If Georgian houses are soldiers, Federal houses are burghers and princes. New England Architecture: The Federal Goodwin Mansion (1811) at the Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
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The windows themselves are double-hung, typically with nine to 12 panes per sash. The lower-story windows appear directly below the uppers with the doorway in the center, making the facade exactly symmetrical. The windows march across the second story, usually at even-spaced intervals and almost always in odd numbers of three, five, or seven across. The window placement on the front facade is absolutely regular. Georgian houses are best identified by the orderly plan of their windows and doors. As the colonists prospered, their houses became better mannered. What chiefly distinguishes Georgians from Colonials is their civility. Many were unpainted and often shingled, but some scholars believe they were originally painted in blue-green, salmon, and mustard-yellow colors.
However, they are bigger, typically two stories high and two rooms deep, and the roofs only moderately pitched. In roof form, chimney placement, and cladding, Georgian houses are much like their Colonial predecessors. New England Architecture: The Georgian Chase House (1762) at the Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The massive chimney was usually placed in the center of the roof, but appears as an exterior feature in Rhode Island “stone-enders.” Small, diamond-paned windows and heavy, vertically planked doors helped keep heat indoors. Their very steep roofs were designed to shed snow.
Whenever possible, they were built facing south for winter warmth. Old and heavy, they seem to grow straight out of the ground.Īs honest and sturdy as the settlers who built them, these houses were built to take weather.
With no eaves, shutters, stoops, porches, window trim, or door decoration, these houses present a very plain facade, relieved only in some examples by a jutting overhang of the second story – the “garrison” style. 1695-1703) at the Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.Ĭolonial houses are usually side-gabled (roof ends at the sides of the house), flat-faced, wooden structures, covered with narrow pine clapboards, although most of the earliest ones had shingles. New England Architecture: The Colonial Sherburne House (c. Here, then, is a guide to five common New England house styles dating from 1630 to 1900. But knowing some of the distinguishing details, and a little of their history, can deepen one’s appreciation of the unique personality of each town or city one visits. In the same way most people can tell a duck from a heron even without knowing its proper name, most people instinctively distinguish a saltbox from a Second Empire and a Cape Cod from a Queen Anne. Because we see houses every day and know them from our history lessons, most of us carry around in our heads a subconscious inventory of house forms. We probably know more about old houses and New England architecture than we realize. New England Architecture | Guide to New England House Styles “Name That House!” was originally published in Yankee Magazine in June, 1997. With nearly 400 years of settlement behind it, New England hosts a collection of architectural styles that are older and more varied than in any other part of the country. Whether they come as leaf peepers, antiques hunters, or Freedom Trailers, travelers in New England frequently find themselves gawking at houses and New England architecture. And no wonder.