Virginia Architecture in the Seventeenth Century Part 5

[Ill.u.s.tration: Archaic Ionic Cap found at Athens]

Branching off the main stream of country house development are exceptions and special cases, such as "The Green Spring" mansion (c.

1646), Sir William Berkeley's home near Jamestown. Sometimes it is mistakenly called the first large country house in America, but it may not lay claim to that status since the earlier "Governor's Castle" in Maryland had a larger area. However that may be, "The Green Spring" for its time was baronial. It seems to have been a "double-parlor"

dwelling--an English derivative, where the "Hall" stood between two parlors. When the recently-revealed watercolor of this mansion-house by Benjamin Henry Latrobe is published, its features, like the roof "shingled" with dormers and the front porch of "clumsy Jacobean brickwork" may be more fully described.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Pre-Berkeley House at "The Green Spring," Va.

Restoration by Author]

In the recent excavations at "The Green Spring" were found the brick footings of a _pre_-Berkeley building. We know that it antedated Sir William's great pile because part of it was covered by Sir William's structure. Our floor plan, based on Kocher, Waterman, and Dimmick, shows a very unusual room arrangement for seventeenth-century Virginia. It looks very much like an "E"-plan of the Elizabethan Style of architecture. And at the rear were "cells" or "outshuts." With grains of allowance, the sketch of the entrance front is conjectural, but probably has enough of the truth about it to reveal the unique character of the edifice.

iii. THE TOWN DWELLING

Because Virginians in founding their towns wished to crowd their houses in rows along their streets, the city abode is substantially different in type from the rural one. Many of our city developers today are building squeezed-up row houses, in order to make as much money as possible, where the front foot is valued in dollars. But, for all that, the Jamestown developers were doing the very same thing, building sardine-packed row dwellings--only the payment was in English currency.

Inside James Fort that first year the settlers erected streets of "settled" houses, which, because of the small s.p.a.ce available within the palisade, must have been of necessity row homes. The current oil painting of James Fort in the Jamestown Museum is all very fine, being based largely on a plan and description of the first settlement by the writer; but it has one great error: the houses are not contiguous to one another, as they were forced to be within the cramped s.p.a.ce of the triangular palisade. Four years later, the settlement had two fair rows of timber-framed houses, two storeys and garret high. Even storehouses at Jamestown were constructed in rows. In 1614 there were erected in that settlement three large, substantial storehouses, joined together in length about one hundred and twenty feet, and extending in breadth forty feet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Governor's House, c. 1620 A Jamestown Duplex]

What appears from a drawing in the Ambler Ma.n.u.scripts to be an early example of a row dwelling is the "Governor's House" or the "Country House,"--the word, country, meaning not countryside, but Colony or Province. This edifice was situated at Jamestown, but it was outside the triangular Fort and upon the so-called "fourth ridge," the highest ground near that fortification. The house was erected some time between the arrival in Virginia of Sir George Yeardley in 1619 and the year 1660. The probable date lies somewhere in the 1620s. The ma.n.u.script drawing is crudely drawn and badly torn, but it does indicate a one-and-a-half storey domicile with three chimneys, one in the center and one at each end--making what seems to be a _double_ house--a duplex.

Excavations of the fragmentary brick remains of the "Governor's House"

revealed that it was a brick edifice fifty-three feet long and twenty wide, with a little frame wing at the rear. Unfortunately no trace remained of the central chimney; but at any rate the diggings established that the eastern half had a cellar, while the western section did not--another indication of the double house.

There is an interesting story about the "Governor's House." Those who disagree with the Gregory-Forman theory of the site of James Fort of 1607 being at or near the point below Orchard Run, Jamestown Island, not a half mile up river near the Brick Church, must explain away the conversation recorded in the archives of Virginia for the night of June 23, 1624, at the "Governor's House," Jamestown. Briefly, there were two "fellows" who lurked on that evening under the walls of this building, trying to get inside. They were seen and hailed by sentries on the walls of James Fort. One of the men at the Fort shouted at the two fellows: "Que Vulla?"--evidently stock military vulgar Latin for _Quae Vultis_?, "What do you want?" To which question the two fellows at the "Governor's House" replied that they could not get in because the door was locked.

It is obvious that the Fort lay near the Governor's House and not half a mile away.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF THE "NEW TOWNE" AT JAMES CITY.

Ill.u.s.trating buildings mentioned in the text, and based on a map in the writer's _Jamestown and St. Mary's_]

At least by 1623, it was the desire of the Virginia Company of London to build towns in Virginia which would possess a convenient and suitable number of houses, constructed together of brick and encircled by a battlemented brick wall. Exactly in the same way Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, commanded the first Maryland settlers to lay out row houses in their first settlement.

And also, Jamestown excavations have borne out the fact that the typical city building was usually a row affair. The few rural homes within the city limits may not be cla.s.sified as "town" houses. There are at least five groups of row houses known at Jamestown, and there are even stock sizes for such groups. Twenty feet by forty, measured on the inside of the walls, were the most common dimensions--an inheritance from British medieval building laws.

[Ill.u.s.tration: First State House, Jamestown: Cellar]

[Ill.u.s.tration: First State House, Jamestown: River Front Author's Reconstruction]

Perhaps the foremost of the James City row buildings is the group of three brick edifices which comprised the "First State House" in Virginia. The three cellars, their long walls being party walls, were excavated under the direction of this writer and of a colleague. The structure was originally two storeys and garret high. The down-river, or eastern section, and the central portion, were erected about 1635 by Governor John Harvey and were used as the capitol building of the Colony from 1641 for fifteen years. The up-river section was built before 1655 by Sir William Berkeley. But by 1670 the whole pile, with its three front gables facing the James River, had gone up in flames.

The unit floor plan of the "First State House" comprised a "hall-and-parlor" dwelling with back-to-back fireplaces and a very narrow pa.s.sageway running the length of the building at one side. Now that arrangement formed pretty much the stock plan of the city house in seventeenth-century London, as our researches have disclosed. That the "First State House" was Tudor in appearance is evidenced by the great wealth of medieval wrought-iron hardware found in the ruins: such items as c.o.c.k's Head hinges, leaded lattice cas.e.m.e.nts, and great rim locks with eight-inch keys. The roof once carried the medieval "pantile,"

which is an "S"-shaped clay tile about thirteen inches long, with a n.o.b at one end to catch on to the roofing strips.

Another row example with gables facing the street lay about a thousand feet north of the Brick Church at Jamestown. It comprised two brick buildings with their long sides being party walls; and we have named them the "Double House on the land of Thomas Hampton." Each bas.e.m.e.nt is approximately sixteen feet by twenty-four in size--another stock configuration--which came about as the result of the Virginia Act of 1639. This duplex contained beautiful Delft tiles in the fireplaces, representing figures of Dutchmen at sport and at play.

[Ill.u.s.tration: London 17{th} C. Town Houses]

Not all row dwellings had gables across the front; some buildings were joined end to end, their gables party walls. The most important example of such at Jamestown is what we have called the "Country-Ludwell-State House" block of five buildings, situated up river a short distance from the Brick Church. Four of these were private homes, and the fifth was the "Third State House." They were all set up as a result of the Act of 1662 calling for thirty-two brick (row) dwellings, arranged in a square or other form which the Governor should decide. Each dwelling was to be twenty feet by forty on the inside, eighteen feet from floor to eaves, fifteen feet from eaves to ridge measured vertically, and to have a slate or tile roof. Of these four habitations, the two nearest the river had floor plans similar to that of the "First State House," already described, except that the gables adjoined one another.

To delve a little further into the subject of this interesting block, we may note that the other two houses were of the same size as the pair nearer the water, but that they had "flush" chimneys ab.u.t.ting the party walls instead of "central" chimneys with back-to-back fireplaces. These two were also marked by three enclosed porches on their front facades.

All four dwellings had "cell" or "aisle" additions at the rear.

Another row house at James City is what we have called the "Double House back of John White's Land," where half the building possessed a large, brick-vaulted, wine cellar, with hundreds of bottles kept within it--a feature indicating a tavern. Let no one think they did not drink at Jamestown: the whole settlement was permeated with taverns and ale-houses.

One of the most recent finds at Jamestown is a triplet or "triplex" row, lying some four hundred feet northeast of the Brick Church. The three dwellings faced south, and each measured twenty by fifty-two feet within the walls. There was the customary back-to-back fireplace on the north wall of each unit; but the easternmost house had an exterior fireplace at its east gable-end, and a square porch room on the south.

As new discoveries are made in this first capital of Virginia, it becomes clearer year by year that the city was full of row buildings, trying to emulate Oxford or Chipping Camden or even the great London herself.

iv. CHURCHES, CHAPELS, AND GLEBES

The medieval Virginia church of the seventeenth century was generally a crossroads shrine set down in or near the middle of a group of plantations. Towns, like James City, also had their own churches, situated on the main thoroughfares. When roads were too bad for traversing, or distances were too great, parishioners built sometimes small fanes called "chapels of ease," nearer their homes than the main parish churches.

The starting point for the Virginia church is at Jamestown, a place which can count five churches, and perhaps more. For brevity we list them:

1. The "cruck" church of 1607, the first substantial church, which, according to Smith, was covered by rushes, boards, and earth.

2. The timber-framed church of 1610, of Lord Delaware, sixty feet by twenty-four in size, where took place in 1614 the marriage of the Indian princess, Pocahontas, and John Rolfe. This edifice had cas.e.m.e.nts on hinges and, at the west end, two bells.

3. Argall's frame church of 1617, fifty feet by twenty, which by 1623 may have been the structure possessing a latticed gallery for ladies, and which needed repairs in 1624.

In connection with this 1617 church, may we digress a moment to mention some contemporary churches outside Jamestown? We have already cited the puncheoned church (c. 1623) on the Eastern Sh.o.r.e. Then there was the Elizabeth City church of 1624, timber-framed, laid upon cobblestone footings, and paved with square tiles; and the wood Hog Island Church of 1628, which measured on the inside twenty by forty feet and which probably had a small tower at the west end. That must have been a tower, because it was not the custom to place a porch at the west end in seventeenth-century Virginia--at least, as far as present research has disclosed. The tower was eight feet wide, but projected only three feet out--big enough, perhaps, to support two or three bells.

To continue the chronology of the Jamestown churches:

4. A wood church, spoken of as "new" in 1636, located next the Reverend Hampton's land, and of which he was the minister. The brick-and-cobblestone footings inside the Brick Church of 1647 at Jamestown may very well have belonged to this "new" wooden church; but they never belonged to Argall's Church, which was located within James Fort, situated half a mile down the James River, near Orchard Run, Jamestown Island.

5. The Brick Church of 1647, of which the original bell tower and foundation are extant.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Brick Church of 1647 at Jamestown After a Foundation Plan in "Jamestown and St. Mary's"]

The tower of this Brick Church at Jamestown is of fine old "English"

bonded brickwork, with a belt course of Flemish bond. It was built separate from the main body of the church, but was connected to it at the jambs and tops of the interconnecting doorways--as the floor plan shows. The great walls of the belfry are three feet thick, and the roof was probably battlemented or crenellated.

The main entrance doorway in the tower has a plain, round-headed brick arch, the earliest form of brick church door in the Old Dominion.

In 1907 the main body of the church was reconstructed for the Tercentenary Celebration. It is a single nave and possesses some interesting medieval features: b.u.t.tresses; pointed and mullioned windows; gables of crow-steps or "tabled offsets"; and a raised tile chancel floor.

The stepped gables were modelled upon those of "St. Luke's Church,"

often called the "Old Brick Church," Isle of Wight County, Virginia. We are fortunate in having in this country such an excellently-preserved medieval church as "St. Luke's." For years its date was considered "1632"; but the authorities, G. C. Mason and T. T. Waterman, in recent years have a.s.signed to this pile the dates respectively of "1677 or before" and "1682."

Unlike the belfry of the Brick Jamestown Church, the tower of old "St.

Luke's" is incorporated into the west gable-end of the building. It, too, probably had a battlemented top, which has now been changed. That the Jamestown belfry is a good deal older than the one at "St. Luke's"

is proven by the simplicity of design of the former in contradistinction to the sophisticated appearance of the latter. The "St. Luke's" tower possesses Jacobean brick quoins, a feature imitating corner stones, and an "embryo" or much simplified, triangular pediment, of Jacobean derivation, over the circular-headed doorway.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The East Window St. Luke's Church, Va.]

The b.u.t.tresses, the crow-stepped gables, the pointed windows at "St.

Luke's" are all original medieval features. In fact the great east window of the chancel, made up of eight main lights separated by foliated tracery, is English Gothic, of the style known as "Decorated"

or "Geometric," which flourished between 1307 and 1377 in England. A source for this east window is the chancel traceried window at Lis...o...b..Park Chapel (c. 1350), Soulbury, England.