HOUSE AND GARDEN 
January 
i 9 i i . 
39 
A dry wall—that is, laid up without 
mortar. It is suited only to garden 
walls 
This cobble wall has had its joints raked out to 
give rougher texture to the surface and to gain 
strong shadows 
Wide flat pointing, where the front of 
the mortar joint is flattened out over 
the edges 
as 
good 
not the buildings to look at, we need only instance as proof of the 
prevalent execrable taste, the pictures of the fearful and mon¬ 
strous clothing in which people proudly arrayed themselves dur¬ 
ing most of that period. During all that time half-educated taste 
and distorted ideas figured in nearly every building that went up 
— just the kind of thing that makes our English cousins and their 
Continental neighbors look down on us as raw and crude. There 
were fortunately some notable exceptions to this reign of hideos- 
ity that stood out boldly as witnesses for artistic sanity, but they 
were only exceptions. 
Colonial stonework commends itself for conscientious modern 
reproduction by its simplicity, its congruity with its surroundings 
as well as the style or purpose of the building for which it was 
employed, its comparative cheapness, and, finally, by its construc¬ 
tional honesty and strength. The last two were indispensable 
qualities before the use of Portland cement in mortar caused 
r odern masonry to deteriorate by supplying a binding element 
that would secure cohesion in spite of faulty stonelaying. All 
masonry may be 
classified 
or 
to the extent to 
which it has to de¬ 
pend on the mor¬ 
tar. In Colonial 
times they had to 
build the walls to 
stand with little aid 
from the mortar 
— practically dry 
walls, hence well 
bonded and firm, 
having the appear¬ 
ance, as well as 
the actuality, of 
strength. 
The kinds of 
stonework com¬ 
monly used by Co¬ 
lonial builders were 
, .ill r What to avoid—an incongruous and un- 
landom nibble ot stable looking pile that suggests only a 
fieldstones or cob- Chinese puzzle 
bad according 
blestones or else of undressed rock exactly as it came from the 
quarry; quarry-faced, coursed rubble—when the stratification of 
the stone permitted it; or broken coursed rubble, quarry-faced. 
By quarry-faced masonry we mean that in which the faces of 
the stones are left as they come from the quarry. When some¬ 
thing more formal was desired, as sometimes for the front of a 
house, regular coursed ashlar of native stone was used, while the 
sides and back were finished in random rubble. An illustration 
shows a building where coursed ashlar of brown stone was used 
for a more ornamental effect. With such simple materials, simply 
and directly used, it is no wonder the Colonial builders secured 
constructional honesty and durability. 
Such a nightmare of diseased imagination as a random rub¬ 
ble wall “with hammer dressed joints and no spalls on face," 
otherwise known as “opus reticulatum,” was undreamed of. The 
Romans used “opus reticulatum’’ in the only way it should be 
used—for street paving. It was left for the nineteenth century 
to introduce that abomination, shown in the cut, in company with 
mansard roofs. The 
end of such walls is 
that the facing 
stones not infre¬ 
quently fall off, when 
there is any defect 
in the mortar, dis¬ 
closing all the un¬ 
derhung imperfec¬ 
tions, besides weak¬ 
ening the whole 
structure. A wall of 
this kind is just as 
odious as a woman 
who paints and ena¬ 
mels her face or 
bleaches her hair. 
Compare a piece of 
such unconstruction- 
al masonry with a 
wall of sturdy Co¬ 
lonial type and you 
(Continued on 
page 50 ) 
The need for color variety in masonry is 
well met in this Germantown stone 
marked with iron and mica 
