OLD NEW ENGLAND DOORWAYS

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OLD NEW ENGLAND
DOORWAYS

.., ■ 4i::*-t^ f.

OLD NEW ENGLAND
DOORWAYS

BY
ALBERT G. ROBINSON

WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS

FKOM THE AL-THOK's UNIQUE COLLECTION OF PHOTOCEAPHS OF

OLD-TIME NEW ENGLAND HOUSES AND DOOKWAYS

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NEW YORK

OURLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1919

COPTKIOHT, 1010, BT

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published September. 1010

THE ftCRtBNER PRESG

DOORWAYS

DOORWAYS

HUNTING for old doorways Is a harmless
and interesting amusement, much like bot-
anizing or collecting postage stamps. In
addition to that, there is "the joy of the road"
whether one travels afoot, in carriage, or in auto-
mobile. In New England particularly, many in-
teresting doorways are to be found quite away from
the main highways of travel, on the side streets of
villages through which automobilists rush with the
apparent purpose of getting somewhere rather than
of seeing something, or on the little-used side roads
in the country where an automobile is still a device
of some wonder and even of alarm. City doorways
and those in the villages may be found easily enough
by inquiry or by strolling about the streets. The
more isolated, the farmhouses in the country, are
much less readily discovered and they sometimes
come as quite delightful surprises.

Old doorways are, usually, most abuni
the old villages that have, in recent years,
[3l

DOORWAYS

into large towns or small cities, like Warren, in
Rhode Island, or Guilford, in Connecticut. The
latter claims more than a hundred houses built be-
fore the Revolution. But the very growth of such
places tends toward change in the old buildings.
They are modernized, or they become real-estate
derelicts or, not infrequently, tenement-houses
rapidly falling into disrepair and soon to be torn
down to make room for more profitable investments.
Naturally, the most fruitful fields are the areas of
earliest settlement, the Massachusetts shore, the
bay of Rhode Island, the towns along the Connec-
ticut shore, and along the Connecticut River valley
as far north as Greenfield. Few of the early houses
remain in the larger cities. Most of the people of
the first century of settlement built in village groups
or not far apart along the main street. The system
had its origin in the danger from attack by Indians.
Usually, the town centre was the village green, or
common, a tract of varying area held for the com-
mon use of all for the pasturage of their cattle. A
straying cow was easily killed by a marauding
Indian, and so was a cow-owner searching afield
for his wandering beast. If a town was raided, the
compactness of its settlement made possible a

[4I

DOORWAYS

prompt concentration of the inhabitants for its de-
fense. So they built their houses around or near
the common where also were the church and the
schoolhouse and, usually, a stoutly built watch-
house in which the men and their families could
seek refuge, and from which the plan of defense
could be carried out.

As the danger from Indian attack lessened, not-
ably after King Philip's war in 1675 and 1676, many
of the colonists built their little houses on the lands
bought by them or allotted to them, on the out-
skirts of the settlement and even farther afield.
Some of the more venturesome went several miles
away. Some of these early buildings were mere
"dug-outs" and more were log cabins. They served
their purpose for the time, but all of the "dug-outs"
and cabins are now gone. Some of the settlers paid
a heavy penalty for their adventure in pioneering,
as did the people in Deerfield, which was destroyed
by a raid from Canada, in 1704, in spite of its con-
centration and its protecting blockhouse. Losses
by individual pioneers were numerous but few
records are left to tell the story. But, with the
coming of greater safety, the towns expanded, and
the settler's frame house might be built a mile or

[5]

DOORWAYS

more from the village. As a general rule, it may
be set down that the greater the modern growth
of the old settlements the fewer will be the old houses
within their borders. Many of them have been
commercialized out of existence, and rows or solid
blocks of stores or shops stand where stood the an-
cient dwellings. Not a few still remain, modernized
out of all recognition. This is perhaps most notice-
ably shown in the towns along the Connecticut shore,
such as Fairfield, Stratford, Milford, Branford,
Guilford, and the rest. The same condition appears
in most of the old Connecticut valley towns, and
in the suburbs of Boston. Each passing year marks
the end of an appreciable number of these old build-
ings. Here and there, an old house is bought by
the State, or by some Historical Society, and held
as a memorial of the early days. The pity of it is
the great difficulty with which funds are raised for
this highly commendable purpose.

The particularly interesting fact about the door-
ways of these old dwellings is that the same designs
are found all along the Atlantic coast, from Maine
to South Carolina. This, of course, argues some
common origin for the designs. Using the term in
its modern sense, there were no professional archi-

[6]

*

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J<..-^'^-

DOORWAYS

tects in America in the seventeenth century, and
few who may properly be classed as professionals
in the first half of the eighteenth. In fact, most of
the best work in architectural designing prior to
the Revolution was done by men who may be re-
garded as amateurs, using the word as meaning
those who cultivated and studied an art without
practising it professionally. Among the amateur
designers of the eighteenth century were George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson; the physicians,
Kearsley and Thornton and Bulfinch; Andrew
Hamilton, the lawyer; Joseph Brown, the retired
merchant; and Smibert, the portrait-painter.

If there is, in New England, an ornamental
doorway that can, with any certainty, be assigned to
the seventeenth century, it has escaped my notice.
It is at least probable that such doorways were
used in some of the larger and more costly city
houses of that period, but I know of no such house
still standing. Here and there a more or less or-
nate entrance appears on a house credibly claimed
as of seventeenth century construction, but such
are, quite certainly, an addition of a later time.
There are several survivals of the early years of
the eighteenth century, among them the Parson

[7]

DOORWAYS

Williams house (1707) in Deerfield, the Porter house
(1713) in Hadley, and the Dummer house (1715)
in Byfield. It is impossible to speak positively
regarding old doorways. Some and perhaps many
of them were added long after the house itself was
built. As such doorways became fashionable, orna-
mental designs were substituted for the originals.
This is sometimes determinable by the design or
by the quality of the workmanship. Thus, the older
part of the Samson-Frary house, in Deerfield, ap-
pears to have been built in the later years of the
seventeenth century, but its porched doorway cer-
tainly was not. House and ornamental doorway
were not always of contemporary construction.
While there were a few exceptions, the era of decora-
tive doorways may be regarded as beginning with
what is known as the Georgian period, the date of
which, in the colonies, may be given as about 1720.
The doorways of houses built after that year may
generally be assumed to be contemporaneous with
the building.

Practically all of the houses of the seventeenth
century, and most of the country houses of the
greater part of the eighteenth century, were the
design and workmanship of local carpenters. They

[8]

DOORWAYS

were, generally, a persistence of the English type
modified by local ingenuity to meet the conditions
of the new country. The matter of the ornamented
and ornamental doorways stands in somewhat dif-
ferent case. As already stated, the correspondence
of designs in all of the States east of the Alleghanies,
from Maine to South Carolina, argues a common
origin. This is found in books on carpentry, pub-
lished in England, notably, perhaps, those of which
Batty Langley was the author. His books appeared
at various times from 1726 to 1756. They were
intended for the use of carpenters, and gave mea-
sured drawings of columns and pilasters, entablatures
and architraves. From Langley and others, selec-
tions were made by the local builders who might
follow the drawing with exactness, or might modify
or vary the design to suit their own taste and judg-
ment. Most of these men were masters of their
craft and, moreover, were men of artistic sense.
They knew the importance of proportions, and their
work shows their close attention to that feature,
vital in all good architecture. The leading archi-
tects of the present time can produce nothing, in
door\\'ays, superior to many of those produced by
the master-artisans of the eighteenth centur}% and

I9]

DOORWAYS

few give to the matter of proportions the careful
attention that was given by the carpenter-builders
of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries.

While stone of different kinds, and clay for brick-
making, were found in endless abundance in New
England, the timber-supply was no less ample. The
settlers in that region had been accustomed to tim-
ber-framed houses in the land from which they
came. Moreover, the wood of the country was more
easily and readily worked than stone or brick. In
many of the decorative doorways there is seen the
result of a translation of the stone doorways of Eng-
land and Europe into wood in this country. In
the older lands, a stone column or pilaster supported
a stone entablature or a pediment. Here, the de-
signs of those portals were repeated or imitated in
wood. In many of the entablatures and arches of
wooden doorways in New England there appears a
design of a central block that corresponds to the
keystone of the stone portal copied or imitated.
So in the wooden columns and pilasters we have
the Corinthian, the Ionic and the Doric capitals.
While some of the earlier work of this kind is some-
what over-heavy in design and a little rough in work-
manship, it is seldom if ever offensive or objection-

lio]

DOORWAYS

able to even a keen artistic sense. WTiile the work
might have been open to criticism when it was new,
time has touched it with a softening hand, and some
of the oldest doorways are among the most charm-
ing.

Because it is quite unsafe to accept the estab-
lished date of the erection of a house as necessarily
the date of its entrance, it is difficult to say w-hat
particular design of ornamental doorway was first
used. Also, practically all of the old city houses,
where ornamental designs were doubtless first and
most generally used, have disappeared, leaving no
clew to the pattern of their entrances. Accepting
the asserted dates of their erection, and assuming
that the doorways are the originals, the design some-
times called the " sw an's-neck " appears among the
earliest. It show-s on the Parson Williams house,
in Deerfield (date given as 1707); on the Porter
house, in Hadley (given as 1713); on the long since
destroyed Clark-Frankland house, in Boston (given
as 1713); and a few other ancient structures. The
earliest type, of course, was a mere flat boarding,
or casing, at the sides and top of the opening. In
many of the seventeenth-century buildings, any-
thing more than this was not possible. In one-story

[11]

DOORWAYS

houses, the top of the entrance was only a few inches
below the eaves, and in many two-story houses the
lintel was just below the overhang of the second
story. As the use of the overhang was common in
the seventeenth century, we must assume that the
ornamental doorway was quite infrequent in that
period. There are, however, houses of that time
with more or less elaborate doorways. In not a
few cases it is found that, at some later time and
perhaps to make an ornamental doorway possible,
the face line of the projecting second story has been
carried down to the ground, thus giving a uniform
surface to the whole front. This was done, for in-
stance, on the House of Seven Gables, in Salem.
The practice, probably not at all uncommon, often
accounts for an apparent discrepancy between the
age of a house and the design of its doorway.

But, after all, few of us care very much about
the architectural technicalities of these charming
relics of the days of our ancestors. We are told
that this house or that has "chamfered beams,"
and we must go to a specialist or to the dictionary
to find the meaning of the term. We are told that
the early New England architecture perpetuates
the "half-timber" method of house construction

[12]

DOORWAYS

common enough in old England. But most of us
care little and know less about that. Our interest
lies far more in the picturesque or the historical
features. Regarded as ornamental doorways only,
most of us doubtless find more interest in the elab-
orate and graceful porched entrances of the later
Georgian period than we do in the simpler types of
the early Georgian, a difference illustrated, perhaps,
by Salem or Portsmouth as compared with such
places as Warren, Wickford, or Guilford. Both
groups have their own particular charm, but the
latter greatly exceed the former both in number
and in variety of design.

It is a fair inference that people built houses
with ornamental doorways, or added such door-
ways to houses already built, because it was fashion-
able; because their neighbors had them. This is
clearly indicated, in a number of areas, by the use
of the same or similar designs on houses of different
ages. In his Essay on Building, Lord Bacon de-
clared that "Houses are built to live in, and not to
look on." This view appears to have been endorsed,
generally, by the Americans of the seventeenth cen-
tury. Their houses were of simple, rectangular
lines. Their doorways were mere openings, arranged
[I3l

DOORWAYS

for convenience, and without embellishment. They
were openings affording passage through outside or
inside walls. This was not because all were poor,
and could afford no decoration. Many were quite
well-to-do. It was the custom of the place and time.
Simplicity was the fashion in garb and in house.
This prevailed for nearly a hundred years, although
there was a gradual lessening of its force, more par-
ticularly in the matter of apparel. But, in the early
years of the eighteenth century, the Baconian idea
was somewhat disputed. A certain attention was
paid to the house from the standpoint of those who
might "look on" it. The decoration of house-fronts
by means of an ornamental doorway became steadily
a common practice. The simple rectangle of the
building itself persisted and the decorative doorway
really served to enhance the charming simplicity
of the structure. A little later, this extended to
a simple but effective decoration above the window-
openings, and, still later, to somewhat elaborate
and ornate cornices. An occasional oddity appeared,
as in the case of the House of Seven Gables, but for
nearly two hundred years the New England fashion
in houses was the simple type of rectangular build-
ing with doorway, window-opening, and cornice

[14]

■•- -J.

DOORWAYS

decoration, sometimes singly and sometimes in com-
bination. The city "mansions" of the later Geor-
gian period differed from their predecessors only
in size and elaborateness of portal and other decora-
tion.

So many old houses have disappeared leaving
behind them no plans, no working drawings, and
no pictures, that it is difficult if not impossible to
fix with any exactness the beginning of what may
be called the "porch period.'' There are many old
houses with a porch projecting from above the door-
way. Many of these are a part of the original struc-
ture; probably most of them are. But many are
of a date long after that of the building of the house.
The two sections of New England in which may be
found the greatest number of old houses and old
doorways are, broadly, eastern Massachusetts and
western Connecticut. These were the fields of the
largest of the early settlements. I have made no
count of the individual cases, but my impression,
amounting almost to a conviction, is that the porch
is common in Connecticut and unusual in Massa-
chusetts. This is in reference to old and not to mod-
cm houses. At some undetermined time, the Mas-
sachusetts area adopted the recessed doorway, some-

I15]

DOORWAYS

what unusual in the Connecticut area, and serving
the purpose of the porch, namely, shelter for one
who might have to wait for entrance. Before the
use of these devices, the user of the doorway, on a
rainy day, was obliged to stand in the dripping from
the roof, not in early days provided with metal
gutters nor, in many cases, even with a wooden
trough. The porch and the recessed door also af-
forded their measure of protection from the rays
of a hot summer sun. The physical reason for their
construction is obvious, but we may assume that
they were also regarded as ornamental.

In not infrequent cases, a porch appears hiding,
largely, an elaborate doorway. In most instances
of that kind, we may infer that the sheltering porch
is an addition of somewhat later date than the erec-
tion of the house, or of its adornment by an orna-
mental entrance. Most, though by no means all,
of these porches are narrow, barely more than the
width of the door itself. Frequently, where the
door has side-lights, the porch includes them. These
little projections afford an interest even aside from
the doorways. All may seem quite alike to the care-
less observer, but their variations are many, almost
endless. Many village houses built in the last half

[i6]

DOORWAYS

of the nineteenth century show a small canopy pro-
jecting above the entrance and supported by brackets
instead of columns, but this device is not often found
on the older houses. While other shapes are not
unusual, the more common form was pyramidal,
a small gable with pilasters on the house wall and
columns at its outer end. The columns vary in
design; round, square, fluted, with plain and with
decorated capitals, with and without pedestals.
In both the gable and the other designs, there is
wide variety. The flat entablature runs all the way
from the severely plain to the elaborate, with dentils
and carved frieze. In the gable, or pyramidal, type
the inner line or ceiling may follow the slope of the
outer line, or it may be arched. Not infrequently,
it is flat, the face of the pediment showing the con-
ventional "tympanum." They frequently show
some simple decoration, dentils or a device of the
Grecian Doric order, or both. From such informa-
tion as I have been able to gather from professional
sources, it would appear that while porches were
used to some extent prior to that time, the device
did not come into any general use until the early
years of the nineteenth century. The veranda,
frequently miscalled the "piazza," is of a later date.

[17]

DOORWAYS

It is now regarded as an almost indispensable feature
of a house in the country, whether large or small,
but our forefathers got along without them for some-
thing like two hundred years.

The lights around the doors are another interest-
ing study. The name given to the light above the
door, "fan-light," because of its shape, like a lady's
fan, would seem to indicate that as one of the earliest
patterns used. In many of the older houses of one
story, and in not a few of those of two stories, the
door opened immediately into a room. In many,
and in probably most, of the two-story buildings
it opened into a little box of a hall, six feet or so
square. A part of this was occupied by a narrow
and' steep stairway proceeding by angular turns to
the floor above. The early custom of building a
house around a middle chimney, with fireplaces in
the rooms about it, prohibited the use of a central
or spacious hallway. The fan-light was evidently
adopted as a means of lighting, to some extent, the
little box that served the double purpose of an en-
trance-hall and a place for a stairway. In the more
modest structures, a row of small panes, usually
rectangular, afforded the desired lighting. When
in the form of a segment of a circle, the fan-light is

[i8]

DOORWAYS

often an ornamental design, of simple but graceful
lines, the glass usually set in lead. Side-lights were
much less commonly used than fan-lights. They
range from panes of common glass, arranged ver-
tically, to ornamental designs. Not infrequently,
they appear in combination with fan-lights. A
modern improvement in the lighting of these little
hallways is found in the use of doors with glass
panels instead of wood.

Salem is probably the most widely known and
best advertised field for hunters of Old New England
doorways, but Portsmouth is quite inclined to re-
gard itself as, at least, a rival claimant for the honor
of presenting the most and the best. These hold
their pre-eminence mainly by reason of the portals
of houses built after the Revolution, although some
of the "mansion houses" of both were built prior
to that event. But there are other centres, some^
what less well known, that are, in their way, quite
as interesting as Salem or Portsmouth. There are
a number of excellent examples in Providence, and
there are many in the near neighborhood of that
city. Somewhat to my surprise, Newport had little
to offer. In earlier days, there must have been many
in that city, notable as it has been for many years

I19J

DOORWAYS

as a centre of wealth and fashion. The modem
multimillionaires who have built their costly palaces
along the shore did not make the place. In the
years immediately preceding the Revolution, New-
port was a busy and highly prosperous conmiercial
centre, with rich merchants who built for them-
selves houses that were more or less palatial in their
day and time. Most of those buildings are now
gone, and most of those that still remain show little
sign of their earlier grandeur. But some of the
towns in the vicinity of Newport are fruitful fields
for doorway-hunters. Many excellent designs may
be seen in Warren, Bristol, Wickford, and a few
other places. Most of them, however, are of the
simpler type, that is, pilasters w^ith entablatures or
pediments rather than the built-out porches with
both pilasters and columns such as appear on many
of the later Georgian mansions.

Most of the cities of New England occupy the
ground on which stood the villages of the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries. The old village
site is, in most of them, covered by modern struc-
tures of brick and stone and steel. Here and there
stand a few old houses that, when they were built,
were on the outskirts of the village. But, aside

[20]

.!_-ii :i

DOORWAYS

from >uch \\ell-knc»\x'n nelds as Salem and I\»rt>-
mc»uth, the larirer cities have little to show in the
way of L^ld-time d'X~^rv\ays. The best centres, in
my experience, are the towns and villages of early
settlement. But even such places present the charm
of uncenainty. There are old towns with old-time
houses but with few or no interesting doorways.
From various excursions, my conclusion is that the
Connecticut valley from the Sound to the Vermont
line is, on the whole, the most fruitful area. Inas-
much, however, as that rield covers approximately
four thousand square miles, the difficulty of cover-
ing it exhaustively is obvious. The northeastern
quarter of Massachusetts, with excursions across
the border into southern New Hampshire, is another
good hunting-ground. So, also, is little Rhode Is-
land, which Doctor Holmes declared to be '' a small
but delightful State in the neighborhood of Paw-
tucket."

But the pleasure of hunting for old doorways
in New England lies almost as much in the search
as in the discovers

[21]

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