January, 1909 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 19 
What Colonial Architecture Really Is 
By C. Howard Walker 
HE term Colonial architecture is applied, as 
its name indicates, to the architecture of the 
English Colonies in America before the 
Revolution, and to the buildings which are 
based upon the same factors of design in 
the period when the young republic began 
to erect town halls, State capitols and other 
buildings, both for civic uses and for private individuals, after 
the depression caused by the war. Recent buildings of the 
latter part of the nineteenth century have also been termed 
Colonial, whenever any factors of the types mentioned have 
been incorporated in their design. The difference between 
the modern Colonial imitation and its prototype varies in each 
and every example, and justification for the variations is 
assumed because of the fact that 
there were different types of ar- 
chitectural design in Colonial 
times. 
For example, the buildings of 
Virginia had individual char- 
acteristics which were absent in 
those of New England, and the 
affected the plan, creating the central hall with rooms of 
equal size on either side and single windows at regular inter- 
vals rather than the grouped windows of the mullioned types. 
Third, the designing of openings, whether doors or 
windows, higher than they were wide, this applying even to 
the Palladian motive, i. e., the larger central arched opening 
flanked by narrow squareheaded openings carried only to the 
spring of the arch. The use of vertical rectangles as open- 
ings in a horizontal rectangle as a facade is characteristic of 
Colonial design. It is, therefore, evident that buildings 
which may in all other respects conform to Colonial details 
lose at once some of the fundamental character of the style 
if they are without symmetry and if they have openings 
larger horizontally than vertically. 
In city houses in which it is 
necessary to place the entrance 
upon one side, the details alone 
preserve the style, and in grouped 
openings, as in shop fronts, etc., 
where the horizontal measure of 
the openings is wider than the 
vertical, the window is strongly 
latter did not entirely resemble 
those of Pennsylvania or of 
Western New York. But there 
were common factors in all the 
actual Colonial work which much 
of the modern work sees fit to 
ignore or violate. The English 
architecture, which is the parent 
of the Colonial architecture in 
America, was the outcome of the 
Classic revival in England under 
Sir Christopher Wren. It was 
strongly influenced by Wren’s 
travels in Italy and his study of 
Italian palaces, and was, in fact, 
an adaptation of Italian work to 
English requirements and con- 
ditions. 
The classical factors which are 
associated with Colonial archi- 
tecture are as follows: First, the general proportion of 
height and width of facades. The tendency is that of long, 
low facades, and few buildings have the thorough Colonial 
quality which are higher than they are wide. This does not 
apply to church towers or spires or to porticoes, but to 
facades only. 
Second, the strong regard for symmetry upon either side 
of a central axis. It will be found by comparison of the 
actual Colonial buildings and their modern imitations 
that the character of dignity is given to the earlier type by 
the accent of the central motive and the absolutely simple 
symmetry upon either side of it. In many cases, such as the 
less pretentious houses in the smaller streets of Portsmouth, 
Salem, Newburyport, Newport, Germantown and New- 
castle, Delaware, there is little more than a dignified door- 
way, flanked by a well proportioned, symmetrical facade. 
Even the cornice is unornamented. Yet these houses are 
thoroughly Colonial, and have much better scale and greater 
charm than facades with various orders of architecture used 
as ornament and with garlanded friezes and oval windows. 
This formal symmetry was the direct outcome of derivation 
from Italian palaces through English country houses and 
A fine Colonial doorway, “ Harwood,” Annapolis 
subdivided by mullions creating 
a series of vertical rectangles. 
The next attribute of proportions 
in Colonial buildings is the grad- 
ual diminution of heights of 
openings in successive stories, in 
the usual dwelling. There are 
naturally types of building in 
which the principal rooms are 
upon the second or other floors 
than the first, and which have 
larger openings than those on 
the ground floor, but in the ma- 
jority of dwellings the openings 
decrease in height above the first 
floor. 
The window openings under 
the eaves or cornice are often 
square and in some cases are 
broader than they are high, 
and are the exception to the usual vertical rectangles. But 
this is in most cases occasioned by a desire to keep as far as 
possible the proportion of an architectural order in the 
facade, these attic windows being in the frieze and corre- 
sponding somewhat to the metopes of the Doric order. 
The work, as has been shown, was developed from stone 
architecture, and while the simpler buildings confine detail 
to the portal and the cornice, the more elaborate examples 
have the corners of the building treated with quoins and 
pilasters. The quoins merely indicate stone corners, but 
the pilasters are often designed with high pedestals and 
carry an entire entablature, all of which is carefully 
proportioned according to the canons of the orders of archi- 
tecture. 
This is quite in accord with sixteenth century Renais- 
sance design. In many cases, as has been mentioned, the 
attic windows are in the frieze of the entablature, and count 
merely as spots in the frieze, and are sometimes either cir- 
cular in form, or are horizontal ovals. Vertical ovals are not 
used for the attic windows, and in fact are rare, occasionally, 
however, being found on either side of a doorway or im- 
portant opening. Buildings, therefore, which employ order 
