File:Domestic architecture of the American colonies and of the early republic (1922) (14759296576).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

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
d in the University were of strict Palladian outlines and proportions, often ofthe heavy Tuscan. Latrobe, first to use the Greek orders, gave the columns of theVan Ness porch (figure 130), after 1813, the full Parthenon ratio of diameter toheight. In some of the most pretentious houses on the model of the Greek temple—Arlington and Andalusia, for instance—the Doric columns were quite of antiquesolidity of proportion, but in many others they were lightened somewhat. This AMERICAN DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE practice was justified by Asher Benjamin in The Practical House Carpenter . . .being . . . the Grecian Orders of Architecture . . . fashioned according to the Styleand Practice of the Present Day (1830). He writes in the preface that the Doriccolumn was generally made, by the Greeks, about five diameters in height; but thesame order was generally made, by the Romans, from seven and a half to eight diam-eters in height. It is therefore evident that the latter proportions come nearer to
Text Appearing After Image:
Figure 188. Smith house, Grass Lake, Michigan. 1840 our practice than the former one, especially when the orders are used in privatehouses. Benjamins Greek Doric was some six and three-quarter diameters high. Different periods had their preferences among the orders. Thus the protago-nists of the Adam style generally chose the Corinthian or the Ionic, whereas thedesigners of the first Greek houses preferred the Doric. The Greek Ionic was soontaken up, but the full Greek Corinthian, of the Lysicrates type, although usedby Latrobe in the House of Representatives in Washington in 1817, did not comeinto general use for houses until after the striking exemplification of it on the ex-terior of Girard College, 1833-1847.1 1 The Russel house at Middletown, Connecticut, by Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis, was de-scribed in 1833 as Corinthian amphiprostyle from the Monument of Lysicrates. Dunlap, Arts of Design(1918 ed.), vol. 3, p. 213, and note. 228 HOUSES OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC Square

Note About Images