igo 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
December, 1909 
The Pierce-Nichols house on Federal Street, Salem, built 1782 
“Most of you have dreamed of some old white clapboarded house . . . 
inoculated it with the spirit of the hearth, and made it his for¬ 
ever. During the reign of the bourgeois Georges in England, 
the people themselves set the pace in style development. These 
kings were uneducated, coarse-grained and foreigners—and. be¬ 
cause of this, exercised no influence over the development of the 
style then being analyzed and used by such men as Christopher 
Wren, Chambers and Jones. These men studied in France and 
Italy, and the works of Palladio, Vignola and the other Italian 
worthies became household tomes. The Roman and Grecian 
orders were studied and applied with a freedom that was truly 
British. 
England is full of the results—doorways, over-mantels, 
cornices and what not, but, best of all, the planning of the homes 
of this period reached the highest point in domestic architecture. 
Utilitarianism and Art were happily married and My Lady 
received in a real reception-room. The dining-room and with- 
drawing-room and the parlor took their proper places, and per¬ 
formed their natural functions. My Lady’s boudoir was as 
domestic and proper, let us hope, in 
every sense, as the kitchen and but¬ 
teries. 
This style and this period belong 
to us — we call it Colonial — and, as we 
study it, we can see the human quali¬ 
ties sticking out of it everywhere. 
For a gentleman of taste, for a lady 
of discernment, the Colonial is the 
only fitting environment. In it there 
is no deceit or sham. It will ring 
true throughout your time, and, if 
properly developed and studied, the 
style will grow and take to itself new 
dignities and new beauties, as it comes 
through new interpreters. It was in 
this way that the quaint, local char¬ 
acteristics of the Colonial we know, 
grew through the idiosyncrasies of the 
architects or joiners of that time. 
They studied the old authorities for 
the law, and when they became past- 
masters of these laws they used their 
own individual invention as they jolly 
well pleased. 
The limitations of the time also had 
much to do in creating sub-types. 
For example, it was impossible to make 
glass in large sheets, so we have small 
panes as a characteristic of the style. They were limited also 
in pigments, using most frequently reds or yellows, though the 
charming, home-loving atmosphere of most of the work of this 
period is better expressed in the white. 
I venture to say that most of you who read this have, at some 
time or other, dreamed of retiring for your mellow dotage to 
some old white clapboarded house, set a little back from the 
street, with elms shading the front, a fence of square pickets, cut 
along the top in sweeping curves, and a swinging gate, chained 
and balanced in its swing with an old cannon ball. Hollyhocks, 
petunias, verbenas and old-fashioned pinks border the herring¬ 
bone brick walk up to the portico—a pediment portico or one 
with upper balcony, it matters little. You insist, however, on 
having the fluted Doric or Corinthian columns, with flat pilasters 
against the wall framing the arched doorway — an elliptic arch, 
please, with radiating divisions in iron and little lead roses at the 
intersection. 
Will you have a brass knocker or do you prefer a cut-glass 
Ji. 
A 1745 doorway on the Peabody house, 
Danvers, Mass. 
The Paddock house at Portsmouth, Mass. — impressive in] the 
splendid window treatment and plain brick walls 
