The words of Thomas Jefferson, though they may not reflect the views of modern admirers of " old colonial," are nevertheless a tolerably exact picture of the state of Architecture at the latter end of the last century and the commencement of the present: " The private buildings are rarely constructed of stone or brick, much the greater proportion being of scant ling or boards plastered with lime. It is impossible to devise things more ugly, uncomfortable, and, happily, more perishable. There are two or three plans, on one of which, according to its size, most of the houses of the State are built." Colonial was, in fact, nu known. There were no architects save here and there an Englishman or a Frenchman, and builders worked according to the remembered traditions of their trade, modified by circumstances and materials. Churches, town-halls, and other places of public assembly were either mere boxes according with Puritanic ideas, or they were based upon reminiscences of the work of Wren or of his inferior successors, Gibbs and Hawksmore.
Cornices, architraves, string-courses—even columns and entablatures —were executed in wood; but, thanks to the fact that mill-work had not yet acquired supremacy, some of the carving was executed with much spirit, as may be seen at the old Walton house, Pearl Street, New York City. The interiors were often adorned with a considerable amount of carv ing; the chimney-pieces especially exhibited the rococo work of the style of Louis XV., and of the Adam brothers and their contemporaries in Eng land. The old houses of Germantown, now a part of Philadelphia, abound with examples of this class of work.
In New York the earlier houses partook more or less of Dutch charac teristics, and some of the peculiarities of the Pennsylvania counties came from Germany; but English influence conquered, and the architecture of the United States became a reflex of the country which furnished a major ity of its citizens.
The United States of the present day does not consist alone of the original English-speaking States, but includes also a State which was formerly French and several which once were Spanish. The architecture of these States before their admission into the Union had nothing in com mon with that of New England.
Early Ecclesiastical still has a series of mission churches, massive and plain, constructed of adobe and similar in style to the smaller and later ecclesiastical structures of the adjoining republic of Mexico, of which country it originally formed a part. Among these churches may be mentioned San Gabriel, San Clemente, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and the Mission Dolores at San Francisco. Though they are but works of the last century, these plain edifices, with their small win dows, broad buttresses, and low bell-turrets, in which the bell is visible, surrounded by quiet graveyards, and set in the midst of the quaint piazza fronted adobe dwellings of the diminishing yet still existing Spanish Californians, breathe an air of great antiquity and speak of a quiet and repose now for ever banished. At Monterey the court in front of the church is paved with whales' vertebra?. Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, is the second oldest city in the United States, having been founded by Spanish settlers in 1581. Its older portions consist, like Monterey and
other Spanish towns in California, of houses of adobe or sun-dried brick, usually of one storey. It contains two Roman Catholic churches. Tuc son, Arizona, is another Spanish adobe town, and its Church of San laver is a remnant of the old regime. St. Augustine, Florida, founded in 1564, is a few years older than Santa Fe, and wears an air of great antiquity from its narrow streets, its balconied houses, its fort and churches built of the shell-conglomerate known as coquina. The cathe dral is an unpretentious structure with a facade consisting of a gable with curved lines surmounting a plain lower storey, in which is set an entrance with two half-columns on each side. The bells hang in semicircular headed openings in the gable.
The Cathedral of St. Louis (fil. 55, fig. 1), a large structure with a finely-proportioned and impressive facade, is the most notable of the older edifices of New Orleans. Above the tall centre of this facade rises a tower crowned by an octagonal spire, while on each side an octagonal spire crowns the angle-turrets of the municipal buildings which form the wings of the front. The cathedral occupies most of the width of Jack son Square, which is beautifully adorned with shrubbery and flowering plants and with the fine equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson, by Mills.
A-ogress of Colonial colonies grew in population and riches, and the seaport-towns especially attained importance. Boston and Newport iu New England, New York and Philadelphia in the Middle States, became centres of wealth, and more ambitious dwellings were erected, while State-houses and other public buildings rose on all hands.
city exhibits more or better examples of the colonial style than Newport, Rhode Island, once second only to Boston among New England seaports. Unarchitectural though the best of these structures may seem to those who have been accustomed to revel among the architectural beauties of all ages, it must be remembered that the col onists of the eighteenth century possessed but limited advantages and were confined to the use of a few forms by what would now be considered a lack of both money and materials. The old house on Broad Street, the Gibbs house, the Hazard and Vernon houses, are examples of Newport colonial dwellings. The exteriors were strictly symmetrical plain square blocks, with an entrance in the centre and rectangular windows on each side; and this description will apply equally well to colonial dwellings generally. But the interiors had stately centre halls and staircases and rich ornamen tation marked by delicacy and refinement—only the ending of the rococo, it is true, but in execution vastly superior to the " American vernacular " which succeeded it. Entrance-doorways, at Newport as at other cities, had usually a pilaster on each side and a broken pediment above the entabla ture. Sometimes, as in the Ayrault house, a half-dome pent-house is borne above the door on consoles, and this may be fashioned into a huge shell, as in the Fairfax house.