Then there came a time when the legitimate development and prosperity of the colonies produced, not what the forcing box of commercialism has produced—a moneyed class under obligations to no one—but an aristocracy whose noblesse oblige vouchsafed the encouragement of architecture in common with other arts and refinements. And if there remain to us, yet fairly intact, a representative town of this aristocracy that we may go to look at, to-day, to see what it was like, I should say it was Anne Arundel Town (Annapolis), the ancient capital of Maryland.

The best description of Annapolis in that relation which concerns us most—its fascinating old houses and their history—is written by T. Henry Randall in the “Architectural Record” (New York), Vol. 1, No. 3. Indeed, I regard this description as the most valuable

paper to American Renaissance that has appeared in periodical literature. Besides this article on Colonial Annapolis, wherein all its remarkable buildings are duly accredited and illustrated, editions de luxe in folio, on Colonial architecture, may also be had of the Bates & Guild Company, of Boston, publishers, containing splendid photogravures of the Chase house, the Harwood, Hammond or Lockerman house,[1] the Brice-Jennings house and other enchanting representatives of our most celebrated rÉgime. These revered authorities, together with Westover, Shirley and Brandon—plantations along the James River—are so well presented in this way to architectural students that I have concluded to reserve the space at my disposal to other subjects which, while nearly as interesting, and exemplifying nearly as well the particular phase of our architectural history under discussion, have a decided advantage in that they have been little exploited (with the exception of Mt. Vernon) in books.

But no writer upon American Renaissance can afford to slight the subject of Annapolis in the letterpress of his work, for its didactic value is immense. The very plan of its streets was formulated according to the principles of art uninfluenced in the smallest degree by America’s ubiquitous ogre, commercialism, which was here relegated, by municipal ordinance, to certain extremely restricted sections of the city, beyond which it trespassed at its peril. The relation these patches of territory bore to the whole equalled, perhaps, one-fourth. In other words, the Annapolitans looked upon commercialism as the mere machinery of their household, and the idea was to sacrifice no more room to its offices than was absolutely necessary. Commercialism during the grand epoch was essentially a steward’s department, and the Annapolitans would have been the last people in the world to tolerate its meddling with architecture.

Moreover, Annapolis stands for the supreme moment of the grand epoch. It was here that the treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States was formally ratified in 1784, and here Washington went through the ceremony of returning his commission as commander-in-chief of the army to the august

power whence it had come to him. The constitution itself owes its first glory to Annapolis, where the initial proceedings were held. Annapolis and American Renaissance are, therefore, indissolubly associated. You speak of one and the other follows as a natural consequence. The amplification of the American dwelling-house was here carried to a higher degree of excellence and refinement than has been elsewhere attained, before or since, for Annapolis was practically finished by 1770, and, happily for this generation, has staid so.

It is disappointing that there should be no good place to “sup and lie”—to resuscitate, a rather poetical archaism—in Annapolis, no snug old tavern with the king’s arms upon a sign-board still swinging over its door. And Annapolis, besides, is most inaccessible and expensive to reach; yet every student of American Renaissance should contrive to make, at least, one pilgrimage thither during his lifetime to gain, if possible, a better idea of the most characteristic development his national school of architecture has seen.

After Annapolis, the honors of American Renaissance are divided between a score of more or less historic towns, among them the Colonial capital of New Hampshire claiming especial recognition. Portsmouth also has the atmosphere which means the elixir of life to the housebuilder in quest of inspiration. To breathe this atmosphere here, at his ease, however, will cost him $4 per day at the Rockingham; but then, what enthusiast is there who would begrudge $4 for the sake of making the acquaintance of such a raving, tearing beauty as the house built by Capt. McPhÆdris in 1723 (see Plate XXX). I could tell you how the bricks to build it were all imported from England, only, this trite piece of information is so applicable to Colonial houses generally as to be of little real interest to the reader, who, I imagine, cares not at all whether the bricks were imported from Kamtschatka or manufactured in a nearby kiln. But when I say that his house cost Capt. McPhÆdris something like the equivalent of $30,000, I receive instant attention, because a modern admirer might think himself warranted in exploiting an adaptation with just about one-third that sum of money. Of course, he would fail, that is, to carry out the scheme properly. The principal rooms of the first

story are paneled in wood from floor to ceiling, and the panels are beveled flush panels—the most expensive kind.

Here is a wonderful old house intensely affecting to stand and contemplate. It seems to be sinking into the earth, as many old houses in England have the appearance of doing, and possesses a tone like a Stradivarius violin, which cannot be counterfeited. The day in the summer of 1896, when I spent a delightful hour in its company, was a sort of reception day, I remember. There were many summer visitors calling, and they “de-ared” it and gushed over it as society people gush over a Chopin Étude, because they think it proper to do so, without appreciating the subtle sentiment of the thing at all. It is not so much an affair of one’s education as it is an affair of the heart. People must have the right kind of a heart and the right kind of a charitable nature before they may really enjoy either a Chopin Étude or the McPhÆdris house at Portsmouth. To quote the lines of Holofernes in “Love’s Labor’s Lost”: They

While Portsmouth is on the main line of travel north from Boston, it is still almost as much neglected as Annapolis, and it is a great pity that many of its once splendid mansions are falling into decay. The Governor Langdon house, the Ladd house and others should receive the attention they bestow upon such priceless relics in Salem, where everything of the kind is jealously guarded. But Salem is so distinctly illustrative of early nineteenth century work that I intend to refer to it later, under that head, likewise to Providence and Bristol, in Rhode Island, and Middletown, in Connecticut.

New York and Boston have practically nothing left of the grand epoch. The Walton house of Pearl Street and the Hancock house of Beacon Street, respectively, with all their less noted colleagues, have passed into history, the Walton house (i.e., in its original splendor) before the advent of photography; so that we have not even pictures of it of any value. The Jumel mansion (A.D. 1758) perched upon a dizzy height overlooking the Harlem, is a sole survivor intact whose permanency is threatened at the time I write.

But Philadelphia, with Fairmount Park and Germantown contiguous, is still, historically, very interesting, the most celebrated relics of this vicinity being the Chew house at Germantown, and the Arnold-Shippen house (called “The Dairy”) in Fairmount Park. Presentments of the famous Chew house (still standing) will be found, however, in every illustrated history of the Revolution, including the popular juvenile, “Boys of ’76”; but pictures of Wyck, at Germantown (see Plate XXXIII) equally historic, are rare, as are also the pictures of some other places I shall mention, and which I have taken much pains to obtain for this review.

Wyck is the oldest house in Germantown, at least, part of it is said to be, and its extreme length, together with the great passage there is through it to an inner court or garden, make it the most curious as well. Stenton-in-the-Fields has many legends and things to commend it to the antiquarian, but it is not pretty at all, and does not appeal to the architect, who is much more attracted to the Wister house, numbered 5261 Main Street, and to the Morris house (both appearing on Plate XXXII), standing a little farther along upon the old turnpike, both of which, like the Strauss waltz I mentioned in a preceding chapter, are awfully nice. Germantown itself is much overrated and disappointing. It is not a picturesque town like Annapolis or Portsmouth or Salem, and lacks character generally.

Journeying into Philadelphia we shall find hidden away in the midst of a cheap, bourgeois neighborhood in South Eighth Street another Morris house (Plate XXXVI) belonging to the grand epoch. This stunning relic is rarely photographed, and then the professional photographer sets up his camera directly in front of it, uses his wide angle lens, which is sure to distort, and he cannot avoid cutting off part of its base line, and foreshortening the dormer windows. This Morris house has outlived all the friends and acquaintances of its youth. Down by the Delaware River there may linger a vestige, here and there, of the old-time gentry; but most of the architecture which may be called “old,” in Philadelphia proper, belongs to a later generation.

Again, let us turn in the direction of Annapolis, not

because it is an irresistible magnet that the student of architecture feels, more or less, all his life, but because he cannot afford to miss Alexandria. And I do not mean Alexandria itself, for it is pathetically decrepit. The Carlyle house[2] is a wreck, and the Fairfax house is ugly. But I mean to say he cannot afford to miss Mount Vernon, which is usually reached via Alexandria. If time is limited in Washington, cut out the new Library of Congress, which is a political job, one degree more vulgar than a commercial one. Indeed, if worse comes to worse in the matter of time, cut out everything but the Capitol, only, be sure to see Mount Vernon! (Plates XXVII and XXVIII.)

Familiar as everybody is with its pillared portico high above the Potomac, and good as many of the modern photographs are of this effective view of the mansion-house, he who has never visited Mount Vernon can form no idea of the enchanting beauty of that Colonial estate. The ride on the electric road from Alexandria is through a country scrubby enough and rough enough to send dismay to the most persevering tourist; but do not dismay, for at the end a transformation scene awaits you which you will never forget, and if you be an architect, will supply inspiration worth many times your travelling expenses.

Walking out upon the magnificent stretch of greensward that overlooks the river, one cannot but agree with Washington in preferring Mount Vernon to every other country seat of America. I can think of none that equals it naturally, while architecturally, it is thoroughly admirable from stylobate to cupola.

Within, the wainscots, cornices and chimney-pieces are models of excellence; and if, perhaps, we could nowadays achieve better success in ventilating bedrooms than was achieved by Washington with his, we must own, we are still largely the debtor party by the amount of education we imbibe relating to what Eliza Southgate calls—in her edifying book of letters of a girl written eighty years ago, bound between samplers, concerning Sunswick, the Delafield house on Long

Island—“Ease, elegance and hospitality,” and which we carry away with us.

As one looks back from the west gate toward the manse which he sees at the end of a vista of verdure, another conception of the first American comes to him which no biographer out of all he has had seems to have thought worth while delineating. Washington has always been our greatest military commander. We were convinced of that long before our visit to Mount Vernon, but he has not always been our greatest connoisseur of American Renaissance.

Colonial estates as carefully restored and preserved as Mount Vernon are extremely scarce, especially throughout the South. I number among my acquaintances some enthusiasts who spent several weeks in Gloucester County, Virginia, a year or so ago, and who did me the honor of writing glowing accounts of some ancestral halls they had discovered there. They were not architects, and could hardly have judged of the architectonic merit of their find; but as the names of the plantations were euphonious—names like “Elmington,” “Whitemarsh,” “Todsbury,” and “Rosewell,” I was anxious to see the pictures they brought home, one of which, with their permission, appears on Plate XXXVII. Visions of more estates like Jefferson’s Monticello, Madison’s Montpelier, Sabine Hall, Westover and Shirley easily flitted across my brain; but alas! I was doomed to disappointment! The photographs revealed many typical Virginia plantations entailed and beautiful, but not at all remarkable architecturally. In my anxiety to know the truth about Virginia I repeated the question, “Were there no houses as nice as Shirley?—nothing as nice as Shirley?” (see Plate V), when, after considerable explanation and some excuses, there was left but frankly to own that the great plantations I had enumerated were the homes of the wealthier planters and proprietors under the royal patents, and as a matter of fact, there was nothing in Gloucester as representative of the grand epoch as was Shirley-on-the-James.

Throughout New England and the middle States isolated examples of exceptionally good Colonial architecture are still numerous, and some of them in good repair. There will be just one, perhaps, to a town

which played its part in the American Revolution, and where any one might suppose there would be more that had survived the menaces of commercialism. This is the case at Morristown, New Jersey, where the Ford mansion (see Plate XXXV) is a lone patriarch whose simple lines make a neighboring and hideous Franco-American roof constructed during our Reign of Terror—the seventies—all the more ugly and exasperating. Then there are some towns like Litchfield, Connecticut, whose claims for Colonial architecture are hardly warranted. There are but two good exemplars in Litchfield to see, and but two indifferent hotels to stop at. As a friend of mine expresses it: “When I dine at one I always wish I had dined at the other.” The two good examples are, namely, Professor Hoppin’s house (Plate XXIX) and the Demming house (Plate XXXIV), standing nearly opposite on North Street. They have both been altered and enlarged, and are therefore so much injured. The fronts of each are happily intact. Modern amplification often makes me wish I could borrow the efficacious sign that used to hang upon the wall of an old saw mill, across which was rudely inscribed the impressive legend: “Don’t monkey with the buzz-saw!” Only, for my purposes, I should omit “the buzz-saw,” substituting therefor “this house.” I sincerely believe a great deal of good could yet be accomplished in that way, or, rather, much evil averted.

A number of celebrated relics properly belonging to this chapter, which is already overstepping the limits assigned to it, I have failed to mention. The foregoing form but a very imperfect list of living representatives of the grand epoch. Still, taken each as a type, they fairly cover the historic period cited. My selections present houses variously constructed of stone, of wood, of brick, and of stucco. They are all original designs, original as the times and the conditions which prevailed in the colonies suggested or permitted—original as the literary styles of authors are dissimilar and original, for every art has its grammar, its glossary, and whatever transcends is not art, but aberration. It ought to be entirely unnecessary for me to say this; but I have lately been confronted with a startling misapprehension upon this point even among architects.

Of course, these Colonial houses are Renaissance, because Renaissance, since MediÆval times, has been the connecting link history has found convenient to unite the present with the past. Yet there is not a building in either England or France or Italy like any of them. They are intensely American in every line, and express as much American history as George Bancroft was able to express in his great literary work. Architecture is not architecture which does not express history. St. Paul’s Cathedral in London is strictly Renaissance, yet who shall say it is not original, that it is not English Renaissance, and architecture above everything?

The Renaissance of America has as much if not more local color than that of Great Britain. And I do not believe there is an architectural scholar in the country who would have the hardihood to declare the vast treasure house of English Renaissance to be a weak imitation of an older school.

No, I cannot clearly make out what the promoters of the newly invented modes of building expect to teach us. There are two lines of poetry wholly irrelevant to architecture, but so irresistibly significant of the propositions of “New Art” in all its guises, that I may not do better than append them here, to wit: