268 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



August, 1 9 13 



First and second floor plans. The light lines 

 structure. Note the heavy 1 



Heirlooms of old furniture in the dining-room 



his family, but also posterity for generations, and the re- 

 sult was a structure which would defy both time and 

 decay for centuries. The outer and sometimes also the 

 inner walls were apt 

 to be built of stone 

 — often of the same 

 brown stone which 

 a century or two 

 later provided so 

 many "stone front" 

 houses in New 

 York. The win- 

 dows were usually 

 of medium size and 

 fitted with small 

 panes of glass, and 

 the outside provided with heavy wooden shutters, usually 

 painted white. The rooms were generally of goodly size 

 and were heated by cavern- 

 ous fireplaces and a fireplace 

 with a Dutch oven was used 

 for producing the feats in 

 cookery in which the house- 

 wives of this period excelled. 



The beginning of English 

 rule ended the Dutch regime 

 in New York, and English 

 oppression soon drove the 

 settlers from New Amster- 

 dam across the Hudson into 

 New Jersey, and particularly 

 in Bergen County there still 

 exist many examples of their 

 quaint and characteristic 

 architecture. 



The Brinckerhoff house at 

 Hackensack, is of particular 

 interest, for besides being 

 one of the most beautiful of 

 these Dutch Colonial homes, 

 it has always remained in 

 possession of some member 

 of the family, and is still oc- 

 cupied by the descendants of 

 the sturdy Jans Dircksen 

 Brinckerhoff, who came to 

 New Amsterdam in 1639, 

 and was a magistrate in 

 Brooklyn, New York, in 

 1654, the same time that 

 Peter Stuyvesant was Gov- The far end of the hall 



U4a 



bed rod: 



BED EDDM 



indicate the portions added to the original 

 eft hand wall of the hall 



The great fireplace with its original crane and pot 



ernor of New York. In a part of Hackensack which yet 

 remains somewhat rural, the old home is still surrounded 

 by several of the broad acres which formed its original 



setting, and it stands 

 on an eminence not 

 far from the street 

 amid old trees 

 which have surely 

 been growing for 

 the greater part 

 of a century. The 

 thick walls of the 

 home are built of 

 brown stone cut into 

 blocks. A gambrel 

 roof with the long 

 and graceful sweep of the old Dutch builders, comes down 

 over these stone walls, and forms broad eaves which shelter 



the entrance doorway and 

 the windows upon both sides 

 of the house. The gable 

 ends are covered with 

 shingles after the manner of 

 building in the early years of 

 the eighteenth century when 

 the house was constructed. 

 The upper floor was planned 

 with small windows placed 

 in the gable ends of the 

 building, and also with large 

 dormers which light the 

 rooms upon this floor with- 

 out interfering unduly with 

 the graceful lines of the roof 

 or breaking its sweeping 

 curves. This is one of the very 

 few examples of dormer 

 windows being originally 

 built in an old Dutch home- 

 stead, for in the great major- 

 ity of cases they have been 

 added as a concession to the 

 ideas of comfort which pre- 

 vail among later genera- 

 tions. 



At the entrance to this 

 old home are placed the two 

 benches or settles which one 

 always associates with an 

 old Dutch home, and which 

 with the old stairway together with the gambrel 





