Architecture for Kids
Georgian was the dominant style of the English colonies
from 1700 until about 1780 in the area from Southern Maine to south of
Savannah, Georgia. Many thousands of Georgian homes survive today, although
most havbe been lost from the major Eastern cities which exploded in growth
in the 19th century, particularly Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.
Large collections of Georgian homes can be found today
in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Newport, Rhodes Island,
Marblehead, Massachusetts, New Castle, Delaware, Annapolis, Maryland, New
Bern, North Carolina, and Charleston, South Carolina. Many southern planation
houses have also survived.
You can, also, of course, find more modern homes designed
in the Georgian style.
People designing and building homes in the colonies
during the 18th Century were heavily influenced by English architects of
the same period. Indigo Jones had discovered Andrea
Palladio who had built palaces, villas, and monumental buildings a
hundred years before in Italy. His influence and those who followed, Christopher
Wren and James Gibbs, changed not only the
architecture of England, but also exported their ideas to the New World
through architectural building manuals called pattern books. These included
expensive treatises stressing Italian models to carpenters handbooks showing
how to construct fashionable doorways, cornices, windows and mantels.
Georgian homes were built of wood or brick depending
upon materials locally available. Characteristics include symmetry around
a central entrance, pedimented dormers, pedimented windows, and quoints
at the corners. After 1750, additional elaborations might include a roof
balustrade, a centered front gable or pediment, a shallow projecting central
facade, and two story pediments.
Identifying features include:
Georgian homes are the most elaborate residential structures
built in the colonies during the 18th Century.
paneled front door, usually centered and capped by an
elaborate decorative crown, supported by decorative pilasters
a row of small rectangular panes of glass beneath the
crown, either within the door or in a transon just above
cornice, usually emphasized by decorate moldings, most
commonly with dentils
windows with double-hung sashes having many small panes
windows aligned horizontally and vertically in symmetrical
rows, usually ranked in five across the front, although smaller homes might
only have three windows across
This house is called Sylvester Manor. It is on Shelter
Island in New York State. Nathaniel Sylvester bought Shelter Island in
1652 for its wood to supply kegs for his rum trade. This house was built
by his grandson, Brinley Sylvester in 1733. It is a grand home, but it
was basically a four over four. The front door opens into a grand hall
with an elegant staircase on the left.
Peter Harrison, a self trained
architect operating in the Boston area in the mid 1700s, built this house
on Brattle Street in Cambridge in 1760. Please note all of the similarities
to Sylvester Manor: symmetry, fenestration, and size. Houses similar to
this were built not only in New England and the mid-Atlantic colonies,
but also as plantation homes throughout the South.
With the end of the Revolution and independence, the
country began to develop new building styles (Adam and Early Classical
Revival) based on changing European fashions.
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