The Architecture of Georgetown. 95 
or bring them in. We come now to the facing or 
fronting of our buildings. Three or four methods are 
in general use among us, viz., shingling, clap-board- 
ing, plain butt-boarding, and upright boarding; they 
all have special advantages of their own. Where the 
space to be filled in, say between window and window, 
is not very great, and where the shingles can be brought 
or forced more or less into a paneled form, the effect is 
exceedingly pretty and artistic, and for the covering 
of small roofs, steeplets and the like, nothing could be 
better than the accomodating shingles. 
The art use of shingles for our buildings, especially 
on our gothic structures has yet to be carefully studied, 
for the shingle, so truthful in itself, lends kindly to art- 
effe6l where cleverly introduced ; nor again is too much 
violence done to these shingles by the fashioning of them 
into hexagonal or octagon form. On the broad 
surfaces of our buildings where shingling is extensively 
employed, some relief and variety might easily be 
gained by something like string courses or rows of 
different shaped shingles being introduced at inter- 
vals. 
Next in artistic merit for the facing of our 
buildings comes " clap-boarding/' The projecting lines 
formed by this method of casing while constructively 
true, helps to take off the plainness of our building by 
breaking the flat surface and thereby supplying a certain 
amount of detail. From a weather point of view this 
clap-boarding has very much in its favour. 
Another method, viz., that of flat-boarding-up, exposes 
itself to the temptation of being treated as stone or 
something else, thus at times falsifying itself ; how- 
