Study of the cross-house in Virginia needs an essay to itself. We have tried here to give some of the highlights of this last development of the rural dwelling, which is outstandingly medieval in design and construction—with a bit here and there of Jacobean trimming.
Branching off the main stream of country house development are exceptions and special cases, such as "The Green Spring" mansion (c. 1646), Sir William Berkeley's home near Jamestown. Sometimes it is mistakenly called the first large country house in America, but it may not lay claim to that status since the earlier "Governor's Castle" in Maryland had a larger area. However that may be, "The Green Spring" for its time was baronial. It seems to have been a "double-parlor" dwelling—an English derivative, where the "Hall" stood between two parlors. When the recently-revealed watercolor of this mansion-house by Benjamin Henry Latrobe is published, its features, like the roof "shingled" with dormers and the front porch of "clumsy Jacobean brickwork" may be more fully described.
In the recent excavations at "The Green Spring" were found the brick footings of apre-Berkeley building. We know that it antedated Sir William's great pile because part of it was covered by Sir William's structure. Our floor plan, based on Kocher, Waterman, and Dimmick, shows a very unusual room arrangement for seventeenth-century Virginia. It looks very much like an "E"-plan of the Elizabethan Style of architecture. And at the rear were "cells" or "outshuts." With grains of allowance, the sketch of the entrance front is conjectural, but probably has enough of the truth about it to reveal the unique character of the edifice.
iii.The Town Dwelling
Because Virginians in founding their towns wished to crowd their houses in rows along their streets, the city abode is substantially different in type from the rural one. Many of our city developers today are building squeezed-up row houses, in order to make as much money as possible, where the front foot is valued in dollars. But, for all that, the Jamestown developers were doing the very same thing, building sardine-packed row dwellings—only the payment was in English currency.
Inside James Fort that first year the settlers erected streets of "settled" houses, which, because of the small space available within the palisade, must have been of necessity row homes. The current oil painting of James Fort in the Jamestown Museum is all very fine, being based largely on a plan and description of the first settlement by the writer; but it has one great error: the houses are not contiguous to one another, as they were forced to be within the cramped space of the triangular palisade. Four years later, the settlement had two fair rows of timber-framed houses, two storeys and garret high. Even storehouses at Jamestown were constructed in rows. In 1614 there were erected in that settlement three large, substantial storehouses, joined together in length about one hundred and twenty feet, and extending in breadth forty feet.
What appears from a drawing in the Ambler Manuscripts to be an early example of a row dwelling is the "Governor's House" or the "Country House,"—the word, country, meaning not countryside, but Colony or Province. This edifice was situated at Jamestown, but it was outside the triangular Fort and upon the so-called "fourth ridge," the highest ground near that fortification. The house was erected some time between the arrival in Virginia of Sir George Yeardley in 1619 and the year 1660. The probable date lies somewhere in the 1620s. The manuscript drawing is crudely drawn and badly torn, but it does indicate a one-and-a-half storey domicile with three chimneys, one in the center and one at each end—making what seems to be adoublehouse—a duplex. Excavations of the fragmentary brick remains of the "Governor's House" revealed that it was a brick edifice fifty-three feet long and twenty wide, with a little frame wing at the rear. Unfortunately no trace remained of the central chimney; but at any rate the diggings established that the eastern half had a cellar, while the western section did not—another indication of the double house.
There is an interesting story about the "Governor's House."Those who disagree with the Gregory-Forman theory of the site of James Fort of 1607 being at or near the point below Orchard Run, Jamestown Island, not a half mile up river near the Brick Church, must explain away the conversation recorded in the archives of Virginia for the night of June 23, 1624, at the "Governor's House," Jamestown. Briefly, there were two "fellows" who lurked on that evening under the walls of this building, trying to get inside. They were seen and hailed by sentries on the walls of James Fort. One of the men at the Fort shouted at the two fellows: "Que Vulla?"—evidently stock military vulgar Latin forQuae Vultis?, "What do you want?" To which question the two fellows at the "Governor's House" replied that they could not get in because the door was locked. It is obvious that the Fort lay near the Governor's House and not half a mile away.
MAP OF THE "NEW TOWNE" AT JAMES CITY.Illustrating buildings mentioned in the text, and based on a map in the writer'sJamestown and St. Mary's
At least by 1623, it was the desire of the Virginia Company of London to build towns in Virginia which would possess a convenient and suitable number of houses, constructed together of brick and encircled by a battlemented brick wall. Exactly in the same way Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, commanded the first Maryland settlers to lay out row houses in their first settlement.
And also, Jamestown excavations have borne out the fact that the typical city building was usually a row affair. The few rural homes within the city limits may not be classified as "town" houses. There are at least five groups of row houses known at Jamestown, and there are even stock sizes for such groups. Twenty feet by forty, measured on the inside of the walls, were the most common dimensions—an inheritance from British medieval building laws.
Perhaps the foremost of the James City row buildings is the group of three brick edifices which comprised the "First State House" in Virginia. The three cellars, their long walls being party walls, were excavated under the direction of this writer and of a colleague. The structure was originally two storeys and garret high. The down-river, or eastern section, and the central portion, were erected about 1635 by Governor John Harvey and were used as the capitol building of the Colony from 1641 for fifteen years. The up-river section was built before 1655 by Sir William Berkeley. But by 1670 the whole pile, with its three front gables facing the James River, had gone up in flames.
The unit floor plan of the "First State House" comprised a "hall-and-parlor" dwelling with back-to-back fireplaces and a very narrow passageway running the length of the building at one side. Now that arrangement formed pretty much the stock plan of the city house in seventeenth-century London, as our researches have disclosed. That the "First State House" was Tudor in appearance is evidenced by the great wealth of medieval wrought-iron hardware found in the ruins: such items as Cock's Head hinges, leaded lattice casements, and great rim locks with eight-inch keys. The roof once carried the medieval "pantile," which is an "S"-shaped clay tile about thirteen inches long, with a nob at one end to catch on to the roofing strips.
Another row example with gables facing the street lay about a thousand feet north of the Brick Church at Jamestown. It comprised two brick buildings with their long sides being party walls; and we have named them the "Double House on the land of Thomas Hampton." Each basement is approximately sixteen feet by twenty-four in size—another stock configuration—which cameabout as the result of the Virginia Act of 1639. This duplex contained beautiful Delft tiles in the fireplaces, representing figures of Dutchmen at sport and at play.
Not all row dwellings had gables across the front; some buildings were joined end to end, their gables party walls. The most important example of such at Jamestown is what we have called the "Country-Ludwell-State House" block of five buildings, situated up river a short distance from the Brick Church. Four of these were private homes, and the fifth was the "Third State House." They were all set up as a result of the Act of 1662 calling for thirty-two brick (row) dwellings, arranged in a square or other form which the Governor should decide. Each dwelling was to be twenty feet by forty on the inside, eighteen feet from floor to eaves, fifteen feet from eaves to ridge measured vertically, and to have a slate or tile roof. Of these four habitations, the two nearest the river had floor plans similar to that of the "First State House," already described, except that the gables adjoined one another.
To delve a little further into the subject of this interesting block, we may note that the other two houses were of the same size as the pair nearer the water, but that they had "flush" chimneys abutting the party walls instead of "central" chimneys with back-to-back fireplaces. These two were also marked by three enclosed porches on their front façades. All four dwellings had "cell" or "aisle" additions at the rear.
Another row house at James City is what we have called the "Double House back of John White's Land," where half the building possessed a large, brick-vaulted, wine cellar, with hundreds of bottles kept within it—a feature indicating a tavern. Let no one think they did not drink at Jamestown: the whole settlement was permeated with taverns and ale-houses.
One of the most recent finds at Jamestown is a triplet or "triplex" row, lying some four hundred feet northeast of the Brick Church. The three dwellings faced south, and each measured twenty by fifty-two feet within the walls. There was the customary back-to-back fireplace on the north wall of each unit; but the easternmost house had an exterior fireplace at its east gable-end, and a square porch room on the south.
As new discoveries are made in this first capital of Virginia, it becomes clearer year by year that the city was full of row buildings, trying to emulate Oxford or Chipping Camden or even the great London herself.
iv.Churches, Chapels, and Glebes
The medieval Virginia church of the seventeenth century was generally a crossroads shrine set down in or near the middle of a group of plantations. Towns, like James City, also had their own churches, situated on the main thoroughfares. When roads were too bad for traversing, or distances were too great, parishioners built sometimes small fanes called "chapels of ease," nearer their homes than the main parish churches.
The starting point for the Virginia church is at Jamestown, a place which can count five churches, and perhaps more. For brevity we list them:
1. The "cruck" church of 1607, the first substantial church, which, according to Smith, was covered by rushes, boards, and earth.
2. The timber-framed church of 1610, of Lord Delaware,sixty feet by twenty-four in size, where took place in 1614 the marriage of the Indian princess, Pocahontas, and John Rolfe. This edifice had casements on hinges and, at the west end, two bells.
3. Argall's frame church of 1617, fifty feet by twenty, which by 1623 may have been the structure possessing a latticed gallery for ladies, and which needed repairs in 1624.
In connection with this 1617 church, may we digress a moment to mention some contemporary churches outside Jamestown? We have already cited the puncheoned church (c. 1623) on the Eastern Shore. Then there was the Elizabeth City church of 1624, timber-framed, laid upon cobblestone footings, and paved with square tiles; and the wood Hog Island Church of 1628, which measured on the inside twenty by forty feet and which probably had a small tower at the west end. That must have been a tower, because it was not the custom to place a porch at the west end in seventeenth-century Virginia—at least, as far as present research has disclosed. The tower was eight feet wide, but projected only three feet out—big enough, perhaps, to support two or three bells.
To continue the chronology of the Jamestown churches:
4. A wood church, spoken of as "new" in 1636, located next the Reverend Hampton's land, and of which he was the minister. The brick-and-cobblestone footings inside the Brick Church of 1647 at Jamestown may very well have belonged to this "new" wooden church; but they never belonged to Argall's Church, which was located within James Fort, situated half a mile down the James River, near Orchard Run, Jamestown Island.
5. The Brick Church of 1647, of which the original bell tower and foundation are extant.
The tower of this Brick Church at Jamestown is of fine old "English" bonded brickwork, with a belt course of Flemish bond. It was built separate from the main body of the church, but was connected to it at the jambs and tops of the interconnecting doorways—as the floor plan shows. The great walls of the belfry are three feet thick, and the roof was probably battlemented or crenellated.
The main entrance doorway in the tower has a plain, round-headed brick arch, the earliest form of brick church door in the Old Dominion.
In 1907 the main body of the church was reconstructed for the Tercentenary Celebration. It is a single nave and possesses some interesting medieval features: buttresses; pointed and mullioned windows; gables of crow-steps or "tabled offsets"; and a raised tile chancel floor.
The stepped gables were modelled upon those of "St. Luke's Church," often called the "Old Brick Church," Isle of Wight County, Virginia. We are fortunate in having in this country such an excellently-preserved medieval church as "St. Luke's." For years its date was considered "1632"; but the authorities, G. C. Mason and T. T. Waterman, in recent years have assigned to this pile the dates respectively of "1677 or before" and "1682."
Unlike the belfry of the Brick Jamestown Church, the towerof old "St. Luke's" is incorporated into the west gable-end of the building. It, too, probably had a battlemented top, which has now been changed. That the Jamestown belfry is a good deal older than the one at "St. Luke's" is proven by the simplicity of design of the former in contradistinction to the sophisticated appearance of the latter. The "St. Luke's" tower possesses Jacobean brick quoins, a feature imitating corner stones, and an "embryo" or much simplified, triangular pediment, of Jacobean derivation, over the circular-headed doorway.
The buttresses, the crow-stepped gables, the pointed windows at "St. Luke's" are all original medieval features. In fact the great east window of the chancel, made up of eight main lights separated by foliated tracery, is English Gothic, of the style known as "Decorated" or "Geometric," which flourished between 1307 and 1377 in England. A source for this east window is the chancel traceried window at Liscomb Park Chapel (c. 1350), Soulbury, England.
From the foregoing it is obvious that the main body of the "St. Luke's" church preceded the Tudor Style and is "Decorated" Gothic. The tower has Jacobean trimmings. At the same time it is erroneous to call this church "Gothic Colonial." What a mixture! In style it is English Gothic, that is, Gothic of England. It is as much Gothic as "Westminster Abbey" or "Wells" or "Yorkminster." What a multitude of errors is covered by that word "Colonial."
Recent research done at "St. Luke's" has uncovered the original, chamfered, timbered trusses and horizontal tie-beams, whichwere exposed in the nave; traces of the original gallery at the tower end of the nave which appears to have had balusters of oak; the old wineglass pulpit; and the enclosed porch or vestibule in the first storey of the tower.
Let not the reader think that most Virginia churches in the seventeenth century had towers. Such buildings were usually simple rectangles, occasionally with a porch attached to the long side on the south, in the approved English parish church manner.
Giving an idea how an early church was constructed is revealed in the building specifications of the "Second Hungars Church" (1680), in Northampton County—an edifice which was contemporaneous with old "St. Luke's." Specifications can be pretty dry reading, but this one had a humorous touch or two. It appears that the church wardens contracted with the builder to put up a timber-framed parish church forty feet by twenty, with wall plates ten feet high. Wall plates, by the way, are timbers upon which rafters rest. Of "substantial substance," the framing was to be oak, and the foundation to be locust blocks of wood. The walls and roof were to have planks or clapboards. It is interesting that the upper edge of the roof planks were to be let, or set, into the rafters for strength and tightness. The inside of the church was also to be planked in order to seal off the walls of the "Old Church,"—the "First Hungars Church,"—which seems to have been incorporated, at least in part, in the second shrine. The planks covered the barrel vault, which was called "Arches," situated beneath the roof. Nails, planks, and food were to be furnished to the builder.
One of the excellent contract provisions was that the contractor was to take over no additional work elsewhere, or to leave the works, except upon some great occasion, for a week or two at the most. Upon completion of the job he was to receive ten thousand pounds of tobacco and to have the help of a hand able to work an axe for the space of a month.
The foremost example of Jacobean Style in early ecclesiastical work was the "Second Bruton Church," Middle Plantation, now Williamsburg. It was completed in 1683—that is, soon after "St. Luke's,"—and has been completely demolished. Excavations of its brick foundations revealed that it possessed buttresses on its long sides and at the back. The inside measurements were sixty feet by twenty-four. The main west door—there was no tower—and the chancel door on the side were to be, with minor variations, the sizes of the doors of the Brick Church of 1647 at Jamestown. An old drawing shows that the "Second Bruton Parish Church" had curvilinear gables of the type found at "Bacon's Castle," and the western rose window was flanked by scrolls which were probably formed of hand-cut brick. Both of these features are Jacobean.
Another early doorway, which is plain, round-headed, and of rubbed brick, stands at the "Merchant's Hope Church," Prince George County, and in style it seems to bolster the theory that at least a portion of the existing shrine is of the seventeenth century.
Some believe that brick "Pungoteague Church" on Eastern Shore, originally erected on a cross plan, with a mansard roof, was seventeenth-century in date, but it is the part of wisdom to accept G. C. Mason's belief for valid reasons that the pile was constructed as late as 1738.
That some of these parish churches in Virginia had interiors which were richly furnished is evident from the description of the builder's work on one of them, the frame "Poplar Spring Church," (1677), Gloucester County. Father Time has unfortunately done away with this shrine, but we do know that itswalls and ceiling were lathed and plastered, and that the chancel, fifteen feet long, was to be divided from the nave by a woodenrood screen—a "Screen to be run Crosse the church," and to have "ballisters."
In the medieval English church the rood screen is the name given to the chancel or choir screen when it supported the "rood," a large cross. It was customary to build such a screen in three parts: a base comprising panelled walls as high as the pews, a middle section with a row of wood balusters set closely together, and a top part of pierced woodwork—that is, traceried work—and heavy cornice.
At "Poplar Spring Church" there were double pews built on each side of the chancel abutting the rood screen. Also set against the rood screen was another double pew, this one between the pulpit in the nave and the screen. The rest of the pews in the church, on both sides of the aisle, were double and had panelled backs. The pulpit itself was hexagonal and a three-decker affair. There was a six-foot space permitted for the reading desk, set eighteen inches above the floor, and for the passage into the pulpit. Half way up were the minister's pew and desk. The church was also the proud possessor of a flowered, crimson, velvet pulpit cloth, a silver communion service, and a drawing of cherubim, presumably upon the altarpiece.
Although it was customary to place wainscoted pews within the chancel, the "Second Lynnhaven Church," of 1692, Princess Anne County, had also in the chancel several benches, which were used by the parish poor.
That all seventeenth-century churches in the Old Dominion were not of brick or wood is shown by the "Second York Church" (1697), now Grace Church, Yorktown, which was constructed of native marl.
The Transitional Style of architecture, which, as we have seen, greatly influenced rural dwellings from about 1680 to about 1730, is marked in the Virginia church chiefly by the doorway designs. The earliest motif of a brick doorway is that plain, round-arched one on the entrance to the Jamestown Brick Church belfry. By 1700, brick doorways were becoming transitional: a good example is that at "Ware Church" (perhaps 1715), Gloucester County, which is flanked by brick pilasters and an arch bounded by a shallow hood—the whole made up of rubbed or gauged brick.
One of the most curious doorways of transitional vintage is the main south entrance to "Yeocomico Church" (1706), Westmoreland County. The door head consists of three brick arches in relief with stucco tympanums or fillings. Of the three, the top arch rests upon the other two—much in the manner that small arches cluster inside a large arch in some English Gothic doorways. But the "Yeocomico" door has the flavor of transitional experimentation.
Apropos of this same "Yeocomico" church, the door itself is a heavy battened door which is Tudor, and which is believed to have been taken from an earlier church (1653) on the same site. At all events, the long vertical panels on the exterior of the door are reminiscent of those at "Christ's Cross," New Kent County, already described. But the "Yeocomico" entrance has an additional medieval feature: a small door or "wicket" within the big door—a feature common to buildings of the Middle Ages abroad.
Most early Virginia churches possessed parsonages, usually on the glebe land and therefore known as "glebes." We have already cited, as an example of the Transition, the "AbingdonGlebe House" (c. 1700), Gloucester County, erected with balancing pavilion wings. Another interesting glebe was specified in 1635 for erection on Old Plantation Creek in Northampton County. Such a building appears to have been of the "hall-and-parlor" variety with a chimney at each end and with a study "outshut" and a buttery "outshut" off each chimney. On the front was an "entry," the familiar little enclosed square porch, and at the rear were a "Kitchinge" and a "Chamber." In size this parsonage was to be forty feet by eighteen, and there were nine feet to the "wall plates," upon which the rafters rested. One could almost make an accurate restoration drawing of this glebe house from the description. But it must have been typical of the minister's house of that day, and the building of a "study" perhaps indicated that religion was then based on learning.
v.State Houses and Other Public Buildings
From the records we may learn of many kinds of public buildings, even though their actual remains have disappeared above ground. We know, for instance, of the Tavern or Ale-house (1660) of Thomas Woodhouse at Jamestown, where at one time were made the laws of Virginia. We are cognizant of the Eastern Shore tavern of 1697 where John Cole was licensed to keep an "ordinary" and to retail liquors near the Court House. We have heard of the "quartering house" of 1670 in Accomack County, which was a kind of tourist home for one-night stop-overs. We learn that there were many courthouses in seventeenth-century Virginia, like that of 1690 in Northampton County, which is sketchily described as having one exterior chimney and as being twenty-five feet long. Jails there were, too, like the Westover Prison and Stocks of 1643, which were probably constructed by Theoderick Bland. In Accomack there stood in 1674 a "logg'd" prison, fifteen feet by ten. At Westover, it may be noted, was also a "Brew house."
Also from the records we find mention of the Salt Works of1676 owned by Daniel and Anne Jenifer and of Darby's Grist Mill of 1668, both in Accomack County; and of the Windmill of 1642 constructed jointly by John Williams and Obedience Robins, "chirugion," in Northampton County.
The Glass House or Factory of 1608 near Jamestown is one building which we do know something about, because of excavations by the National Park Service. It had originally a dirt floor about fifty feet by thirty-seven—a large area. Upon this floor were built three crude stone furnaces and a pot kiln. There was probably an open-walled timber structure with a pitched roof over the large floor and with louvres for the thick smoke to escape through the roof. There is not the slightest evidence for the use of crucks in the present off-site reconstruction of this great pile.
THE COUNTRY-LUDWELL-THIRD STATE HOUSE BLOCKAuthor's reconstruction fromJamestown and St. Mary'sshowing four residences and the first American state house to be built specifically as a State House or Capitol.
When we take up the subject of State Houses, we have an excellent example in the "Third State House" at Jamestown,which, as heretofore noted, formed part of the "Country-Ludwell-State House" block of five buildings a little up river from the Brick Church of 1647. Only the foundations of the "Third State House" remain, but from them and from the references in the Virginia records we know pretty much how the edifice looked originally. And it is noted as the first structure in the United States erected as a legislative seat.
Built about 1662 and burned in 1676, the "Third State House" was a medieval cross-house possessing close analogies to "Bacon's Castle" in the general neighborhood, and it rose two full storeys and garret high. There was no basement. The main façade, facing the south and the main body of Jamestown, had a porch and porch chamber, and at the back was a tower which held the stairway—an area which in that day was known as a "Stair Case." In size, the stair tower was about the same as that of the "Brick State House of 1676" in St. Mary's City, Maryland, a cross-building which postdated the Virginia structure by only about thirteen years.
The interior of the "Third State House" must have been impressive. Downstairs were a spacious waiting room and a Court House Room, in which the Governor and his Council met and in which at times Provincial Courts were held. Upstairs were another waiting room and the Assembly Hall or House of Burgesses. The little porch chamber on the second floor was used by His Majesty's Secretary of Virginia, until he was ordered to work in the eastern garret.
The four great rooms in this pile—two down and two up—had huge fireplaces on their long sides. The downstairs fireplaces could burn nine-foot logs. All the ceilings had girders and joists exposed.
After the conflagration of 1676 set by Nathaniel Bacon, the building was rebuilt (1685) on the same site, probably using what brick walls were still standing, to become the "Fourth State House." It is believed that in the rebuilding there was not muchchange in the design. But it was only natural that some of the rooms should have new uses, so that we find that the lower waiting room was fitted into a Secretary's Office by placing a strong partition under the "second girder" and, because of dampness, by raising the floor two feet up from the ground. To keep persons from breaking in to steal the record books of the Colony in the small storage room next to the Secretary's Office, the windows were barred with iron and had board shutters half an inch thick, with cross-bars.
Virginia may well be proud of the design of this "Third State House" at Jamestown, which has recently been the subject of a special restoration study for the Commonwealth by this writer. That legislative seat, built nearly three hundred years ago, was dignified, handsome, impressive, and in fine scale. Through its portals passed in those days the chief figures of the Dominion. Its mullioned and diamond-pane windows, its pantile roof, and its porch and porch chamber gave the fabric a strong medieval flavor.
It is unfortunate that the "Fourth State House" burned on October 31, 1698, through an accident. What kind of an accident the records do not state. Was it a faulty flue, an overturned sconce, or carelessness in lighting a tobacco pipe? We shall probably never know. But the very next year the early capital, Jamestown, which had flourished for ninety-two years, was abandoned in favor of Middle Plantation, "nigh his Majesties Royall Colledg of William and Mary."
Three years before the destruction by fire of the "Fourth State House," the foundation of the "Sir Christopher Wren Building" of William and Mary College was laid down (1695). The shape of the great structure was to have been a quadrangle in the best English tradition of the Middle Ages. Colleges in Britain, as early as the 1200s, were in their general equipment much like monastic establishments, grouped about an arcaded cloister, and were halls of residence for communities of teachers and students.
But in Williamsburg the Wren Building was slow to get started, and has in truth never been completed in the form of a rectangle. By 1705, the year of the first fire, only the front façade and half of the north side had been completed. Consequently, for all intents and purposes, the edifice is an eighteenth-century structure, in spite of its earlier foundation, and belongs more to Classic Williamsburg than to the former era. In more than one respect it paved the way for the Virginia Georgian.
For all that, the style of the original building may be said to be Transitional, with Georgian details, like modillions in the cornice. The main façade, one hundred and thirty-six feet long, is distinguished by a "break-front" or projecting bay on the center, crowned by a steeply pitched gable—the motif being repeated on the courtyard side. According to an old drawing of 1702 the entrance façade had in the center two balconies, one above the other, over the great, arched, front doorway. The hipped main roof is crowned by a "tower" or cupola.
The arrangement of the main roof on the quadrangle side is unique: there is on each side of the central gable a row of hipped roofs. In the early days in Virginia there must have been many a building with a similar row. It is possible that the "First State House" itself had three hips contiguous to one another instead of the three gables which we have drawn herein. At any rate, in order to see existing parallels one has to visit the Bermudas, the Bahamas, or even Great Britain herself.
V
THE RICH HERITAGE OF ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS
Although it is true that the vast majority of English buildings in Virginia during the seventeenth century were simple and unadorned, constructed by plain people, there was a large number of structures which had ornate or costly details and exquisite furnishings. What is known about these interesting features is still largely unknown to Virginians, and it is the purpose of this chapter to make mention of some of them.
The richest details known to a seventeenth-century building in the Old Dominion appear to have once upon a time decorated the ceiling of the Great Hall of "William Sherwood's House," built about 1677-80 in Jamestown. The dwelling was a small, brick, storey-and-garret residence built on top of and across the foundation ruins of the old "Governor's House," already described. Mr. Sherwood's Great Hall, seventeen feet by sixteen in size, was rented in 1685 by the Government of Virginia and used as a Council Room by His Majesty's Governor and Council.
Now for the discovery. It was in the excavations of 1935 in Sherwood's neat, brick basement, and in the area immediately surrounding that cellar, that more than fifty thousand fragments of plaster were retrieved. There are still some who do not believe that this plaster work came from Sherwood's House; but like "Kilroy," this writer was there and can vouch for its coming from Sherwood's. In fact we have charts showing exactly where each important fragment of plaster was found, and at what depth below the ground.
At any rate, some of the plaster was colored or frescoed, and much of it was moulded. There were two particular pieces of plaster with raised letters upon them: on one the letters "VI,"on the other the letter "Y." What did they mean? This writer invited Mr. Singleton Moorehead, of the Williamsburg Restoration, down to Jamestown Island to view the letters, and he immediately identified them as belonging to the "Garter" of the Royal Arms of Great Britain. In quoting what the Garter states, we have underlined the Jamestown letters, thus: "HONI SOIT QVIMALYPENSE." Translated, the words mean, "Evil be to him who evil thinks." There is no doubt that Mr. Moorehead was correct. The tail of the "Q" in "QVI" showed plainly, and the blank space in front of the "Y" indicated that it was a letter by itself. But with the Garter in hand we could identify the other important plaster finds—the masks, roses, leaves, the lion, the hand-and-book, and the ribs, which ordinarily divide a large plaster composition into separate panels—as part of the Royal Coat of Arms.
In England such a ceiling arrangement in plaster was called "pargetry" and was a Tudor manner of decorating an important room. How appropriate to find the Royal Arms of England in the room in Sherwood's which was used by His Majesty's Governor and Council. That was one of the great archaeological finds of America, and the translation of the inscription one of the great interpretations.
The important, widespread, and non-perishable building material of tidewater was brick; and when we take up the subject of seventeenth-century brickwork, we may still with justification hover about the ruins of "William Sherwood's House" at Jamestown as a starting point. It was there were found the largestand most varied collection of rubbed or gauged brick in that capital city. By "gauging"—and we have mentioned the term before in describing certain church doorways,—we mean that the bricks have been cut and finished off by rubbing upon a sandstone. In England by 1660, only about seventeen years before Mr. Sherwood's home was erected, gauged bricks had become widely popular. Such bricks were usually lighter in color than the run-of-the-mill bricks, and were employed on cornices, belt or string courses, quoins at the corners of buildings, and the heads and jambs of openings. They dressed up an edifice in the eye of the seventeenth-century beholder.
Further, we know that in Britain one of the ways of decorating an opening in a late medieval building was to put mouldings on jambs and head of a doorway or of a window. Apropos of Sherwood's at Jamestown, few of us, if any, know that his mansion possessed openings withovolobricks—bricks rubbed and cut in an egg-shaped ornamental moulding.
There seems little doubt that Virginians made bricks, even gauged bricks, in their capital and did not bring them from England—popular tradition to the contrary. Several brick kilns have been discovered at Jamestown by the National Park Service. One was a well-preserved, square brick kiln of about 1650, found with arched ovens and with some bricks and tiles in place. The citizens of James City had no difficulty in fabricating all the fancy and ornamental bricks or tiles which they desired.
Virginia brick of the seventeenth century was generally called English brick or Englishstatutebrick, not because it was broughtfrom England—which it was not—but because its size was regulated by English law. There was another kind of brick used at that time in Virginia, the Dutch brick, made not by Hollanders but by Virginians and English, which was a great deal smaller than the English brick. The Jamestown English brick generally run 9" by 4¼" by 2¼" in size, but the Dutch brick, yellow in color, average 6" by 2½" by 1½".
In the realm of fireplaces, early Virginia had some ornate ones. Old "Fairfield" (1692), Gloucester County, before its destruction, had a mantelpiece of carved marble and some "linenfold" wainscoting. A peculiarity of Gothic carved decoration, the linenfold design was employed in oak panels in imitation of folded parchment or linen. Sometimes in the Old Dominion a rich array of Dutch faïence tiles, five inches square, decorated the sides of a fireplace, as in the "Double House on the Land of the Reverend Hampton," already described. Those tiles, called Dutch, but probably made in England in the Dutch manner, have blue designs upon a milky white surface, and show human figures—Dutchmen—throwing javelins, bowling, or playing games.
In the field of wrought-iron work early Virginia was outstanding. Iron was a common commodity, even as far back as 1610, when the Spanish spy, Don Miguel, wrote from Jamestown to Spain that iron mines, and mines for other metals, were being worked in Virginia. Then, in 1619, Sir Edwin Sandys, Treasurer of the Virginia Company of London, sent one hundred and fifty persons to Virginia to set up three iron works. Glassware, too, was made as early as 1608, at the "Glass House" on Glass House Point, near Jamestown, and was imported into England; but the fragile nature of glass has caused it to endure less well than wrought-iron. Probably much of the best quality ironwork was brought from England: we have record, for instance, of Sir John Harvey in 1639 bringing with him "iron wares to the value of upwards of £45."
The wooden casement window, as well as that of wrought-iron, often gave Virginians a chance to create beautiful and enriched designs. The little metal casement taken from the ruin on the "John Washington Farm" of about 1670 in Westmoreland County measures only 12¾" across and 18½" tall, yet it has a fairly ornate iron plate, punched and cut out in an interesting design, over which is fastened a spring latch-bar, also of a cut-out shape. A ring or pull through which a finger could be slipped to twist a lever against the latch-bar to open the casement was welded to the latch itself. When viewed from the interior of a room, the ornamental fastener was especially effective silhouetted against the light. There was no limit to the fanciful shapes and decorations of such fasteners.
The "First State House," which as we have already noted formed a group of three row dwellings at Jamestown, had in its day probably as much wealth of ornate ironwork as any other building in the Old Dominion. From its ruins came a veritable mine of hardware of good quality, yet rusted. A few specimens may be mentioned here: Cock's Head hinges—a type of "H"-hinge with four heads, the pattern of which harks back to Roman times; an ornamental cupboard latch-lock, made of wrought-iron and steel, with a punched and lobed silhouette, a spring, a pull for turning; and a bar delicately incised with diagonal grooves.
Another bit of hardware from the "First State House" was a pair of decorative cupboard latch-bars, with diagonal grooves, with spear-and-ball terminations at one end and with "V"-shaped notches at the other.
An outstanding example of woodcarving is the folk Jacobean capital with its heart shield and twin volutes at the dwelling, "Christ's Cross," in New Kent. How many other wood sculptures of equal importance have been lost in the almost clean sweep of seventeenth-century Virginia building?
For all that, we know today that the Virginia domicile andedifice sometimes possessed in its details and its decoration an elegance scarcely yet realized in this country—an elegance for which it is necessary to search England to find the proper sources and comparisons.
MEDIEVAL DOOR AND FURNITURE HARDWARE FROM JAMESTOWNOriginally made forAntiques Magazine, this drawing shows a. wrought-iron key; b. and i. Cock's Head hinges; c. door-pull escutcheon; d. iron key; e. part of a strap-hinge; f. stock-lock main plate; g. small brass cabinet hinge; h. brass keyhole escutcheon.
VI
EPILOGUE: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY STYLES?
When over the fens and marshy slashes of Jamestown Island the eighteenth century dawned in that year of 1700, there were two significant aspects of Virginia architectural history which stand out clearly. Today the first of these aspects is well known, but the second is known only to a handful of persons. They are:
1. The most important style of architecture of the eighteenth century—the pseudo-classical Georgian—was about to make its entrée upon the Virginia scene, with the building of the "Governor's Palace," Williamsburg, begun in 1706.
2. All the styles of architecture, both American Indian and English, which flourished in the seventeenth century carried over—hung over—into the eighteenth century, and even into the nineteenth century.
The Georgian Style, of course, was actually English Georgian—Georgian of England—and in Virginia it prevailed from the 1710s to the 1780s—a span of some seventy years. It ushered into the Old Dominion a rage for ballrooms, such as that in the "Governor's Palace," theatres, tea tables, and china. It marked the golden age of the great houses, like "Marmion," "Stratford Hall," "Westover," and "Mt. Vernon."
At the same time in Virginia there existed side by side with the Georgian Style the following five styles of architecture, of which the last four have been identified and named by this writer for convenience:
1. The American Indian Style, which faded away probably in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
2. The "Hangover" Medieval Style.
3. The "Hangover" Jacobean Style.
4. The Transitional Style, which, as we have seen, prevailed from about 1680 to about 1730.
5. The "Hangover" Transitional Style (after about 1730).
In this way, like a mighty river the four main streams of Virginia architecture in the seventeenth century—American Indian, Medieval, Jacobean, and Transitional—flowed into the eighteenth, to be then joined by the Georgian tributary.
Furthermore, in the nineteenth century the men of tidewater Virginia who put up the buildings in the false medieval style, the copybook, birthday-cake Gothic known as the "Gothic Revival," were not aware of, and took no cognizance of, the true medieval examples existing on their very doorsteps—a "Thoroughgood House" here, a "St. Luke's Church" there. That situation was one of the strange paradoxes of our architectural history.
A few of us in very recent years are just beginning to label those English structures along tidewater which make up the bulk of Virginia architecture in the seventeenth century by the correct name,Medieval.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ambler Manuscripts, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
"American Notes," C. E. Peterson, ed.,Journal of Society of Architectural Historians.
Bruce, P. A.,Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century. N. Y. 1895. 2 vols.
Bushnell, D. I., Jr.,Native Villages and Village Sites East of the Mississippi. Washington, D. C. 1919.
Bushnell, D. I., Jr.,Virginia before Jamestown. Washington, D. C. 1940.
Caywood, L. R.,Excavations at Green Spring Plantation(brochure). Yorktown, Va. 1955.
Forman, H. C.,The Architecture of the Old South. Cambridge, Mass. 1948.
Forman, H. C., "The Beginning of American Architecture," inCollege Art Journal, vol. 6. no. 2. Winter, 1946.
Forman, H. C., "The Bygone 'Subberbs of James Cittie,'" inWilliam and Mary College Quarterly, 2nd ser., vol. 20, no. 4. October, 1940.
Forman. H. C.,Jamestown and St. Mary's: Buried Cities of Romance. Baltimore, 1938.
Forman, H. C., "The Old Hardware of James Towne," inAntiques Magazine, vol. 39, no. 1, January, 1941.
Harrington, J. C.,Glassmaking at Jamestown. Richmond, Va. 1952.
Hatch, C. E., Jr.,The Oldest Legislative Assembly in America & its First State House. Washington, D. C. Revised, 1947.
Historic American Buildings Survey. Library of Congress. Washington, D. C.
Gregory, G. C., "Jamestown—First Brick State House," inVirginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 42, pp. 193-199. July 1935.
Lewis, C. M., and Loomie, A. J.,The Spanish Jesuit Mission in Virginia, 1570-1572. Chapel Hill, N. C. 1955.
Mason, G. C.,Colonial Churches of Tidewater Virginia. Richmond, Va. 1945.
Moorehead, S. P., "Christ's Cross," inVirginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 43. January, 1935.
Moorehead, S. P., "The Castle," inVirginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 42. October, 1934.
Stewart, T. D., "Excavating the Indian Village of Patawomeke," inExploration and Field-Work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1938. Washington, D. C. 1939.
Swem, E. G.,The Virginia Historical Index. 2 volumes, Roanoke, Va. 1934-36.
Waterman, T. T.,Domestic Colonial Architecture of Tidewater Virginia. N. Y. 1932.
Whitelaw, R. T.,Virginia's Eastern Shore. Richmond, Va. 1951. 2 vols.
Yonge, S. H.,The Site of Old Jamestown, 1607-1698. Richmond 1904.
INDEX
Illustrations are letteredA,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I, andJ.