Volume XVI 
December, 1909 
Number 6 
Washington’s headquarters at Williamsburg—an excellent example of the dignified Southern work in brick 
What and Why is Colonial Architecture? 
THE FIRST OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES BY ADVOCATES OF THE VARIOUS 
STYLES OF HOME ARCHITECTURE — THE CASE FOR THE COLONIAL 
by Frank E. Wallis 
Photographs by Frank Cousins and others 
T HERE are basically but two fundamental types of architec. 
ture and all the numerous sub-styles are variations of 
these two. They are the Classic with its child, the Renaissance, 
and that marvelous expression of national and ideal socialism, 
the Gothic, which has come to be accepted essentially, though not 
necessarily, as church architecture. 
The Greeks invented the custom of undressing before retiring, 
an invention of as much importance as the telephone. When the 
Romans absorbed the Greeks, they took this most domestic of 
habits, the night dress or undress, and it developed the private 
side of Roman life to a very great degree, giving the Roman homes 
a new spirit of domesticity and privacy with architecture to 
correspond—courts, semi-private and private, surrounded by 
rooms for the members of the family. 
t And later, when the unspeakable Turk took over unto himself 
the city of Constantinople, in the middle of the fifteenth century, 
he forced the later Greek with his ancient culture westward again 
to Italy, and this migration added a new inspiration to the jaded 
minds of the architects of Europe, at that time exhausted by ex¬ 
cesses in the use of the flamboyant type of Gothic. So we have 
the Renaissance and another impetus to the development of 
refined architecture along classic lines. 
France discovered the Renaissance in Italy about the time 
of Francis I and developed it amazingly in the chateaux. But 
the French were not then a domestic type of people, and their 
palatial chateaux can mean little to the home-builders of America; 
whereas the Englishman built for his wife and family, and later, 
when colonizing, wife, baby, axe and gun were with him. So that 
his interpretation of the Renaissance is a fine expression of 
dignity, truth and domestic virtue. This is the Georgian or Colo¬ 
nial, the only type for our kind and for our children. The 
Englishman had got it from the French and the Italian, but he 
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