Virginia Architecture in the Seventeenth Century Part 7

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Now Famous Letters from the Jamestown Plaster Garter identified by S. P. Moorehead]

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 largest and 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 with _ovolo_ bricks--bricks rubbed and cut in an egg-shaped ornamental moulding.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Part of a Medieval Ornamental Ovolo Jamb Brick from Sherwood's H. Jamestown]

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 English _statute_ brick, not because it was brought from 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 4-1/4" by 2-1/4" in size, but the Dutch brick, yellow in color, average 6" by 2-1/2" by 1-1/2".

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 faence 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. Gla.s.sware, too, was made as early as 1608, at the "Gla.s.s House" on Gla.s.s House Point, near Jamestown, and was imported into England; but the fragile nature of gla.s.s 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 cas.e.m.e.nt window, as well as that of wrought-iron, often gave Virginians a chance to create beautiful and enriched designs. The little metal cas.e.m.e.nt taken from the ruin on the "John Was.h.i.+ngton Farm" of about 1670 in Westmoreland County measures only 12-3/4" across and 18-1/2" 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 cas.e.m.e.nt 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: c.o.c.k'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 s.h.i.+eld 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 and edifice 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEDIEVAL DOOR AND FURNITURE HARDWARE FROM JAMESTOWN Originally made for _Antiques Magazine_, this drawing shows a.

wrought-iron key; b. and i. c.o.c.k's Head hinges; c. door-pull escutcheon; d. iron key; e. part of a strap-hinge; f. stock-lock main plate; g. small bra.s.s cabinet hinge; h. bra.s.s 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-cla.s.sical Georgian--was about to make its entree 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 Ma.n.u.scripts, Library of Congress, Was.h.i.+ngton, 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_. Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C. 1919.

Bushnell, D. I., Jr., _Virginia before Jamestown_. Was.h.i.+ngton, 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, Ma.s.s.

1948.

Forman, H. C., "The Beginning of American Architecture," in _College Art Journal_, vol. 6. no. 2. Winter, 1946.

Forman, H. C., "The Bygone 'Subberbs of James Cittie,'" in _William and Mary College Quarterly_, 2nd ser., vol. 20, no. 4. October, 1940.

Forman. H. C., _Jamestown and St. Mary's: Buried Cities of Romance_.