Harold Donaldson Eberlein

IT is a far cry from the first place of worship contrived at Jamestown, in 1607, to the stately fanes erected in the eighteenth century in all the Colonies. Through each successive stage of development, however, runs a thread of continuity corresponding to the material circumstances of the colonists. Everywhere in the Colonies, the church building was an exceedingly important structure and no one building or set of buildings, in each community, more faithfully reflected the social and political as well as the religious conditions of the colonists. Setting aside the civic and defensive uses to which church edifices were often put, especially in the earliest period, and confining ourselves to the purely ecclesiastical side of their existence, we shall find them an invaluable index to the varied aspects of the life of the times.

For the sake of contrast, both historical and architectural, it will not be amiss to quote Captain John Smith’s account of the first Virginia place of worship so that we may fully realise the strides of progress made from the feeble Jamestown beginning in 1607. He says: “This was our church till we built a homely thing like a barne, set upon cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge and earth; so was the walls. The best of our houses [were] of like curiosity; but the most part far much worse workmanship, that neither could well defend [from] wind nor raine. Yet we had daily Common Prayer, morning and evening; every Sunday two sermons; and every three months the Holy Communion, till our minister died; but our prayers daily with an Homily on Sundaies we continued two or three years after till our preachers came.” The words “till our preachers came” mean, of course, the successors of the Rev. Mr. Hunt who had accompanied the expedition.

In tracing the history of the older parishes and congregations, it is the rule rather than the exception to find two or three successive houses of worship erected, as the means and growing numbers of the people made it possible or expedient, to replace former structures of meaner fabric which seem to have been regarded from the outset as merely temporary gathering places, meant to serve only until worthy edifices could be undertaken. Some of the earliest churches were merely block houses or forts, occasionally surrounded by stockades, proclaiming the ready physical as well as spiritual militancy of the worshippers within their walls, but these were abandoned so soon as the increasing prosperity and a greater sense of security from attacks by hostile savages warranted a more peaceful and comfortable type of building for religious purposes.

Of course, in the several parts of the Colonies, the character of the buildings erected for religious uses indicated the prevailing local ecclesiastical organisation. In the South, especially in Virginia and Maryland, where the Church of England was the recognised dominant body and Church and State were closely allied, we find the churches conforming to English ecclesiastical traditions. In the Middle Colonies, where religious liberty was freely permitted, we find a greater variety including the structures peculiarly adapted to the worship of the Church of England, Quaker meeting houses and the buildings designed to accommodate the different German sects. In theocratic New England, while Church of England edifices were to be met with now and again, the simple meeting house type, agreeable to the congregational form of worship, everywhere prevailed.

And now let us glance for a moment at the manner of people who frequented these churches Sunday after Sunday. We shall find among them the extremes of both worldly pomp and ostentation, on the one hand, and humble simplicity, on the other, as they went to the weekly discharge of their religious duties. Our Colonial forebears, however democratic some of them may have been in religious principle or however much some of them may have decried set ceremonial forms, were, almost without exception, great respecters of persons and in no way did they more fully display this common failing—it is just as prevalent in kindred forms at the present day—than in their methods of seating the congregations according to the accepted worth or dignity of the individual members.

In the South, the lords of the manors or the squires, just as in England, had their great square pews in the chancel or, perhaps, a whole transept would be reserved to their exclusive use for their family, dependants or tenants as was the case, for example, in Christ Church, Lancaster County, Virginia, where Robert (“King”) Carter, at whose charge the edifice was built, made such a reservation. The “King’s” own high panelled family pew, just before the pulpit, had a brass rail around the top from which hung damask curtains on all sides except that opposite the pulpit. This screened the occupants, when standing up, from the gaze of the rudely inquisitive.

Upon the removal of the seat of the Virginia government from Jamestown to Williamsburg, in 1699, Bruton Parish Church became the “court church” of the Colony and “official distinction was recognised and emphasized” in the order of seating. The historian of the parish, writing of the present building, which was completed in 1715, says: “To His Excellency the Governour and His Council of State was assigned a pew elevated from the floor, overhung with a red velvet canopy, around which his name was emblasoned in letters of gold, the name being changed as Spotswood, Drysdale, Gooch, Dinwiddie, Fauquier, Lord Botetourt and Lord Dunmore succeeded to office. In the square pews of the transepts sat the members of the House of Burgesses, the pews in the choir being assigned to the Surveyor General and the Parish Rector, while in the overhanging galleries in the transept and along the side walls of the church sat the Speaker of the House of Burgesses and other persons of wealth and distinction, to whom the privilege of erecting these private galleries was accorded from time to time.”

In city churches, because of the greater number of important folk, questions of precedence in seating were more perplexing than in the country. At Annapolis in St. Anne’s, in Christ Church at Philadelphia and also in the “court churches” in New York and Boston the Royal Governours’ pews were marked by appropriate symbols of the majesty of state, the royal arms carved in walnut that once hung above the Lieutenant Governour’s seat being still preserved at Christ Church in Philadelphia. The lesser dignitaries sat in due order becoming their station.

In New England it seems to have been the general custom in the earlier period for the men to sit on one side of the church and the women on the other. Afterwards, families sat together. In order to avoid bickering and contention about the order of precedence it was not an unusual thing to appoint a committee to “dignify the meeting.” The members of these committees were changed from time to time “in order to obviate any of the effects of partiality through kinship, friendship, personal esteem or debt.” A second committee was appointed to seat the members of the first committee according to their proper rank. In her charming book, “The Sabbath in Puritan New England,” Alice Morse Earle says:—

“Sometimes a row of square pews was built on three sides of the ground floor, and each pew occupied by separate families, while the pulpit was on the fourth side. If any man wished such a private pew for himself and family, he obtained permission from the church and town, and built it at his own expense. Immediately in front of the pulpit was either a long seat or a square enclosed pew for

Not only in New England, but in the other Colonies as well, seats and pews in the galleries seem to have been preferred as the most desirable by persons of quality and consideration in the community next to the specially exalted seats belowstairs.

In many places, particularly in the Middle and Southern Colonies, the churches were regarded as the most dignified places of sepulture for persons of consequence, and their gravestones, with the armorial bearings and inscriptions almost effaced by the treading feet of generations of worshippers, are to be seen in the aisles and chancel pavements. The chancel was esteemed the most honourable place of burial and as an instance of this may be mentioned the grave of General Forbes, the hero of Fort Duquesne, in the chancel of Christ Church, Philadelphia. John Penn, one of the Proprietaries, is buried at the foot of the chancel steps. It is interesting in this connexion to note, by way of exception, that Judge Moore of Moore Hall, the stout old Pennsylvania Loyalist, and the person of greatest consequence in the parish of St. David, Radnor, directed that he and his wife, the Lady Williamina Wemyss, should be buried at the threshold of the church. Emblazoned hatchments were frequently used at the time of funerals and some of them are still preserved in our old churches. As in England, during much of the eighteenth century, it was the fashion in the Colonies to bury persons of note at night by the light of torches.

In not a few of the early churches there was an utter lack of uniformity in the style of the seats or pews employed and permission was often granted to influential persons to buy space within the churches and erect pews of their own, suited to their personal fancy. The space not occupied by these privately owned pews was sometimes filled with movable benches, stools, or chairs, and it was not an unusual thing for the humbler members of the congregation to bring their seats with them and put them wherever they could find room. We find ample evidence of this condition of things in places as widely apart as the simple country parish of St. David’s, Radnor, in the Welsh Barony, and King’s Chapel in Boston. In early days the members of St. David’s congregation fetched thither nondescript seats as they listed and it was not until well into the eighteenth century that rough benches were furnished and “rented for the support of the Church.” Not till the middle of the eighteenth century do the parish records show the existence of pews and the custom seems to have then prevailed of “selling a piece of ground within the Church on which the purchaser had the privilege of building such a pew as he desired.” With this system, or rather lack of system, in seating, it appears that squabbles occasionally arose as we may judge from the following minute in the old register:—

So late as 1763 the “Vestry granted to Robert Jones the privilege to build a Pew on a piece of ground in St. David’s Church, adjoining Wayne’s and Hunter’s pew, he paying for the ground £4 10s.” In King’s chapel in Boston the vestry “stipulated that each member should pay the cost of building his own pew; this was accordingly done, but without any uniformity, so that the interior of the old church must have presented an amusing diversity of work.... The walls were decorated with banners, escutcheons, and coats of arms of the King of England, of the nobility and gentry of the congregation, and of the Governour of the province, and the interior was considered so magnificent and so luxurious as to be a blot upon the religion of Massachusetts.”

As might be expected, when so much was made of assigning each member of the congregation a seat befitting his dignity, the question of suitable clothing loomed large in the minds of our forebears and from one end of the Colonies to the other they gave way to the temptation to appear before their neighbours in their best frills and furbelows so that the church service on Sunday was often a clothes show as well. To such an extent was this passion for display carried that it led to a custom in some country parishes of New England to which Alice Morse Earle refers. She says:—

If the same custom did not prevail in other parts of the country, doubtless the members of the congregation had ample opportunity, and made the best of it too, to scrutinise the apparel of their fellow worshippers. It is to be feared, however, that their brave attire sometimes suffered damage from insufficiently dusted seats for we read that the sexton of Christ Church, Philadelphia, probably the wealthiest and most splendid church in the Colonies, having applied in 1761 for an increase of salary, it was agreed to give him “£20 a year on a condition that he was ‘to wash the church twice a year and sand it at Easter and September; and also to sweep the church once every two weeks.’”

The music was of an exceedingly indifferent character from an artistic point of view and was not always edifying and whole hearted on the part of the congregation. In New England, musical instruments were only introduced after a storm of bitter opposition and general repugnance to the “boxes of whistles,” as organs were contemptuously called. Even in the Middle and Southern Colonies, where a prejudice against instruments did not exist, the music must often have been of a distressing nature. Referring once more to Christ Church we read that “the singer then called the Clerk, was Joseph Fry—a small man with a great voice, who, standing in the organ gallery, was wont to make the whole church resound with his strong, deep and grave tones.” When there was a ripple of improvement in the general musical situation, after the Revolution, “the efforts of church musicians to raise the standard were apparently not looked upon with favour. Joseph Fry, or his successors, did not ‘make a cheerful noise before the Lord’ to the taste of the congregation, for in 1785 the vestry passed a resolution ‘that the clerks be desired to sing such tunes only as are plain and familiar to the congregation; the singing of other tunes, and frequent changing of tunes, being to the certain knowledge of this vestry, generally disagreeable and inconvenient.’”

Although early New England settlers were at first summoned to meeting “by drum, horn and shell,” bells were soon introduced and in the Middle and Southern Colonies great store was set by them and more than one fine peal was brought hither from England. The bells of Christ Church, Philadelphia, were particularly famous and were always being pealed so that the German traveller, Dr. Schoepf, said that you would think you were in a papal or imperial city—there was always something to be rung. “From the time that ‘the ring of bells’—the first in the Colonies—was first hung, their metal throats were busy proclaiming all sorts of things from the anniversaries of King Charles’s Restoration, Guy Fawkes’s Day, and the King’s Birthday, down to semi-weekly markets or the arrival in the Delaware of the ‘Myrtilla,’ Captain Budden’s ship, in which the peal had been brought out from London.”

In a previous chapter reference has been made to the splendid equipage in which wealthy people of the Northern and Middle Colonies came to church. A word must be added, to complete the picture, of the way in which Southern congregations arrived. While a few of the very wealthy drove to church in their state coaches, the great majority came on horseback for the distances were too great to traverse afoot. Horses were tethered in groups to the trees about the churches and it was the recognised custom that the congregation should gather in the church yard before and after service and they gladly embraced the opportunity thus afforded for social intercourse. In country districts of the South the same condition prevails to-day, and saddle horses and buggies may be found in groups under all the trees near the church building or in the sheds, where such are provided.

And now we pass to a consideration of the architectural features of the church buildings in the several Colonies. We shall begin with those in Virginia as they were the earliest. Only two of the seventeenth century structures in the Old Dominion remain but they are sufficiently distinctive to give us a very definite idea of the architectural ideals that actuated the Virginia colonists. These are St. Luke’s at Smithfield, built in 1632, and St. Peter’s, New Kent County, built at the very beginning of the eighteenth century, but so closely following the type of the first mentioned building that it may be reckoned as a seventeenth century structure. Besides these two, there is the tower of the old church at Jamestown to which has been added, in the way of restoration, a body designed upon the lines of St. Luke’s, Smithfield.

St. Luke’s is a staunchly built rectangular brick structure with a steep pitched roof and a heavy, square tower, of three stages, at the western end. The coping of the eastern gable is curiously stepped in a way that suggests Dutch or Flemish influence. The general appearance is that of a rural English village church that might have been transplanted to its new environment. There is little in its contour, proportions or detail that savours of Renaissance inspiration, then dominant in England, but rather does it smack of the old English Gothic feeling that characterised many of the sixteenth century structures, when the Gothic spirit was really decadent but still strong enough to retain certain well defined traditional features. The side walls are strengthened and divided into bays by buttresses and the pointed arch is retained above the twin lancet windows. The mullions of these windows and of the east window, with its unusual combination of round arch and pointed arch sections, are substantially constructed of bricks. The one particular in which Renaissance influence is visible is the use of quoins instead of buttresses to stiffen the tower corners. The round arched door is almost Norman in character. Within, the walls are plastered above the wainscot and the ceiling is a single barrel vault.

St. Peter’s, New Kent County, presents the same general contour so that a family resemblance is unmistakable but it is less felicitous in all its details. The tower is pierced by such large arched openings in front and at the sides that it appears to stand on legs and to have no particular connexion with the ground. There are no buttresses to support the walls, the windows are rectangular with flat-arched lintels and are filled with sashes. While venerable and interesting, St. Peter’s can scarcely be regarded as in any way architecturally so satisfying as St. Luke’s is. How much of this lack of charm is due to so-called “restoration” and “improvements,” it would be hard to say, for want of sufficiently specific data.

One of the earliest structures to show a distinctly Renaissance feeling, a suggestive precursor of the Georgian buildings that soon followed, was Bruton Parish Church at Williamsburg, completed in 1715. Here for the first time may be seen the cruciform plan, often met with in other Virginia churches, sometimes of Latin, sometimes of Greek outline. It is curious that this feature, which belongs peculiarly to edifices of Gothic provenance, should make its first appearance in a structure of Renaissance inspiration. The pitch of the roof is steep and this fact, along with the cruciform plan, gives the contour a partly Gothic character. All else is of Renaissance affinities.

There are no buttresses, the tall windows with round or compass heads contain sashes with broad muntins and the sturdy, square tower, of three stages, at the western end, is surmounted by an octagonal wooden spire which, although severely simple and devoid of architectural ornament, suggests in structural treatment the methods of Wren and his contemporaries. Circular windows pierce the end walls of the transept and chancel and these were originally filled with panes of plain glass set in broad muntins. The brick is laid in Flemish bond and the cornice is exceedingly simple and far less prominent than in later buildings of purely Georgian character.

For examples of the typically Georgian churches of the South we may instance Christ Church, Lancaster County, Virginia, “Old Pohick Church,” Fairfax County, Virginia, with the building of which Washington was intimately concerned and of which he was a vestryman, and Christ Church, Alexandria, where Washington was also a vestryman and frequent attendant. The last named building was designed by James Wren, a descendant, it is said, of the great Sir Christopher. Other churches just as typical might have been selected but these three will fully answer the purpose.

Christ Church, Lancaster County, was built in 1732 at the charge of Robert (“King”) Carter as before stated. The ground plan is in the form of a Greek cross, all the arms being of equal length. The shingle roof is hipped and of steep pitch, the cornice is bold and vigorously proportioned, the walls are of brick laid in Flemish bond with black headers. The windows are round-or compass-headed and the brick surrounds project slightly from the face of the wall, meeting at the top in a white keystone. The muntins of the sashes are heavy and the panes small. The door is set between heavy pilasters and surmounted by a straight pediment. Above the pediment, and just below the cornice, is a small elliptical window. Within, the aisles are paved with stone, the pews are high and straight backed, the pulpit is an imposing structure and the plastered ceiling is vaulted. All the details, both inside and out, are characteristic of the Georgian mode.

“Old Pohick Church,” the parish church of Mount Vernon, was built in 1769 and shows evidence of later Georgian feeling in several of its details. The cornice, notably, has become more refined in the proportion and contour of its mouldings and the muntins are of less buxom dimensions. The building is taller than Christ Church, Lancaster County, and the walls are pierced by two tiers of windows, those in the lower tier being rectangular while those in the upper tier are round headed. Both upper and lower windows have surrounds of one-coloured brick, not projecting as at Christ Church but set flush with the surface of the wall. The building is practically square in plan, the corners being stiffened by white stone quoins, and the roof is hipped. Inside, the aisles are paved with stone, the communion table, surrounded by a railing, stands at one end of the church and the wall back of it is panelled and embellished with a broken pediment resting on four Ionic pilasters, in the panels between which are painted the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed and the Ten Commandments. Against one of the side walls is built a high, wine-glass pulpit with a great sounding board above it and, just below it, the clerk’s desk. At the angle of the walls and ceiling is an unusually heavy and elaborate wooden cornice. All the minutiÆ of the interior woodwork show the increasing refinement of proportion and detail characteristic of this part of the Georgian period.

Christ Church, Alexandria, built slightly later than Pohick Church, is substantially the same in plan, the main points of difference being the Palladian window at one end of the building and the tower and portico at the other, the latter embellishment being a later addition. Inside, the chief point of difference consists in the placing of the pulpit immediately in front of the central member of the Palladian window, the panelled spaces on each side of the window being devoted to the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments, according to a common custom. Christ Church, Alexandria, further differs from Pohick Church in having galleries around three sides, supported on slender Tuscan columns. The coved cornice at the angle of walls and ceiling, while exceedingly graceful, is not so beautiful as the wooden cornice in Pohick Church.

From considerations of date and geography, our attention is next claimed by the group of small churches in the Middle Colonies which may be represented by the Gloria Dei (Old Swedes), Philadelphia, St. David’s, Radnor, and Trinity, Oxford. The present structure of the Gloria Dei was built in 1700 to replace the old block house, built in 1665, which had afforded a place of worship for the congregation since 1677. Seen from the exterior, the church is cruciform in plan with an apsidal east end. At the west end is a small, sharp pointed belfry surmounting a projection in front of the church which is carried up to the peak of the roof somewhat in the manner of a tower, the lower part forming a vestibule. The roof is exceedingly steep in pitch and, by the same token, thereby exhibits the Swedish origin of its plan. The apsidal east end also indicates its Swedish origin for both the steep pitched roof and the apse were thoroughly characteristic of the Scandinavian ecclesiastical edifices. The brick is laid in Flemish bond, the headers, which seem to have been the arch bricks in the kiln, being covered with a vitreous blue black glaze. At several places an interesting diaper pattern is worked in the walls by the ingenious use of these glazed headers. The great square windows are filled with heavy muntined sashes and small panes of glass. It was found at an early date that the side walls were being pushed over by the thrust of the roof and to brace them the transepts, which do not appear in the interior plan, were built about 1703, giving the building its cruciform appearance. The south transept is a vestibule or porch while the north transept is used as a sacristy. The ceiling is vaulted. North and south galleries date from an early period but were built somewhat later than the rest of the structure. The details of panelling and woodwork are of distinctly pre-Georgian affinities.

St. David’s, Radnor, was built in 1714 and seems to have been the result of the efforts of local artisans without much attempt at architectural direction or planning. It is extremely simple in every way. In plan it is rectangular with a later addition at one side to accommodate the vestry room. The organ gallery is at one end and is reached by an outside enclosed stone stairway. The roof is of steep pitch and the cornices are severely plain. The round headed windows are now filled with small panes set in broad muntins but, if we may believe tradition, they were originally filled with diamond paned leaded casements. Perhaps the most interesting architectural feature of St. David’s is the texture of the stone work in its rubble walls which are built of random sized native field stone and pointed with white mortar. This masonry is thoroughly representative of the traditional manner of building stone walls which the Welsh artisans seem to have brought with them from their Cambrian home and which has left such a strong impress upon the stone work of so many of the old houses in Pennsylvania. It is one of the clearest instances of the survival in America of methods of craftsmanship brought from specific localities in the old world.

Trinity Church, Oxford, was built in 1711 and is mentioned here chiefly because it exhibits a more ambitious plan in its original design, having transepts in the interior which greatly add to its seating capacity and carry out the cruciform idea both within and without. Its details of design, masonry and woodwork display an affinity with the earliest phase of Georgian work.

Christ Church, Philadelphia, to which we now come, stands for all that is best in church architecture of the Colonial period in America. The present building was erected in 1727 from plans prepared by Dr. John Kearsley who seems to have drawn his inspiration largely from St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, London. From whatever source his inspiration came, Christ Church is a peculiarly beautiful and graceful structure, well meriting all the praise that has been bestowed upon it and incidentally affording a striking instance of what might be achieved by the amateur architects of the eighteenth century who believed that a knowledge of architecture was an essential part of every gentleman’s education and who were willing to put aside their own professional vocations for a time in order to plan and superintend the erection of some public structure as a kind of public duty.

In every respect the building is thoroughly representative of the best Georgian traditions. In outline the plan is rectangular with nave and aisles. The round headed windows of the lower stage are separated from each other by pilasters whose capitals support the projecting cornice-like string course. Superimposed above this member are the bases of other pilasters separating the windows of the upper tier and while their capitals come immediately below the wooden frieze of the cornice, the roof is surrounded by a heavily carved balustrade whose posts are capped by well proportioned urns. At the eastern end of the church, a great Palladian window lights the chancel. The tower, at the western end, is a massive structure of brick and is surmounted by a wooden spire of singularly graceful proportions and beautiful detail, inspired by some of the masterly creations of Sir Christopher Wren. For all the proportions are massive, the structure presents a light and graceful appearance, attributable in large measure to the manner in which the side walls are pierced with many windows and the wall spaces broken by graceful architectural adornments such as the pilasters and string courses. In this general lightening effect the triglyphs of the cornice frieze and the spindles of the surmounting balustrade must not be forgotten.

Within, the woodwork is thoroughly typical of the best Georgian traditions with its fluted pillars, its carefully carved triglyphs and guttÆ and the nicety of the panelling. The aisles are now paved with tile but fortunately the ancient tombstones fill most of the aisle space so that the modern tiling is not obstrusive. The ancient pews have been replaced by modern seats but historic locations are carefully noted by small brass tablets.

St. Peter’s Church, Philadelphia, built in 1761, is peculiarly interesting because it has never undergone profanation at the hands of improvers or restorers. The old pews remain in their original condition as does also the paving of small, square blocks of stone in the north and south aisles. The exterior of St. Peter’s is less ornate than the exterior of Christ Church but it preserves the same interesting feature of having doors approximately at the four corners, the tower in both cases either serving or having served at one time or another as a vestry room. St. Peter’s exhibits at its eastern end a large Palladian window of more expansive dimensions than that of Christ Church which, however, was fully in accordance with the tendency of the times as Palladian windows seem to have expanded their dimensions as the Georgian period progressed. The pediments over the four doors are peculiarly interesting at St. Peter’s and the cornice shows considerable refinement.

The galleries within are supported on Tuscan pillars and the other woodwork, while of excellent proportions, is exceedingly simple and dignified. It is of interest to note that the pulpit is accessible only by climbing up through the tower; the clerks’ seats are immediately beneath it. The organ gallery is built above the chancel which is at the east end of the church while the pulpit and the clerks’ desk are at the west end so that frequent processions of the clergy during the course of the service are sometimes necessary.

In the same class with Christ Church and St. Peter’s must be mentioned St. Michael’s Church, Charleston, S.C., and St. Paul’s Chapel, New York City. St. Michael’s was built in 1742 from plans, it is believed, furnished by James Gibbs, the famous English architect, while St. Paul’s is of native American design. Both churches show the strong influence of Wren feeling which persisted in the ecclesiastical architecture of the Georgian era.

While speaking of ecclesiastical architecture of the Middle Colonies we must not omit to mention the Quaker meeting houses which were ordinarily of brick or stone and sometimes covered with a coating of roughcast. They are rectangular in form with pitch roofs and usually display two rows of square windows. The cornices are simple and severe and all the woodwork is extremely plain. As a rule there are four doors, two on each of the longer sides. The woodwork within is not infrequently devoid of paint and has acquired a wonderfully rich colour from age. In many of the meeting houses there are galleries although the gallery is by no means a universal feature. The smaller and older meeting houses are generally of one storey in height but those of later date are frequently of two storeys and in that case ordinarily have galleries. All the details of woodwork are so exceedingly simple that one can scarcely say they show a marked affinity with Georgian models although they belong, for the most part, to the Georgian period.

Nor must we forget the meeting houses erected to accommodate the various German sects. These buildings generally displayed architectural affinities of Teutonic character. As an example of this we might mention the old Trappe Meeting House on the Perkiomen, or some of the Moravian churches and Reformed churches in the interior of Pennsylvania.

It will be unnecessary to make any further mention of the Georgian churches of New York as they are, in the main, similar to those that have been mentioned in an earlier part of this chapter. Some note, however, should be made of the little Dutch churches one occasionally finds such as that at Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson. Here we see the same persistence of Dutch ecclesiastical traditions as was noted in Pennsylvania in the case of German traditions exemplified in the structures like the Trappe Meeting House. The general form of the building and the method of its execution might readily be paralleled in Holland.

We now come to the New England Meeting House as the next type demanding examination and for this we can find no more fitting example than the Old Ship Meeting-house at Hingham, Massachusetts. This building was erected in 1680 and it is said to have been framed by ship’s carpenters. It is a spacious square building of extreme severity of line. The roof is hipped, or would be a perfectly hipped roof were it not truncated at the top and finished with a balustrade and a belfry with a small pointed spire. The exterior is so devoid of all architectural amenity that one can scarcely speak of the structure as having any architecture at all. The walls are clapboarded and the cornice is of the simplest contour. The interior is plain and, owing to modernisation, has been made unattractive and prosaic. For our purpose this building is valuable as marking the four-square type of meeting house so often met with.

Where the older meetings have not fallen victims of modern improvement, their interiors, though severe and rigid, possess a degree of charm with their ancient high backed pews, tall pulpits, and seats for the elders of the meeting immediately below them. Their excessive plainness is, of course, proverbial, but although there was a dearth of architectural amenity in their construction, it must be admitted that many of them possessed the charm of unobtrusive simplicity.

The Old South Meeting-house, erected in 1730, is a fair representative of similar structures where more attention was paid to and more allowance made for architectural endeavour. The wonted plan of having the pulpit on one of the long sides was adhered to and the gallery stretched around on the other sides. The double rows of windows are round arched and form the chief point of interest both on the exterior and in the interior. The brick is laid in Flemish bond and there is a slightly projecting base course several feet from the ground. Cornices are plain and the expansive roof is rather flat in pitch. The tower, while graceful enough in proportion, is severely plain. Nevertheless it must be confessed that the attenuated proportions of the spire with the little arcade around its base have a certain charm of their own which it is extremely difficult to analyse.

Of wholly different type is King’s Chapel. Here we find ample evidence of attention to architectural opportunity and enrichment. While the rectangular plan is adhered to, the interior is divided into nave and aisles by the columns which fulfil the double function of supporting the roof and upholding the galleries. The windows in the lower row, underneath the gallery, are of smaller dimensions than those in the upper row which throw their light down over the galleries into the middle of the nave. The windows of the lower row have flat arched tops while those above are round arched. The masonry is of carefully dressed stone and, while there are no buttresses, the front of the building is adorned by pilasters at the corners and by a pillared arcade forming a porch around the square tower. The roof is hipped. Inside the building, far more play is given to architectural elaboration than outside. Here we find the pairs of columns supporting the roof and galleries are fluted from top to bottom and surmounted by elaborately carved Corinthian capitals upon which are imposed sections of frieze and cornice from which again spring the arches of the roof vaulting. While the effect is agreeable enough, it cannot be denied that the arrangement and general method of execution are illogical and capricious.

The old North and Trinity Churches, Newport, also exhibit a somewhat similar and illogical arrangement of the ceiling and its method of support. Trinity, Newport, and the old North are mentioned in addition to King’s Chapel because they all represent the New England type of ecclesiastical edifice erected during the Georgian period which affords an antithesis to the auditorium type represented by the Old South which may be regarded as a logical development of the type exemplified by the Old Ship Meeting-house at Hingham.

It would be an unpardonable oversight to bring this chapter to a close without mentioning buildings like the Park Street Church in Boston with its graceful spire and other buildings of similar type, erected about the same period, whose inspiration we owe partly to former ecclesiastical traditions and partly to the new spirit of the Classic Revival. In Boston, and elsewhere throughout New England, may be found many such churches which illuminate the era in which that master of architectural refinement, Samuel McIntire, wrought so successfully.

The foregoing pages, cursory as the review of ecclesiastical architecture has necessarily been, will show the diversity of styles that prevailed in the Colonies from North to South and incidentally the reader will be enabled to compare the modes of architectural expression with the ideals and habits of the people inhabiting the several sections of the country.