File:Domestic architecture of the American colonies and of the early republic (1922) (14595502969).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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little known. Outside New England,however, as we have seen, the great majority of the finest Colonial houses are ofmasonry, and in a number of these even the doorways and other details are ofbrick and stone. On the other hand, many Georgian houses in England have door-ways and cornices of wood. In neither country are the forms and proportions ofwooden details in general modified in the direction of slenderness prior to the ad-vent of the Adam style. The Doric pilasters of the west front of the Royall house, 1 Kimball, Thomas Jefferson, Architect, p. 130.IIO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY fifteen diameters in height, and the columns of the Roger Morris portico, some thir-teen diameters tall, are quite exceptional. It is just as easy to find examples of lessthan the normal academic proportions, which in general were closely followed. Theattenuation of classic forms by the Adams, based on Pompeian suggestions, whichhad its beginnings only about 1760, appeared in the popular handbooks after 1780,
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Figure 80. Drawing-room of the Miles Brewton house, Chadeston. 1765 to 1769 and in America thus after the Revolution. The wide-spread change of proportions,which then first took place, was English in its origin and independent of material. In the Colonial interiors of the eighteenth century, as in the houses as a whole,a formal academic treatment took the place 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 stil

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