck building in this country, but early Virginia
possessed hundreds and perhaps thousands of cruck fabrics. Like the
palisade and puncheon methods, the cruck was medieval down to its very
core. In describing the James Fort church of 1607, Captain John Smith
stated it was set upon "crotchets," covered with rafters, rushes, and
earth. When he spoke of crotchet, he probably meant cruck, of which it
was a later derivative. At all events, a building set on crucks means
that it is supported or hung upon pairs of curved or bent tree trunks
placed together in the shape of a Gothic pointed arch and spaced one
"bay" apart. It was the custom in medieval England to erect buildings in
bays for the sake of convenience. A bay was the standard unit of length,
generally sixteen feet, although it could vary. A four-bay cruck church
on Jamestown Island means that there were five pairs of bent trees, or
crucks, in total length some sixty-four feet, arranged in the following
manner: : : : : : Then, upon the crucks were hung the side walls and the
roof.
[Illustration: A Hypothetical Three-Bay Cruck House in Virginia]
Yet in this era of Virginia history before the
"Mayflower" landed in New England, the most common of all the medieval
types of construction is _timber-framing_. A building which was
timber-framed was a substantial one, comprising a framework of posts set
_far_ apart, of diagonal braces, and of studs, sills, plates, and
girts--the ensemble fastened together securely with tongues and grooves
and wooden pegs. It was the custom to cut and adz the timbers so that
they would fit together neatly; and in order to do that, Roman numerals
were cut into each timber to identify it. In that way the whole
framework could be assembled properly and efficiently--the first
pre-fabricated house in Virginia. So good were these timber-framed
structures that the English in the Old Dominion called them "fair
houses" and "English houses." In 1611 James City boasted of two fair
rows of dwellings, all of framed timber, two storeys and garret, or
corn-loft, high. At Berkeley, in 1619 there were two timber-framed
habitations, and at the City of Henrico in 1611 three streets of well
framed houses.
[Illustration: Example of Timber Framing in 17{th} C. Va.]
The timber-framed dwelling is the most commonly erected today in this
country, although builders and carpenters no longer bother to number or
to peg together the timbers.
In this Cottage Period about which we have been reading the general
manner of framing structures was to either cover the framework or make
"half-timber work." In the former method, weatherboarding (clapboards),
or shingle tiles or slate nailed to weatherboards, covered up the posts
and studs. In the latter method, the filling between the studding would
be left exposed to the elements. And this filling could take a variety
of forms: plaster; "wattle-and-daub"; brick "nogging," with the bricks
laid horizontally, in herring-bone, or helter-skelter; or mud and straw.
Contrary to popular opinion, there were undoubtedly _brick_ buildings in
Virginia in the first thirteen years. It was at Jamestown in 1607 that
President Wingfield visited "ould Short, the bricklayer." What do you
suppose Short did in those early years of the Colony? He manufactured
brick for chimneys, walks, walls, terraces, floors, kilns, and
buildings--_brick_ buildings. Now brick for an edifice, usually laid in
English bond, where the courses are alternately headers and stretchers,
is still another English medieval method of construction, which became
popular in Virginia. We know, for instance, that there were in 1611, in
addition to the well-framed dwellings already cited at City of Henrico,
some "competent and decent houses, the first storie all of brick." These
were not purely brick structures but only part brick, which we have
called buildings of "half-and-half work." The downstairs was brick, the
upstairs timber-framed--another English medieval type.
Further, during the Cottage Period and for many a year afterward, the
wooden chimney was the common method of smoke outlet. Strachey mentioned
at James City not only the wattled buildings, but the "wide and large
Country chimnies"--in other words, the wood or "Welsh" chimney, a
medieval construction which dates back in English history to the
eleventh century and before. Ordinarily the fire had its smoke and
sparks sucked up a large wattle-and-daubed or lath-and-plastered hood
resting on the garret floor, thence up a wood flue and out the stack,
which might have been a barrel or wood box or some such contraption. At
other times the whole chimney and fireplace were placed on the exterior,
the better to protect against fire; and the boards were lined with crude
lath and clay daubing. Still another kind of chimney was the "catted"
chimney, made of "cats" or rolled-up strips of clay mixed with straw,
and placed closely together within a framework of wooden posts and
rails. But you have to see these wooden chimneys to know how they
actually appeared.
* * * * *
The story of this thirteen year period from 1607 to 1620 should not be
concluded without mention of the influence of Indian building methods
upon the English settlers. In 1608, after the great smoke of the fire
had blown away from James City, the colonists under the direction of
Captain Newport roofed some of their new homes with the bark of trees,
which was cooler than their usual roofing clapboards or wooden shingles.
Also they adorned their new rooms with mats woven into delicate colors
and designs by the Indians.
Thatch for roofs did not go out of style altogether in favor of bark,
because as late as 1638 there is record of a "thatcht" dwelling on the
Eastern Shore of Virginia.
Plowden noted the construction in 1650 in some of our East Coast
settlements of "arbour" houses, of poles and bark boards; and some of
these _English_ arbor buildings were undoubtedly built in Jamestown and
the other major settlements in earliest Virginia.
While the white man sometimes copied the Indian in his construction, it
is significant that when the colonists landed in 1607, the Indian, for
his part, was already employing several types of English medieval
construction, which he had invented and acquired independently of
European contact. Although we have already cited most of these types, we
list them again, in order to give the Indian credit, where credit is
due: palisaded walls with moats, and pale fencing; puncheoning with
wattles; central hearths with roof louvres for smoke; thatched roofs;
and timber-framing with wattle-and-daub panels. How can anyone belittle
the technical accomplishments of the Indian by calling him "savage,"
when in at least five building methods he equalled the white man
bringing the English Medieval Style to these shores? Our English
ancestors _originally_ lived in smoky buildings with the central open
hearth in the middle of the great room; in seventeenth-century Virginia
the Indian did likewise. The difference was in timing.
ii. THE COUNTRY HOUSE
In the seventeenth century, the English rural homestead was usually
placed along the great Bay, the Chesapeake, or upon one of its tidewater
tributaries. Back of such a seat, or on either side of it, there
stretched the outhouses, generally arranged in rows or around
courtyards. The water served as the principal highway, and the
plantation depended upon it. Certain Indian paths, it is true, were
turned into narrow lanes for carts, in order to reach the interior, like
the oldest "road" in Virginia, which, as we have seen, extended from
Jamestown to Middle Plantation, now Williamsburg.
[Illustration: A Type of 17{th} century Virginia Plantation
"Carotoman," Lancaster Co.]
The variety and number of properties which the prosperous land-owners
possessed is revealing, by giving us a glimpse of the economic and
architectural life of the times. Besides the mansion-house there were
offices, kitchens and bake houses, slave quarters, school houses,
dairies, barns, stables, granaries, smoke houses, spring houses, and
dovecots.
There were servants' dwellings, spinning houses, smithies, tan houses,
bin houses, well houses, hogsties, cornhouses, and guest houses. For the
gardens, sometimes called "hortyards," there were summerhouses,
greenhouses, and arbors. Then there were bloomeries and ironworks,
wharves for landing goods, called "bridges," warehouses, windmills,
watermills, sawmills, glassworks, silkhouses, brick and pottery kilns,
lime kilns, saltworks, and blockhouses.
[Illustration: The Green Spring Pottery Kiln c. 1646]
[Illustration: Two Va. Outhouses
Bin House Jamestown (Author's Reconstr'ns)]
For all intents and purposes such grandiose estates were
self-sustaining. Those goods not produced in Virginia came generally
from England and were usually landed upon the wharf in front of the
plantation-dwelling. That the kitchen outhouse was frequently placed at
a distance from the dining room was primarily due not to class or color
distinction, but to the medieval custom of carrying food across the
service courtyard.
Very often throughout the seventeenth century, especially on the Eastern
Shore of Virginia, the kitchen building was tied to the main abode by a
colonnade--a passage with columns--or by a curtain--a covered
passageway.
That these edifices in their wooden parts were painted, when the owner
could afford paint, is proven by the record of importations of large
quantities of color pigments and oils to make paint. Many of us today
think that the early Virginia building was white, but colors like gray
and tan were common. When the owner could not bear the expense of
painting, he left his house bare or "whited" it with good white
lime--that is, used whitewash.
[Illustration: SOME OCCUPANTS OF 17TH-CENTURY VIRGINIA HOMES ATE FROM
BOWLS LIKE THIS ONE, FROM JAMESTOWN
A scraffito or scratched slipware bowl with one handle. Height 3-5/8",
dia. 8-3/4". _Photo, author._ (See page 21)]
[Illustration: A MEDIEVAL "PYRAMID" CHIMNEY IN VIRGINIA
So large is the fireplace of this one-bay dwelling that you can burn
an eight-foot log within it. Great "weatherings" taper the chimney
towards the stack, which is freestanding as protection against fire.
Note medieval "black-diapered" brick pattern in gable. _Photo,
author._ (See page 22)]
[Illustration: REMNANTS OF A MEDIEVAL VIRGINIA STOREHOUSE
The foundation of the "Bin House," Jamestown, excavated by the
National Park Service. The two brick bins have concave floors below
the original main floor level. _Photo, author._ (See page 36)]
[Illustration: A TYPE OF MEDIEVAL CORNICE IN VIRGINIA
Unlike the later box cornice, to which we are accustomed, the cornice
of this dwelling of about 1670 has exposed and rounded beam ends,
which are pegged to a tilted plate, on which the rafters rest. Note
corbel of overlapping bricks which stops cornice. _Photo, author._
(See page 37)]
[Illustration: A MEDIEVAL "HALL-AND-PARLOR" HOUSE IN JAMES CITY COUNTY
The "Warburton House" or "Pinewoods" of about 1680 has
segmental-arched openings, "T"-chimneys, and chimney caps with
mouse-tooth brickwork, a decoration which seems to have come into
fashion about that time. A rear wing has disappeared. _Photo,
author._ (See page 40)]
[Illustration: "SWEET HALL," A MEDIEVAL "T"-PLAN HOME IN VIRGINIA
This old seat of the Claibornes in King William County, dating from
about 1695, has very tall "T"-stacks, with "weatherings" or slopes
above the ridge, and with heavy, ornate caps. The dormers and porches
are later. _Photo, author._ (See page 41)]
[Illustration: CLAY ROOFING PANTILES FROM THE FIRST STATE HOUSE,
JAMESTOWN
The left-hand tile, nearly complete, has a "nob" at one end to catch
on the roof strips. It was pieced together by Mr. John T. Zaharov, and
is the _first_ pantile ever found in the United States. The paper
arrow at right marks cemented overlap. _Photo, author._ (See page 48)]
[Illustration: ONE OF THE MOST HISTORIC SITES IN THE UNITED STATES
Much of our knowledge of 17th-century Virginia life and art comes from
Jamestown foundations. This interesting "complex" of ruins reveals
William Sherwood's house cellar of c. 1677-80, and in the immediate
foreground, a fireplace hearth of the "Governor's House," probably
built in the 1620s, and occupied by Sir George Yeardley. _Photo,
author._ (see page 49)]
[Illustration: A JAMESTOWN LATTICE CASEMENT AS IT CAME FROM THE GROUND
This medieval window, with the diamond panes or "quarrels" knocked
out, came from the "Double House on the Land of Thomas Hampton," and
is drawn restored in _Jamestown and St. Mary_'s. Note pane of glass
standing upon a Dutch brick. _Photo, author._ (See page 67)]
[Illustration: TWO UNUSUAL JAMESTOWN STRAP-HINGES
The right-hand hinge, broken, probably came from a wagon-box or chest.
(See page 68)]
[Illustration: A BRASS SWORD HANDLE FROM THE JAMESTOWN MUD
Found in three pieces with the blade missing, this cavalier's sword is
ornamented with _putti_ and other decorations. _Photos, author._
_Courtesy, Antiques Magazine._]
The most significant aspect of the medieval rural abode in Virginia was
its regular course of development from the simple, one-room-and-garret
cottage--what an English bishop in 1610 called a "silly cote," a hut of
"one bay's breath"--to the stately and elegant Georgian mansion of the
eighteenth century. Even so, it may not be unequivocally declared that
all the simple dwellings were constructed first and all the complex ones
later. At the same time, we find that often the homes with more than two
downstairs rooms and a central passageway were constructed in late
seventeenth-century times. Further, the country lodging for the most
part was only one-storey-and-loft high. The full two-storey domicile was
the exception.
[Illustration: Floor Plan of a Medieval One-Bay House (c. 1670) in
Va.]
The elementary hut of one bay, such as we have noted as having been
prevalent in the Cottage Period of the first thirteen years, was the
earliest type of substantial house-form in the Old Dominion; it had a
"hall," which was the "Great Room"--not a passage,--a dining room, and a
kitchen, all rolled into one. The garret with sloping ceilings, perhaps
reached by a stepladder or narrow, winding, "break-your-neck" staircase,
was usually a cold, unheated, cramped space for sleeping.
One of these small, fractional-bay dwellings stood (1660) in Northampton
County, and was ten feet from end to end. It served as the first
meeting-place of the Quakers or Friends on the Eastern Shore, and was
later used as a "wheat house."
A better known one-bay domicile was Richard May's, built about 1661 in
Jamestown, and pictured in a crude sort of way in the Ambler
Manuscripts: a flush chimney at one gable and a front with central door
flanked on each side by a window. Excavations by the National Park
Service at the site of May's revealed that the house had a chimney at
the opposite end--a feature which must of necessity have marked an
addition.
[Illustration: PLAN OF A HOUSE-FOUNDATION ON THE LAND OF ISAAC WATSON
AT JAMESTOWN.
Showing the distribution of important hardware, and a reconstruction
of the house. _Courtesy Antiques Magazine._]
One of the few known ruins of a one-bay dwelling was excavated at
Jamestown under this writer's direction and was designated as the
timber-framed "House on Isaac Watson's Land," built possibly as early as
1644. Before its destruction, it comprised one "hall," twenty feet by
twenty, with a great projecting fireplace at one gable big enough for an
eight-foot log to burn. The chimney must have been what we call a
"pyramid," and it was flanked on either side by small "outshuts," which
were probably "ingle recesses" or "chimney-pents." Inside, there was a
Dutch oven at one side of the fireplace and a setting for a brewing
copper next to it. This was no pauper's hovel, for the casements were
leaded, and the hardware included fancy wrought-iron hinges, including
the fairly-rare "Cock's Head" hinge.
Another structure of this type is here illustrated under the caption,
"Medieval One-Bay House" (c. 1670) in Virginia. Without including its
tremendous "pyramid" chimney, the dwelling measures twenty-and-a-half
feet long and sixteen wide. The chimney end is wholly brick, and the
other three sides clapboarded. The one downstairs room, the "Great
Hall," has exposed posts, beams, and wall plates, with chamfers
terminating in crude "lamb's tongues." In a corner opposite the
fireplace there was a stepladder or very steep staircase, only
twenty-seven inches wide. Upstairs there was one sleeping room with two
tiny, lie-on-your-stomach windows--almost peep-holes--to give air and
light. There were no dormers, and the long cedar shingles were pegged to
thin oaken strips across the rafters. Even the floor beams were pegged
to the rafters so that the roof on a stormy night would not part company
with the "Great Hall."
[Illustration: A Medieval Hall-and-Parlor House in Va.]
When the planter or tradesman became a little wealthier, or his family
became larger, it was a simple matter to add a "parlor" to one end of
the homestead, thus making the second stage of development, the
"hall-and-parlor" dwelling. There was a regular "school" of building of
such habitations in seventeenth-century Virginia. In such examples the
parlor was smaller than the "Hall" or "Great Room." Sometimes, of
course, the early settler commenced with a "hall-and-parlor" residence
built all at once.
The foremost example of this type in the Old Dominion is the "Adam
Thoroughgood House" (c. 1640), Princess Anne County, a brick
storey-and-garret dwelling, with a flush chimney at one gable and a
"pyramid" at the other. The chimney-stacks are "T"s, meaning that they
are designed in that shape in plan to reveal multiple flues. The
brickwork is English bond, and the windows, before alterations, were
leaded casements. The doors, too, were battened, or built up with
boards. All the openings have segmental arches, and high up on the brick
gables are lines of glazed header bricks parallel to the rakes.
Of the same ilk is another brick lodging, the "Wishart House" (c. 1680)
in Norfolk, which has two pyramid, "T"-chimneys, and a cornice
terminated by little corbels of overlapping brick--a common medieval
feature. Other extant examples are "Sweet Hall" (c. 1695) and "Warburton
House" (c. 1680), both of which had a projecting addition at the rear.
In fact the records are full of "hall-and-parlor" houses which may have
been destroyed, such as Sam Wools' plantation (1638) on Eastern Shore,
twenty-five feet long and sixteen wide--a standard size. There was "one
partition in it," and it had only one chimney and only one wing, a
buttery. The kitchen, it seems, was not mentioned, but it probably was
an outhouse.
It was a natural step to the third development, the "central-passage"
type, a group of buildings named by this writer for the purpose of
convenience. A "screen" or wooden partition was added to the end of the
"Hall" or Great Room in order to make a passage from front to back in
the center of the edifice. In that way the living space, the "Hall," was
made more private than when it served as a passageway. At any rate, the
brick "Keeling House" (c. 1700), Princess Anne County, is a good
specimen. A later, or "Hangover" phase of the central-passage type is
"Smith's Fort Plantation," generally known as the "Rolfe House," Surry
County, which has been continuously and erroneously dated 1652, but
which really belongs to the first half of the eighteenth century.
[Illustration: A Cross Plan in Virginia "Bacon's Castle," c. 1650]
The last or culminating development in the rural dwelling was the
changing of a "hall-and-parlor" habitation, or one of "central-passage"
variety, into a "cross-house." The cross was formed by adding an
enclosed porch, usually with a "porch chamber" above it, on the front
façade, and a wing, like a stair tower, to the rear. However, a
"T"-shaped domicile, with no back wing, is also classified as a
"cross-house." An old record tells of one Southey Littleton, of
Accomack, who had a porch and porch chamber on the front of his
dwelling--in other words, a cross-house. Of the extant or partially
extant examples in Virginia are "Bacon's Castle" (c. 1650), Surry
County; "Malvern Hill" (c. 1662), Henrico County; and "Christ's Cross"
(c. 1690) and "Foster's Castle," (c. 1685) both in New Kent. They make a
veritable school of building which once must have flourished the length
and breadth of tidewater Virginia. With its noted "Bond Castle,"
Maryland, too, had a school of cross-houses.
Of the Virginia examples, "Bacon's Castle," two-storeys-and-garret high,
with basement, was built by one Arthur Allen, and was named for the
rebel, Nathaniel Bacon, who in 1676 ordered his men to capture the
dwelling. "Castle" meant "fort." Its cross-plan incorporated a porch,
porch chamber, and stair tower. A low, wooden, curtain and kitchen
extension, which is believed to have been seventeenth century in date,
formerly stood off the gable on the "Hall" side--an arrangement
indicating that the Great Room perhaps also served as a dining room. The
curtain was the buttery, or bottlery.
[Illustration: Medieval Diamond Stacks in Virginia
Plan
Bacon's Castle c. 1650 West Gable]
But the most distinguishing feature of "Bacon's Castle" is the Jacobean
"curvilinear" gable at each end. These gables possess round
members--"cuspings"--and steps, built pretty much the same way in which
they were made in England and the Low Countries. The chimney stacks are
Tudor, three in number, set diagonally on their bases at each gable.
Because of the way these chimneys look in plan, we call them "diamond
stacks."
Also Jacobean are the crude brick pediment over the main entrance, now
much changed, and the brick borders surrounding the windows--called
"enframements." And of course, the windows formerly held leaded
casements, with mullions and transom bars.
Two important features of another of the cross-houses mentioned belong
to "Christ's Cross," called for short, "Criss Cross." This writer can
remember when there was hardly a person who knew of the existence of
this place, and where it was located. The double door opening out into
the enclosed porch from the "Hall" we have denoted as the "finest Tudor
door in all Virginia"--because of its panel design and Gothic mouldings;
and the post in the "Hall" has probably the finest Jacobean carved
capital in the United States. The capital is in truth a _folk_ Jacobean
carving, a grotesque, comprising a raised heart-shaped shield with
crudely chiselled volutes upon it, and an "echinus" or cushion, and an
"abacus" or block above it. It reminds one of the ancient Greek Ionic
wooden capitals in Athens, Asia Minor, or elsewhere, which possessed
rough or incipient volutes.
[Illustration: The Folk Jacobean Post Capital (c. 1690) "Christ's
Cross," Va.]
Study of the cross-house in Virginia needs an essay to itself. We have
tried here to give some of the highlights of this last development of
the rural dwelling, which is outstandingly medieval in design and
construction--with a bit here and there of Jacobean trimming.
[Illustration: Archaic Ionic Cap found at Athens]
Branching off the main stream of country house development are
exceptions and special cases, such as "The Green Spring" mansion (c.
1646), Sir William Berkeley's home near Jamestown. Sometimes it is
mistakenly called the first large country house in America, but it may
not lay claim to that status since the earlier "Governor's Castle" in
Maryland had a larger area. However that may be, "The Green Spring" for
its time was baronial. It seems to have been a "double-parlor"
dwelling--an English derivative, where the "Hall" stood between two
parlors. When the recently-revealed watercolor of this mansion-house by
Benjamin Henry Latrobe is published, its features, like the roof
"shingled" with dormers and the front porch of "clumsy Jacobean
brickwork" may be more fully described.
[Illustration: The Pre-Berkeley House at "The Green Spring," Va.
Restoration by Author]
In the recent excavations at "The Green Spring" were found the brick
footings of a _pre_-Berkeley building. We know that it antedated Sir
William's great pile because part of it was covered by Sir William's
structure. Our floor plan, based on Kocher, Waterman, and Dimmick, shows
a very unusual room arrangement for seventeenth-century Virginia. It
looks very much like an "E"-plan of the Elizabethan Style of
architecture. And at the rear were "cells" or "outshuts." With grains of
allowance, the sketch of the entrance front is conjectural, but probably
has enough of the truth about it to reveal the unique character of the
edifice.
iii. THE TOWN DWELLING
Because Virginians in founding their towns wished to crowd their houses
in rows along their streets, the city abode is substantially different
in type from the rural one. Many of our city developers today are
building squeezed-up row houses, in order to make as much money as
possible, where the front foot is valued in dollars. But, for all that,
the Jamestown developers were doing the very same thing, building
sardine-packed row dwellings--only the payment was in English currency.
Inside James Fort that first year the settlers erected streets of
"settled" houses, which, because of the small space available within the
palisade, must have been of necessity row homes. The current oil
painting of James Fort in the Jamestown Museum is all very fine, being
based largely on a plan and description of the first settlement by the
writer; but it has one great error: the houses are not contiguous to one
another, as they were forced to be within the cramped space of the
triangular palisade. Four years later, the settlement had two fair rows
of timber-framed houses, two storeys and garret high. Even storehouses
at Jamestown were constructed in rows. In 1614 there were erected in
that settlement three large, substantial storehouses, joined together in
length about one hundred and twenty feet, and extending in breadth forty
feet.
[Illustration: The Governor's House, c. 1620 A Jamestown Duplex]
What appears from a drawing in the Ambler Manuscripts to be an early
example of a row dwelling is the "Governor's House" or the "Country
House,"--the word, country, meaning not countryside, but Colony or
Province. This edifice was situated at Jamestown, but it was outside the
triangular Fort and upon the so-called "fourth ridge," the highest
ground near that fortification. The house was erected some time between
the arrival in Virginia of Sir George Yeardley in 1619 and the year
1660. The probable date lies somewhere in the 1620s. The manuscript
drawing is crudely drawn and badly torn, but it does indicate a
one-and-a-half storey domicile with three chimneys, one in the center
and one at each end--making what seems to be a _double_ house--a duplex.
Excavations of the fragmentary brick remains of the "Governor's House"
revealed that it was a brick edifice fifty-three feet long and twenty
wide, with a little frame wing at the rear. Unfortunately no trace
remained of the central chimney; but at any rate the diggings
established that the eastern half had a cellar, while the western
section did not--another indication of the double house.
There is an interesting story about the "Governor's House." Those who
disagree with the Gregory-Forman theory of the site of James Fort of
1607 being at or near the point below Orchard Run, Jamestown Island, not
a half mile up river near the Brick Church, must explain away the
conversation recorded in the archives of Virginia for the night of June
23, 1624, at the "Governor's House," Jamestown. Briefly, there were two
"fellows" who lurked on that evening under the walls of this building,
trying to get inside. They were seen and hailed by sentries on the walls
of James Fort. One of the men at the Fort shouted at the two fellows:
"Que Vulla?"--evidently stock military vulgar Latin for _Quae Vultis_?,
"What do you want?" To which question the two fellows at the "Governor's
House" replied that they could not get in because the door was locked.
It is obvious that the Fort lay near the Governor's House and not half a
mile away.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE "NEW TOWNE" AT JAMES CITY.
Illustrating buildings mentioned in the text, and based on a map in
the writer's _Jamestown and St. Mary's_]
At least by 1623, it was the desire of the Virginia Company of London to
build towns in Virginia which would possess a convenient and suitable
number of houses, constructed together of brick and encircled by a
battlemented brick wall. Exactly in the same way Cecilius Calvert, Lord
Baltimore, commanded the first Maryland settlers to lay out row houses
in their first settlement.
And also, Jamestown excavations have borne out the fact that the typical
city building was usually a row affair. The few rural homes within the
city limits may not be classified as "town" houses. There are at least
five groups of row houses known at Jamestown, and there are even stock
sizes for such groups. Twenty feet by forty, measured on the inside of
the walls, were the most common dimensions--an inheritance from British
medieval building laws.
[Illustration: First State House, Jamestown: Cellar]
[Illustration: First State House, Jamestown: River Front
Author's Reconstruction]
Perhaps the foremost of the James City row buildings is the group of
three brick edifices which comprised the "First State House" in
Virginia. The three cellars, their long walls being party walls, were
excavated under the direction of this writer and of a colleague. The
structure was originally two storeys and garret high. The down-river, or
eastern section, and the central portion, were erected about 1635 by
Governor John Harvey and were used as the capitol building of the Colony
from 1641 for fifteen years. The up-river section was built before 1655
by Sir William Berkeley. But by 1670 the whole pile, with its three
front gables facing the James River, had gone up in flames.
The unit floor plan of the "First State House" comprised a
"hall-and-parlor" dwelling with back-to-back fireplaces and a very
narrow passageway running the length of the building at one side. Now
that arrangement formed pretty much the stock plan of the city house in
seventeenth-century London, as our researches have disclosed. That the
"First State House" was Tudor in appearance is evidenced by the great
wealth of medieval wrought-iron hardware found in the ruins: such items
as Cock's Head hinges, leaded lattice casements, and great rim locks
with eight-inch keys. The roof once carried the medieval "pantile,"
which is an "S"-shaped clay tile about thirteen inches long, with a nob
at one end to catch on to the roofing strips.
Another row example with gables facing the street lay about a thousand
feet north of the Brick Church at Jamestown. It comprised two brick
buildings with their long sides being party walls; and we have named
them the "Double House on the land of Thomas Hampton." Each basement is
approximately sixteen feet by twenty-four in size--another stock
configuration--which came about as the result of the Virginia Act of
1639. This duplex contained beautiful Delft tiles in the fireplaces,
representing figures of Dutchmen at sport and at play.
[Illustration: London 17{th} C. Town Houses]
Not all row dwellings had gables across the front; some buildings were
joined end to end, their gables party walls. The most important example
of such at Jamestown is what we have called the "Country-Ludwell-State
House" block of five buildings, situated up river a short distance from
the Brick Church. Four of these were private homes, and the fifth was
the "Third State House." They were all set up as a result of the Act of
1662 calling for thirty-two brick (row) dwellings, arranged in a square
or other form which the Governor should decide. Each dwelling was to be
twenty feet by forty on the inside, eighteen feet from floor to eaves,
fifteen feet from eaves to ridge measured vertically, and to have a
slate or tile roof. Of these four habitations, the two nearest the river
had floor plans similar to that of the "First State House," already
described, except that the gables adjoined one another.
To delve a little further into the subject of this interesting block, we
may note that the other two houses were of the same size as the pair
nearer the water, but that they had "flush" chimneys abutting the party
walls instead of "central" chimneys with back-to-back fireplaces. These
two were also marked by three enclosed porches on their front façades.
All four dwellings had "cell" or "aisle" additions at the rear.
Another row house at James City is what we have called the "Double House
back of John White's Land," where half the building possessed a large,
brick-vaulted, wine cellar, with hundreds of bottles kept within it--a
feature indicating a tavern. Let no one think they did not drink at
Jamestown: the whole settlement was permeated with taverns and
ale-houses.
One of the most recent finds at Jamestown is a triplet or "triplex" row,
lying some four hundred feet northeast of the Brick Church. The three
dwellings faced south, and each measured twenty by fifty-two feet within
the walls. There was the customary back-to-back fireplace on the north
wall of each unit; but the easternmost house had an exterior fireplace
at its east gable-end, and a square porch room on the south.
As new discoveries are made in this first capital of Virginia, it
becomes clearer year by year that the city was full of row buildings,
trying to emulate Oxford or Chipping Camden or even the great London
herself.
iv. CHURCHES, CHAPELS, AND GLEBES
The medieval Virginia church of the seventeenth century was generally a
crossroads shrine set down in or near the middle of a group of
plantations. Towns, like James City, also had their own churches,
situated on the main thoroughfares. When roads were too bad for
traversing, or distances were too great, parishioners built sometimes
small fanes called "chapels of ease," nearer their homes than the main
parish churches.
The starting point for the Virginia church is at Jamestown, a place
which can count five churches, and perhaps more. For brevity we list
them:
1. The "cruck" church of 1607, the first substantial church, which,
according to Smith, was covered by rushes, boards, and earth.
2. The timber-framed church of 1610, of Lord Delaware, sixty feet
by twenty-four in size, where took place in 1614 the marriage of the
Indian princess, Pocahontas, and John Rolfe. This edifice had
casements on hinges and, at the west end, two bells.
3. Argall's frame church of 1617, fifty feet by twenty, which by
1623 may have been the structure possessing a latticed gallery for
ladies, and which needed repairs in 1624.
In connection with this 1617 church, may we digress a moment to mention
some contemporary churches outside Jamestown? We have already cited the
puncheoned church (c. 1623) on the Eastern Shore. Then there was the
Elizabeth City church of 1624, timber-framed, laid upon cobblestone
footings, and paved with square tiles; and the wood Hog Island Church of
1628, which measured on the inside twenty by forty feet and which
probably had a small tower at the west end. That must have been a tower,
because it was not the custom to place a porch at the west end in
seventeenth-century Virginia--at least, as far as present research has
disclosed. The tower was eight feet wide, but projected only three feet
out--big enough, perhaps, to support two or three bells.
To continue the chronology of the Jamestown churches:
4. A wood church, spoken of as "new" in 1636, located next the
Reverend Hampton's land, and of which he was the minister. The
brick-and-cobblestone footings inside the Brick Church of 1647 at
Jamestown may very well have belonged to this "new" wooden church;
but they never belonged to Argall's Church, which was located within
James Fort, situated half a mile down the James River, near Orchard
Run, Jamestown Island.
5. The Brick Church of 1647, of which the original bell tower and
foundation are extant.
[Illustration: Brick Church of 1647 at Jamestown
After a Foundation Plan in "Jamestown and St. Mary's"]
The tower of this Brick Church at Jamestown is of fine old "English"
bonded brickwork, with a belt course of Flemish bond. It was built
separate from the main body of the church, but was connected to it at
the jambs and tops of the interconnecting doorways--as the floor plan
shows. The great walls of the belfry are three feet thick, and the roof
was probably battlemented or crenellated.
The main entrance doorway in the tower has a plain, round-headed brick
arch, the earliest form of brick church door in the Old Dominion.
In 1907 the main body of the church was reconstructed for the
Tercentenary Celebration. It is a single nave and possesses some
interesting medieval features: buttresses; pointed and mullioned
windows; gables of crow-steps or "tabled offsets"; and a raised tile
chancel floor.
The stepped gables were modelled upon those of "St. Luke's Church,"
often called the "Old Brick Church," Isle of Wight County, Virginia. We
are fortunate in having in this country such an excellently-preserved
medieval church as "St. Luke's." For years its date was considered
"1632"; but the authorities, G. C. Mason and T. T. Waterman, in recent
years have assigned to this pile the dates respectively of "1677 or
before" and "1682."
Unlike the belfry of the Brick Jamestown Church, the tower of old "St.
Luke's" is incorporated into the west gable-end of the building. It,
too, probably had a battlemented top, which has now been changed. That
the Jamestown belfry is a good deal older than the one at "St. Luke's"
is proven by the simplicity of design of the former in contradistinction
to the sophisticated appearance of the latter. The "St. Luke's" tower
possesses Jacobean brick quoins, a feature imitating corner stones, and
an "embryo" or much simplified, triangular pediment, of Jacobean
derivation, over the circular-headed doorway.
[Illustration: The East Window St. Luke's Church, Va.]
The buttresses, the crow-stepped gables, the pointed windows at "St.
Luke's" are all original medieval features. In fact the great east
window of the chancel, made up of eight main lights separated by
foliated tracery, is English Gothic, of the style known as "Decorated"
or "Geometric," which flourished between 1307 and 1377 in England. A
source for this east window is the chancel traceried window at Liscomb
Park Chapel (c. 1350), Soulbury, England.
From the foregoing it is obvious that the main body of the "St. Luke's"
church preceded the Tudor Style and is "Decorated" Gothic. The tower has
Jacobean trimmings. At the same time it is erroneous to call this church
"Gothic Colonial." What a mixture! In style it is English Gothic, that
is, Gothic of England. It is as much Gothic as "Westminster Abbey" or
"Wells" or "Yorkminster." What a multitude of errors is covered by that
word "Colonial."
Recent research done at "St. Luke's" has uncovered the original,
chamfered, timbered trusses and horizontal tie-beams, which were
exposed in the nave; traces of the original gallery at the tower end of
the nave which appears to have had balusters of oak; the old wineglass
pulpit; and the enclosed porch or vestibule in the first storey of the
tower.
[Illustration: Liscomb Park Chapel
Soulbury England c. 1350
A Source for "St. Luke's," Virginia]
Let not the reader think that most Virginia churches in the seventeenth
century had towers. Such buildings were usually simple rectangles,
occasionally with a porch attached to the long side on the south, in the
approved English parish church manner.
Giving an idea how an early church was constructed is revealed in the
building specifications of the "Second Hungars Church" (1680), in
Northampton County--an edifice which was contemporaneous with old "St.
Luke's." Specifications can be pretty dry reading, but this one had a
humorous touch or two. It appears that the church wardens contracted
with the builder to put up a timber-framed parish church forty feet by
twenty, with wall plates ten feet high. Wall plates, by the way, are
timbers upon which rafters rest. Of "substantial substance," the framing
was to be oak, and the foundation to be locust blocks of wood. The walls
and roof were to have planks or clapboards. It is interesting that the
upper edge of the roof planks were to be let, or set, into the rafters
for strength and tightness. The inside of the church was also to be
planked in order to seal off the walls of the "Old Church,"--the "First
Hungars Church,"--which seems to have been incorporated, at least in
part, in the second shrine. The planks covered the barrel vault, which
was called "Arches," situated beneath the roof. Nails, planks, and food
were to be furnished to the builder.
One of the excellent contract provisions was that the contractor was to
take over no additional work elsewhere, or to leave the works, except
upon some great occasion, for a week or two at the most. Upon completion
of the job he was to receive ten thousand pounds of tobacco and to have
the help of a hand able to work an axe for the space of a month.
The foremost example of Jacobean Style in early ecclesiastical work was
the "Second Bruton Church," Middle Plantation, now Williamsburg. It was
completed in 1683--that is, soon after "St. Luke's,"--and has been
completely demolished. Excavations of its brick foundations revealed
that it possessed buttresses on its long sides and at the back. The
inside measurements were sixty feet by twenty-four. The main west
door--there was no tower--and the chancel door on the side were to be,
with minor variations, the sizes of the doors of the Brick Church of
1647 at Jamestown. An old drawing shows that the "Second Bruton Parish
Church" had curvilinear gables of the type found at "Bacon's Castle,"
and the western rose window was flanked by scrolls which were probably
formed of hand-cut brick. Both of these features are Jacobean.
Another early doorway, which is plain, round-headed, and of rubbed
brick, stands at the "Merchant's Hope Church," Prince George County, and
in style it seems to bolster the theory that at least a portion of the
existing shrine is of the seventeenth century.
Some believe that brick "Pungoteague Church" on Eastern Shore,
originally erected on a cross plan, with a mansard roof, was
seventeenth-century in date, but it is the part of wisdom to accept G.
C. Mason's belief for valid reasons that the pile was constructed as
late as 1738.
That some of these parish churches in Virginia had interiors which were
richly furnished is evident from the description of the builder's work
on one of them, the frame "Poplar Spring Church," (1677), Gloucester
County. Father Time has unfortunately done away with this shrine, but we
do know that its walls and ceiling were lathed and plastered, and that
the chancel, fifteen feet long, was to be divided from the nave by a
wooden _rood screen_--a "Screen to be run Crosse the church," and to
have "ballisters."
In the medieval English church the rood screen is the name given to the
chancel or choir screen when it supported the "rood," a large cross. It
was customary to build such a screen in three parts: a base comprising
panelled walls as high as the pews, a middle section with a row of wood
balusters set closely together, and a top part of pierced woodwork--that
is, traceried work--and heavy cornice.
[Illustration: Elements of the Typical Medieval Church in Va.]
At "Poplar Spring Church" there were double pews built on each side of
the chancel abutting the rood screen. Also set against the rood screen
was another double pew, this one between the pulpit in the nave and the
screen. The rest of the pews in the church, on both sides of the aisle,
were double and had panelled backs. The pulpit itself was hexagonal and
a three-decker affair. There was a six-foot space permitted for the
reading desk, set eighteen inches above the floor, and for the passage
into the pulpit. Half way up were the minister's pew and desk. The
church was also the proud possessor of a flowered, crimson, velvet
pulpit cloth, a silver communion service, and a drawing of cherubim,
presumably upon the altarpiece.
Although it was customary to place wainscoted pews within the chancel,
the "Second Lynnhaven Church," of 1692, Princess Anne County, had also
in the chancel several benches, which were used by the parish poor.
That all seventeenth-century churches in the Old Dominion were not of
brick or wood is shown by the "Second York Church" (1697), now Grace
Church, Yorktown, which was constructed of native marl.
The Transitional Style of architecture, which, as we have seen, greatly
influenced rural dwellings from about 1680 to about 1730, is marked in
the Virginia church chiefly by the doorway designs. The earliest motif
of a brick doorway is that plain, round-arched one on the entrance to
the Jamestown Brick Church belfry. By 1700, brick doorways were becoming
transitional: a good example is that at "Ware Church" (perhaps 1715),
Gloucester County, which is flanked by brick pilasters and an arch
bounded by a shallow hood--the whole made up of rubbed or gauged brick.
One of the most curious doorways of transitional vintage is the main
south entrance to "Yeocomico Church" (1706), Westmoreland County. The
door head consists of three brick arches in relief with stucco tympanums
or fillings. Of the three, the top arch rests upon the other two--much
in the manner that small arches cluster inside a large arch in some
English Gothic doorways. But the "Yeocomico" door has the flavor of
transitional experimentation.
Apropos of this same "Yeocomico" church, the door itself is a heavy
battened door which is Tudor, and which is believed to have been taken
from an earlier church (1653) on the same site. At all events, the long
vertical panels on the exterior of the door are reminiscent of those at
"Christ's Cross," New Kent County, already described. But the
"Yeocomico" entrance has an additional medieval feature: a small door or
"wicket" within the big door--a feature common to buildings of the
Middle Ages abroad.
Most early Virginia churches possessed parsonages, usually on the glebe
land and therefore known as "glebes." We have already cited, as an
example of the Transition, the "Abingdon Glebe House" (c. 1700),
Gloucester County, erected with balancing pavilion wings. Another
interesting glebe was specified in 1635 for erection on Old Plantation
Creek in Northampton County. Such a building appears to have been of the
"hall-and-parlor" variety with a chimney at each end and with a study
"outshut" and a buttery "outshut" off each chimney. On the front was an
"entry," the familiar little enclosed square porch, and at the rear were
a "Kitchinge" and a "Chamber." In size this parsonage was to be forty
feet by eighteen, and there were nine feet to the "wall plates," upon
which the rafters rested. One could almost make an accurate restoration
drawing of this glebe house from the description. But it must have been
typical of the minister's house of that day, and the building of a
"study" perhaps indicated that religion was then based on learning.
v. STATE HOUSES AND OTHER PUBLIC BUILDINGS
From the records we may learn of many kinds of public buildings, even
though their actual remains have disappeared above ground. We know, for
instance, of the Tavern or Ale-house (1660) of Thomas Woodhouse at
Jamestown, where at one time were made the laws of Virginia. We are
cognizant of the Eastern Shore tavern of 1697 where John Cole was
licensed to keep an "ordinary" and to retail liquors near the Court
House. We have heard of the "quartering house" of 1670 in Accomack
County, which was a kind of tourist home for one-night stop-overs. We
learn that there were many courthouses in seventeenth-century Virginia,
like that of 1690 in Northampton County, which is sketchily described as
having one exterior chimney and as being twenty-five feet long. Jails
there were, too, like the Westover Prison and Stocks of 1643, which were
probably constructed by Theoderick Bland. In Accomack there stood in
1674 a "logg'd" prison, fifteen feet by ten. At Westover, it may be
noted, was also a "Brew house."
Also from the records we find mention of the Salt Works of 1676 owned
by Daniel and Anne Jenifer and of Darby's Grist Mill of 1668, both in
Accomack County; and of the Windmill of 1642 constructed jointly by John
Williams and Obedience Robins, "chirugion," in Northampton County.
The Glass House or Factory of 1608 near Jamestown is one building which
we do know something about, because of excavations by the National Park
Service. It had originally a dirt floor about fifty feet by
thirty-seven--a large area. Upon this floor were built three crude stone
furnaces and a pot kiln. There was probably an open-walled timber
structure with a pitched roof over the large floor and with louvres for
the thick smoke to escape through the roof. There is not the slightest
evidence for the use of crucks in the present off-site reconstruction of
this great pile.
[Illustration: THE COUNTRY-LUDWELL-THIRD STATE HOUSE BLOCK
Author's reconstruction from _Jamestown and St. Mary's_ showing four
residences and the first American state house to be built specifically
as a State House or Capitol.]
When we take up the subject of State Houses, we have an excellent
example in the "Third State House" at Jamestown, which, as heretofore
noted, formed part of the "Country-Ludwell-State House" block of five
buildings a little up river from the Brick Church of 1647. Only the
foundations of the "Third State House" remain, but from them and from
the references in the Virginia records we know pretty much how the
edifice looked originally. And it is noted as the first structure in the
United States erected as a legislative seat.
Built about 1662 and burned in 1676, the "Third State House" was a
medieval cross-house possessing close analogies to "Bacon's Castle" in
the general neighborhood, and it rose two full storeys and garret high.
There was no basement. The main façade, facing the south and the main
body of Jamestown, had a porch and porch chamber, and at the back was a
tower which held the stairway--an area which in that day was known as a
"Stair Case." In size, the stair tower was about the same as that of the
"Brick State House of 1676" in St. Mary's City, Maryland, a
cross-building which postdated the Virginia structure by only about
thirteen years.
The interior of the "Third State House" must have been impressive.
Downstairs were a spacious waiting room and a Court House Room, in which
the Governor and his Council met and in which at times Provincial Courts
were held. Upstairs were another waiting room and the Assembly Hall or
House of Burgesses. The little porch chamber on the second floor was
used by His Majesty's Secretary of Virginia, until he was ordered to
work in the eastern garret.
The four great rooms in this pile--two down and two up--had huge
fireplaces on their long sides. The downstairs fireplaces could burn
nine-foot logs. All the ceilings had girders and joists exposed.
After the conflagration of 1676 set by Nathaniel Bacon, the building was
rebuilt (1685) on the same site, probably using what brick walls were
still standing, to become the "Fourth State House." It is believed that
in the rebuilding there was not much change in the design. But it was
only natural that some of the rooms should have new uses, so that we
find that the lower waiting room was fitted into a Secretary's Office by
placing a strong partition under the "second girder" and, because of
dampness, by raising the floor two feet up from the ground. To keep
persons from breaking in to steal the record books of the Colony in the
small storage room next to the Secretary's Office, the windows were
barred with iron and had board shutters half an inch thick, with
cross-bars.
[Illustration: In 17{th} C.--Va., builders used to scratch their
initials on plaster. From J'town.]
Virginia may well be proud of the design of this "Third State House" at
Jamestown, which has recently been the subject of a special restoration
study for the Commonwealth by this writer. That legislative seat, built
nearly three hundred years ago, was dignified, handsome, impressive, and
in fine scale. Through its portals passed in those days the chief
figures of the Dominion. Its mullioned and diamond-pane windows, its
pantile roof, and its porch and porch chamber gave the fabric a strong
medieval flavor.
It is unfortunate that the "Fourth State House" burned on October 31,
1698, through an accident. What kind of an accident the records do not
state. Was it a faulty flue, an overturned sconce, or carelessness in
lighting a tobacco pipe? We shall probably never know. But the very next
year the early capital, Jamestown, which had flourished for ninety-two
years, was abandoned in favor of Middle Plantation, "nigh his Majesties
Royall Colledg of William and Mary."
Three years before the destruction by fire of the "Fourth State House,"
the foundation of the "Sir Christopher Wren Building" of William and
Mary College was laid down (1695). The shape of the great structure was
to have been a quadrangle in the best English tradition of the Middle
Ages. Colleges in Britain, as early as the 1200s, were in their general
equipment much like monastic establishments, grouped about an arcaded
cloister, and were halls of residence for communities of teachers and
students.
But in Williamsburg the Wren Building was slow to get started, and has
in truth never been completed in the form of a rectangle. By 1705, the
year of the first fire, only the front façade and half of the north side
had been completed. Consequently, for all intents and purposes, the
edifice is an eighteenth-century structure, in spite of its earlier
foundation, and belongs more to Classic Williamsburg than to the former
era. In more than one respect it paved the way for the Virginia
Georgian.
For all that, the style of the original building may be said to be
Transitional, with Georgian details, like modillions in the cornice. The
main façade, one hundred and thirty-six feet long, is distinguished by a
"break-front" or projecting bay on the center, crowned by a steeply
pitched gable--the motif being repeated on the courtyard side. According
to an old drawing of 1702 the entrance façade had in the center two
balconies, one above the other, over the great, arched, front doorway.
The hipped main roof is crowned by a "tower" or cupola.
The arrangement of the main roof on the quadrangle side is unique: there
is on each side of the central gable a row of hipped roofs. In the early
days in Virginia there must have been many a building with a similar
row. It is possible that the "First State House" itself had three hips
contiguous to one another instead of the three gables which we have
drawn herein. At any rate, in order to see existing parallels one has to
visit the Bermudas, the Bahamas, or even Great Britain herself.
V
THE RICH HERITAGE OF ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS
Although it is true that the vast majority of English buildings in
Virginia during the seventeenth century were simple and unadorned,
constructed by plain people, there was a large number of structures
which had ornate or costly details and exquisite furnishings. What is
known about these interesting features is still largely unknown to
Virginians, and it is the purpose of this chapter to make mention of
some of them.
The richest details known to a seventeenth-century building in the Old
Dominion appear to have once upon a time decorated the ceiling of the
Great Hall of "William Sherwood's House," built about 1677-80 in
Jamestown. The dwelling was a small, brick, storey-and-garret residence
built on top of and across the foundation ruins of the old "Governor's
House," already described. Mr. Sherwood's Great Hall, seventeen feet by
sixteen in size, was rented in 1685 by the Government of Virginia and
used as a Council Room by His Majesty's Governor and Council.
Now for the discovery. It was in the excavations of 1935 in Sherwood's
neat, brick basement, and in the area immediately surrounding that
cellar, that more than fifty thousand fragments of plaster were
retrieved. There are still some who do not believe that this plaster
work came from Sherwood's House; but like "Kilroy," this writer was
there and can vouch for its coming from Sherwood's. In fact we have
charts showing exactly where each important fragment of plaster was
found, and at what depth below the ground.
At any rate, some of the plaster was colored or frescoed, and much of it
was moulded. There were two particular pieces of plaster with raised
letters upon them: on one the letters "VI," on the other the letter
"Y." What did they mean? This writer invited Mr. Singleton Moorehead, of
the Williamsburg Restoration, down to Jamestown Island to view the
letters, and he immediately identified them as belonging to the "Garter"
of the Royal Arms of Great Britain. In quoting what the Garter states,
we have underlined the Jamestown letters, thus: "HONI SOIT Q_VI_ MAL _Y_
PENSE." Translated, the words mean, "Evil be to him who evil thinks."
There is no doubt that Mr. Moorehead was correct. The tail of the "Q" in
"Q_VI_" showed plainly, and the blank space in front of the "_Y_"
indicated that it was a letter by itself. But with the Garter in hand we
could identify the other important plaster finds--the masks, roses,
leaves, the lion, the hand-and-book, and the ribs, which ordinarily
divide a large plaster composition into separate panels--as part of the
Royal Coat of Arms.
[Illustration: The Now Famous Letters from the Jamestown Plaster
Garter identified by S. P. Moorehead]
In England such a ceiling arrangement in plaster was called "pargetry"
and was a Tudor manner of decorating an important room. How appropriate
to find the Royal Arms of England in the room in Sherwood's which was
used by His Majesty's Governor and Council. That was one of the great
archaeological finds of America, and the translation of the inscription
one of the great interpretations.
The important, widespread, and non-perishable building material of
tidewater was brick; and when we take up the subject of
seventeenth-century brickwork, we may still with justification hover
about the ruins of "William Sherwood's House" at Jamestown as a starting
point. It was there were found the largest and most varied collection
of rubbed or gauged brick in that capital city. By "gauging"--and we
have mentioned the term before in describing certain church
doorways,--we mean that the bricks have been cut and finished off by
rubbing upon a sandstone. In England by 1660, only about seventeen years
before Mr. Sherwood's home was erected, gauged bricks had become widely
popular. Such bricks were usually lighter in color than the
run-of-the-mill bricks, and were employed on cornices, belt or string
courses, quoins at the corners of buildings, and the heads
and jambs of openings. They dressed up an edifice in the eye of the
seventeenth-century beholder.
Further, we know that in Britain one of the ways of decorating an
opening in a late medieval building was to put mouldings on jambs and
head of a doorway or of a window. Apropos of Sherwood's at Jamestown,
few of us, if any, know that his mansion possessed openings with _ovolo_
bricks--bricks rubbed and cut in an egg-shaped ornamental moulding.
[Illustration: Part of a Medieval Ornamental Ovolo Jamb Brick from
Sherwood's H. Jamestown]
There seems little doubt that Virginians made bricks, even gauged
bricks, in their capital and did not bring them from England--popular
tradition to the contrary. Several brick kilns have been discovered at
Jamestown by the National Park Service. One was a well-preserved, square
brick kiln of about 1650, found with arched ovens and with some bricks
and tiles in place. The citizens of James City had no difficulty in
fabricating all the fancy and ornamental bricks or tiles which they
desired.
Virginia brick of the seventeenth century was generally called English
brick or English _statute_ brick, not because it was brought from
England--which it was not--but because its size was regulated by English
law. There was another kind of brick used at that time in Virginia, the
Dutch brick, made not by Hollanders but by Virginians and English, which
was a great deal smaller than the English brick. The Jamestown English
brick generally run 9" by 4-1/4" by 2-1/4" in size, but the Dutch brick,
yellow in color, average 6" by 2-1/2" by 1-1/2".
In the realm of fireplaces, early Virginia had some ornate ones. Old
"Fairfield" (1692), Gloucester County, before its destruction, had a
mantelpiece of carved marble and some "linenfold" wainscoting. A
peculiarity of Gothic carved decoration, the linenfold design was
employed in oak panels in imitation of folded parchment or linen.
Sometimes in the Old Dominion a rich array of Dutch faïence tiles, five
inches square, decorated the sides of a fireplace, as in the "Double
House on the Land of the Reverend Hampton," already described. Those
tiles, called Dutch, but probably made in England in the Dutch manner,
have blue designs upon a milky white surface, and show human
figures--Dutchmen--throwing javelins, bowling, or playing games.
In the field of wrought-iron work early Virginia was outstanding. Iron
was a common commodity, even as far back as 1610, when the Spanish spy,
Don Miguel, wrote from Jamestown to Spain that iron mines, and mines for
other metals, were being worked in Virginia. Then, in 1619, Sir Edwin
Sandys, Treasurer of the Virginia Company of London, sent one hundred
and fifty persons to Virginia to set up three iron works. Glassware,
too, was made as early as 1608, at the "Glass House" on Glass House
Point, near Jamestown, and was imported into England; but the fragile
nature of glass has caused it to endure less well than wrought-iron.
Probably much of the best quality ironwork was brought from England: we
have record, for instance, of Sir John Harvey in 1639 bringing with him
"iron wares to the value of upwards of £45."
The wooden casement window, as well as that of wrought-iron, often gave
Virginians a chance to create beautiful and enriched designs. The little
metal casement taken from the ruin on the "John Washington Farm" of
about 1670 in Westmoreland County measures only 12-3/4" across and
18-1/2" tall, yet it has a fairly ornate iron plate, punched and cut out
in an interesting design, over which is fastened a spring latch-bar,
also of a cut-out shape. A ring or pull through which a finger could be
slipped to twist a lever against the latch-bar to open the casement was
welded to the latch itself. When viewed from the interior of a room, the
ornamental fastener was especially effective silhouetted against the
light. There was no limit to the fanciful shapes and decorations of such
fasteners.
The "First State House," which as we have already noted formed a group
of three row dwellings at Jamestown, had in its day probably as much
wealth of ornate ironwork as any other building in the Old Dominion.
From its ruins came a veritable mine of hardware of good quality, yet
rusted. A few specimens may be mentioned here: Cock's Head hinges--a
type of "H"-hinge with four heads, the pattern of which harks back to
Roman times; an ornamental cupboard latch-lock, made of wrought-iron and
steel, with a punched and lobed silhouette, a spring, a pull for
turning; and a bar delicately incised with diagonal grooves.
Another bit of hardware from the "First State House" was a pair of
decorative cupboard latch-bars, with diagonal grooves, with
spear-and-ball terminations at one end and with "V"-shaped notches at
the other.
An outstanding example of woodcarving is the folk Jacobean capital with
its heart shield and twin volutes at the dwelling, "Christ's Cross," in
New Kent. How many other wood sculptures of equal importance have been
lost in the almost clean sweep of seventeenth-century Virginia building?
For all that, we know today that the Virginia domicile and edifice
sometimes possessed in its details and its decoration an elegance
scarcely yet realized in this country--an elegance for which it is
necessary to search England to find the proper sources and comparisons.
[Illustration: MEDIEVAL DOOR AND FURNITURE HARDWARE FROM JAMESTOWN
Originally made for _Antiques Magazine_, this drawing shows a.
wrought-iron key; b. and i. Cock's Head hinges; c. door-pull
escutcheon; d. iron key; e. part of a strap-hinge; f. stock-lock main
plate; g. small brass cabinet hinge; h. brass keyhole escutcheon.]
VI
EPILOGUE: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY STYLES?
When over the fens and marshy slashes of Jamestown Island the eighteenth
century dawned in that year of 1700, there were two significant aspects
of Virginia architectural history which stand out clearly. Today the
first of these aspects is well known, but the second is known only to a
handful of persons. They are:
1. The most important style of architecture of the eighteenth
century--the pseudo-classical Georgian--was about to make its entrée
upon the Virginia scene, with the building of the "Governor's
Palace," Williamsburg, begun in 1706.
2. All the styles of architecture, both American Indian and English,
which flourished in the seventeenth century carried over--_hung
over_--into the eighteenth century, and even into the nineteenth
century.
The Georgian Style, of course, was actually English Georgian--Georgian
of England--and in Virginia it prevailed from the 1710s to the 1780s--a
span of some seventy years. It ushered into the Old Dominion a rage for
ballrooms, such as that in the "Governor's Palace," theatres, tea
tables, and china. It marked the golden age of the great houses, like
"Marmion," "Stratford Hall," "Westover," and "Mt. Vernon."
At the same time in Virginia there existed side by side with the
Georgian Style the following five styles of architecture, of which the
last four have been identified and named by this writer for convenience:
1. The American Indian Style, which faded away probably in the first
quarter of the nineteenth century.
2. The "Hangover" Medieval Style.
3. The "Hangover" Jacobean Style.
4. The Transitional Style, which, as we have seen, prevailed from
about 1680 to about 1730.
5. The "Hangover" Transitional Style (after about 1730).
In this way, like a mighty river the four main streams of Virginia
architecture in the seventeenth century--American Indian, Medieval,
Jacobean, and Transitional--flowed into the eighteenth, to be then
joined by the Georgian tributary.
Furthermore, in the nineteenth century the men of tidewater Virginia who
put up the buildings in the false medieval style, the copybook,
birthday-cake Gothic known as the "Gothic Revival," were not aware of,
and took no cognizance of, the true medieval examples existing on their
very doorsteps--a "Thoroughgood House" here, a "St. Luke's Church"
there. That situation was one of the strange paradoxes of our
architectural history.
A few of us in very recent years are just beginning to label those
English structures along tidewater which make up the bulk of Virginia
architecture in the seventeenth century by the correct name,
_Medieval_.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ambler Manuscripts, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
"American Notes," C. E. Peterson, ed., _Journal of Society of
Architectural Historians_.
Bruce, P. A., _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_.
N. Y. 1895. 2 vols.
Bushnell, D. I., Jr., _Native Villages and Village Sites East of the
Mississippi_. Washington, D. C. 1919.
Bushnell, D. I., Jr., _Virginia before Jamestown_. Washington, D. C.
1940.
Caywood, L. R., _Excavations at Green Spring Plantation_ (brochure).
Yorktown, Va. 1955.
Forman, H. C., _The Architecture of the Old South_. Cambridge, Mass.
1948.
Forman, H. C., "The Beginning of American Architecture," in _College Art
Journal_, vol. 6. no. 2. Winter, 1946.
Forman, H. C., "The Bygone 'Subberbs of James Cittie,'" in _William and
Mary College Quarterly_, 2nd ser., vol. 20, no. 4. October, 1940.
Forman. H. C., _Jamestown and St. Mary's: Buried Cities of Romance_.
Baltimore, 1938.
Forman, H. C., "The Old Hardware of James Towne," in _Antiques
Magazine_, vol. 39, no. 1, January, 1941.
Harrington, J. C., _Glassmaking at Jamestown_. Richmond, Va. 1952.
Hatch, C. E., Jr., _The Oldest Legislative Assembly in America & its
First State House_. Washington, D. C. Revised, 1947.
Historic American Buildings Survey. Library of Congress. Washington,
D. C.
Gregory, G. C., "Jamestown--First Brick State House," in _Virginia
Magazine of History and Biography_, vol. 42, pp. 193-199. July 1935.
Lewis, C. M., and Loomie, A. J., _The Spanish Jesuit Mission in
Virginia, 1570-1572_. Chapel Hill, N. C. 1955.
Mason, G. C., _Colonial Churches of Tidewater Virginia_. Richmond, Va.
1945.
Moorehead, S. P., "Christ's Cross," in _Virginia Magazine of History and
Biography_, vol. 43. January, 1935.
Moorehead, S. P., "The Castle," in _Virginia Magazine of History and
Biography_, vol. 42. October, 1934.
Stewart, T. D., "Excavating the Indian Village of Patawomeke," in
_Exploration and Field-Work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1938_.
Washington, D. C. 1939.
Swem, E. G., _The Virginia Historical Index_. 2 volumes, Roanoke, Va.
1934-36.
Waterman, T. T., _Domestic Colonial Architecture of Tidewater Virginia_.
N. Y. 1932.
Whitelaw, R. T., _Virginia's Eastern Shore_. Richmond, Va. 1951. 2 vols.
Yonge, S. H., _The Site of Old Jamestown, 1607-1698_. Richmond 1904.
INDEX
Illustrations are lettered A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J.
Abingdon Glebe, 27, 57
Accohannocks, 1
Accomack Co. (Va.), 14, 41, 58, 59
Accowmacks, 1
Act of 1639, 49;
of 1662, 49
Albemarle Co. (Va.), 5
Alehouse, of Thomas Woodhouse, 58
Alford, John, 29
Algonquian, 1, 5
Allen, Arthur, 41
Ambler Manuscripts, 38, 45
Anglo-Saxons, 3
"Arches" (church), 54
Architectural details, heritage of, 63
Architecture, American Indian, 1, 21, 34, 69;
Dutch, 24;
English, 18, 69;
English styles of, in Va., 21, 22, 28, 69;
Georgian, 25, 27, 62, 69;
Gothic Revival, 70;
"Hangover" Jacobean, 70;
"Hangover" Medieval, 69;
"Hangover" Transitional, 70;
Jacobean, 24, 42, 55;
medieval, 18, 23, 28;
Transitional, 23, 25, 26, 57, 62, 70.
_see also_ Indian Architecture, Medieval Style
Arms, of Great Britain, 64
Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, vi
Athens, Greece, 43
Ayres family, vi
Back Street, 46
Bacon, Nathaniel, 41, 60
Bacon's Castle, 24, 41, 55, 60
Bagnio, Indian, 12, 13
Baltimore, Lord, 16, 47
Bath houses, Indian, 12, 13
Bathing, Indian, 13
Bay (unit), 31
Bedford Co. (Va.), 1, 6
Belmont, 26
Berkeley (plantation), 30, 32
Berkeley, Sir William, 16, 43, 44, 48
Bermudas, 62
Bin House, 36, 46
Bland, Theoderick, 58
Bond Castle (Md.), 41
Bone-house, Indian, 11
Bowl, slipware, A
Branding Iron, 20
Brick Church, Jamestown, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55, 57, 60
Brick construction, 29, 33
Brick houses, half-and-half, 33
Bricklayer, first, in Va., 33
Bricks, Dutch, 66;
English statute, 65, 66;
ovolo, 65
Brickwork, black-diapered, 23;
Jacobean, 43, 53;
mouse-tooth, E;
rubbed (gauged), 55, 57, 65;
seventeenth-century, in Va., 33, 64, 65
Bridges (wharves), 14, 36
Bridges, Indian, 14
Britain;
_see_ England
Brunswick Co. (Va.), 15
Bruton Church, Second, 24, 55
Buildings, on a Virginia plantation, 35, 36;
public, 58
Buttery (bottlery), 40, 42, 58
Cairns, 6
Calvert, Cecilius, 47
Camping stations, Indian, 13
Capitol, 25, 48, 59
Casement;
_see_ Window
"cats," 34
Ceiling, plastered, at Sherwood's, 64;
of Indians, 15
Cell (aisle), 26, 27, 44, 49
Cellar, wine, 50
Ceremonial centers, Indian, 14
Chapels of ease, 50
Charleton, Stephen, 30
Chelsey, Richard, 28
Cherokees, 2, 6, 15, 16
Chesapeake Bay, 35
Chew family, vi
chimney, board, 34;
"catted," 34;
pyramid, 19, 23, 24, 39;
T-, 40;
wooden (Welsh), 33, 34
Chimney-pent, 39
Chote (Tenn.), 16
Christ's Cross, 41, 42, 43, 57, 67
Church, Argall's, 51;
at Hog Island, 51;
cruck, 31, 50;
elements of medieval, in Va., 50, 56;
Elizabeth City, 51;
First Hungars, 54;
first, on Eastern Shore, 30, 31, 51;
interiors, 55;
Lord Delaware's, 50;
Merchant's Hope, 55;
new in 1636, at Jamestown, 51, 52;
of 1607, 28, 31;
palisaded, 30, 31;
Poplar Spring, 55;
Second Bruton, 24, 55;
Second Hungars, 54;
Second Lynnhaven, 56;
second, on Eastern Shore, 31;
Second York, 57;
transitional, 57;
Ware, 57;
Yeocomico, 57.
_see also_ Brick Church; St. Luke's Church.
Claiborne, William, 30
Clapboards, 32, 54
Clough's tomb, 52
Cock's Head hinge, 39, 48, 67, 68
Cole, John, 58
College, William and Mary, 61, 62
Colonial style, a misnomer, 23, 53
Colonnade, in Va., 36
Construction, English medieval, 29, 32, 33, 34
Cornice, medieval, in Va., D
Corotoman, 35
Cottage Period, the, 28, 33, 37
Cotton, Reverend, 30
Council Room, 16
Country house, development of, 37;
_see also_ Governor's House
Country-Ludwell-State House block, Jamestown, 49, 59
Court House, in Northampton Co., 58;
in Va., 58;
on Eastern Shore, 58;
Room, 60
Cross-house, the, 41, 42, 43, 60
Crotchets;
_see_ Cruck
Cruck, 29, 31, 50
Curtain, the, in Va., 41
Cuspings (gable), 42
Dale, Sir Thomas, 30
Dancing Grounds, Indian, 14
Darby's Grist Mill, 59
Daubing;
_see_ Wattles
Decorated Style (window), 18, 53
Delaware, Lord, 50
Dome, gored, Indian, 12
Don Miguel (spy), 66
Door, battened, 40;
earliest brick, in Va., 52;
English Gothic, 57, 65;
transitional church, 57;
Tudor, 42, 57;
wicket, 57
Double House, back of John White's Land, 46, 50;
on land of Reverend Thomas Hampton, 46, 48, 51, 66
Duplex house, 45, 48
Dutch brick, 66;
oven, 39, 65
Dwelling, _see_ House
Early Cell type, 27
Eastern Shore, 1, 10, 30, 31, 34, 36, 37, 40, 51, 55, 58
Elizabeth (Queen), 19
Elizabeth City, 51
Elizabethan Style of architecture, 19, 24, 44
Empire, British, 19
England, 18, 19, 22, 24, 28, 29, 30, 31, 42, 53, 65, 66
English arbor houses, 34
English bond, 33, 40, 52
English Gothic Style, 18, 19, 23, 53
English medieval construction, types of, employed by Indians, 34
English statute bricks, 65, 66
English Tudor Style;
_see_ Tudor Style
Factory, Glass, of 1608, 59, 66
Fairfield, 66
Fences, Indian, 8, 14, 35;
pale, 30, 35;
"Park-pale," 30
Fen's Point, 26
Finland, 13
Firebed, Indian, 9, 10, 13, 35
Fireplace, back-to-back, 48, 49, 50;
diagonal, 26;
hooded, 34;
ornate, in Va., 66
First Hungars Church, 54
First State House, Jamestown, 20, 46, 47, 48, 62, 67;
cellar plan of, 47
Fishing Creek, 31
Flemish bond, 52
Florida, 17
Folsom points, in Va., 1
Fort, at Dutch Gap, 30;
at Henrico, 30;
at Kent Island (Md.), 30;
at Old Point Comfort, 30;
at the "Town," 30;
first, on Jamestown Island, _see_ James Fort; Indian towns
Foster's Castle, 41
Four Mile Tree (plantation), 29
Fourth State House, Jamestown, 60, 61, 62
Fresco, at Jamestown, 63
Furnace, glass, 59, 66
Furniture, Indian, 9, 10
Gables, curvilinear, 24, 42;
crow-step, 52, 53
Gallery, latticed, 51
Gardens, in Va., 36
Garret, the eastern, 60
Garter, plaster, at Jamestown, 64
Geometric Style (window), 53
Georgia, 6, 16
Georgian mansion, the, 25, 37
Georgian Style, in Va., 25, 27, 62, 69
Glass House, of 1608, 59, 66
Glass House Point, 66
Glassmaking, at Jamestown, 66
Glebes, 57, 58;
_see also_ Abingdon Glebe
Gloucester Co. (Va.), 27, 55, 57, 66
Gothic arch, 31
Gothic Revival, 70
Gothic Style of architecture, 18, 19, 53;
_see also_ Medieval Style
Governor, His Majesty's, 63, 64
Governor's Castle (Md.), 43
Governor's House, Jamestown, 45, 46, 63;
drawing of, 45
Governor's Palace, 69
Great Plains, the, 6
Great Room;
_see_ Hall
"Greate Road, the," from Jamestown, 14
Green Spring, the, 16, 36, 43;
pre-Berkeley house at, 44
Gregory-Forman theory, 46
Guillotine window;
_see_ Window
Half-and-half work, 33
Half-timber work, 23, 29, 32, 33
Hall (Great Hall, Great Room), 37, 38, 39, 42, 43, 63
Hall, Assembly, 60
Hall-and-parlor house, 39, 40, 48, 58
Hampton (Va.), 2
Hampton Court, 18
Hampton, Reverend Thomas, 46, 48, 51, 66
Hardware, diagram of, 68;
distribution of, at Jamestown, 38;
drawing of door and furniture, from Jamestown, 68;
furniture, 67, 68
Harmanson tract, 14
Harvey, Sir John, 48, 66
Hearth, central, 35
Henrico, City of, 32, 33
Henrico Co. (Va.), 41
Henry VIII, 19
Hog Island Church, 51
Hood, fireplace, 34
"Hortyards," in Va., 36
House, ale, 58;
arbor, 6, 7, 8, 10, 34;
bath, 12;
beehive, 6;
Bin, 36, 46;
brew, 58;
cell, 26, 27;
"central-passage," 40;
country, 35, 37;
cruck, 31, 32;
double, in Va., 45, 48;
double-parlor, 43;
earth, 29;
"fair" or "English," 32;
first brick, in Va., 33;
first pre-fabricated, in Va., 32;
"hall-and-parlor," 39, 40, 48, 58;
hunting, Indian, 13;
Indian "row," 15;
May's, at Jamestown, 38;
of Burgesses, 60;
on land of Issac Watson, 38, 46;
on land of Thomas Hampton, 46, 48, 66;
medieval, one-bay, 23, 37, 38, 39;
puncheoned, 30, 31;
pre-Berkeley, 44;
"quartering," 58;
row, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49;
Sherwood's, 63, 64, 65;
the town, 44, 47;
thatched, 34;
timber-framed, 32, 45;
triplet, 50;
two rows of, at Jamestown, 32, 45;
types of, in Va., 23, 28, 29;
wheat, 37.
_See also_ Cross house, Indian Architecture
Hunting houses, Indian, 13
Huts, or booths, 28, 29, 37
Indian architecture, 1, 15, 21, 69;
building methods on English, influence of, 34;
council chamber, 16;
designs, 15, 34;
houses, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 34;
hunting houses, 13;
landing, 14;
plastered ceilings, 15;
sculpture, 11, 12, 14;
towns, 2;
tribes, 1.
_See also_ Mounds
Ingle recess, 38
Ionic capital, at Athens, 43;
at Christ's Cross, 42, 43
Iron, branding, 20;
wrought-iron, in Va., 66
Iroquoian, 2, 5
Isle of Wight Co. (Va.), 52
Italy, 22
Jacobean capital, 42, 43, 67;
enframements, 42;
gable, 24, 42, 55;
pediment, 42, 53;
quoins, 53;
scrolls, 43, 55;
style of architecture, 19, 23, 24, 55
Jail, 58;
_see also_ Prison
James City;
_see_ Jamestown
James Fort, fire at, 34;
near Governor's House, 46;
painting of, 44;
plan of, 29, 30;
shape of, 28, 29;
site of, 22, 46
James River, 1, 2, 5, 13, 28, 30, 48, 51
Jamestown (James City), 14, 16, 17, 33, 35, 36, 38, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47,
48, 50, 51, 55, 58, 59, 61, 64, 65, 66
Jamestown Brick Church, 46;
_see also_ Brick Church
Jamestown Island, 28, 29, 31, 46, 64, 69
Jamestown Museum, 44
Jefferson, Thomas, 5
Jenifer, Daniel and Anne, 59
Jerkin (roof), 26
Jesuits, 17
Jones, Inigo, 22
Kecoughtan, 2
Keeling House, 40
Kiln, brick, 36, 65;
lime, 36;
pottery, 36, 59
King's Creek, 31
King's House, Indian, 10
Kocher, Lawrence, 44
Lamb's tongue, 39
Lancaster Co. (Va.), 27, 35
Late Cell type, 27
Latrobe, Benjamin, 43
Linenfold, 66
Listening post, Indian, 8, 14
Liscomb Park Chapel, 53
Littleton, Southey, 41
Log cabins, 31
London, England, 22, 49, 50;
unit floor plan in, 48, 49
Lunette window, 7, 9
Malvern Hill, 41
Manahoac, 2
Marmion, 69
Maryland, 16, 41, 43, 60
Mason, G. C., 52, 55
Massacre of 1622, 30
May, Richard, house of, 38
_Mayflower, The_, 32
Medieval, Late;
_see_ Tudor
Medieval cottage in England, the, 19
Medieval Style of architecture, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 29, 70;
"Hangover," 70
Merchant's Hope Church, 55
Middle Plantation;
_see_ Williamsburg
Mill, Darby's Grist, 59
Mines, iron, in Va., 66
Monocan, 2
Moorehead, S. P., 64
Mortuary temples, Indian, 11
Mounds, burial, 5;
effigy, 6;
platform, 6, 12
Mt. Vernon, 69
National Park Service, 38, 59, 65
New England, 26, 32
New Kent Co. (Va.), 41, 57, 67
New Towne, at Jamestown, 46
Nogging, brick, 32
Norfolk, 40
North Carolina, 30
Northampton Co. (Va.), 29, 37, 54, 58
Nottaway town, 4;
tribe, 2
Old Brick Church;
_see_ St. Luke's Church
Old Plantation Creek, glebe at, 58
One-bay dwelling, in Va., 23, 24, 37, 38, 39
Orange Co. (Va.), 5
Orapaks (Va.), 11, 16
Orapaks Treasure House, 11, 16
Orchard Run, Jamestown, 22, 46, 51
Ossuaries, 12
Outhouses, in Va., 23, 35, 36, 40
Outshuts, 23, 26, 39, 44, 58
Ovens, Indian, 12;
English, 65
Oxford (England), 50
Paint, in Va., 36
Painting of James Fort, 44
Palaces, Indian, 10
Palisading (palisades), 2, 3, 4, 15, 29, 30, 35, 44, 45
Palladio, Andrea, 22
Pamunkey (Va.), 12, 21;
Indian Reservation, 15, 21
Pantile, 48, 61, G
Pargetry, 64
Pasbyhayes (suburb), 14
Paski, town of, 4
Patawomeke (Potomac), village, 3
Paths, Indian, 14, 35
Peaks of Otter, 1, 6
Piedmont, 1, 5
Pilgrim Fathers, 28
"Pinewoods," 40, E
Plan, unit floor, in Va., 48
Plantation, the, in Va., 35
Plaster, 15, 32, 34, 61;
at Sherwood's, 63, 64
Plowden, 34
Plymouth Rock, 28
Pocahontas, 51
Poplar Spring Church, 55, 56
Porch chamber, 41, 60
Porch, enclosed, 41, 42, 43, 49, 50, 54, 56, 58, 60
Portan (Powhatan) Bay, 10
Post and pan (wattle-and-daub), 30
Pottery, Indian, 21
Pottery kiln, 36;
_see also_ Kiln
Powhatan, 10, 11, 12, 16;
Confederacy, 1, 5
Prince George Co. (Va.), 55
Princess Anne Co. (Va.), 40, 41, 56
Prison, log, 58;
_see_ Jail
Pulpit, hexagonal, 56;
wineglass, 54
Puncheoning, 3, 15, 29, 30, 35, 51
Puncheons (quarters, punches), 3, 29, 30
Pungoteague (brick) Church, 55
Quacasum House, 11
Quadrangle, the medieval, 62
Quakers, 37
Queen Anne, 19
Queen Elizabeth, 19
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 30
Rapidan River, 5
Renaissance architecture, 19, 24
Renaissance, Early, 19, 24;
High, 19
Restoration, Williamsburg, 64
Richardson House, 27
Richmond (Va.), 2
Rivanna River, 5, 6
Road, "Greate," 14, 35
Roanoke Fort (N. C.), 30
Robins, Obedience, 59
Rogers, Will, 16
Rolfe, John, 51
Roman numerals, on timbers, 32
Roofs, bark, 7, 8, 15, 34;
board, 30, 31, 34, 54;
catslide, 26, 27;
gambrel, 26, 27;
hinged, of Indians, 15;
hip, 26, 27, 62;
Indian, 7, 8, 9, 12, 15;
mansard, 55;
pantile, 48, 61;
"pyramid," 26;
shingle tile, 49;
"shingled" with dormers, 43;
slate, 49;
sod, 31;
thatched, 34, 35;
wooden shingle, 32, 34, 39
Room, Court House, 60;
waiting, 60
Row houses, in London, 48, 49;
in Jamestown, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50;
Indian, 15
Salt Works, 58
Sandys, Sir Edwin, 66
Sapponey (Va.), 15
Scaffolding, Indian, 12, 13
Screen, rood, 56;
hall, 40
Sculpture, Indian, 11, 12, 14;
folk, at Christ's Cross, 42, 43, 67
Second Bruton Church, 55
Second Hungars Church, 54
Second Lynnhaven Church, 56
Second York Church, 57
Secretary of Va., 60
Secretary's Office, 60, 61
Shenandoah River, 5
Sherwood's House, Jamestown, 63, 64, 65, H
Short, bricklayer in 1607, 33
Shutters, bark, 9;
board, 29, 61
Siouan, 1, 4, 5, 12
Sioux Indians, 6
Skipwith family, vi
Smith, Capt. John, 31, 50
Smith's Fort Plantation (Rolfe House), 41
Soulbury (England), 53
Southampton Co. (Va.), 4
Spain, 66
Spanish architecture, in Va., 17
Spanish settlement in Va., 17
Specifications, for church, 54
St. Augustine (Fla.), 17
St. Luke's Church (Old Brick Church), 52, 53, 54, 55
St. Mary's City (Md.), 16, 60
Stack, freestanding, B;
diamond, 42
Stafford Co. (Va.), 4
Stair Case, the, 60
Stair tower, 23, 41
Stairs, open-well, 26;
winding, 37
State House, First, 20, 46, 47, 48, 62, 67;
Fourth, 60, 61, 62;
Third, 49, 59, 60, 61
State House, Brick, of 1676 (Md.), 60
Storehouses, in Va., 45;
_see also_ Bin House
Strachey, William, 28, 33
Stratford Hall, 69
Style, medieval, naming of, 70
Styles, architectural;
_see_ Architecture
Surry Co. (Va.), 24, 41
Sweating house, Indian, 12, 13;
_see also_ Bath houses
Sweet Hall, 40, F
Sword, from Jamestown, J
Tavern, of John Cole, 58;
_also see_ Alehouse
Temples, Indian, 10, 11, 12
Tennessee, 16
Tercentenary, Jamestown, 52
Third State House, Jamestown, 49, 59, 60, 61
Thoroughgood House, 40
Tiles, Delft, 49, 66;
faïence, 49, 66;
shingle, 32, 33, 49;
square paving, 51, 52;
_see also_ Pantiles
Timber-framing, 29, 32, 35, 51, 54;
diagram of, 32
Tombs, in Jamestown Brick Church, 52
Towers, church, 51, 52, 54, 56
Towles Point, 26, 27
Town House, of Cherokees, 16
Town houses, in Va., 44, 47;
stock sizes of, 47
Towns, Indian, 2, 4, 15;
in Virginia, 47
Transitional, "Hangover," 70
Transitional Style of architecture, 23, 24, 25, 26, 57, 62
Treasure House, at Orapaks, 11, 16
Treasure houses, Indian, 10
Triplet house ("triplex"), 50
Tudor Chimney stacks, 42
Tudor Style of architecture, 18, 19, 53, 64
Turnpikes (gates), 4
Vann House (Ga.), 16
Vaults, Indian, 7, 12;
Roman, 7
Vernacular, the English, 18
Virginia Company of London, 47, 66
Virginia Medieval architecture, 23
Walls, battlemented, 47, 52, 53;
palisaded, 2, 3, 4, 15, 30;
puncheoned, 3, 15, 30;
timber-framed, 29, 32;
wattled, 3, 13, 30, 31;
_see also_ House
Warburton House (Pinewoods), 40, E
Ware Church, 57
Washington Farm, 67
Waterman, Thomas T., 44, 52
Watson, Isaac, house on land of, 38, 46
Wattle-and-daub (wattling), 3, 13, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35
West Point (Va.), 15, 21
Westminster Abbey, 53
Westmoreland Co. (Va.), 67
Westover Prison, 58
Wharves, Indian, 14;
called "bridges," 36
White Hall (London), 22
White, John, house back of land of, 46
Wigwam;
_see_ House
William and Mary College, 61, 62
Williams, John, 59
Williamsburg (Va.), 14, 19, 24, 25, 35, 55, 61, 69
Williamsburg Restoration, 64
Windmill, 23, 36, 59
Window, barred, 61;
casement, 23, 25, 26, 29, 39, 40, 42, 48, 51, 61, 67, I;
"guillotine" or sash, 25;
Indian, 7, 9;
lie-on-your-stomach, 39;
lunette, 7, 9;
paper, 29;
pointed, 52, 53;
rose, 55;
traceried, 18, 53;
shutter, 29;
sliding-panel, 29
Windsor Castle, 18
Wingfield, President, 33
Wishart House, 39, 40
Woodhouse, Thomas, 58
Woods, Sam, plantation, 40
Wren Building, 62
Yeardley, Sir George, 45
Yeocomico Church, 57
York River, 10
Yorkminster, 53
Yorktown, 57
Zaharov, John T., G
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Text in italics or underlined text is surrounded with
underscores: _italics_
Superscripted text is surrounded with curly brackets: 17{th}
Punctuation has been corrected without note.
Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from
the original.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected as follows:
Page 12: labyrinthin changed to labyrinthine
Page 55: orginally changed to originally
Page 69: ever changed to even
Extensive research did not reveal that the copyright on this book
was renewed.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Virginia Architecture in the
Seventeenth Century, by Henry Chandlee Forman
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIRGINIA ARCHITECTURE IN 17TH CENTURY ***
***** This file should be named 37288-8.txt or 37288-8.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/2/8/37288/
Produced by Mark C. Orton, David E. Brown and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
https://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at https://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit https://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
https://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
