CHAPTER IV

PRE-GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

ENGLISH, WELSH, SWEDISH AND GERMAN INFLUENCES

From the very outset, Pennsylvania was the most polyglot and conglomerate of all the English colonies or provinces in America. West Jersey and Delaware, which latter State was originally a part of Pennsylvania and known as “the three lower counties on Delaware,” in some degree shared this miscellaneous character, and together the three formed a practically distinct unit in the Middle Colonies, peculiar in composition and without parallel elsewhere. The diversity in nationality and speech among the early settlers was directly reflected in architectural manifestations and the variant types were never wholly welded together into one distinct style and, even long after the advent and almost universal prevalence of the Georgian mode, they continued in use concurrently. Just as similar phenomena were to be detected in the several parts of New England, they displayed local peculiarities of artisanship attributable to the different traditions obtaining in the respective parts of the Old World from which the individual artisans had come. The two most noticeable features in the early population of Pennsylvania were the diversity of elements and the clannishness and consequent isolation of the people who composed the several distinct parts of the colony. These elements remained distinct from each other both from preference and interest, and natural conditions favoured this division.

First of all in date of settlement on the shores of the Delaware were the Swedes, whose successful efforts at colonisation began in 1638. The Dutch, it is true, had previously made some slight attempts at settlement. In 1616, in pursuit of the exploration essayed but abandoned by Hudson in 1609, Captain Hendrickson, in the “Onrust” (“Restless”), had sailed up the Delaware to the mouth of the Schuylkill and, in 1623, under Captain Cornelius Mey, Fort Nassau was built at what is now Gloucester Point, nearly opposite Philadelphia. In the main, however, the Dutch preferred to stay down the bay and, in 1650, Fort Nassau was abandoned. They were traders rather than settlers, so far as their connexion with the Delaware was concerned, and the first real settlements, therefore, are to be credited to the Swedes who were home-loving, industrious farmers, proud of their homesteads and capable in the management of their dairies but possessed of little inclination towards commercial activity. The Swedish foundation was permanent and, though the Swedish population was eventually absorbed by the more numerous elements brought hither a few years later by Penn’s “holy experiment,” it left an indelible and significant mark upon the corporate composition of the colony and the traces of Swedish influence are still distinct and unmistakable, not only in much of the local architecture, in the names of places and persons, and in the strong strain of Swedish blood in many Pennsylvania families but in humbler and less obvious matters as well. As an instance of the latter may be mentioned the common strain of red cattle to be seen everywhere on the hills and in the valleys of eastern Pennsylvania. These same red cattle are the descendants of the Swedish kine, brought hither nearly three hundred years ago by the hardy colonists who planted their farmsteads along the waters of the Delaware and its lower tributaries.

Attracted by the prospect of religious liberty, by the liberal inducements offered them, and by the fatness of the land, a great variety of settlers, following in the wake of Penn’s pioneers, flocked to the colony on the Delaware and found there a safe and happy refuge after the troublous existence many of them had led before their departure from their old homes. Besides the English, who were almost altogether Quakers, there were, in this second wave of immigration, both Welsh and Germans. Later still, a small Dutch element was added and then came the Scotch-Irish. Each of these elements naturally perpetuated its own peculiar architectural traditions, and why those traditions continued so long a time distinct in their expression we shall presently see.

While the English Quakers were numerically preponderant, counting the neighbourhood of Philadelphia and West Jersey as a unit of population, and were politically in supreme control until late in the eighteenth century, the Welsh and Germans dwelt close beside them and were accorded so large a measure of practical independence in the management of their own affairs that their communities were virtually _imperia in imperio_. For twenty or thirty years after the founding of Pennsylvania, “the Welsh were the most numerous class of immigrants” and in place names, in blood, in local history, and in architecture their enduring influence is plainly discernible. Before they migrated from the land of their birth, they had entered into an agreement with Penn by which he promised them “a tract of forty thousand acres, where

they could have a little government of their own and live by themselves.” Accordingly, upon their arrival, this tract was surveyed for them in the high, rolling lands embraced chiefly within the present bounds of Montgomery and Delaware Counties, a section that more nearly resembled in character their beloved Wales than did any other part of this new country of their adoption. The tract was called the Welsh Barony for the sturdy, “red-haired, freckle-faced descendants of the ancient Britons insisted that this territory, specially set apart for them, was a barony or county palatine and, in very truth, it was a manor with the right of court baron.” These Owens and Joneses, Evanses and Wynnes, Powells and Pughs and all their kith and kin, managed their affairs according to their own notions and, at first, dispensed with the usual system of township and county organisation. Civil authority was vested in the Quaker meetings until, in 1690, the three townships of Merion, Haverford and Radnor were formed and the civil jurisdiction of the meetings superseded. Welsh was the official language of the courts and records and Welsh was the daily tongue of all the people in the barony and very few of them understood English, so that when William Penn preached at Haverford, in 1701, his hearers could not have been much edified, so far as his words were concerned. Closely bound together by the tie of language and separated by the same means from the other colonists who spoke English, Swedish or German, these Welsh gentry and yeomen held aloof from outside affairs, content with a mode of life that was “unusual on a provincial frontier” for its “amount of enjoyment and expenditure for dress and entertainment.” Local independence and self-sufficiency were only broken down when the barony was thrown open to outside settlers because the Welsh occupants refused to pay quit-rents on more land than they actually used or held. Their strong feeling of nationality, however, remained and nothing could have been more natural than that the architecture for which they were responsible should have had, as it did, a characteristic local flavour.

The earliest German community was Germantown and, though it is now a part of Philadelphia, in 1683 and for more than a hundred years afterward, Penn’s “greene country towne” and the village of the Germans were separated by a long stretch of open country and the highroad between the two was oftentimes so bad that it was an obstacle rather than an aid to communication. The German settlers spoke their own language, printed their own books, pursued their own industries, worshipped in their own way, built their own schools and managed their own affairs of internal organisation without either interference or assistance from the powers in Philadelphia. As did the earliest settlers in Germantown, so also did their countrymen, who continued to come to America in ever-increasing numbers and travelled farther and farther into the interior of the land where the richness of the soil and the opportunity to follow their own inclinations without let or hindrance from interfering or antagonistic neighbours invited them.

Besides keeping aloof, during most of the early period, from the settlers of other nationality, the Germans were also subdivided among themselves. There were the Pietists or Rosicrucians, who had their settlement or community on the banks of the Wissahickon. Although they maintained some intercourse with the other German settlers, they nevertheless led a distinct existence. The people in Germantown, likewise, formed a complete community in themselves and the industries in which they engaged at an early date, namely, the operation of paper and knitting mills, are still flourishing in the neighbourhood, in some instances on the original sites. Again, the settlers in the Skippack region were far removed from those in Germantown and developed peculiarities of their own. The Moravians, in their turn, pushed still farther into the northern part of the province and founded settlements quite distinct from all other colonisation enterprises. Their ancient buildings are deeply interesting and have preserved permanently the traditions of the country whence the Moravians originally came. An examination will clearly show a similarity in many points to the Suabian modes of architectural expression, as one might expect from the close ties of kinship.

The isolation of the several elements of population in the colony was still further favoured by the fact that, at first, the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware colonists who followed Penn resembled their Swedish predecessors and were not commercial in their instincts like the Dutch, who were aggressively mercantile with their fur trade. What they needed for home consumption the early Pennsylvanians made for themselves, so far as they could, and in every way were essentially agricultural and diametrically opposed to the Dutch. For some years after the founding of the colony, Swedes, English, Welsh, and Germans alike turned their eyes inland. We might say that their policy of colonisation was introspective rather than expansive.

This introspective policy of colonisation did not tend toward the expansion or the prosperity of the colony and, while the colonists led lives of comfort in their own preferred seclusion, it was not until they turned their eyes to the sea and engaged in commerce that the prosperity of Philadelphia, and of the colony generally, increased by leaps and bounds. The roads, for the most part, were extremely bad and, in the winter and spring, were hopelessly miry. Where the settlers did not follow the course of the streams for the spread of their area of colonisation, they followed the Indian trails, and most of the old roads leading out from Philadelphia, the old arteries of traffic along which the colonists made their homesteads, and from which they pushed farther and farther into the interior, were originally the pathways worn by the red men through the forest.

While the Swedes chose the streams to determine their course of colonisation, the Germans usually stuck to the Indian trails which, in time, became the highroads to their various communities. In the earliest times, the German lads and lasses forded the streams and came on horseback along these roads, carrying their goods for market in the city in panniers. It was not long, however, before sufficient improvement was made in the condition of the highways to allow the great four, six, and eight horse wains to be driven to the city periodically from the more remote settlements. In these wains were contained the products of the six months’ or year’s labour on the farms and, with the money from what they sold, the farmers bought materials which they took home to be manufactured into the various articles of necessity or comfort required by the different members of their households.

Not until they learned, in the course of time, to appreciate the fundamental liberalism that characterised the principles of the colony as established by the Founder, and not until the gradual development of commercial industries tended to bring them more together had the different groups of colonists any common ground upon which they might meet without bringing their diversity of principles and prejudices into conflict. In the meanwhile, the architectural course of the province had fallen into several well-defined separate channels that are still easily recognisable. That these divers phases of Colonial architecture should retain their individuality side by side is not to be wondered at when we consider the early diversity and isolation of the various racial elements of the province, explained at length in the foregoing pages, and when we consider, also, the tenacity with which the people clung to their distinguishing racial peculiarities of every sort long after the barriers of antagonism or isolation had been broken down.

It is always well to be explicit, and it is easier to make the basis of contention clear when a

definite instance is cited. We shall, therefore, use certain specified houses for the sake of example. The first of these to claim our attention is Wynnestay, shown in one of the accompanying illustrations, the ancient home of the Wynne family, on the borders of the Welsh Barony. When built in 1689, it was in deep country; now it is surrounded by a suburban growth. Practically the only alteration that Wynnestay has ever undergone was raising the ridgepole of the roof, on the oldest part, to the line of the 1700 addition at a time when it was found necessary to make some repairs. Save this, and what has been built at the back to meet increased domestic needs, Wynnestay remains to-day in its pristine state and is, therefore, valuable as a well-preserved example of Welsh Colonial work. Doors and windows are low, but of generous breadth, and capped by heavy stone lintels made of thick, oblong slabs that must have cost no ordinary exertion and energy to set them in place. The two dormers have the same sharply-pointed peaks that we shall see in another Colonial example. As might be expected, the walls are thick and everything about the building is of the most solid construction.

When Wynnestay was built, the colonists had had no time to evolve new architectural forms, so we may be sure that in erecting their dwellings they followed as closely as they were able all traditions and precedents with which they had been familiar in the old country. That Wynnestay and its contemporaries faithfully represent the farmhouses and small manor houses of Wales and England we may feel the more certain because capable artisans, both house carpenters and stone masons, accompanied the earlier settlers and by this time had arrived in considerable numbers in the colony, and of course were working by the principles instilled into them in their apprentice days.

The masonry of the Pennsylvania Colonial type has been highly admired time and time again by architects in all sections of the country. The same sort of masonry work is being done by local stone masons today, and so individual and characteristic is it that they are sometimes sent for to erect walls at a great distance from their own locality, because no other masons can be found to put quite the same touch into the face of the wall or lay the stones in quite the same way. But the charm for which their handiwork is justly famed is due to the fact that they are merely following the tradition handed down to them by the old Welsh and English masons who came over with the first settlers. The tradition has been faithfully perpetuated ever since. We find it in strong evidence in all the old houses of that type, in fact in all the old buildings. It will be adverted to, in the chapter on old Colonial churches, in connexion with St. David’s, Radnor. Again we see it in such a building as Waynesborough, which, by the way, is particularly interesting as marking the transition from the early Colonial type to the early Georgian.

Although Waynesborough was not built until a few years after Graeme Park or Hope Lodge, those striking examples of the first phase of the Middle Colonies’ Georgian, it has, nevertheless, retained in certain features a strong resemblance to the early Colonial Welsh type. The masonry is precisely the same, but more noticeable even than this are the lintels of the doors and windows, constructed of a number of stones vertically set in a flattened or elliptical arch. This form is to be seen in much of the early Welsh work concurrently with the great slabs noted at Wynnestay.

In general character Wynnestay is similar to the other Welsh houses near by, such as Pencoyd, at Bala, built in 1633, or Harriton, built a little later, but it has suffered less change in the lapse of years than its near neighbours in Lower Merion township or other sections in which the Welsh influence was felt, and it is better fitted to represent the type. The house is built of native grey fieldstone of varied sizes--some of the stones were probably turned up in the course of clearing the fields round about--lined with white mortar and presents an interesting feature in the bold moulding of the cornices. A continuation of the cornice from the eaves, following the same horizontal line, traverses the face of the wall at each gable end, making, with the gable cornice, a complete triangle. This arrangement of the cornice as a string course across the gable ends gives the roof a downright, positive appearance. The cornice in this arrangement is not dissimilar from the penthouse so often used on structures of this date between the first and second floors. Wynnestay was built at two different periods. The first part, built in 1689, has a penthouse along the front with a triangular hood; the later addition, built in 1700, has the penthouse between the first and second floors, but without the triangular hood above the door. Still another feature showing the close connexion of Waynesborough with the early Colonial type, as exemplified by Wynnestay, is the hood over the house door. Although the penthouses have disappeared the hood has remained, and indicates very plainly a certain line of descent.

Wynnestay and other old houses just like it were the forerunners of a type of structure that has come to be known as the Pennsylvania Colonial farmhouse type; very worthy the type is, truly comfortable, homelike and sensible, and deserving the popularity accorded it, so long as it sticks closely to its severe simplicity and avoids all attempt at pretence. The very moment, however, we depart from time-honoured tradition and attempt to begaud this sort of building with Georgian embellishments and furbelows--a thing far too often done--it looks unseemly and ludicrous. Before leaving the subject one should add that the Pennsylvania Colonial farmhouse is found in roughcast as well as stone, and that the buildings erected by the English settlers, though similar, were apt to be somewhat higher than the old, squat dwellings of the Welsh, whose natural predilection for “stumpiness” is well exemplified by the towers of their churches.

Our next Colonial example is Wyck in Germantown, at the corner of Walnut Lane and Germantown Road. Like Wynnestay, Wyck has undergone scarcely any change since its staunch walls were reared. Furthermore, Wyck has never been sold, but has passed from owner to owner by inheritance, and as its possessors have always been careful to maintain everything in its original condition, it can readily be seen that a more trustworthy example of Pennsylvania Colonial architecture could not be chosen. Wyck represents the German influence in Colonial architecture. The structure is really two houses joined together. The first was built about 1690 or earlier; the second, though built somewhat later, nevertheless dates also from an early period. Through the first part of the connecting portion, that links the two houses into one, ran a passage or waggon way. This passage was afterward closed in and now forms a great hallway from which open outwards big double doors almost as wide as barn doors, with a long transom of little lights above them.

The whole long south front of the house is whitewashed. Trellises cover the face of the wall, and the vines, with their masses of thick foliage, stand out in sharp contrast to the gleaming brightness of their background. At Wyck the windows are higher and not so wide in proportion as at Wynnestay, and the same may be said of the dimensions of the doors. The proportions are excellent and the measurements of sash-bars, muntins, and panes have been duplicated by architects again and again, with most satisfactory results. The dormerheads have the same sharp angularity as those at Wynnestay. At Wyck, however, the cornice runs only beneath the eaves, and does not extend across the wall at the gable end. This extension of the cornice as a string course was more apt to occur in houses of Welsh or English build, while the Germans, one of whom built Wyck, usually left their gable ends unadorned. In fact, there is no cornice at all at the gable ends of Wyck, and the junction of wall and roof is marked only by plain barge-boards, beyond which the roof edge scarcely projects. At Wyck the pitch of the roof is not so steep as at Wynnestay, and it may be remarked that the flatter pitch was generally found on Colonial houses built by the Germans, and also in the later English Colonial houses.

Both Wynnestay and Wyck, different as they may be in national tradition, are alike in their thoroughgoing staunchness, their straightforward simplicity of expression and detail and their utter lack of all conscious attempt at adornment. It is true, both houses have distinct elements of charm and embellishment, arising from such details as the trellises and long transoms with little lights at Wyck, or the hoods above the doors and the extension of the cornice across the gable-end walls at Wynnestay, but the effect is wholly fortuitous and not the result of design. Both houses are thoroughly typical of most of the contemporary dwellings, and because of their escape from damaging alterations no part of their charm has been impaired. Both, too, well exemplify architectural modes that have continued uninterruptedly in use to our own day. In the portions of the country where the English element predominates, the little peculiarities of English tradition are still plainly observable in modern work, while in the parts of the country where the Pennsylvania German element is most numerous, it is easy to trace, even in small matters, the enduring influence of German architectural tradition, introduced by the early German settlers. Indeed, we may very properly compare the persistence of architectural minutiæ to the persistence of family traits and features in the human race. So much, then, for worthy specimens of Pennsylvania styles that are truly Colonial. The instances given are by no means isolated, but stand as representatives of a numerous class of buildings to be found not only in Pennsylvania, but in Delaware and New Jersey.

Before leaving the subject it should be noted that the brick farmhouses of New Jersey, while often following closely the type noted in Pennsylvania, occasionally assumed, as the period wore on, much more bulky proportions than the dwellings of the early settlers, the roof rising to a considerable height, and the body of the structure assuming great depth as well as breadth. Some of these great brick structures date from a comparatively early period, and may be attributed to the rapidly increasing prosperity of the West Jersey planters, who had the advantage of the Pennsylvania settlers

through their considerably earlier settlement. The oldest houses were usually built on points of land stretching out into the numerous creeks by which a part of the country is intersected, so that their communication by water was always assured when the roads were bad, as they frequently were. In this respect they resembled many of the old houses of Virginia and Maryland. The walls of some of these early Jersey houses are made of thick planks, tightly grooved together with a sliding tongue, and stand today as staunch and true as when they were first built. Stone was not a popular building material in Jersey, but brick was generally used instead, and for brick was sometimes substituted a kind of adobe or large block of sun-baked marl.

It is interesting to note that the long narrow transom of small lights which we so often find over house doors in the Colonial period and the first phase of the Georgian, seems to be a remnant of Queen Anne tradition that got into English architecture from Dutch sources, probably in the reign of William and Mary when such a large importation of Dutch ideas and Dutch practices came into England.

While noting foreign influences in Colonial architecture we must not forget to include the tendency to steep pitch and also gambrel forms in roofs shown by the Swedish colonists. Nor should we forget to chronicle two exceedingly interesting specimens of wholly foreign appearance that were erected in Pennsylvania at an early date. One is the Moravian Sisters’ House, at Bethlehem, erected about 1748 and the other is the Saal or great hall of the monastery at Ephrata, built by the Seventh Day Baptists about the same time. The tiny dormers are exact replicas of the dormers to be seen on the towering and seemingly boundless roofs of any old German town while the small, irregularly placed windows and steeply pitched, high roof of the Ephrata Saal make the building look as though it might have been transplanted bodily from Nürnberg or Rothenburg.