Before the 18th century, the Dutch doorway was merely a rectangular entrance into the house, an occasional narrow transom with small square lights being the only attempt at adorn ment. The doors were either solid or divided at mid-height. Sometimes a simple stoop was built at the entrance with settees arranged on either side. In the latter part of the century, however, more attention was paid to the en trance, and during the last Georgian motifs were informally introduced with a broad individuality of treatment, which oftentimes in dicated but the first inspiration. In the in terior it became possible to expand the con struction indefinitely on account of the lack of formality of plan. Often there were two large square rooms on the first floor front, one on either side of the hall which extended from the front to the back door; and an oblong bed room on either side at the rear. As the family expanded, succeeding generations witnessed the building of a large addition or a number of smaller ones. Each of the large rooms had an enormous chimney, unornamented or crowned with a plain overmantel which extended well into the room. With the advent of the Georgian influence, a tendency arose toward more elabo rate decoration in the doorways and in order to relieve the former plainness carved wood moldings, leaded glass fans and side lights were used.
In domestic buildings in the Dutch, German and French Huguenot settlements of Central New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania it is exemplified in the Lefferts House, Erasmus Hall and other frame buildings of Long Island, The Memorial House, New Paltz, the Sennet House, Kingston, The Hashrook House, New burgh, Clinton Mansion, Poughkeepsie, and other stone buildings in the Hudson and Mo hawk valleys and throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania, The Schuyler Mansion, Albany, The Herkimer Home, Little Falls, and other brick buildings of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys. Crude and unrefined, frankly the products of the craftsman's art, these dwellings so closely resemble their English neighbors in general attributes that they cannot be said to have been developed in a distinctive style such as would warrant a departure from the broad classification of Colonial.
In New England, race craft determined architectural design. Original touches where ever introduced were not from mere caprice but from obvious local needs which the formal styles of England had not provided for, until at length there was established a type of archi tecture the result of successive evolutionary types, that was a distinctively characteristic product of New England. At first small, the houses were of one or two stories, with sharp peaked roofs, stone chimneys, and small win dows; a long, narrow lean-to being frequently added in the rear to serve as the kitchen. In the earlier houses, of which the Paul Revere house in Boston is an excellent example, the original construction was of the half-timber variety, with clay, or brick and stone pugging as used in England, the clapboard casing being added later when the severity of the winters .made it apparent that a more substantial form of exterior sheathing was necessary. In the interior plan, the New England house had two rooms to a floor, or three when the kitchen lean-to was added, in the latter case the room originally used as a kitchen became a sitting room with that •adjacent as a sleepingroom. A few of the larger and more elaborate houses, Governor Eaton's at New Haven among them, were architecturally more pretentious, with an E-shape design of four rooms on the first floor and several more, usually sleeping and storerooms, on the second.
In Pennsylvania, West Jersey and Delaware the mixed nationality and clannishness of the early settlers caused the architecture of the surrounding country to fall into several sepa rate and distinct channels. Each race preserved the traditions familiar to the mother country, the Welsh expressing themselves in stone con struction, with sharply peaked dormers on their roofs. Low, wide doors and windows were cap
ped by thick, oblong stone slabs, with sometimes a hood added over the former. A peculiarity frequently found in this type of house was the continuation of the cornice from the eaves horizontally across the ends, so as to make a complete triangle with the gable cornice. In the German colonial architecture, the windows and doors were higher and less wide, while the dormer heads had the same sharp angularity as those of the Welsh. A cornice was seldom carried on the gable ends, which were left un adorned. The peaked roof was common to the houses of the Welsh and German colonists ex cept that the roofs of the latter had less pitch.
While these two types of houses were or dinarily built of stone, the dwellings in New Jersey, although closely following them in architectural design, were often of larger pro portions and of brick rather than stone con struction. The Pennsylvania 'Quakers followed the English style at first, but gradually adopted many of the peculiarities of the Welsh and G.er mans; so that the Pennsylvania colonial farm house of to-day is a mixture of the best points of the three styles. In Philadelphia, severity ,of style was caused by the same strong Quaker in fluence while the easy access to white marble in considerable quantities made this a favorite ma terial. Hence arose the well-known type of the Philadelphia house, with walls of red brick, white marble lintels, sills and doorsteps, and as the houses were built close to the sidewalk, with out areas and with the entrance nearly on a level with the street, a display of solid white painted wooden shutters, which carried out the chromic effect to the full. The population of the South during the colonial period was alto gether English as was the architecture, though differing somewhat from the English archi tecture of New England in that there was no half-timber construction and the chimneys were wholly outside the house, instead of being con tained within as in the North. With a natural preference for brick and stone, the earliest southern colonists were compelled to use wood, and though later means of transportation proved adequate for supplying these materials and they were greatly used as soon as the Georgian influence began to be felt, the early dependence on wood created a precedent which has continued until the' present time. The cities of the South were less crowded, less busy, more decidedly marked by the distinction between elegant and humble dwellings. In Mobile, Charleston and Savannah, the characteristic dwelling was rather a more stately mansion standing free or nearly so, and having broad verandas or ((galleries)) which, however, were not turned toward the street, but sidewise upon gardens. Savannah, however, has a very unusual plan: a succession of square, open ((places)) from each of which four streets lead in four directions, giving a series of square corners and allowing of an irregularity of shape in the house lots which is not known in our other cities. The typical dwelling either in brick or wood was rectangular in plan with the entrance door on one of the long fronts. The shingled or tiled roof, with a chimney at each end, was steeply pitched. The interior consisted either of a ground floor with an attic, or of two living floors with a small storage space above. The entrance house•door opened directly into a large hall in contrast with the small entry of New land houses, and this served as a dining- and sitting-room, the kitchen being detached from the house proper. The remainder of the floor was occupied by one or more bedchambers. When the attic was used for domestic purposes it was the cus tom to light it by long dormer windows with sharp peaked gables.