February, i 9 i/ 
15 
W^'^he Building Number .gs# 
House & Gardenl 
THE NATIVE ARCHITECTURE OE BERMUDA 
English Modes Adapted To Climatic Conditions 
Lessons For The American House Builder 
HAROLD DONALDSON EBERLEIN 
W HAT’S under our noses we’re least 
likely to see. 
This very human failing comes to the fore 
where architecture is concerned quite as 
much as it does in trivial matters. It has 
certainly been so with reference to our dis¬ 
regard of Bermudian architecture. 
In our architectural tastes, we Ameri¬ 
cans, as a nation, are intensely eclectic. 
We pick here and choose there and adopt 
what pleases us individually. We have wel¬ 
comed all types of architecture, just as we 
have welcomed all races of immigrants to 
our shores. Immigrants and architecture 
alike we have tried to assimilate and have 
met with varying results in our attempts. 
Now we have scored a success; again our 
experimental combination has proved a 
conspicuous and costly fiasco. 
From our seething melting-pot of archi¬ 
tectural modes, there will doubtless emerge 
a distinctly American style of domestic 
architecture, purged of all unnecessary fea¬ 
tures and retaining the best and most sane 
from each element which we know today. 
We have gone 
back and brought 
over to America sun¬ 
dry domestic forms 
from our old home 
in England. We have 
hunted through 
France. We have 
ransacked Italy. We 
have scoured Spain. 
From each we have 
appropriated archi¬ 
tectural riches. And 
yet, from Bermuda, 
so near our shores, 
we have gathered 
nothing — probably 
for the reason al¬ 
luded to at the outset 
of this ai'ticle. But 
Bermuda has a do¬ 
mestic architecture 
full of individuality, 
and that architecture 
has something to 
teach us. So let us 
first find out what 
the houses are like, 
and then go on in 
the time - honoured. 
but just now unfashionable, way to draw 
the moral therefrom. 
Before getting involved in a discussion of 
explicit details and plunging into the natural 
history of Bermuda architecture, it is neces¬ 
sary to state emphatically what it is not. It 
is not Spanish. It is English. 
Not of Spanish Origin 
Somehow, an erroneous impression has 
got abroad that the houses of Bermuda are 
modeled after Iberian prototypes. No sup- 
I)osition could be more unwarranted. From 
its first colonization, in the early years of 
the 17th Century, Bermuda has always been 
under the British flag and its colonists have 
been of British birth. As to its geographical 
position and its trade relations with the 
Spanish West Indies, it may not be amiss 
'to remind the fautor of the Spanish fallacy 
that there was far more direct trade, in the 
17th and 18th Centuries, between Phila¬ 
delphia, New York, Boston, Marblehead or 
Salem and these same Spanish W’est Indies 
than there was between the West Indies and 
Bermuda. And yet no ingenious person 
has hitherto discovered that the aforemen¬ 
tioned American cities are Spanish. 
In geographical position Bermuda is near¬ 
er to Charleston and New York than she is 
to the islands that form the northern boun¬ 
dary of the Spanish Main. 
Fallacies and superstitions are like weeds. 
Somebody incontinently sows them and then 
they spread insidiously and unbidden. 
The trouble, in this particular case, is 
that the sponsor or sponsors for the Span¬ 
ish fancy disregarded both history and 
geography, two old-fashioned but rather im¬ 
portant factors that it is always advisable 
to reckon with carefully in connection with 
architectural history. 
If one wished to explain the origin of 
the glamorous Spanish error, it might be 
found in some tourist’s romantic inference 
that vines hanging over the tops of white¬ 
washed garden walls, with palmettos in the 
background, must be Spanish, or else, per¬ 
haps, in a tourist’s muddled mental processes 
getting the word “verandah”—and there 
are many of them 
in Bermuda — con¬ 
founded with the 
Spanish “hacienda.” 
The pity of it is, 
and the mischief too, 
that the picture post¬ 
card purveyors have 
made capital of this 
pleasing fallacy and 
got up postcards leg- 
ended “Spanish 
Architecture in Ber¬ 
muda.” One of them 
in particular, the 
writer remembers to 
have seen, showing 
two old detached 
butteries that were 
more Egyptian or 
Trojan than Spanish 
but whose fairly 
close counterparts 
one might discover 
in the south of Eng¬ 
land today. 
Beginning in the 
17th Century and 
continuing right 
down to the fore 
“WaterJot,” huilt about 1710, shows decided Dutch influence in the gable ends. Such 
“steijs” were formed, however, by successive ivhiteivashing of the roof tiles 
