Georgian & Federal Architecture in New Jersey …gardenstatelegacy.com/files/Georgian___Federal...Image from the Historic American Buildings Survey. Georgian & Federal Architecture

Georgian & Federal Architecture in New Jersey Janet W. Foster GardenStateLegacy.com Issue 7 March 2010

With the American Revolution, a newpolitical state was established, and along process of defining what exactly

was “American” was begun. There was aninterest in defining a national identity, in arts,culture, and politics. But the new nationremained a place of sharply different local andregional identities, and different architecturalexpressions. The “Cape Cod” house of NewEngland had a large central chimney, lowceilings, and a kitchen integral to the house—allfeatures developed to conserve heat in the longmonths of a cold New England winter. Incontrast, houses throughout the South hadchimneys outside the body of the building, and

often a separate kitchen outbuilding to preventthe main house from becoming too hot. TheMid-Atlantic states of New York, New Jersey, andPennsylvania had culture, as well as climate, asa driver of vernacular building traditions. Settledby a variety of European language and culturegroups, differences between communities withineven one state were as numerous and marked asany of the similarities that bound these peopletogether as “Americans.”

New Jersey had a particularly diverse set ofcolonial-era settlers—from New England andfrom Old England, from the German states,Scandinavia, and from the Low Countries, all ofwhom created lasting communities with strong

Cavalier Jouet House, built 1757-1760, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. A rare example of a fully realized, masonry Georgian eraPalladian-style house in Colonial New Jersey. Characteristic features include the strict symmetry of the composition, themain house flanked by matching wings, and classical details including corner quoins, keystones over the main windows, andIonic columns at the front entrance. The house is no longer extant. Image from the Historic American Buildings Survey.


associations to their old culture and traditions.But the period between the American Revolutionand the first quarter of the 19th century marked aperiod of great change as the insular, regionalcommunities of New Jersey and other statesworked to forge a common culture and tobecome “American.” This change may bemarked in many ways, not least of which was achange in the vernacular architecture of thecountry.

In the beginning of the 18th century, thewealthiest and most aspiring of the colonial elitebuilt houses to imitate the fashionable residencesof the upper classes in England. Such houses aretoday described as “Georgian,” named for theEnglish monarchs, George I, II and III, who ruledEngland and its colonies, from 1714 through1830. A Georgian house was the Englishinterpretation of Italian Renaissance design, aspublished in works of Andrea Palladio andothers. The style is perhaps best described as thetriumph of form over function, or of formalityover the informal. The Georgian housepresented itself as a strictly regular form, focusedon a formal façade and decorative details that

used a classical architectural vocabulary. Nolonger would the homes of the gentry impresswith their strength and impenetrability, asmedieval castles had done. No longer could ahouse added to over the generations toaccommodate many rooms and functions bepraised simply for its size. An important 18th

century house needed to have a formal,classically -referenced design to impress and toexpress one’s status and wealth. This Georgianideal began in homes of the English-affiliatedelite but soon was adopted in its most basiclevels by many people, and it transformedregional vernacular architecture in New Jersey.

Georgian formality in architecture stood indistinct contrast to the vernacular dwellings thatconstituted the building traditions all over theworld. Vernacular houses used local materials,responded to local climate and environment,and were typically extended and modifiedthrough time not according to a set design, butaccording to the needs of the occupants. Aprevious article examined some of the distinctvernacular building traditions of colonial NewJersey. But vernacular architecture and

NAME THAT HOUSE? A center-hall house from the early 19th century in Metuchen, Middlesex County, New Jersey. This is agood representation of the evolution of the Georgian country house ideal of the 18th century to the commonly-built house typeof early America. The bay window is a later addition. Photo by the author.


traditional design is not impervious to changeand adaptation, and it is clear that New Jerseybuilders and their clients were interested in theformality and regularity of the Georgian style asearly as the mid-18th century.

The formal, symmetrical mansion of the 18th

century gentry was adopted and adapted tobecome a distinctly American house type by theearly 19th century. One adaptation was inmaterials—high style Georgian mansions inEngland and colonial America were masonry. InAmerica, wood was the cheapest, most availableand workable building material, and most of thelocal vernacular versions of the Georgian styleused clapboard siding and wooden dentilmoldings and columns. This immediately gaveAmerican architecture a distinctive look from itsEuropean cousins, even when they followed thesame form and detailing.

The Georgian house not only had formal

qualities on the exterior. Its symmetry told of arevolution occurring inside as well. The centerfront door of a full five-bay Georgian houseopened into a hall running the depth of thebuilding, and all the main rooms were accessedfrom this hallway. Vernacular dwellings placedentries into rooms where needed—directly fromthe outside, or into one room from anotherwithout mediation of a hallway. The idea ofcreating a hall, and thus of controlling access toeach individual room, was entirely new. Muchhas been written about the changes in the ideasof the family, and of the development of theconcept of privacy in the 18th century, and itsadoption by a large swath of the Americanpublic, whether rich or poor, urban or rural. [ Forinstance, see Richard Bush, The Refinement ofAmerica]. Nothing illustrates this so vividly as thedevelopment of the center hall as an organizingdevice for domestic living

The classic floorplan of a five—bay center hall Georgian, with a hall as the dominant organizing element, and each roomseparately accessible from it. From the HABS documentation of Boxwood Hall in Elizabeth, NJ.


Until the 1750s, the number of center-hallGeorgian-inspired houses in all the Americancolonies may not have exceeded two hundred,and those were all owned by the wealthiestpeople. By the 1820s, the center hall Georgianhouse was found across all the states andterritories of the United States, and was used asa house form across a wide swath of cultural,social and economic strata.

For instance, the colonial-era Dutch-Americanhouses found in northern and central New Jerseycommunities settled by the Dutch, often used afour-bay façade, with paired entries, leading intoseparate rooms within the house.

Under the influence of the Georgian high style,the Dutch changed their preference for spatialorganization and façade design to the center-hall, five bay house type. There was no abruptshift from one form to the other, and in the latter18th century, both types were being builtsimultaneously. But by the early 19th century, the“Dutch Colonial” was a fully developed anddistinctive vernacular architecture in New Jerseyand New York, although the type is neitherstrictly “Dutch” in its culture nor “colonial” in itschronology. It is American. Characterized by agambrel roof, sweeping eaves, and abrownstone base, the Dutch colonial came to be

The classic floorplan of an East Jersey cottage, with a hall running front to back and accessing two principal rooms in themain part of the house. Asymmetrically arranged lateral service additions were typical of the East Jersey cottage. The three-bay, side-hall plan was used here in a free-standing farmhouse of one-and-a-half stories, but the plan was also used in twoand three story town houses. From the HABS documentation of the Guerin House, outside Morristown, Morris County, and now part of the MorristownNational Historical Park at Jockey Hollow.


built as an emblem of the Dutch-rooted familieswho still controlled much of the real estate andcivic institutions of Bergen County in particular,and parts of Monmouth and Somerset Counties,in the early 19th century. It was also the lastsignifier of a formerly distinct cultural group. Atthe same moment the “Dutch Colonial” housewas being developed, the Dutch language wasdisappearing even from their ReformedChurches, where it had held on long after civiclife switched to English in the 18th century.Dutch-Americans, who had in many instanceshad settled first in New Amsterdam before 1664,were generations and centuries away from theirroots in Holland. Children born following theRevolution were no longer named Katerina andCornelius and Hendrik, but Kate and Charlesand Henry. So the “Dutch Colonial” is really thesign of the Americanization of a large andsignificant cultural group within New Jersey and

New York.The gambrel roof is characteristic of the Dutch

Colonial House, and also of many otherdwellings from the Federal period in New Jersey.The gambrel, with its two-part pitch, createdmore useable attic space. It had been used inEuropean buildings from the 17th centuryonward, and may be found in 18th centuryAmerican structures up and down the East Coast.Gambrel roofs may be seen on a couple of thesingle story houses in Williamsburg, Virginia, andwere also used on large two-story houses inPortsmouth, New Hampshire, and on manystructures in-between. But in the Federal period,the gambrel roof surged in popularity in thenorthern New Jersey-New York-Long Island areathat had been the hearth of development for theEast Jersey Cottage (see GSL December 2009). Agambrel roof, combined with a three-bay sidehall plan house, whether in wood, stone, or

House in Delaware, New Jersey. This house exhibits all the characteristics of Federal style design in northern New Jersey—gambrel roof, three-bay, side-hall plan, and decorative embellishments in the round-arched window and two quarter-roundwindows at the attic level of the side of the house. Photo by the author.


brick, is a solid indicator of Federal periodconstruction in New Jersey. And while itscomponent parts—the roof shape, the buildingmaterials, and the formal arrangement of planand elevation—were all known and used in thecolonial period, the combination of all thesethings produced an architecture that is distinctiveto both time and place—Federal period NewJersey.

In southern New Jersey, where the colonialtradition of building houses with patterns createdin colored brick formed a distinctive regionalvernacular architecture, the Federal period saw acontinuation of the use of brick, but thepatterning disappeared. Three and four-bayhouses were a traditional form, but the formalfive-bay center-hall plan also took hold for bothfarmhouses and town houses. In this region, too,the gambrel roof gained in popularity in the

immediate post-Revolutionary generation.The greater house size that could be achieved bylonger front-to-back spans with a gambrel roofled to the need for multiple chimneys to serverooms in front and back of the house. Biggerhouses meant that fireplaces were too far apartto be connected by one chimney exiting at theridge of the house as had been typical in colonialtimes. In many houses of the Federal period,there were two chimneys, serving front and backrooms of the house. The “bridged chimney”developed in brick houses as a way of bothreinforcing the great height needed to have theflue effectively draw smoke up and out, and asa decorative element highlighting the house. Thetall, paired chimneys are connected by a shortspan creating an extension of the building’s endwall, and diminishing the apparent height of thechimneys themselves.

The L’Hommedieu-Gwinnup House is a late 18th-century or early 19th-century house built in the tradition of northern NewJersey’s East Jersey Cottage, with its frame construction and extra-high spacing between the façade windows and the eaveline. That vernacular form was updated for the Federal period with a gambrel roof and full five-bay, center hall plan. The delicatesidelights and transom around the central doorway appear to be a somewhat later (1840s?), Greek Revival inspired alteration.This house originally stood on Spring Street in Morristown and was moved in the 1960s to Speedwell Village, now part of theMorris County Park Commission. Photo by the author.


The Germans who settled along the DelawareRiver Valley and in the western portions of NewJersey, around Mercer, Hunterdon, and Warrencounties, had a long tradition of building instone. They continued to favor fieldstoneconstruction, although during the Federalperiod, quarries opened and some local stoneswere shaped into evenly-dimensioned cutstones. The persistence of stone as a favoredbuilding material among German-descendedAmericans would continue through the Federalperiod. There was however, the adoption of thetwo-story five-bay Georgian center hall form asthe standard dwelling type, replacing colonialhouses that usually had four bays on the façade,and an asymmetrically placed entrance.

High style Federal period architecture is oftendescribed as being more delicate and linear thanthe Georgian style that precedes it. When itcomes to the vernacular architecture of theFederal period, it is not a matter of style anddecoration but of the adoption during this timeof more universal standards of what an Americanhouse would look like, and how its plan wouldbe laid out. But New Jersey does have a uniqueexpression of that “delicate” decoration of theFederal period. Interior decoration focused onthe mantelpiece, and was often accomplishedduring this time through “gouge carving.” Ratherthan high-style bas-relief, New Jersey craftsman

embellished mantelpieces with simple lineardecorations, often circles, ovals, or fan designs,“gouged” or carved into the wood. Sometimesother elements, such as split dowels or evenmass-produced plaster relief elements, wereglued onto a mantelpiece to provide decorativeelements projecting from the surface of themantle.

Gouge-Carved mantle of theFederal period in the PhoenixHouse, Mendham, New Jersey. Thebuilding, erected as a privateacademy, served for much of the19th century as a genteel boardinghouse. It has been used by theBorough of Mendham as theirmunicipal offices since the 1930s.Photo by the author.

Although much about the house reflects the Georgian ideal ofa five-bay center hall dwelling, a closer look at The ReedHouse in Salem, New Jersey reveals that the facadewindows are unbalanced both in spacing and number. Thebridged chimneys extending up from the end walls of thehouse are characteristic of the Federal period found on brickmasonry houses throughout New Jersey. Photo by the author.


Bridged chimneys on the Phoenix House, built in the Federal period in Mendham, New Jersey. The gable end is alsoembellished with a half-round and quarter-round windows at the attic level. The two-tier front porch is a later addition in theGreek Revival style. Photo by the author.

Farmhouse in Union Township, Hunterdon County, NewJersey. The five-bay center hall form of Georgian originsmerged with the stone building tradition of the German settlersof western New Jersey. Photo by the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHORJanet W. Foster is Associate Director for both the HistoricPreservation and Urban Planning Programs at Graduate School ofArchitecture, Planning and Preservation. She studied historicpreservation at the Columbia University program, and worked in thefield for nearly 20 years before returning to the university. Ms.Foster's own research work is focused on American vernaculararchitecture and particularly the role of pattern books and periodicalsin the transmission of architectural ideas in the nineteenth century.She has two books related to the topic, Building By the Book:Patternbook Architecture in New Jersey, co-authored with RobertGuter, and The Queen Anne House.

Janet Foster is also interested in traditional paints and their use inAmerican architecture. She has done paint analysis for many historichouses, museums, and private clients throughout the New Jerseyand New York region. Her preservation consulting practice hasallowed her to work on Historic Structures Reports, National Registernominations, and Tax Credit applications for buildings as disparateas a vernacular Dutch-American farmhouse and an early 20thcentury concrete factory building built by Thomas Edison. Currentprojects include development of preservation guidelines for acommunity in New Jersey and paint analysis for a perfectDowningesque cottage.


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Georgian & Federal Architecture in New Jersey …gardenstatelegacy.com/files/Georgian___Federal...Image from the Historic American Buildings Survey. Georgian & Federal Architecture