so 
House & Garden 
The square columns, steep roof and 
free-hanging balcony are distinctive, 
near-New England features of this 
house at Newman 
This old house at Clinton re¬ 
peats in its entrance portico and 
window above the door a beauty 
found in Colonial Salem houses 
A street in Clinton is lined with trees 
in the New England fashion, and the 
branches are festooned with clusters of 
purple wistaria 
NEW ENGLAND 
IN GEORGIA 
A Study in Transplanted 
Architecture 
O NE often wonders why the casual Amer¬ 
ican critic is so prone to lament the ab¬ 
sence of an American architecture, to 
bewail the fact that we have added nothing 
original to the art of building. Visiting for¬ 
eigners are much more lenient with us. W. L. 
George only recently has sung a paean in praise 
of our sky-scrapers (a typical and beautiful 
American word) and many other world citizens 
grant us rather inspired achievements in mon¬ 
umental or civic building. 
But my plea is for a few wreaths to be 
laid at the feet of the delightful things we 
have done—and not too entirely in the past— 
with domestic architecture. In spite of the in¬ 
fancy of our civilization we are precocious 
enough in architectural traditions to put for¬ 
ward a fairly sound claim to having created 
distinctive and charming styles of dwellings 
that are quite American notwithstanding ad¬ 
mittedly derived influence. 
It is too obvious to state that at this com¬ 
paratively late date in human evolution any art 
or science must be to a great extent derivative. 
The tepee of the aboriginal and the log cabin, 
which were the a, b, c’s in building of the 
earliest native and imported Americans, might 
conceivably have been translated by some im¬ 
aginative super-designer into lasting architec¬ 
tural forms. But failing that, we have more 
conservatively, if not so originally, succeeded 
in assembling several architectural contribu¬ 
tions over whose merits we need not be too 
downcast. 
If architecture, as has been said, mutely 
and accurately spells the history of a locality, 
so too does it set forth the character and ten¬ 
dencies of a people. “Show me what a man 
builds and I'll tell you what he is.” We have 
set up vivid historical documents in the form 
of our Colonial architecture—original varia¬ 
tions of age old themes which speak clearly 
and with a very native tang of a not too un¬ 
civilized and not too sophisticated America. 
Are our critics like the man who couldn’t 
find the forest for the trees? To refute them 
our early American dwellings stand on the 
Atlantic seaboard in at least three defined 
types—Georgian England, out of Greece un¬ 
doubtedly—but attaining a personal and de¬ 
scriptive distinction that could not come of 
slavish borrowing. Put any fine example of 
New England Colonial, Dutch Colonial or 
Southern Colonial in a typical English setting 
and see what aliens they are—hear the eagle 
screech, and with what a Yankee accent! These 
three types while often lacking the classical 
perfection of some of the beautiful Georgian 
architecture of Virginia, Maryland and 
Charleston (which was generally the work of 
English architects) have, perhaps through the 
“defauts de ses qualites” a freshness and in¬ 
dividuality that Iro mere adaptation attains. 
They have the beauty and suitability of the 
