Part 3 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 bal.u.s.ters. 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 cas.e.m.e.nts of opaque gla.s.s.

These people began to look toward a goal which may have been vaguely defined in their minds: a handsome and s.h.i.+pshape 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 cas.e.m.e.nt window was still fas.h.i.+onable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 s.p.a.ce.” 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 s.p.a.ce for paris.h.i.+oners. In the Old Dominion such elongated warts or ”outshuts” at the rear of the homestead afforded additional bedroom s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sign the examples to the _Late Cell_ type.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 flouris.h.i.+ng 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 gla.s.s, or tiny cas.e.m.e.nts.