File:Domestic architecture of the American colonies and of the early republic (1922) (14595459110).jpg

Identifier: domesticarchite00kimb (find matches)
Title: Domestic architecture of the American colonies and of the early republic
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: Kimball, Fiske, 1888-1955 New York. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Committee on Education
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic Architecture, Colonial
Publisher: New York, C. Scribner's Sons
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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of the direct revelation of structuralelements. As we have seen, however, this formal composition did not extend at firstor in any high degree to the organization of the interior spaces themselves, but waslargely confined to the wall surfaces and to the elaboration of individual elementssuch as the doorways, the window casings, the ceilings, and especially the chimney-pieces and staircases. The instrumentalities of change and continued evolution were largely the same 111 AMERICAN DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE as for the plan and exterior—that is to say, chiefly the architectural publicationsand builders handbooks. After 1700 and still more after 1725, these became richin details of cornices, doorways, chimneypieces, and stairs, as well as consoles, car-touches, and other ornaments, and it is often easily possible, as we shall see, toidentify the very book from which the forms used in a given house were derived.In the course of the century, and even in competing works ot the same date, there
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From a /holograph by H. P. Cool- Figure 81. The stairs at Westover are marked differences in the character of the forms exemplified and recommended.While the English Palladianism of Lord Burlington tended to banish from the ex-terior the baroque forms used by Wren, such as scroll pediments and broken formsgenerally, for the interior these persisted in company with the novel and floridrocaille ornamentation of Louis XV. The assertion used often to be made that the interior finish, as well as thebricks, of the old mansions was imported.1 We are not aware, however, of authen- 1 Earliest in the account of Westover in William Dunlaps History of the Arts of Design in the UnitedStates (1834), vol. i, pp. 286 ff. 112 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY tic instances of this except in the case of paper-hangings, hardware, and marblefireplace facings and mantels. It is true that Thomas Hancock wrote from hisnew house to England, March 22, 1739-40: I pray the favor of you Enquirewhat a pr. of Capitolls will

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