Ornamenting the »Cold Roast«: The Domestic Architecture and Interior Design of Upper-Class Boston Homes, 1760-1880 [1. Aufl.] 9783839422762

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Dorothee Wagner von Hoff Ornamenting the »Cold Roast«

American Studies | Volume 6

Dorothee Wagner von Hoff received her PhD at the University of Munich. Her research interests include Colonial and Victorian Architecture and interior design, as well as urban studies and American literature.

Dorothee Wagner von Hoff

Ornamenting the »Cold Roast« The Domestic Architecture and Interior Design of Upper-Class Boston Homes, 1760-1880

Munich, Univ. Thesis 2012

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de © 2013 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustration: Japanese Leather wallpaper, picture taken at the Gibson House Museum, Boston, Massachusetts. Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc. Proofread and typeset by Wagner von Hoff, Dorothee Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar ISBN 978-3-8376-2276-8

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements | 7 Introduction | 9 A Brief History of Living and Family Life in America | 45

Growing Urbanization and Its Consequences | 47 The Formation of Class Divisions | 51 Family Structure and Family Members in American Households | 58 The Shift towards Equality among Family Members | 80 Everyday Manners and Rituals | 81 Life and Living in American Literature | 85 The Upper Class in America and Boston | 89 The Upper Class in Boston | 97 Upper Class Neighborhoods in Boston | 102 Politics | 114 Religion | 124 The Profession of Architecture in America | 131 Women Architects in America | 142 African-American Architects in America | 143 The Profession of Interior Design in America | 145

The Architectural Canon of Nineteenth-Century Boston | 148 Charles Bulfinch | 148 Asher Benjamin | 157 Edward Clarke Cabot | 164

Domestic Architecture in America | 171

Eras of Domestic Architectural Styles in America | 172 The Contradiction between Upper Class Domestic Architecture and Democracy | 184 Domestic Architecture as a Sign of Status | 198 Floor Plans | 201 Domestic Architecture in Boston | 210 The First Harrison Gray Otis House | 214 The William Hickling Prescott House | 225 The Gibson House | 231 Interiors and Furnishings | 237

Upper-Class Interiors and the Rise of Consumerism | 244 Rooms of American Domestic Interiors | 250 Furnishings and Objects in American Domestic Interiors | 261 The Interiors of the First Harrison Gray Otis House | 267 The Interiors of the William Hickling Prescott House | 281 The Interiors of the Gibson House | 288 Conclusion | 301 Works Cited | 307 Appendix I: Glossary | 325 Appendix II: Beacon Hill Architectural Guidelines | 329 Appendix III: Harrison Gray Otis Logbook | 339

Acknowledgements

The following book investigates domestic architecture and interiors by examining three distinct houses and their inhabitants. These inhabitants were a part of a kinship network, whether in the sense of their immediate family, who resided with them, or through a network of support and guidance from a community of friends, neighbors, and colleagues. While researching, writing, and putting the final touches on this book, I was fortunate enough to have this kind of backing, as well. One of these networks was the expansive community of archives and libraries in Boston, which I had the pleasure of visiting on two occasions and whose staff is unsurpassable in their knowledge and help. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Lorna Condon and the staff at Historic New England and the Harrison Gray Otis House for making not only the house, but also the documents and architectural drawings pertaining to numerous houses in Boston available to me. I am especially grateful to Catharina Slautterback and the staff at the Boston Athenaeum for guiding me through invaluable historical documents, paintings, and personal correspondences and allowing me to do my research in one of the most exquisite private libraries. The Boston Public Library’s many departments held vital information that greatly furthered my research endeavor and expanded this book in providing information on the urban center of Boston. Here I would like to thank Kimberly Reynolds and Sean P. Casey from the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department, as well as the staff at the Fine Arts Department. Additional information regarding Charles Bulfinch and Harrison Gray Otis were graciously made available to me by the Massachusetts Historical Society, as well as the original drawing of the First Otis House by Bulfinch. Each house that I investigated also granted me numerous visits as well as the unabridged use of their archives. The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts guided me through the William Hickling Prescott House and permitted me to sort through their precious documents. I would espe-

8 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

cially like to thank Debbie Ledbetter for her support both while I was in Boston and also through her reliable correspondence even after my visit. The Gibson House Museum and Gibson Society, Inc. and its archives provided extensive information on Victorian life in Boston and I would like to thank Charles Swift and his staff for their assistance. This book is the result of a PhD dissertation, which was written and completed at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich and its successful completion and publication was made possible thanks to the guidance that I have received through the course of my entire academic career from Prof. Dr. Michael Hochgeschwender and Prof. Dr. Ursula Prutsch. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their continuous support and advice throughout this project. There are several individuals that I want to specifically acknowledge. I would like to thank my mom, Elfie, who has assisted me in every aspect of this project and in everything that I do. I would also like to thank my brother, Christoph, who took on the immense task of proofreading this entire book and who always encouraged me to persevere. I would also like to give special thanks to Ronny, who has stood by me from the beginning and has endured the great amount of time that I have invested in this project, while constantly inspiring me to strive towards my goals and supporting me in every phase of the past years. This book is dedicated to all those who have lent me their resources, given me their insight, and who have made all of this possible.

 

Introduction

Urban studies observe various aspects of cities that all work together to individualize a specific locale. One of these aspects is domestic architecture, which includes interior design as well, and is a considerable part of urban life, even after significant suburbanization in most American metropolises. The urban structure of a city, the architectural design that civic and private buildings follow in a given region, and the people that stand behind the planning, building, and habituating of the latter require an interdisciplinary approach. Urbanism has many supporters and critics from different analytical backgrounds, which all have varying points of view and opinions regarding city planning, development, and life. The civic, public, and domestic architecture within these ambiguous cities is usually historically observed by architectural historians, who analyze their foundational and design features. The people who are responsible for the construction and, in the case of domestic architecture, the homeowners are a matter for social historians that look at their lives and their work. This study intends to empirically work with and combine these three aspects of architectural urbanism from the standpoint of a cultural historian. Thereby, the focus will lay in part on the urban and spatial constitution of the city of Boston during the late eighteenth and most of the nineteenth century, in order to get an in-depth look at the neighborhood distribution of the upper class. The real focus, however, is dedicated to the domestic architectural and interior design of three specific upper-class homes from various points within the timeframe of 1760 until 1880 and the people that functioned as their architects and their owners. Although architectural texts and works were consulted and are used as references throughout this study to apprehend the fundamental construction attributes, the main object behind this research endeavor is to gain an understanding of social, cultural, and political indices within domestic architecture. This was constituted through the empirical observation of three case studies that cover the architect, the architecture, and the homeowners and their respective positions in society and the greater national influence that these aspects produced.

10 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

T OPIC , O UTLINE ,

AND

R ESEARCH Q UESTIONS

The domestic architecture and interior design of upper-class Boston homes from 1760 until 1880 includes numerous facets, which are important to observe prior to disseminating the three case studies, in order to get an accurate picture and understanding of the city and the eras that this domestic architecture came about in. In order to make a statement concerning domestic architecture, the focus was restricted to a region, one race, one class, and one gender. The regional point of interest is the city of Boston, which was an integral player in the colonies and the American nation and its development throughout the nineteenth century. Additionally, nineteenth-century Boston, “[…] maintained much of what has been called a preindustrial form – the elite continued residing in the city, commercial districts expanded slowly, and areas close to the central business district were kept free from commercial development.”1 The center of Boston, then, is the ideal setting for upper-class urban domestic architecture because it stayed in this form throughout the nineteenth and partially the twentieth century permitting the empirical research to stay within the city limits. Additionally, the civic planners and proprietors of the most important sections of Boston had a vision of “urban utopianism,”2 in which the city was constructed according to the most satisfying extent, in this case rather subjectively for the upper class. The study restricts itself to white Bostonians, both architects and homeowners, in that both black architects and upper-class homeowners did exist, but were not significant contributors to the layout of the city nor to the defining of a social and national architecture. The upper class is the social rank that had the most wealth and the most influence on city politics, architects, and architecture and is thus seen as setting the standard in their own city, which quickly spread to other growing American cities. The subject of gender is also important in cultural histories and in this study is similar to the matter of race. Women architects were present in Boston in the nineteenth century and also women in the home became a vital part of domesticity during this time, however, they also were not able to leave an adequate imprint on national architecture. The three case studies thus encompass three upper class, white, male architects who built homes in upper-class, white neighborhoods in Boston for three upper-class, white, male commissioners.

  1

Mona Domosh, Invented Cities: The Creation of Landscape in Nineteenth-Century New York and Boston (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 34.

2

Síofra Pierse, “The City for Voltaire and Rousseau 1776-1778: The Imaginings of Old Age,” in Imagining the City, Volume 1: The Art of Urban Living, ed. Christian Emden, Catherine Keen, David Midgley (Bern: Peter Lang AG, 2006), 56.

I NTRODUCTION | 11

The more common background that these individuals and their architecture shared discloses the introductory chapters of this research and provides a social setting for their domestic architecture. The first chapter discerns life in colonial and American households, which evolved substantially from the late eighteenth to nineteenth century and brought about changes among all classes of society. Prior to the American Revolution and the War of 1812, these households and their way of life were still dependent on European forebears and thus, these households must be comparatively included. The family, all of its members and their roles, and the rituals, manners, and traditions of early America are aspects that this chapter scrutinizes to show the everyday city life that families experienced and how their architecture was nothing more than a utilitarian tool. The second chapter takes a closer look at the city of Boston and the upper social strata, which will be discussed in terms of its domestic architecture in later chapters. In this chapter the more specific question of who the upper class were and, more specifically, who they were in Boston is addressed. The prerequisites that one needed to belong to upper-class Boston are analyzed and broken down further into their political and religious background. The neighborhoods that these individuals and their families inhabited and built for their exclusivity provides the setting and downsizes the geographical area of focus to those parts of the city that were reserved for proper Bostonians. The South End, Back Bay, and Beacon Hill were upper-class neighborhoods that underwent an evolution and development of their own and, much like some of the members of this class, were hailed once and then discarded of due to the invasion of emulation. The common denominator affecting the architects and homeowners that were studied are given in theses introductory chapters. Chapter 3 begins the architectural study by introducing the profession of architecture and the rank of the architect within society. The professional status of an architect, and interior designers, was not always a given case in the time that provides the frame for this study. The late-eighteenth century did not professionalize architecture and although talented builders were erecting houses, they were considered nothing more than contractors and carpenters. The evolution of the vocation is discussed in order to get a feel for the importance that architecture was gaining and how its professionalization ran parallel to the refinement within American architecture. The three architects involved in the case studies are presented through their personal lives and through the development of their careers and commissions. Charles Bulfinch, Asher Benjamin, and Edward Clarke Cabot are the three architects that enjoyed an upper-class position in society and in their vocation and who were responsible for the houses that will be presented. Their achievements, and failures, distinguish them as a canon of architects within the early construc-

12 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

tion of the city of Boston and provide evidence of the vitality of both evolving upper-class domestic architecture and the proper architect as status symbols. The professionalization of architecture leads into the fourth chapter in which the domestic architecture of Boston is the focus. The architecture that dominated the eastern seaboard was always controversial in some manner. Often times this controversy was bound to the political agenda that occupied the colonies and the nation. The ideals and values that politics hinged onto their newly acquired sovereignty had the peculiarity of not coinciding with the ideals behind upper-class domestic architecture. This was especially the case before, during, and after the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Additionally, the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876 marked a cultural, as opposed to political, event in which the values behind this architecture were similarly dismantled and reevaluated. It is necessary to mention that an important political event that also falls into this time, namely the Civil War, will be omitted. The Civil War had a significant influence on domestic architecture in the southern United States, but less so in the northeastern region or Boston, for that matter. The domestic and landscape architecture of southern plantations are testaments to the controversy of slavery that came with this political event; however, Bostonian architecture was influenced more decidedly by the Centennial Exhibition in 1876, which is the reason for focusing on this historical event instead. Architectural trends in America can be categorized according to these three historical events and their influences thus become clearer. Once the general timeline of domestic architecture is established, it is possible to apply the three case studies to these changes in styles and trends and to the changes in the national political arena. The Harrison Gray Otis House marks the first time era, being built after the Revolution and during a time in which the consensus of liberty had not collectively been reached. The William Hickling Prescott House also falls into this ambivalent timeframe in American history and its construction is situated prior to the dawning of the War of 1812. Once these political upheavals had settled and the nineteenth century progressed, the Victorian era set in producing among many other unique exemplars, the Gibson House. These homes, their style of architecture, and their owners will be depicted and placed accordingly into the social, cultural, and political context that each of them influenced and were influenced by. Another feature within domestic architecture that should not be disregarded is the floor plan of the house. Domestic architecture is not only restricted to exterior elevations that display certain types of ornamentation, it also includes the interior layout of the house. These floor plans have undergone significant changes between the time of the colonies and the very late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The floor plans are important to mention in that they produced a mani-

I NTRODUCTION | 13

festation of style and luxury through elevated comfort levels. These spatial arrangements initially allowed the upper class to distinguish themselves through the superficial means of size and privacy. The more rooms that one could add, and the more intimate these became, the better off the homeowners seemed to be. Floor plans then, are another symbol of status that entered the realm of representative domestic architecture. In chapter four, the development of floor plans will be discussed. The exhibition of the floor plans within the three case studies will be shown in more detail in the next chapter on interiors. The final chapter in this study moves from the outside of the house into the interiors. Interiors were an equally important part in putting oneself and one’s position in the social order on display. Analyzing the interiors will be done in a similar manner as with the domestic architecture in that the general trends and style movements will be discussed to give an overview of the attitudes reflecting on interiors during each time. The rooms that were intended for display and entertainment are given an in-depth look in order to correspond to the case studies and the confirmation of the presence of appropriate quarters. The Otis, Colburn and Prescott, and Gibson interiors were each treated individually and the emphasis was placed on different rooms. The intention of the research overall, with regard to both the domestic architecture and the interiors, is not meant to be comparative among these three case studies. Instead, both the elevations and the rooms that were empirically observed are each used to reach the collective goal of using upper-class domestic architecture as a medium to explain social, cultural, and political trends and progressions. The interiors of each of these three houses were filtered accordingly and only the rooms that confirmed the owner’s upper-class membership were taken into consideration. These interior spaces will be looked at more closely in relation to their status within the house’s hierarchy and in their individual characteristics, which elevate their rank and their owner’s rank. Various objects embellishing the room as such, and objects put on display within the room are seen as a means to ornament the interiors. These, along with the positioning within the floor plan, will be perused to describe each interior. The interiors thus conclude the examination of the house as a status symbol and the effects that this had on American society. The history of life in parts of Europe, the colonies, and later the United States broadly commence the investigation of this domesticated aspect of urban life. The upper class in Boston relays the general attitude regarding characteristics of this part of society in a specific urban center and the ideals that they followed. The architects, elevations, and interiors of the house are then produced to reflect the influences that they accommodate and reversely, the influences that they exert. As a result, the combi-

14 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

nation of architectural and social history is fused together and perceived from a cultural historical point of view. The novel mediums used to scrutinize this cultural perspective are the families that breathed life into these homes and cities. “On the one hand there is considerable popular interest in the intimate details of upper-class family life and social experience; on the other, scholarly interest in the upper class has almost always been posed in terms of general group characteristics, rather than a particular set of families who make it up.”3 The intention is to demonstrate that urban and national history can be reevaluated through the guiding influence of domestic architecture and that this influence can be read off a selection of standard-setting upper-class homes that depict them in their façades and interiors. The question that underscores the intent of the research project consists of three distinct parts, which adhere to the different sections that make up the entirety of the house and the message that it gives the cultural historian. The first part of the question is concerned with the exterior of the home and its location. What did the exterior elevations of an upper-class home in Boston and the neighborhood that it was located in say about the owner’s position in society? To answer this question it is important to look at the exterior and the neighborhood, as mentioned, and also the architect and his rating in the high society and their choice of employees. Secondly, what did the interior design and floor plan say about one’s refinement and standing in society and what objects and embellishments were used to confirm this? In each house, the highest ranked rooms require a closer look to identify and analyze these attributes of the interiors and to complete the investigation of the house. Lastly, how were these houses influenced by social, cultural, and political actions and how did they go on to influence a political, national domestic architecture? These houses in Boston were not only exposed to the sentiment of their times, but they also relayed their contribution into the greater national landscape not only because they answered to the political cry for democracy, but also because they set the standard for emulation, spreading the politically correct and sometimes also incorrect domestic architecture of the upper class across the growing nation by inadvertently guiding the copying hands of the middle class.

  3

Betty G. Farrell, Elite Families: Class and Power in Nineteenth-Century Boston (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), 3.

I NTRODUCTION | 15

T HEORY

AND

M ETHOD

Theory Taking a theoretical approach to the dynamic process of domestic architecture within a broader spectrum requires tools of explanation to guide the theme of this study. Theories in the context of history allow the historian to reconstruct the meanings of the past and apply them,4 as in this case theories were applied to the greater notion of architecture. This history of past timeframes acts, like architecture, as a social framework for each given point within this particular historical investigation. “[…Vergangenheit] ist eine soziale Konstruktion, deren Beschaffenheit sich aus den Sinnbedürfnissen und Bezugsrahmen der jeweiligen Gegenwarten her ergibt. Vergangenheit steht nicht naturwüchsig an, sie ist eine kulturelle Schöpfung.”5 In the investigation of the domestic architecture and interior design of upper-class homes in Boston, guidance and explanatory support was conducted using the ideas behind the performative turn, the spatial turn, partially the topographical turn, and the theory of cultural transmission. These provide a framework for the depiction of the influence that space and architecture inspired in eighteenth and nineteenth century Boston. The performative turn, stemming from Theater/Drama studies, embodies the thought that culture can be seen and regarded as a performance of various sorts.6 The type of performance that culture relays, however, varies and has been conceived differently among the writers and contributors to this cultural turn. Often times the performative was seen as being equal to the interpretive in the cultural context, in that cultures and their behavior were interpreted. Clifford Geertz proposed the thought that these manners and behaviors could be staged conceptions of culture, which on a more general level are a performance of specific values and beliefs.7 In the 1970s, John Austin went further and expressed the act of speaking as being a part of the performance of expression, which eventually came together with concepts of theatrical studies that

  4

Chris Lorenz, Konstruktion der Vergangenheit: Eine Einführung in die Geschichts-

5

Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität

theorie (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 1997), 1-2. in frühen Hochkulturen (München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2005), 48. 6

Doris Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns: Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften (Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2007), 104.

7

Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns, 106.

16 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

underscored the extent of performative actions in a normal cultural context.8 It is this interdisciplinary definition of the performative turn that applies to the study at hand in that it provides insight into the everyday life and especially the domesticated life of the protagonists that acted out their class, regional, and personal membership within society using specific objects. “[…Durch Kapital geprägte Erfahrungen lässt sich eine] Tendenz zur Nutzung von Konsumgegenständen als Instrumente der Selbstdarstellung und des Rollenspiels ableiten.”9 This form of self-manifestation in social, cultural, and even political branches of society can be traced through Otis, Colburn, Prescott, and Gibson and the domestic architecture that they used as their main prop. In addition to the setting and staging of the cultural performance, ceremonies and rituals become the demeanor with which these cultural actors embellish their script. According to Victor Turner, these ceremonies are the signs of action. They do not provide new insights or influences, but rather describe something, such as the rank of an individual in the social order. Ceremonial actions in the cultural context provide a backdrop, a sign or depiction of a stable action.10 Rituals, on the other hand, alter the culture and reconstruct cultural phenomena while at the same time providing regulation.11 They can change the constellation of the social order and its members, while at the same time establishing systematic uniformity with which this is accomplished. Thus, the groundwork of a culture is laid and progressively altered according to institutionalized norms and practices. Among these ceremonies and rituals are also the performances that develop self-representation. A performance usually requires actors, human or inanimate, which act according to the setting that they have been placed in. The former of the two, the human actors, perform in order to further themselves and represent their place on a greater scale. These performances are then adjusted to the surroundings that they cater to, “It is worth noting here that the notion of performance implies that the self is seen as acting in response to and in accordance with the social scene

  8

Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns, 107, 109.

9

Rolf Lindner, “Kritik der Konsumgüterwerbung: Gesellschaftliche Voraussetzungen, ökonomische Implikationen eines Kommunikationsmittels” (PhD dissertation, Freie Universität Berlin, 1975), 303.

10

Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns, 112.

11

Ibid.

I NTRODUCTION | 17

rather than reacting to it from a self-identical or gyroscopic position.”12 The perperformance is based on the society and the culture that one has been introduced to and grown accustomed to. These ceremonies are categorically stable in each given society, but there are also actions that change over time. “[…] Die inszenierte Ungezwungenheit des bürgerlichen Lebensstils und das Streben nach stilistischer Exklusivität (‘Luxusgeschmack’) erscheinen als Garanten für das größte Maß an sozialer Distinktion.”13 These factors are applicable to both huhuman protagonists as well as inanimate objects, such as houses, that evolve with their surroundings and according to the level of social distinction that is the goal. “The emphasis on spectatorship, on acts of observation and on adjusting one’s behavior to the response of others, is linked to the shift from a social structure based on tight family relations and traditions to a market society based on money and exchange.”14 Both the owners and the houses presented in this study altered their behavior and their appearance, respectively, to adhere to these new values within society and to perform according to what the audience wanted to see. The performative turn is speculatively applied to the three case studies of the owners and homes that represent the domestic architecture of the upper class in Boston. It can only be speculated what ceremonies and rituals the owners and families of the homes produced in order to confirm their social rank, because the primary sources are too vague to provide grounded evidence thereof. All of the families were of high rank in Bostonian society, a fact that is conspicuous in both the primary and secondary literature that exists. However, the actions that brought them there and kept them in this position are not alluded to with enough vigor. Therefore, the performance of these proper Bostonian families can only speculatively be reconstructed. The homes, on the other hand, provide a performance of style and refinement. This performance pertains to the domestic architecture in general and the succession of each of the studied homes, as opposed to each house separately. Domestic architecture performed in a costume that reflected the surroundings that society at each given time required and styles

  12

Ulfried Reichardt, “Interior and Exterior Spaces: Versions of the Self in the American Novel around 1900,” in Space in America: Theory History Culture, ed. Klaus Benesch and Kerstin Schmidt (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), 348. More specifically, Reichardt refers to the novel The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton in his discussion on interior and exterior spaces.

13

Klaus Kraemer, Der Markt der Gesellschaft: Zu einer soziologischen Theorie der

14

Reichardt, “Interior and Exterior Spaces,” in Benesch and Schmidt, 348.

Marktvergesellschaftung (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997), 300.

18 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

that catered to both the inhabitants and the spectators. Another set of performances that took place simultaneously to this was the role of the consuming emulators. According to Walter Grasskamp, these middle class consumers can be considered modern-day sinners, who used and took advantage of objects in order to reach a higher goal.15 On the contrary, the collectors, or rather the upper class, work with these objects, cultivate them, and use them without destroying their meaning and worth.16 This presentation of both domestic architecture and interior design and the imitation thereof is a ritual of Bostonian society that evolved partially dependent and partially independent from its builders and promoters, creating a heroic elitist backdrop that defined various levels of a new national culture. The space in which this enactment took place is undeniably important to the result. The surroundings that constitute this given arena, in a geographical, cultural, social, and political sense, define the boundaries of influence of culture that are obeyed and trespassed. “Sie können sich nur in der Wirklichkeitsform ausdrücken, gehorchen der Befehlsform, gehen in ihrer Verwendung auf, ohne sich auf das Gestern beziehen zu können, und bestimmen mehr oder weniger ihre Umwelt im Raum, ohne deren zeitliche Tiefe ausfüllen zu können.”17 The restricted space of Boston is the immediate environ in which influences on the domestic architecture of each given time era distinguish the performance and the culture regionally and geographically. However, the cultural, social, and political emphasis on the colonies and later the nation reach beyond these natural boundaries of Boston and influenced other spaces of architecture and design. Ceremonies and Rituals were transcribed through the process of cultural transmission into other cultures that defined the greater American space that was slowly developing. The spatial turn is a postmodern discourse that is a social construction and encompasses cultural and implied categorizations of the concept of space, as well as the spatial concept of space.18 Space is the focus in this discourse and brings with it numerous facets that need to be included in a theoretical analysis:

  15

Walter Grasskamp, Konsumglück: Die Ware Erlösung (München: C.H. Beck Verlag, 2000), 38.

16

Grasskamp, Konsumglück, 19, 38.

17

Jean Baudrillard, Das System der Dinge: Über unser Verhältnis zu den alltäglichen Gegenständen, trans. Joseph Garzuly (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus Verlag, 1991), 98.

18

Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns, 284-285.

I NTRODUCTION | 19

Raum meint soziale Produktion von Raum als einem vielschichtigen und oft widersprüchlichen gesellschaftlichen Prozess, eine spezifische Verortung kultureller Praktiken, eine Dynamik sozialer Beziehungen, die auf die Veränderbarkeit von Raum hindeuten […die] Gestaltbarkeit des Raums [wird] durch Kapital, Arbeit, ökonomische Restrukturierung sowie durch soziale Beziehungen und Konflikte bestärkt.19

The construction of space from a geographical, architectural, and social point of view is the emphasis that is placed on this study and the influence that it received and had from politics, culture, and society. There are two names that are closely linked and vital to the concept of the spatial turn: Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja. Henri Lefebvre was responsible for including the social factor within space and the role that it played within societies and social relationships.20 He proposes that social space is a social product.21 Spatial distribution is connected to the evolution of societies and the manner in which they are constructed. The city of Boston and its upper-class neighborhoods are distributed according to this principle in that the social relationships of fellow upper-class men and the natural, political, and economic environment played an important part in the creation and sustainability of neighborhoods that underscored certain social relationships. In the 1960s Lefebvre proposed that, “Die Stadt wird als Projektion der Gesellschaft auf das Terrain definiert [emphasis in original].”22 In effect, the city is a cultural construction of space that abides to the vision and rules that a society has set itself. The projection of social relationships on the spatial constitution of an urban center is defined by class hierarchies that bring about conflict and cohesion, resulting in the distribution of space. “‘Die räumliche Struktur ist deshalb nicht nur die Arena, in der Klassenkonflikte sich austragen, sondern ebenso der Bereich, in dem – und teilweise durch den – Klassenverhältnisse

  19

Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns, 289.

20

Ibid., 291.

21

Jörg Döring, “Spatial Turn,“ in Raum: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, ed. Stephan Günzel (Stuttgart: Verlag J.B. Metzler, 2010), 91.

22

Kurt Meyer, Von der Stadt zur Urbanen Gesellschaft: Jacob Burckhardt und Henri Lefebvre (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2007), 271.

20 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

konstituiert werden.’”23 Lefebvre proposes three different spaces that can be conceptualized in a cultural context: the mental space, the physical space, and the social space.24 However, the mental and physical spaces tend to coincide in that the mentally established social space is directly related to the physical constitution of individual space but has to be appreciated in its entirety. “Daher könnte man, wie Max Weber festellt, ‘mit etwas zu starker Vereinfachung sagen: ‘Klassen’ gliedern sich nach den Beziehungen zur Produktion und zum Erwerb der Güter, ‘Stände’ nach den Prinzipien Ihres Güterkonsums, in Gestalt spezifischer Arten von ‘Lebensführung’’.”25 Imitating a specific physical space does not constitute it as being the appropriate social space; it has to follow the asascribed rules of functionality. This study concentrates on the physical space, in the sense of the city of Boston, the domestic architecture of the case studies, and their interior spaces, as well as the social space, in the sense of the influence and symbolic production of status that evolved out of these physical structures. Edward Soja went on to write about the understanding of what space is, a subject that is still controversial in the discourse of space in general, and promoted the expansion of the spatial turn. He defines two aspects of the spatial turn, which should be given more attention in cultural and social studies. In general, he criticizes that space has not received enough attention and that it has been treated rather passively, whereas history and time have always been conceived as being active.26 The first aspect that he speaks of is “spatial capital,” which refers to the advantages that arise from the density and connectivity of urban centers. The second aspect is “spatial justice,” which exclaims that hierarchies are easily established in these same urban centers and that oppositions form as a result.27 Spatial justice could refer to the emulation that

  23

Derek Gregory, Ideology, Science and Human Geography (London: Hutchinson, 1978), 120, quoted in Edward Soja, “Verräumlichungen: Marxistische Geographie und kritische Gesellschaftstheorie,” in Raumproduktionen: Beiträge der Radical Geography, Eine Zwischenbilanz, ed. Bernd Belina, Boris Michel (Münster: Verlag Westpfälisches Dampfboot, 2007), 92.

24

Meyer, Von der Stadt zur Urbanen Gesellschaft, 313.

25

Max Weber, op. cit., T. II: 688, quoted in Pierre Bourdieu, Zur Soziologie der symbolischen Formen, trans. Wolf H. Fietkau (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), 60.

26

Döring, “Spatial Turn,” in Günzel, 91.

27

Edward Soja, “Vom ‘Zeitgeist’ zum ‘Raumgeist’. New Twists on the Spatial Turn,” in Spatial Turn: Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften, ed. Jörg Döring (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2008), 241-242.

I NTRODUCTION | 21

resulted through the middle class and their strive to be upper class. Through the strategic formation of neighborhoods, architectural styles, and interior trends, the upper class set itself apart and created an urban hierarchy. As a result, gentrificagentrification occurred in direct opposition or perhaps even in coherence with these hierarchies and spatial justification was attempted. On the smaller scale of the house, the distribution of space and rooms had the intention of separating and connecting areas, which adhered to the same social affiliation guidelines that ruled society. The spatial turn applies to the following study in a twofold manner: on the one hand, space is seen metaphorically, “[…] als gesellschaftlicher Produktionsprozess der Wahrnehmung, Nutzung und Aneignung […]”,28 on the other hand, space is considered for what it is, a funcfunctional, utilitarian concept of a given area. “Auch hier gilt Raum nicht als Behälter, ebenso wenig als wahrnehmungsprägende Bewusstseinskategorie, sondern als ‘Produkt sozialen und politischen Handelns’ mit seinen materiellen Entsprechungen in Architektur, Bauwesen, usw.”29 The homes under scrutiny are both metaphorical and structural entities. They create a specific space in the greater context of an urban center, giving it a hierarchy and a systematic organization of class and an identity that is local and national. “Quite literally, space or, more accurately, its ‘warring’ ideological appropriations formed the arena where America’s search for identity (national, political, cultural) has been staged.”30 Within domestic architectural structures, a hierarchy of space also exists and an individualized, domesticated as well as a national identity are produced. The spatial turn is a theoretical tool, which guided the discussion and research of the domestic architecture in Boston. However, the ambiguity of the spatial turn and the construction and application of the aspect of space in cultural historical pieces of writing must be clarified. The problematic of the spatial turn is that it is never quite clear whether a physical rendition of space, such as a house or interior rooms and spaces, are applicable as concepts of space. Sociologists criticize the use of physical space as an aspect of analyzing social

  28

Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns, 292.

29

Bernhard Klein and Gesa Mackenthun, Das Meer als kulterelle Kontaktzone: Räume, Reisende, Repräsentationen (Konstanz: UVK Verlag, 2003), 9, quoted in Doris Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns: Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften (Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2007), 307.

30

Klaus Benesch, “Concepts of Space in American Culture: An Introduction,” in Space in America: Theory History Culture, ed. Klaus Benesch and Kerstin Schmidt (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), 19.

22 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

relationships, because it distracts from the political and social realm of descripdescription. Even scholars jump back and forth between perceiving physical space as a part of the spatial turn, like “[…] Pierre Bourdieus anfänglicher Unterscheidung und dann doch wieder Verschmelzung von physischem und sozialem Raum demonstrieren.”31 In the following chapters, it becomes clear that physical space is a cultural concept; in fact, it is a cultural text that establishes the social, cultural, and political definitions of a broader space and even in a national context. According to Bourdieu, Folgt man diesen Prämissen, wird die gesellschaftliche Welt vornehmlich als symbolische Welt wahrgenommen, in der um die Verfügung über symbolische Macht gekämpft wird. Dabei ist vor allem die Fähigkeit zur Grenzziehung, zur Unterscheidung, zur Klassifizierung und Differenzierung von Bedeutung.

32

Social, cultural, and political actions are materialistically reflected in domestic architecture and, thus, reversely these concepts and ideas can be transcribed to historians that observe these structures at a later point in time. “Architecture may be an effort to arrest time by wresting and shaping a livable place from space, yet its specific design is always shaped by particular cultural values and social norms.”33 These values and social norms, to be found in a physical form of space, do possess a historical stronghold that personalizes and politicizes culture. Furthermore, these physical and social or rather cultural spaces, when combined with modern concepts of historical thought, create an understanding of contemporary taste, “So ergänzt die ganze Vergangenheit, als eine Sammlung von Gebrauchsformen, die Kollektion der modernen Verbrauchsgegenstände, um zusammen die transzendente Sphäre des Zeitgeschmacks, der Mode, zu bilden.”34 A variation of this spatial conception that is partially applicable to the study is the topographical turn. It applies through one part of its theory in which it sees architecture as acting in two distinct ways in cultural history. Primarily, as supported by Maurice Halbwachs and Jan Assmann, it is seen as the foundation of a collective memory:

  31 32

Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns, 315. Achim Landwehr, Geschichte des Sagbaren: Einführung in die historische Diskursanalyse (Tübingen: Edition Diskord, 2001), 94.

33

Benesch, “Concepts of Space in American Culture,” in Benesch and Schmidt, 17.

34

Baudrillard, Das System der Dinge, 109.

I NTRODUCTION | 23

Assmann’s concept, on the other hand, looks at the medial conditions and social structures of organization which groups and societies use to connect themselves to an objectified supply of cultural representations, available in diverse forms (for example, in writing, image, architecture, liturgy), in order to construct patterns for self-interpretation legiti35

legitimized by the past.

Thus, it often occurs that the group that is responsible for this form of selfinterpretation does not act in a particularly egalitarian or open manner, instead cultural memory, in most cases, is strongly tied to an elitist concept.36 The architecture of the upper class provides not only a collective memory for those among its ranks, but through the emulation of middle-class households and the consequential spreading of their style – the American landscape was influenced by their developing memory. Secondly, according to Susanne K. Langer, architecture is a symbol for specific social groups.37 “Bei der Erinnerungskultur dagegen handelt es sich um die Einhaltung einer sozialen Verpflichtung. Sie ist auf die Gruppe bezogen.”38 Maurice Halbwachs has a slightly altered conception of memory and its construction. He considers individual and collective memory to be socially and spatially conceivable, “[…] the social group comes into being through stable spatial images representing it […]. It is the spatial images which produce collectively constituted psychological states, and especially the collective representations connected with memories and stored in the collective memory.”39 On a grander scale, these spatial conceptions are the instruments of creating identity within a regional space and perhaps even extending to a national identity. “In urban society, the spatial fragmentation causes fragmentation of social life. But movements among people are faster paced, and

  35

Dietrich Harth, “The Invention of Cultural Memory,” in Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 91.

36

Jan Assmann, “Communicative and Cultural Memory,” in Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 116.

37

Kirsten Wagner, “Topographical Turn,“ in Raum: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch,

38

Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, 30.

39

Jean-Christophe Marcel and Laurent Mucchielli, “Maurice Halbwachs’s mémoire

ed. Stephan Günzel (Stuttgart: Verlag J.B. Metzler, 2010), 100.

collective,” in Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 145.

24 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

a greater diversity of situations is concentrated in a given time frame.”40 In addiaddition, it is clear that the architecture presented here deemed as a symbol for this group of elites and exalted a message to other groups that determined their position in society: Auch diese Dingwelt – Geräte, Möbel, Räume, ihre spezifische Anordnung, […] – ist sozial geprägt: ihr Wert, ihr Preis, ihre status-symbolische Bedeutung sind soziale Fakten. Diese Tendenz zur Lokalisierung gilt für jegliche Art von Gemeinschaften. Jede Gruppe, die sich als solche konsolidieren will, ist bestrebt, sich Orte zu schaffen und zu sichern, die nicht nur Schauplätze ihre Interaktionsformen abgeben, sondern Symbole ihrer Identität und Anhaltspunkte Ihrer Erinnerung. Das Gedächtnis braucht Orte, tendiert zur Verräumlichung.

41

This memory and symbolism not only influenced the middle class, but also other cultures and, notably, was influenced by other cultures to begin with. The personalization of culture evolves through the influence of other cultures, which is a result of the transmission and transfer of culture. This theory of cultural transmission provides that a society be shaped into one by various influences and by agents of experience and transcription. "A culture lives according to the ways it is reproduced and transferred, just as it is modified by the operational aspects of the transmission itself.”42 According to Bonnemaison, culture is first inherited and then reinvented according to the culture that is already present, the way it was transferred, and the way in which it is received.43 This process of cultural transmission influences those people that are responsible for the construction and those who are responsible for the commissioning of structures of domestic architecture, not to mention their own individual preexisting cultural attributes which come into the mix, as well. Domestic architecture and interior design, then, is the transferal of one’s own culture and the influences from outside sources. This process of civilization was recognized by Norbert Elias, who describes individuals as having gone through several practices of transferal and thus, becoming who they are:

  40

Marcel and Mucchielli, “Maurice Halbwachs’s mémoire collective,” 147.

41

Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, 39.

42

Joël Bonnemaison, Culture and Space: Conceiving a New Cultural Geography

43

Bonnemaison, Culture and Space, 69.

(London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), 69.

I NTRODUCTION | 25

Rather than attributing all this to the rise of capitalism or liberal constitutional democracy, he argued that contemporary modes and standards of behaviour are a result of long-term processes which gradually form the individual into a particular kind of person, one who as a result of numerous civilizing processes adopts a particular mode of existence: a modus operandi which fundamentally defines the person’s relation to the world.

44

Their mode of existence also influences their manner of living and their places of habitation. Elias supports the idea that civilization, coming from French and English linguistics, is a developmental process, whereas culture, rather a German term, is a product that humans have made.45 This German word Kultur describes an elite, highly positioned identity that describes a nation and its ideals. The English term civilization, however, describes so much more than actual culturally significant characteristics, it is all-encompassing and thus becomes excessively collective and almost superficial.46 This fabricated commodity, then, experienced a high rate of transmission in the eighteenth and still in the nineteenth century in America, which was mainly due to the influx of immigration from various countries, all with different cultures and different architectures. The process of civilization, in this case, is applicable to the Bostonians of varying origins, as a well as to their architecture, which went through a process of architecturalization, and in the case of the upper class, a process of continuous refinement. “Die legitimen Inhaber der Symbolischen Macht definieren Bourdieu zufolge allgemeinverbindlich die ‘Wahrheit der sozialen Welt’, der sich subalterne Gruppen schließlich selbstgenügsam und selbst-beschränkend anzupassen und unterzuordnen haben.”47 The middle class, thus, had to undergo a further step of cultural transmission in order to attain subdued refinement.

  44

John Mandalios, “Civilization Complexes and Processes: Elias, Nelson and Eisenstadt,” in Handbook of Historical Sociology, ed. Gerard Delanty, Engin F. Isin (London: SAGE Publications, 2003), 66.

45

Norbert Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation: Soziogenetische und Psycho-

46

Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners and State Formation

genetische Untersuchungen (Basel: Verlag Haus zum Falken, 1939), 3. and Civilization, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), 4-5. 47

Bourdieu, Pierre, “Sozialer Raum und ‘Klassen’. Leçon sur la leçon. Zwei Vorlesungen (Frankfurt a.M., 1985):25, quoted in Klaus Kraemer, Der Markt der Gesellschaft: Zu einer soziologischen Theorie der Marktvergesselschaftung (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997), 299.

26 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

The transferal of culture did not always have to stem from abroad, but could also come from within and instead breach the boundaries of class, as opposed to geographical borders. The middle class attempted to emulate the culture of the upper class and transfer it onto themselves. Their main method of instrumentalization was consumption and the marketplace evolved according to evolving social standards: Die Soziologie führt hier auch nicht recht weiter, weil sie die demonstrative Aspekte des Konsumgüterverbrauchs bevorzugt, die sich nicht auf die stofflichen Eigenschaften der Gegenstände, sondern auf ihre symbolische Handhabung im Sinne des Prestigeerwerbs beziehen. Bei dieser angesehenen Form des Fetischismus, der Zurschaustellung von Reichtum im ‘demonstrativen Konsum’ (Thorstein Veblen), macht der erkennbar hohe 48

Tauschwert einen beträchtlichen Teil des Gebrauchwertes der Güter aus.

Emulation by the middle class thus became a demonstrative display of status through the exhibition of certain objects and their applicable worth. “Der Konsum dient folglich als Mittel zum Zweck: als Mittel zur Demonstration eines Lebensstils, der sich von der Lebensweise des Proletariats prinzipiell abhebt.”49 This can be deemed a process of cultural change, which is linked to a new performance and improvisation of a ritual that is not one’s own. “Veränderungsmomente ergeben sich bereits aus den Spielräumen der rituellen Praxis selbst, wie sie durch eine analytische Zergliederung des Rituals in seine spezifische Verlaufsform sichtbar werden.”50 The process of change and civilization can be observed in the manner in which it changes. The rituals may be the same, but the processes are different. The transmission of culture can thus be disseminated in order to understand the origin of influences and the evolution of societies. This cultural progression can be traced through the attempt at the development of a national architecture in a nation that is characterized by an abundance of cultural transmissions. The performative turn, the spatial turn, the topographical turn, and cultural transmission are theoretical approaches that underscore the cultural significance of upper-class domestic architecture. The performative turn can only be applied from a distant perspective in that the empirical evidence of these performances of social mobility is rather limited. The spatial turn provides an insight into the categorization of spaces and the various forms that culminate in this research,

  48

Grasskamp, Konsumglück, 37.

49

Lindner, “Kritik der Konsumgüterwerbung,” 300-301.

50

Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns, 110.

I NTRODUCTION | 27

including the socially revealing form of physical spaces. Part of the topographtopographical turn applies the importance of architecture in societal understanding. Cultural transmission gives a background look at the possible magnitude of the influences that shaped Boston, its neighborhoods, its architecture, and its people and how these processes are infinite. Yet, these approaches should not consummate the interpretation of domestic architecture fully, Wenn Du ein architektonisches Projekt im Kopf hast, die verschiedenen Gegebenheiten des Raumes, der Geschichte, der Umgebung, die Elemente des Projektes, die Ziele, die Finalität, dann wird Dir das vielleicht alles an einem bestimmten Moment erlauben, Dich zu einem verwirrenden Objekt gelangen zu lassen, das wirklich etwas anderes ware als das ursprüngliche Objekt. Aber wenn Du zuviel planst, wenn die Konzeptualisierung zu dicht ist, verkümmert die Ader, und ich glaube, daß das auch für den Bereich der theoretischen Forschung zutrifft, diejenigen, die alles anhäufen worauf man sich beziehen kann, die Daten multiplizieren, eine Bahn bis ins unendliche darlegen, erschöpfen sich, bevor sie 51

etwas gesagt haben[...].

These theories, which guide the research and hinge on past and contemporary approaches, but are not intended to steer the interpretation entirely, were complemented by the methodology of the investigation of these metaphorical and physical spaces. Method Methodically two perspectives had to be considered. On the one hand, this is a cultural historical study requiring methods that are used by historians from different branches of cultural disciplines. On the other hand, there is an artistic aspect, more specifically that of the decorative art of architecture, which follows methods used in art history. These methods are rather similar, yet they need to be explained individually in order to gain an understanding of the overall spectrum of the research methodology that was used to contemplate eighteenth and nineteenth century Bostonian upper-class domestic architecture. The cultural historical method used to structure the following research was a hermeneutic appraisal of the texts and objects that construe the focus. Hermeneutics is usually understood as, “the art of understanding particularly the

  51

Jean Baudrillard and Jean Nouvel, Einzigartige Objekte: Architektur und Philosophie, trans. Eva Werth (Wien: Passagen Verlag, 2004), 113-114.

28 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

written discourse of another person correctly.” 52 Interestingly, Friedrich SchleiSchleiermacher refers to hermeneutics as being an art of understanding texts, but it can also be an art of understanding art. The latter postulation is rather the one that art historians would refer to, however, some art, such as homes and interiors, can be read as a text and thus, the hermeneutical method of research is similar in its construction and utility. The former discourse of reading and interpreting a text has developed in the cultural and philosophical historical disciplines, as a reference to understanding the past. Hermeneutics has a large connection to language and is thus often seen as being a method for textual sources. “First and most famously developed by Wilhelm Dithey (1833-1911) and Wilhelm Windelband (1848-1915), this was a reading strategy that emphasized the scholar’s empathy with a text, an understanding of the meanings constructed by the text’s language.”53 The language and the message of written sources were interpreted and read not only according to contemporary sentiment concerning the upper class, Boston, and domestic architecture and interiors, but also the way that these texts had an impact and an influence on the time of relevance. The primary documents of the architects and the owners of the homes give insight into the life that they lived and strove for, and lay the foundation for their social positioning and the architecture that resulted from this. Hermeneutics is a broad method of research that in itself requires further classification and understanding. Although the text is the center of the hermeneutic method, the meanings that a text conveys and the influences that this may have had are all aspects that hermeneutics must consider and investigate. According to Johann Gustav Droysen, there are four phases of the interpretation of texts that historians must relate to in order to produce an accurate representation of past events. These four phases consist of a pragmatic interpretation, an interpretation of the circumstances, a psychological interpretation, and an interpretation of ideas. The pragmatic asks what happened. In the following study the diction is more specifically, what was built and why? The interpretation of the circumstances extends to the reasoning and influence that these conditions had on the topic of discussion. The historical events in Boston, the development of the city, the establishment of the upper class and its

  52

Friedrich Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism And Other Writings, trans. and ed. Andrew Bowie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 3.

53

Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, “The Source: The Basis of Our Knowledge About the Past,” in From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods, ed. Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 102.

I NTRODUCTION | 29

morals and values, the professionalization of architecture, and the progress that each homeowner in question underwent are all results of specific circumstances that influenced the domestic architecture that they chose to erect. In the psychological interpretation, it is the historian’s task to place themselves in the shoes of those that are being analyzed. In slight coherence with the performative turn, the protagonists of this study, the architects and the homeowners, are reanimated and their lives recreated to the best of the ability using the primary sources that were available. The interpretation of ideas is the reasoning that lies behind the actions being described and constitutes the integrity of the house as it was and as it is.54 The greater purpose behind the use of multifaceted hermeneutic interpretation is to steer away from a purely analytical observation of the text or objects that one is working with.55 The theme here, therefore, is not to examine the minute architectural characteristics of each house, but instead to investigate and interpret the symbolic aspects of the outside and inside and to link these to the architects and owners on the immediate scale, and to the upper class in Boston, as well as nationally, on the greater scale. To return to Edward Soja, he was responsible for composing a specialized type of hermeneutics that should also be attributed to this study. The concept of “spatial hermeneutics” refers to an open conception of space, which allows the historian to interpret all aspects of space in correspondence with one another.56 In this sense, it is not only the domestic architecture and interiors of the upper class that present the statements that these objects exclaim, but also the emulation of the middle class provides the additional interrogation of what general refinement was. Being able to look at other classes and architectures in relation to one another aids the interpretation of the obvious supremacy of one over the other. It also permits the problematic of spatial distribution and spatial hierarchies to become recognizable. Although this study is not meant as an analogy of social hierarchies and their varying domestic architecture, occasional comparisons of spatial features underscore the importance, authority, and permanence of an upper-class architecture in Boston and also what this meant in the national realm. These literal and geographical research methods are used to place the objects of interpretation accordingly within society and also to inspect and read their protagonists. Art historians whose focus lies on architecture also use methods that are very similar to those used by cultural historians and reiterate the use of text semiotics

  54

Lorenz, Konstruktion der Vergangenheit, 92-93.

55

Ibid., 95.

56

Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns, 303.

30 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

and hermeneutics with regard to structural objects. The method of semiotics in architectural history introduces the idea that architecture is a language, which speaks to the owner of a house and the onlooker. “Die Anwendung der Semiotik innerhalb der Architekturinterpretation setzt stillschweigend voraus, daß die jeweilige Architektur nicht nur funktioniert, sondern kommuniziert und somit neben dem Benutzer vorrangig auch den Betrachter anspricht.”57 It is precisely this point of view that expresses the manner in which the houses under observation were perceived. The importance lay in reading their façades and their interiors like a historical document, which expressed and made a statement concerning the owner and which was directed at the onlooker, in this case referring to society as a whole. The use of hermeneutics in the field of the decorative arts is widespread and architectural historians often make use of it. It is with this method that the actual reading and interpretation of a given structure takes place and it requires the following of a new set of rules: Im Medium der Architektur wird der Raum als Gestalter zum Gestaltenden und somit zu einem die Erfahrung übersteigendem. Es ist die Möglichkeit eröffnet, den Raum nicht nur als Struktur- oder Formelement und in seinem zweckbestimmten Sinn zu interpretieren, sonder darüber hinaus als ein eigenständiges Sinnstiftendes wie Sinnganzes[...]. Der Raum gelangt zur Eigenqualität, zur ästhetischen Wirklichkeit, von der Objekts- zur Subjektsqualität vor aller Anbindung an Funktion, Inhalt oder Stil.58

Both the architecture and the space or rather interior space have to be seen through their expressive purpose as opposed to their superficial function. Architectural hermeneutics consists of the interpretation of a façade and interiors according to their semiotics, or rather what they are trying to say. The messages that can be deciphered from their walls give the historian information on the various aspects of these domestic spaces. In this study, this application of hermeneutics provided the method with which to read the façades and interiors of the Otis, Colburn/Prescott, and Gibson houses and constitutes the central effort of the architectural interpretation presented. The interpretation of written documentation is thus secondary. The focus of this study is the domestic architecture of upper-class Boston and is exemplified

  57

Ralf-Peter Seippel, Architektur und Interpretation: Methoden und Ansätze der Kunstgeschichte in ihrer Bedeutung für die Architekturinterpretation (Essen: Verlag Die Blaue Eule, 1989), 68.

58

Seippel, Architektur und Interpretation, 116.

I NTRODUCTION | 31

through three case studies. These three homes are not literal texts, but they are historic texts in that they can be read and scrutinized in order to attain a historical perspective of this regional class hierarchy using their home dwellings. The use of objects is more closely related to iconography and iconographic studies thereof. Disseminating the text of a visual object requires, much like that of language, a look beyond the surface and an interpretation of what is stated between the lines, or rather between the mortars.59 The architectural hermeneutic of the Otis, Colburn/Prescott, and Gibson houses require an iconographic reading in that they say more than they appear to. The interpretation of their foundation, elevations, and interiors provides the icon that they mean to represent on behalf of their architects and their owners. This method of research is applied not only to the (very well-maintained) remnants of the houses, but also pictures of them from different time periods, how they may have adjusted to contemporary surroundings, and how they were evaluated in certain records and statistics. The interpretation of the source of the house as a whole requires different points of view from which to examine the entirety of its structure and purpose. The hermeneutics of cultural and art history provide the empirical research guidelines for investigating domestic architecture in the context of upper-class Boston. The hermeneutics of text analysis provides the method of interpreting the primary sources that pertain to the architects and the homeowners and their abodes. Spatial hermeneutics lets a comparative analysis enter the scene, where it is necessary, to confirm the social renderings of upper-class cohesion and the threat that was present from below. The architectural methodology allows a more in-depth and disciplined investigation of the objects and their structural personas while adjusting the historical context to the decorative arts. This allows the iconography of certain objects to be further examined using both cultural and historical guidelines that were established using hermeneutics and architectural accuracy to underscore the influences and, thus, the equivalent meanings of houses and interiors and their respective ornamentations. It is the combination of these different interdisciplinary methods that are obligatory prerequisites for the proper interrogation of the artifacts within a cultural historical interpretation of domestic architecture.

  59

Howell and Prevenier, “The Source: The Basis of Our Knowledge About the Past,” in Howell and Prevenier, 104.

32 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

T ERMINOLOGY A cultural historical study of the upper class in Boston and their domestic architecture and interiors introduces interdisciplinary terminology that needs to be explained for the purpose of clarification. The social aspect of class in general and in Boston, which possesses its own elitist terms, will be discussed with regard to their locales, politics, and religion in the second chapter; however, their specific definitions need to be put into context. In addition, the meaning behind the architect and the interior designer, which cannot be used loosely throughout the entire timeframe, will be given a general meaning that explains its continuous use throughout the following chapters. Finally, writing as a cultural historian, it was necessary to study the terminology frequented by architectural historians and to use these terms for the descriptive passages concerning the case study homes. In order for the reader to be able to follow along and picture the house and its details, these terms will be given an overview and listed in an appendix as a reference aid while perusing the architectural details of the houses.60 Upper-class membership can be subdivided into various categories, which have different words to adorn them and that can mean different things. Primarily, the general term upper class is used throughout this study and signifies the top rank of individuals within the general social order, regardless of whether they are a part of this class because of their ancestry or their wealth. An additional term that is used to express the same general idea is the word elite. There are two further terms that may seem ambiguous and whose meaning in this particular work should be paid some attention. The word aristocracy can mean upper class but, on the American scene, it brings with it a somewhat derogatory connotation in that it is often associated with royal ancestry. Many authors writing about American history often use the term in coherence with an upper class that had high-ranking ancestry and their diction was not altered. The use of the word in the general context of the American upper class, however, will only be used in circumstances where it seems necessary in that a name-based accession is the underlying requisite of class membership. Aristocracy is a term that is somewhat controversial in the top ranks of American society, whereas the word gentry can mean various things regarding the lower portion of the upper class. Similar to the term aristocracy, different authors use this word in differing ways. Often times gentry is equal to upper class, whereas other times the gentry refers rather to the upper-middle or middle class. In this study, it will be used universally to

  60

A Glossary of architectural terms is in Appendix I.

I NTRODUCTION | 33

describe the more wide-ranging upper ranks of society, which include the upper class and the upper-middle class. Notably, the term gentrification is only appliapplicable to the upper-middle and middle class in that it signifies a communal rise, or rather an exchange, within the social hierarchy, which the upper class is incapable of achieving in that they are already at the top. “Mit dem aus dem Englischen entlehnten Begriff gentrification ist ein sozialer Umstrukturierungsprozess gemeint, der sich in viele Städten beobachten last: eine statusniedrige Bevölkerung wird durch eine statushöhere Bevölkerung ausgetauscht.”61 These words provide an overview of mainstream terms for the upper regions of society and the use of each in the chapters that are to follow. Whilst referring to these families their origin and their influence are sometimes referred to as being from the mother country, which, unless otherwise specified, refers to England. In the metropolis of Boston, new terms became a part of the local idiom that described the upper class and, consequently, the individuals of each respective case study. The most widespread nickname was that of the “Boston Brahmins,” a term that was given the socially exclusive members of Boston proper by Oliver Wendell Holmes.62 In essence, the term refers to the Brahmins of the ancient Hindus, which were the leaders of their caste and society. Holmes applied the term to the elite Bostonians who also became the guiding dynamic behind their modern society.63 The term will be used on occasion to describe this exclusive tract within society and it should be noted that it was a term that the Brahmins would gladly have associated themselves with. Another nickname that the majority of upper-class Bostonians perhaps did not fancy as much was that of belonging to, “a city of blue-nosed provincials – ‘cold roast Boston,’ as T.G. Appleton once described his birthplace […]. Its citizens were fierce sectionalists and often suffered from acute overrefinement, what [Henry] James usually meant by the word ‘genteel’.”64 The slight ridicule behind this endearing term of an untouched, frigid meat dish is strategically placed in the title of this work because it provides a metaphorical link to their domestic architecture. Ornamenting the ‘cold roast’ describes the circumstances of domestic architecture and interior designs attempts at embellishing a conservative, uncooked part of society. As Theroux calls it, their

  61

Meyer, Von der Stadt zur Urbanen Gesellschaft, 275.

62

Farrell, Elite Families, 1-2.

63

Stephen Birmingham, America’s Secret Aristocracy (Boston: Little, Brown and

64

Alexander Theroux, “Henry James’s Boston,” The Iowa Review 20, no. 2

Company, 1987), 137. (Spring/Summer 1990): 160.

34 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

“over-refinement,” the domestic architecture and interior design, were the gargarnish that the upper class used in order to set themselves apart from the rest. The Boston Associates and sometimes also the Mount Vernon Proprietors are also names granted Boston’s upper class in general, but they refer more specifically to certain groups of individuals that were a part of upper-class business ventures. These groups and their names will not be used generally, but rather contextually with regard to their business partners or endeavors. Among the protagonists in this study are the architects and interior designers, as they are known today. Neither of these terms existed in the United States until well into the nineteenth century, and in the case of interior designers not until the very late-nineteenth, early-twentieth century. The development of the trade will be discussed in further detail in chapter three, including the evolution of the appropriate terminology and its connotations. Seeing as this study is written in the twenty-first century, in which the term architect and interior designer have been well established over time and there is hardly room for discrepancy, both terms will be used to describe the builder and planner of a house and the decorator of the inside of the house, respectively. As a result, even in coherence with structures that were built in the eighteenth century and prior to the implementation of both terms, the words architect and interior designer will be used to describe the carpenters, builders, and decorators, as they may have been more commonly known back then. Coming from a cultural perspective, architecture and its implications remain to be the focus. The descriptions of the houses do require some insight into architectural terminology, however, and these terms must be properly defined. Domestic architecture is the overall term for privately owned homes that can differ greatly in their size, style, and build. This includes the exterior façade and the floor plan of the space within these elevations. It requires to be treated separately from civic and public architecture in that its scale and use are of a completely dissimilar magnitude. The same holds true for domestic interiors, which refers to the decoration and placement of objects in specific rooms or spaces that make up the house. The detailed definitions of aspects that define domestic architecture and interiors, and which are used in the study of the houses can be referenced in Appendix I. Domestic architecture also includes another aspect that has been omitted from analysis due to its different characteristics. Landscape architecture is a part of most domestic architecture, less so in urban centers, however. The homes that are to be analyzed in this study have small tracts of natural land in front of their doors, but in all three case studies, these are restricted to a small piece of lawn, which can hardly qualify as landscape architecture. Exterior elevations and interiors can be scrutinized more readily

I NTRODUCTION | 35

because of their spatial connectivity and because they incorporate the same asaspects of design. Landscapes can be considered status symbols, as well, due to the fact that being able to sacrifice a piece of one’s property for nothing more than a piece of grass in a dense urban center signaled the immensity of space that one obviously still had available while retaining the proper comfort level. Their embellishment, at least in consideration of the three case studies, is kept rather minimal and thus a certain degree of uniformity is attached to this aspect of private homes. The focus, therefore, remains with the strict structural elements of the house from the outside as well as the inside.

C ONTEMPORARY R ESEARCH

AND

S OURCES

Contemporary Research Each individual section has some sort of contemporary research that can be attributed to it. This pertains to the discourse concerning Boston, the upper class, domestic architecture, interior design, and to a lesser degree also the houses that were studied. Yet, the combination and analysis of all of these elements put together and in relation to each other fails to exist. More specifically, a concise perception of these three homes and the statements that they made about their owners, about architecture in the United States, and about Boston has not been presented from a cultural point of view in which the political agenda that discerned the colonies and the development of an independent nation is put into the context. The intention in the following chapters is thus to establish a backdrop for the urban upper class in Boston and then to analyze their domestic architecture and interiors while contemplating the social, cultural, and political consequences that these have. In correspondence to the general outline, the contemporary discourse concerning each part of the study will be investigated. The regional focus on Boston is the starting point of concentration in this analysis of private homes. The discourse on urban centers has long been established and it is common to concentrate on cities and their various characteristics. “Urbanism is the study of cities – their inner structures and environments as well as developments and processes within. It is also the practice of planning, arranging, designing, and

36 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

creating human communities.”65 These aspects of urbanism also establish part of the argument presented here. The inner structures and environments of a specific class, or rather human community, are followed in their planning and designing stages and then investigated from an internal point of view. The city is perceived not only through its structures, but also through the individuals that design and those that inhabit them. The concept of New Urbanism, which came into being after the Second World War, integrates this human factor and uses it as the medium with which to plan and evaluate cities.66 The study does not concentrate on urbanism with regard to Boston, as such, but instead uses the urban plan that Boston embodies to reconfirm the upper-class stronghold over neighborhoods and city planning in general. Urbanism is a widespread discourse in cultural history, yet it is only an introductory part of the study of domestic architecture and interiors, which is placed in the urban setting of Boston. The second aspect of the study is that of class, in this case the upper class, which has also been paid attention to in past and present discourses. The topic of class has been analyzed from the standpoint of the upper, middle, and lower class placing each in a social context that varies from region to region. The more specific subject matter of the upper class has been given the backseat in scholarly research after the Second World War. Instead, the New Histories were introduced, which decided to put the focus on the marginalized groups in society, which included the less fortunate and poorer classes of American society.67 Also, a New Cultural History was developed, which presupposes that the majority of past cultural studies were directed towards the upper class. “What is even more important here is that historians have learned to take culture more seriously, not just the culture or cultural products of the elite – that historians have always done – but culture as the system of meaning through which people experience the world.”68 The upper class, whether through the willful act of exclusion or as a measure of standard, has been treated differently in past and contemporary research. This study treats the upper class as the focal

  65

Tigran Haas, “New Urbanism & Beyond,” in New Urbanism and Beyond: Designing Cities for the Future, ed. Tigran Haas (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2008), 11.

66

Haas, “New Urbanism & Beyond,” in Haas, 9.

67

Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, “New Interpretive Approaches,” in From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods, ed. Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 112-113.

68

Howell and Prevenier, “New Interpretive Approaches,” in Howell and Prevenier, 117.

I NTRODUCTION | 37

point because it demonstrates the only possible perspective of the original strive towards extravagance and of a decisive threat of emulation from lower ranks. Domestic architecture has been a part of both architectural research as well as cultural historical research. This is not restricted to a purely structural and technical perspective, but also views the house as a symbol and a tool in underunderstanding history. “By common understanding, Americans have embraced the house as the most appropriate metaphor for their political and social states.”69 It is not new, then, to use domestic architecture as means in investigating the people, lives, and events of things past. “As buildings are candid statements they have a moral superiority as records over many of those made by historians, and subsequently revered and treasured by other historians.”70 Relying on these artiartifacts that have been preserved over time, in most cases, is a common method in analyzing a nation’s history. The discourse of using architecture as a historical text has been introduced and used, but is not very widespread. Looking at both the outside and inside of a house is important in capturing a nation’s historical development in that it brings historians directly to the people that lived and created it and permits them to enter their most personal and intimate of spaces. “In the absence of ancient customs or structures, the foundational unit of community construction, the house, became the means by which the nation conceptualized its own history.”71 Breaching the boundaries of a community by observing people’s living situations is a manner of reconstructing history that other historians have used. The interiors also count for something in this process in that, “[…] the filling in of interior space is an exercise in self-representation.”72 If interiors and exteriors served a representative purpose then these rare glimpses at early American life and values must be exploited. Using the three case studies in Boston is a means of exemplifying this exact process and methodically using the metaphor as the medium of investigation. The arrangement of these different and similar discourses provides the foundation for examining the Otis, Colburn/Prescott, and Gibson houses. The brief inspection of the urbanism of the city of Boston and the symbolic use of domestic architecture and interiors are implemented into the three case studies

  69

Duncan Faherty, Remodeling the Nation: The Architecture of American Identity, 1776-1858 (Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2007), 2.

70

John Gloag, The Architectural Interpretation of History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975), 1.

71

Faherty, Remodeling the Nation, 6.

72

Ibid., 34.

38 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

and correspond to the general social, cultural, and political climate that was prepresent at each respective time in the United States. The houses provide the evievidence of these interactions and permit the events of each of their times and the positions of their owners in society to be read off of their walls. Looking at Boston through the streets that are lined with elite private homes is a new manner of conceptualizing the city and its influence on American architecture and national politics. Boston is ideal for this purpose in that it not only provides the tumultuous political backdrop for the creation of the new nation in the lateeighteenth century, but also “This sureness of purpose, this desire to create a model city, lay at the very heart of Boston’s identity as a community.”73 The houses that were investigated bring with them an idealness that also helped constitute the proper confirmation of these statements and meanings. Although each one has been researched independently, they have not been put together in one study that covers the major architectural instances and symbolisms of the nineteenth century. The Otis house magnifies the architecture of Revolutionary times and aids in bringing to light the conception of Boston, the professionalization of architecture, and the political voice of Federalism. The Colburn/Prescott house symbolizes merchant wealth and ranking and spatial exclusivity prior to the War of 1812. The Gibson house exhibits cluttered refinement that accentuated the Victorian era and brought about an architectural revolution in the years to come, especially after the Centennial Exposition of 1876. These houses followed the urban sprawl of Boston and the alterations within domestic architecture that were based on national mechanisms of change. There are few other houses that exemplify this chronology so clearly and it is the compilation of these three that underscore the theme of ornamenting the “cold roast” throughout the first century of American nationhood. Sources The sources that were available on these topics of focus varied and had to be individually gathered, as well. Literature concerning the upper class and Boston proper were among the most numerous sources available. Many authors have given a general account of the upper class in America and have postulated theories concerning their behavior. Literature on Boston considered the urbanism approach and brought geographical, historical, cultural, and political themes to the forefront. Furthermore, attention was paid to the planning and development

  73

Michael Rawson, Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 14.

I NTRODUCTION | 39

of the city as an early American center of ideas and influences and some of these sources included the theme of domestic architecture in this process. The secondsecondary sources concerning domestic architecture and interior design often had a referential tone to them and usually offered descriptive nuances, but barely touched upon the interpretation of these, which was left open to the observer. Overall, the secondary literature was extensive enough to gain an adequate overview of information concerning each aspect of the cultural analysis. One difficulty in using secondary sources that pertained to upper-class domestic architecture and interiors was the rapid turnover from Europe to the upper class and the upper to middle class. Defining whether a style can be attributed to American influences at a given time or was still copied from European building is rather ambiguous. “Since the beginning of the eighteenth century, America’s elite had copied the homes, furnishings, clothing, and manners of the European aristocracy.”74 An emphasis that should be placed on the domestic architecture and interiors that are portrayed here is that they all were copies of European trends, but added an American touch that made them unique. It is not possible to term any of these an American architectural style, but it also not an exact replica of European houses. The same holds true with regard to middle-class imitations, some of the objects and aspects that distinguished a home as being upper class, and which were advertised as such in the literature, may already have been considered middle class because of the immense rate of emulation and because it was slightly altered. The research done on the houses had to confirm that they were truly upper class in order to accurately attribute the influences to this social stratum. The secondary sources often times do not provide an accurate background on the family and thus, ensuring that they are truly upper class occasionally had to be reduced to mere speculation. Contemporary sources and research on these different topics does exist, yet the vaguer the topic is the simpler it is to find accurate, modern sources. The secondary sources that pertain more specifically to the topic at hand were increasingly older. The literature that was consulted was also used and recommended by the curators and archivists in Boston and sometimes reach quite far back. The literature regarding Boston’s domestic architecture, and more specifically Boston’s upper-class domestic architecture, is limited and provides only a general overview. The three houses and the primary sources that they still hold provide the most reliable look at specific examples of this type of

  74

Rawson, Eden on the Charles, 32.

40 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

architecture and deliver the detail to the argument that remains vague in the secsecondary sources. The primary sources that were consulted in Boston can be categorized by those concerning the architect, those concerning the house, and those concerning the family. The sources that dealt with the architects Charles Bulfinch, Asher Benjamin, and Edward Clarke Cabot were sometimes manifold and sometimes rather scarce. Bulfinch and Benjamin were among the most well-known architects in Boston and in the United States and their personal and business papers are well maintained. Benjamin and his architectural expertise are especially accessible in that he was an architectural author whose books were widespread and popular. They also went through numerous editions and have therefore persevered to this day. Cabot was the only one of the three that posed some problems even though he was responsible for at least one major monument: the Boston Athenaeum. One of the only manners in which his talent can be interpreted is through his watercolor paintings and the few personal notes that exist regarding his work on the Boston Athenaeum and his architectural partnerships. Each of the three houses that were under scrutiny is a historical home, meaning that it has been preserved in some way or another. In most cases, these homes were bought by an organization that ensures that its upkeep is continuously maintained. “Das performative Vermögen der Sprache ist es, das Räume herstellt, die mehr sind als bloße Verhaltensumwelten.”75 The houses were used as texts of cultural interpretation that performed and described their own and their surrounding’s history. Each home has an archive, which possesses the primary material that has been left from the original owners and sometimes even the architects. Some of these archives are very extensive in their material and have collected these over many years. The Otis house has its library and archives in the basement of the house and these include papers by Harrison Gray Otis and also other architectural material on the house and other historic homes that belong to Historic New England, the proprietor of the first Otis house. Additionally, other scholars have done research on the Otis home and a structure report exists, which goes through the entire house and minutely reveals which parts of the house are still in their original state. The Colburn/Prescott house possesses reports compiled by an anonymous author, who was assumed to have been a member of the current owners, The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and who prepared these notes after the purchase of the house. Additionally, the Colburn/Prescott

  75

Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns, 310.

I NTRODUCTION | 41

house was built as a twin house and the twin portion remains less altered than the one that is open to visitors. This twin house is privately owned, yet an archiarchitectural historian was allowed to look at the home a few years ago in order for the Dames to reconstruct what the inside of the Colburn/Prescott house may have originally looked like. These notes were consulted and perused in order to imagine the manner in which the house was spatially arranged. The Gibson house also has an archive, which is situated on the fourth floor of the house in the Back Bay. The last owner, Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., envisioned the house to be a Victorian house museum that grants visitors an authentic look at nineteenth-century domestic life in Boston. The interiors and exteriors are thus preserved, for the most part, in the way that they were over one hundred years ago. Gibson also made it a point to document the design and trends within the house by writing inventories of the rooms. Unfortunately, he only got around to finishing two of them, the library and the music room, but these are first hand primary sources of the actual decoration of this house. Additional pieces of information are pictures that survive of #2 Park Street, where Rosamond Warren Gibson lived prior to moving to the Back Bay. These pictures contain some of the objects that Rosamond brought with her to the new house and show the importance of some objects over others in that they were passed down to future generations. These sources were a vital part of acknowledging the worth of the presence of things and styles that managed to ornament two upper-class homes in nineteenth-century Boston. The archives within the homes also contained information and documentation concerning the owners and families that lived there. Historic New England possesses transcripts of Harrison Gray’s letters to his wife, Sally Foster Otis, (the original letters are owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society) and various business papers of his. In some of the letters that Harrison Gray wrote to his wife, he mentions aspects of the house and things that may have needed repairing. Yet, that is the extent of the architectural and domestic references that he makes, in general, the letters are very intimate personal correspondences between him and his spouse. The unfortunate circumstance of the age of these letters is that the ones that Sally wrote have all apparently been lost over time. Seeing as Harrison Gray was often away on business and it was normal for the woman to be in charge of most domestic affairs, it is not possible to get a glimpse of the on goings at the Otis house. Perhaps Sally’s letters contained narratives of days in the life of the Otis house to keep her husband up to date, but these stories will never be recountable. Although the sources that are available allow researchers to reconstitute the house and its interiors, it is only possible to speculate on the life that went on within its walls.

42 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

The commissioner and owner of the Colburn house, James Smith Colburn, also did not leave much behind that could be used to get a better picture of his life and times in the house. He did, however, write a memoir, which has a brief descriptive section that alludes to the house at #55 Beacon Street. This source was also useful in that it provided a reminiscence of his work as a merchant and his personal relations, placing him within a specific part of society from the onset. This is the only piece of personal evidence left concerning Colburn, his life, and his home. The later owner, William Hickling Prescott, was more prominent in that he was a well-known historian. The information that remains on him can be found in the anonymous papers written by a member of the Dames, his own historical works, and the literature that has been compiled on him. In these, it is stated that he often invited guests and that these were usually prominent members of society, making it possible to place him properly in the upper echelons of Boston’s elite. The Gibson house had the advantage of having an archive that the last owner had already planned. The sources that dealt with the house were written by his hand and are seen as utterly reliable accounts. As for the life of the family that lived here, a written recollection by Rosamond Warren Gibson (Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr.’s mother) alludes to the life that went on at the Park Street and Beacon Street houses. She concentrates more so on the Park Street home and it comes across as though she preferred this house to the dark Victorian row house in the Back Bay, but she does occasionally talk about events that took place at #137 Beacon Street. An interview from the year 1988 describes the later life within the Gibson house, which already trespasses into the twentieth century, but brings to the page some oral memories that Charles, Jr. seemed to have expressed while talking about the way things used to be at the house during his youth in the nineteenth century. The Gibson Society also put together a Study Report, which looks into the house and the family in order to organize the museum accordingly and to recount the life that went on there. This report investigates the architecture, interiors, and family across the generations and is an integral part of analyzing and understanding the house in its entirety. These powerful insights give the house and the rooms meaning in that they show the way the family lived and behaved in their new upper-class community. The primary sources, both in their plentitude and scarcity, were useful tools in bringing the three houses to life.

I NTRODUCTION | 43

O RNAMENTING THE “ COLD

ROAST ”

The development of this research paper followed a similar path as that of the domestic architecture that is being examined. The design was contemplated, the structure defined, and the ornamentation added in succession to the building process. The evolution of the topic at hand gradually gained the embellishments that were necessary to depict the whole. The interesting aspect involved in this piece of writing is the fact that many historians have used objects to discover new things about specific cultures and their pasts. These objects include fictional literature, paintings, and the more rudimentary primary sources that remain up until modern times. However, rarely do cultural historians look to the architecture and even less so the domestic architecture in order to read into the lives of the people that lived before them. It seems almost logical to look at the home as a safe haven and a pivotal commodity in American society to investigate the lives that were lived there. Although the house has been mentioned as being a metaphor for an American identity and the thought of using domestic architecture to peruse these early identities has been discussed it has never been done to the extent that individual homes were empirically researched. The houses of the three case studies have been looked at through architectural and preservationist writings, the architects have been examined with regard to their careers and their life’s works, and the owners have been discussed in the secondary literature with regard to their place in society, as well as history. The essential parts of the research have thus been touched upon in cultural history, however, never in combination with one another. That is the novelty of this study. The intention is to regard the social, political, and cultural influence that the domestic architecture and interior design of upper-class Bostonian’s homes between 1760 and 1880 had on society as a whole. In order to adequately accomplish this feat it is necessary to take an in-depth look at the components of this domestic architecture, something that has never been done to this extent. First, the history of the way life in general was is provided. Second, the upper class in general and the upper class in Boston are contextualized and their collective values and norms within society are discussed. Third, the architect as a profession and the establishment thereof, as well as the three architects responsible for the construction of the three case studies are presented. Finally, domestic architecture and interior designs are depicted in their general trends, followed by each house with its individual characteristics. It is through this general and specific look at domestic architecture and interiors and through the development of the background of the urban space, class, and current

44 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

lifestyle that life is breathed into these houses and the stories of the people that lived them become known. The personal lives of the architects and homeowners are the true ornamentations of the domestic architecture and interiors in Boston. The embellishments that signal something to society also embroider their lives and their history. It is therefore a symbiotic relationship, the refinements of the upper class enhanced the houses that these families lived in and the houses enhanced the lives of the families in return. The profundity of this interdependent relationship and the influence it had on an American culture and national identity can only be understood by taking in all of the perspectives that are accessible. Although a complete rendition of the lives and the way they were lived in these homes, as well as a comprehensive reproduction of the commissioning and building process is not entirely possible due to a lack of direct sources, it is conceivable to reconstruct and also to speculate on the lives and the thoughts that went into these domestic elevations and interiors. With this information and reconstruction, it was possible to research the manner in which American culture, thought, and identity was influenced through the domestic architecture and interiors of upper-class Bostonians and to use these artifacts, and all of their facets, as texts of history. The domestic architecture and interior design of the upper class in Boston between 1760 and 1880 reflect American cultural history that was lived by Harrison Gray Otis, James Smith Colburn, William Hickling Prescott, and Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., during each of their respective times. Their choice of neighborhood, architect, elevation style, and interior decoration establish them within the ranks of society. The elevations, if taken the time to study, classify and read, describe the architect’s and owner’s political and social affiliations and place them within the proper rank. The interiors cater to the social strata that the exterior elevation previously confirmed and provide the proper setting of comfort and refinement for those that share the same place in the hierarchy. Other classes did not need long to realize that the ticket to upward social mobility was through the altercation of their domestication. As such, the middle class proceeded to emulate these surface restorations, leading to the spread and mass-production of upper-class style beyond regional borders. The “cold roast” and its exterior and interior ornamentation, both architecturally and personally, shaped their cultural identity, their identity as Americans, and the culture of those who were emulating them and made this recognizable, then and now, through their core American possession: personal property and its commodification, the house.

A Brief History of Living and Family Life in America

Pivotal places in which the independence of the United States of America had its founding can be found in the pre-Revolutionary narrow streets and semiautonomous architectural structures of the city of Boston. “A comparison of the aristocracies of America and Great Britain is useful, for the American uppermost class has always looked to the British class system as its most satisfactory model. Even at the time of the American Revolution this was true[…].”1 Prior to and also during the Revolution the designs and trends, not only in architecture, but also in various aspects of a colonist’s lifestyle, were largely copied from the styles that were influencing English cityscapes. In order to gain a better understanding of the way colonists and early Americans lived, various aspects that make up everyday life need to be investigated. First, what constituted urbanism and its development in the colonies and how was this related to the situation in England? Second, what did the hierarchies within the home and family look like and how did these function? Lastly, what were the traditions, trends, and manners that were imported into the colonies and how did these evolve over time in congruence with a heterogeneous population? These questions require an exploration into the general history of living in the colonies during the timeframe shortly before the American Revolution until roughly the beginning of the twentieth century. All the while, the possibility of similarities to Europe, or more specifically England, will be examined. Urban centers in Great Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries partially influenced their American counterparts in that styles of living were imitated and the overall environment, especially with regard to urban domestic archi-

1

Birmingham, America’s Secret Aristocracy, 6.

46 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

tecture, was made to seem very English.2 However, due to different circumstances and the gradual evolution of a new, diverse nation these concepts and traditions were altered and made distinctly American, perhaps without conspicuously attempting this feat. Initially, however, it is important to observe the general urban structure and situation reigning in the Old Country. The mother country is and was ruled by a monarchy, which included the colonies before the American Revolution and was one of the few things that most of the elite colonists sacrificed willingly, yet ambiguously. The upper class set itself apart from the rest of society and established certain rules and traditions regarding their way of life and thus directly influenced their architecture and interiors: They had ‘immense public rooms and small squalid back bedrooms. They were not built for domestic but for public life – a life of continued entertaining in drawing rooms, anterooms and “eating rooms” where conversation would not be wholly ephemeral, where a sentence might be delivered which would echo round political England, where an introduction might mean the beginning of a career or a deft criticism, the dethronement of a policy’.3

Conspicuously, the tradition of making political and economic decisions within the home was one of the many aspects of domestic life, which also reached the colonies. The trends that came from England were not the only ones that left their mark on the New World. Numerous European aspects of architectural and interior designs are evident in the colonies, yet this study will focus on English trends and to a minute degree also French influences. Also, a strong political, economic, and genealogical connection can be traced to England thus; this will constitute the European counterpart of choice and will be named throughout the following chapters. Consequently, it is plausible to suppose that before the Revolution an eager, unhindered look at English styles and trends, not solely in architecture and interiors, was granted acceptable to the elite colonists. After the Revolution, the trend-scouting look still crossed the Atlantic, yet it did bring certain implications with it, not necessarily negative or unpatriotic, but rather in an altering possessive manner. Thus, one of the intentions of this study is to illustrate

2

Steven Sarson, British America, 1500-1800: Creating Colonies, Imagining an Em-

3

G. Rudé, Hanoverian London 1714-1808 (Berkeley, CA: University of California

pire (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005), 190. Press, 1971), 144, quoted in Leonore Davidoff, The Best Circles: Society, Etiquette and the Season (London: Croom Helm Ltd., 1973) 20.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 47

that the pre-Revolution English influence, in the following specific case studies of architecture and interiors, can be deemed acceptably and demonstratively English, whereas post-Revolution styles took on an American identity while still exhibiting significant traces of European influences. Before investigating the upper-class peculiarities in Boston, it is vital to look at the aforementioned traditions accentuating their equivalent peers in eighteenth century pre-American Revolution Great Britain.

G ROWING U RBANIZATION

AND I TS

C ONSEQUENCES

The colonies were very rudimentary in their set up in their beginnings. The newly arrived settlers came to a large, sparsely settled piece of land, which had not been tamed, and thus they had to adjust to new ways of life. Initially, the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were a period of survival and discovery and once this phase was over and towns began evolving into cities, a development became evident in the growing metropolises. In this phase it is important to point out that, “Occasionally, in the early years, gentlemen did cross to America […] still, the generalization holds that most of the emigrants emerged from England’s middle and lower-middle classes.”4 The moment that the population grew beyond settlements and into clearly defined towns and neighborhoods it was necessary to set up a government in order to control citizen politics. “The affairs of Boston and Newport were tended in town meetings, an institution that resembled the assemblies of rural England, yet grew out of Puritan congregationalism.”5 The tradition of civil politics appearing similar to that of the English countryside was actually a version of assembly that was copied from the Puritans. Their origins and their government were thus slight replicas of the English countryside from approximately the same timeframe. English urban centers were radically different in appearance during the eighteenth century. The London of the eighteenth century already had a distinct government set up which, notably, was also in charge of the colonies. “Thus, broadly speaking, the City of London, enclosed within its square mile of narrow streets and wharves, was the centre of banking, business and international trade; Westminster was the home of gov-

4

David Freeman Hawke, Everyday Life in Early America (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1988), 2.

5

Howard P. Chudacoff, The Evolution of American Urban Society (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1975), 5.

48 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

ernment, Parliament, justice, the Court, the arts and fashionable society[…].”6 These aspects of city life were yet to be established in the colonies and in BosBoston. As far as the family and the home in the seventeenth century are concerned, there were many inhabitants and many duties, which had to be done at home. Looking more specifically at family life in New England; there were usually a large number of children, only a few of which lived in the house, and the occuroccurrence of both children dying during birth or in young years as well as women dying while giving birth was relatively normal for that age. Men usually entered a marriage in their mid-20s whereas women were in their early 20s.7 A woman who was not married was treated as an outsider and perceived as not abiding to Puritan beliefs. It was important to be married at this time in American history in order to be able to live in a community and a production unit of one’s own. In fact, the family in early America was seen as, “[…] a business, a vocational institute, a house of correction, a church, [and] a welfare institute.”8 The situation in European families and homes had similar functions, “In der ständischen, vorindustriellen Gesellschaft galt das Haus als eine wirtschaftlich, organisatorische und räumliche Grundeinheit. Die Familie war keine emotionale Gemeinschaft, sondern eine Arbeits- und Produktionsgemeinschaft, zu der auch das Gesinde gehörte.“9 As cities became larger and the number of immigrants consistently increased, these values and traditions had to make alterations. In the years between 1820 and 1860, the new nation experienced a large influx of immigration.10 However, the citizens viewed urban growth as an important part of their sustainability and welcomed newcomers. “The urge for growth was connected with a concern for preservation, and the two made early nineteenth century urbanization an aggressive, dynamic phenomenon. The belief was that a city had to keep growing in order to prevent economic stagnation.”11 The aspect that they did not

6

George Rudé, Hanoverian London, 1714-1808 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 118.

7

Hawke, Everyday Life in Early America, 59.

8

Ibid., 60.

9

Bernd Furhmann, Wencke Meteling, Barbara Rajkay, and Matthias Weipert, Geschichte des Wohnens: Vom Mittelalter bis Heute (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008), 116.

10

Clifford Edward Clark, Jr., The American Family Home, 1800-1960 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 15.

11

Chudacoff, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 33.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 49

take into consideration was that more people in a condensed area also led to varvarious problems that needed attention and thus, cost money. To name a few, the availability of water became a constant concern, the safety and security of citicitizens was jeopardized as crime rates rose, and a solution for the rising urban poverty levels was vehemently sought after. A natural threat, so to say, for the people living in rapidly evolving American cities in the nineteenth century was prompted by a growing demand for one of life’s necessities: water. The problem as such was not novel to arising citycityscapes, yet some cities needed longer than others to see the urgency behind this case. Philadelphia was the first city to experiment with an integrated water system in the year 1798 by none other than an architect, Benjamin Henry Latrobe.12 In contrast, Boston took their time and, “In 1845 Bostonians accepted an act passed by the General Assembly enabling the city to construct its own water system.”13 According to basic economic theory of supply and demand, the glut of a resource or product can indefinitely lead to increased demand thereof, leading yet to another problem: disequilibrium.14 As was the case in other aspects of city life, the problem was solved by further widening class divisions and granting the availability of said water to a certain group that was willing and able to pay for it. “Abundance of water and higher standards of public health created new habits of consumption. Indoor plumbing, with its tub and toilet, now became a facility of city life, at least for the wealthy.”15 As a comparative point of reference, indoor plumbing and sanitary utilities were already established in urban centers in Europe, conspicuously long before the colonies were even settled. Considering these facts, it is interesting to see that it was not until the late eighteenth century, or in the case of Boston, the mid-nineteenth century that public water works were implemented, even though a ready model from the mother country would have been available. As class divisions were getting more pronounced the dissatisfaction and aggression could be felt among the lower classes. With regard to Boston, the regional, architectural, and overall lifestyle of the upper class had quite strikingly set itself apart by the mid-nineteenth century and there were enough people present by this time that were not very happy about it. In order to gain the upper hand on these outbreaks, a controlling force had to be implemented that

12

Chudacoff, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 36.

13

Ibid., 37.

14

Alan Glanville, Economics from a Global Perspective (Oxford: The Alden Group, 1997), 31-32.

15

Chudacoff, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 37.

50 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

could bring order to the streets. “Mob violence had characterized American citcities since colonial days, but by the 1830s and 1840s ethnic, racial, political, and social conflicts were beginning to stir upper and middle classes to support the creation of stronger, more efficient police forces to preserve life and property.”16 Interestingly, the two things that were most important to the highstanding citizens in America at the time were their life and their property. The same emphasis that was placed on protecting their lives was also placed on not only their material property in the form of various things that they may have owned, but also on their estates as property and thus also their status ensuring place as property-holders. To keep both of these things, upper-class citizens were willing to invest money to provide for their security. However, the greatest life and property eradicating issue in cities, namely that of ravaging fires, ran into the late 1800s and was much harder to maintain and did not receive the attention and funds that it probably should have.17 The important concept of property was, thus, continuously threatened by this uncontrollable natural element while other aspects of urbanity were somewhat easier to regulate. The most discussed threat, and probably considered to be the root of all the evils springing up in cities, was the poor, the lower classes which were expanding at an immense rate. The nineteenth century received a large amount of immigrants coming in from various parts of Europe. One of the biggest groups overall and one of the most problematic in the case of Boston, were the Irish. However, other groups as well were responsible for bringing instability into the country and creating a felt threat among the upper class. The main reason that the well-to-do were not particularly fond of the poor was because they did not understand their way of life. The nation had overcome many tribulations within the last few decades and it was unclear to them that new immigrants were unable to succeed in America. “American tradition considered poverty to be the result of individual moral failure. In a land of opportunity, according to the theory, only a person’s laziness or intemperance could make him or her poor.”18 Along with not succeeding in their new home, these new immigrant groups were partially responsible for the increased dilettante on goings and the extensive divisiveness between the classes that were forming.

16

Chudacoff, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 38.

17

Ibid., 108.

18

Jürgen Martschukat, Die Geschichte der Todesstrafe in Nordamerika: Von der Kolonialzeit bis zur Gegenwart (München: C.H. Beck Verlag, 2002), 39.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 51

T HE F ORMATION

OF

C LASS D IVISIONS

All of these factors led to the formation of specific groups in a society that was progressively taking shape through increased urbanization. From the colonial days well into the nineteenth century, the division between these groups began to define classes and its members according to certain criteria. At the top of the social ladder, a group of well-to-do merchants and financial investors took their place. In colonial days and up to the time of the Enlightenment and its effects this group also contained the clergy:19 Nevertheless, in Boston and Philadelphia, as well as in other cities, this upper order was neither a closed aristocracy nor a monolithic social class. Its membership was both large and diverse, including men who had advantages of birth and position as well as those who had emigrated from abroad or had risen from a lower rank.20

In close proximity to this upper class was a middle class, which included craftsmen, retailers, and skilled laborers in general.21 This middle class felt as though they were not that far off in position from the members of the group placed above them, compelling them to do everything in their power to appear as if they belonged to the higher rank. This included various aspects of everyday life also counting material possessions, the way they lived, and, of course, their architecture. As the middle class exceedingly tried to attain higher status even architects attempted to gain profit from this venture, “He [Asher Benjamin] also functioned as a purveyor of upper-class standards to a rising middle class.”22 The upper class often times viewed this as a threat and constantly felt the need to set new trends to distinguish themselves from the larger, powerful middle class. To a certain extent a threat in a quite different manner existed in the lower half of the social order. The two lowest classes constituted a threat to both the upper and middle class not so much through the fear of possible emulation of styles and trends, but rather because of their race, their culture, and their everyday lives. The higher of these two groups is the urban lower class, which consisted of unskilled workers and also mariners.23 Even lower than this working class was the servant class or lowest class. Interestingly, the lowest class criteria

19

Chudacoff, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 14.

20

Ibid.

21

Ibid.

22

Clark, The American Family Home, 9.

23

Chudacoff, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 15.

52 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

was largely race by itself in that African Americans and Native Americans were placed in this rank regardless of whether or not they were slaves or free men.24 However, without paying too much attention to the class that one adhered to, the family in general was a class in itself that went through some major changes in the nineteenth century. Using modern-day standards of living as a point of reference, it is legitimate to say that starting in the eighteenth century American city dwellers were already experiencing overall improvements in their living situations. “The growing affluence of life in the eighteenth century, reflected in presence of knives and forks, crockery, and tea equipment in even the poorest families, modified without entirely replacing this earlier functional basis for family life.” 25 This improvement among all ranks continued and became more defined in the nineteenth century with regards to both the home and the family. The home became increasingly symbolic in its purpose as a refuge from the rest of society and as a place where future citizens were raised and formed. It was even perceived as a place that could improve society as a whole if structured appropriately. “Improvements in domestic architecture would not only cure the vices of the individual, they would reform and uplift society itself.”26 The family had a similar function in the endeavor of improving American society. Accordingly, it was a hierarchy with functions for each member that deemed to implement a minute version of the society waiting outside of the homes protective doors and acting in a preparatory manner thereof. “According to the reformers, the new, mid-nineteenth-century ideal of the family – the canon of domesticity – would stabilize and strengthen the social order.”27 The initial change that families experienced was that their size was amplified and their society uplifting houses had to do the same. As the nineteenth century evolved and modernizations were occurring, the family also followed suit and changed in its ways. Advances were being made with regard to hygiene and medicine and thus brought about a new vitality among Americans. A major impact of this was that death became less frequent, especially with regards to family planning. Women were less prone to dying during child birth, due to the increased medical attention paid to women during the process, and thus were able to have more children and recover better and faster from a pregnancy. Additionally, children were less likely to pass away at a

24

Chudacoff, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 15.

25

Clark, The American Family Home, 9.

26

Ibid., 28.

27

Ibid., 29.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 53

young age because they too had the availability of improved medical care and grew up in a more protected and sanitary environment. An example of the evoluevolution within medicine was a discovery by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes who, in 1843, made aware of the fact that puerperal fever was actually contracted through the attending physician and could therefore be consciously avoided.28 In consequence of increasingly foreseeable familial conditions, this meant that, “The changing pattern of family life at mid-century had important implications for the nature of house design. The large numbers of children and the extended period of childbearing meant the families had children of widely differing ages in the house.”29 Not only was the composition of the family changing but also their homes, in order to cater to these changes. This resulted in a new form and dependency on homeownership and with that, a new cost for living without having to give up the standard that had been attained. In Europe, a similar process of assimilation was taking place in urban lifestyles. “Während mit Verstädterung ein quantitatives Phänomen gemeint ist, bezeichnet Urbanisierung einen qualitativen Prozess, der einen fundamentalen Wandel der Lebensformen hin zu einer urbanen Lebensweise bewirkte. Darunter versteht man einen Lebensstil, der dem Wesen der (industriellen) Großstadt angepasst ist, ihrer Infrastruktur, ihrem Kulturangebot, ihrem Rhythmus[…].”30 As the cities grew, the people living and migrating to each respective city were responsible for adjusting to its ways as best they could, and often times this meant adjusting their families and their homes. Adjusting also meant that homeownership was already considered a given fact, at least in the case of the upper class and also, for the most part, for the middle class. The upper class was known to have elaborate houses that were built in their own exclusive neighborhoods and if one could not be a homeowner then it was obvious that he or she did not belong to this rank of individuals. Owning an estate was thus an important aspect of membership in the upper ranks.31 The middle class did not necessarily have to live in their own home however, if they wanted to get closer to appearing upper class it was a definite requisite. “Owning a home is not merely a vehicle for better shelter. It is also

28

Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 6.

29

Clark, The American Family Home, 61.

30

Fuhrmann, Meteling, Rajkay, and Weipert, Geschichte des Wohnens, 104.

31

Jackson Turner Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 283.

54 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

supposed to increase one’s wealth.”32 The appearance of being wealthy was granted when one owned a properly designed and constructed home, yet, the cost of living and caring for this home could quickly diminish the actual wealth that the family possessed. The high costs, particularly in Boston, were already evievident in the eighteenth century and continued to rise in the nineteenth. As early as 1728, an article was published in the New-England Weekly Journal listing the expenses that a middle-class family had to invest to appear upper class. In reresponse to the list of expenditures, readers wrote new lists each describing the expenses that their families had on a daily basis. In justifying her list, one of the readers mentions as a preliminary, The Computation is by no means Designed for Families of the lower Rank, or of daily Labourers, which may be expected to live somewhat lower, as their Incomes require: But for Families of a Middling Figure, who bare the Character of being Genteel, and of whom its expected that tho’ they don’t expend at the Rate of those who have great Estates, that yet they live agreeable to their more publick Character.33

In order to appear genteel families had to spend more money on everyday needs than the lower class. This same state of mind was still in use in the nineteenth century, yet turmoil often drew attention away from the thought of spending money. The first major conflict that is important to the study of upper-class standards and also their domestic architecture is the American Revolution. A prominent feature that describes the growing society shortly before and also during the Revolution is the constant movement that it entailed. The ability to move around and to migrate to different areas where one’s skills were needed was a guarantee, in most cases, for upward mobility. “Crucially important to the early American was his ability to improve his economic and social position […] the evidence points decisively toward a much higher degree of mobility in revolutionary America than had been usual elsewhere.”34 The invariable capacity for workers, immigrants, and members of virtually all ranks of society to move up was a factor that made revolutionary America seem largely egalitarian. The only

32

Matthew Edel, Elliot D. Sclar, and Daniel Lura, Shaky Palaces: Homeownership and Social Mobility in Boston’s Surburbanization [sic] (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 3.

33

Carl Bridenbaugh, “The High Cost of Living in Boston, 1728,” The New England

34

Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America, 280.

Quarterly 5, no. 4 (October 1932): 809.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 55

members of society that continued to stand out were the elites who stood far above the rest, similar to their counterparts in England: If the word ‘class’ requires the presence of class consciousness, if it can be used only when men are aware of a hierarchical structure and of their own rank within it, then […] America during the period 1763-1788 was relatively classless. Certainly it was both classclassless and democratic by comparison with the America of 1900 or with England in 1776.35

England, during the time of the Revolution, was still ruled by a monarchy, making the existence of an aristocracy and a class structure within society almost inevitable. Hence, the appearance of a class structure, particularly of an independent America, was comparably harmless to that of England or also France. Although classes may seem less pronounced in revolutionary America, they were still present and when concentrating solely on the colonies, these evolved from the result of the aforementioned mobility. “The different standards of living during the revolutionary era grew out of the unequal distribution of property. In studying the consumption habits and manner of life of the early Americans, it is convenient to divide them into three groups: the poor, who had little property; the small property holders; and the rich.”36 Moving around allowed most newcomers to acquire property somewhere, however, some were unable even to do this and thus landed in the lowest ranks. The threat of revolution was not only felt in the more general sense of the colonies wanting to revolt against the British, but also to a lesser degree the upper class had fears of an uprising from members of the poorer, lower classes (similar to Shay’s Rebellion). Fortunately, “[…] economic abundance together with high mobility combined to minimize these conflicts which might have grown out of the class structure and the concentration of wealth.”37 Instead, the Revolution brought about economic change, which allowed members of the middle class to improve their wealth. Boston was an important part of revolutionary America and the effects of the war could be felt within its city limits. The artisans that may not have amounted to much earlier in the colonies were suddenly rising in their social and economic position. “The superior success of the Bostonians may be due to some local

35

Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America, 270.

36

Ibid., 155-156.

37

Ibid., 163.

56 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

factor, but is more probably an effect of the Revolution.”38 The war gave memmembers of various vocational groups and classes in the social hierarchy a chance to excel and to take opportunities that became newly available to them. It was also a signal to break with anything that may have resembled English societal structure, including an aristocracy that may have been present. Instead, one’s economic standing became an indicator of success, letting merchants rise into a new class that catered more to them. “Before the war, 30 or 40 percent of New York’s mercantile upper class were self-made men, and the proportion both there and in Boston reached 50 percent after the Revolution.”39 The Revolution is vital to the study of upper-class domestic architecture, not only because of its repercussions in the architectural dynamic, but also because it opened the doors for more members of the new nation to take part, or at least partially participate, in an upper-class lifestyle. The conflict between the colonies and England may have resulted in American independence, yet the conflict as such had not entirely been resolved. The second major conflict that is important to American upper-class society and also its architecture is the War of 1812. Although the Americans had gained their independence in a political and bureaucratic sense, they were still very attached to British ways of life. This fact was reflected less in the family, yet more in their architecture and also domestic architecture. “American architecture, too, was little more than a warmed-over version of their classical British styles then in vogue, as Bostonians witnessed with Charles Bulfinch’s new State House, Asher Benjamin’s Charles Street Meetinghouse, and Peter Banner’s Park Street Church.”40 This war fought very harshly for the complete secession from England and it induced the thought and the appeal of American patriotism among the people: Historians are not wrong when they refer to the pathetic War of 1812 as America’s ‘Second War for Independence,’ for it resulted in an enthusiastic wave of patriotic fervor and a proud spirit of nationalism that, in turn, prompted a fierce determination to cut loose from the rest of the world and set sail on an independent course that would be uniquely and distinctively American.41

38

Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America, 187.

39

Ibid., 195.

40

Thomas H. O’Connor, The Athens of America: Boston, 1825-1845 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), 99.

41

O’Connor, The Athens of America, 99.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 57

The War of 1812 has been attributed with the enormous feat of creating a nanational identity that the Revolution had failed to complete. It was the necessary war that made the nation, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution truly and promisingly American.42 The effects that this war had on domestic architecture will be shown later, yet the effect on the upper class; its members and its politics, were clear. Important figures in the upper class were a part of the Federalist Party as the new war began to unfold. The Federalists, especially those in New England, were not pleased with the thought of going to war with Britain, which they verbally exclaimed, because they were not content with the Republican President James Madison, they had economic bonds to the mother country, and they were afraid that they would not be victorious in this conquest.43 To onlookers who were still stained with the patriotic blood from the Revolution, these thoughts did not seem democratic and liberating. “Fears that the republic was endangered bound the pro-war Republicans together. Ever since the completion of independence, they believed, the great ideal of republicanism had been threatened, by the British from the outside and the Federalists from within.”44 As the Federalists noticed the extent the war was taking, they called a meeting together which took place in Connecticut and came to be known as the Hartford Convention. This meeting may have appeared innocent to them but it produced a bad reputation for the party, which was accused of treason-like behavior that eventually led to their downfall. “The undertaking begun at Hartford, so mild and purposeful in the Federalists’ own minds, had placed not just [Harrison Gray] Otis and his colleagues but Federalists everywhere in an awkward position that lent itself cruelly to ridicule.”45 As the Federalists went down in popularity and the attention turned towards the outcome of this new war against Britain, Americans took on patriotism and a newly defined national identity46 that would

42

Michael Wala, “From Celebrating Victory to Celebrating the Nation: The War of 1812 and American National Identity,” in Celebrating Ethnicity and Nation: American Festive Culture from the Revolution to the Early Twentieth Century, eds. Jürgen Heideking, Geneviève Fabre, and Kai Dreisbach (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 74.

43

Wala, “From Celebrating Victory to Celebrating the Nation,” in Heideking, Fabre, and Dreisbach, 80.

44

Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 156.

45

Ibid., 175.

46

Wala, “From Celebrating Victory to Celebrating the Nation,” in Heideking, Fabre, and Dreisbach, 87.

58 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

later also be reflected in their architecture. After their collective absence to witwitness the end of the War of 1812 and the resulting sentiment towards their party, the elites that made up the Federalists went on to become Whigs and started a new political chapter. The point that these two international conflicts with the colonies and later with America deem to prove is that a connection with Europe in various aspects of life continued to exist. Emotionally, politically, and economically secession from England was achieved partially during the Revolution and again after the War of 1812. Yet, a controversy ensued that directly involved the upper and middle classes. On the one hand, many high-ranking citizens continued to look to Europe in order to determine the correct trends and standards of living. Even in domestic architecture, England and also France continued to play an important role in creating guidelines. More specifically, members of the upper class tended to import ideas from abroad and even preferred hiring architects and builders that were trained in Europe. On the other hand, proud citizens from the front and also intellectuals from the early to mid-nineteenth century promoted the idea of creating a new, American way of life. Influential individuals, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, encouraged people not to look back to old Europe but instead to be American.47 Eventually, this new mode of thinking did reach all classes of society and even architecture took an American turn. The urban situation of the late-eighteenth and the nineteenth century and a picture of life outside the doors of society’s homes has been painted, the view now turns to the indoors and more specifically to the members of the family that inhabit these homes.

F AMILY S TRUCTURE AND F AMILY M EMBERS IN AMERICAN H OUSEHOLDS The family, much like society, was set up hierarchically and this hierarchy changed over time. As the conditions inside and outside of the house changed so, too, did the duties that each member of the family had been assigned with. The father, the mother, the children, and in some cases also live-in servants or slaves became a part of a unit that was responsible for its own well-being. The American family was thus a constantly changing presence, which altered itself with the times and according to the expectations that society presented it. “In all

47

Mark Rennella, The Boston Cosmopolitans: International Travel and American Arts and Letters (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 183.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 59

of this, New England simply replicated the gender hierarchy of the mother councountry.”48 In the very beginning, the settlements and colonies built a society that conconsisted largely of farmers and their families. In this era, the family hierarchy was difficult to disseminate in that everyone played a part in sustaining its existence. “In the seventeenth century, the family was the primary and allcompetent social institution. It was expected to be self-sustaining, with all members subsuming their individual desires to the common good of the unit. Households were the primary units of production.”49 This lifestyle changed in the 1800s and more explicitly in the growing urban centers. The family was a strict hierarchy at this time and placed the husband, the man of the house, at the top of the family order. “Society looked to families to maintain order and to support, care for, and police their own members. Patriarchy was designed to ensure that this happened.”50 Beneath him came the woman of the house, followed by the children and lastly any servants that were a part of the household, which in the upper class was almost always the case. “The remarkable feature of this early Victorian ideal of the family […] was that the contradiction between freedom and social control was so easily accepted. Victorian Americans were not troubled by their apparently contradictory ideals for family life.”51 These ideals were what the American people had preached as a consequence of the American Revolution and the War of 1812, but for some reason these did not apply to social structures within the home. The positions within family structures were not all that different in Europe. In fact, the family hierarchy in both Europe and America had similar forms of organization. “Alle Familienmitglieder unterlagen je nach Geschlecht und Generation bestimmten Rollenzuweisungen, und diese Rollen ließen sich an Räumen und ihrer Einrichtung festmachen.”52 The family hierarchy was not only responsible for the duties that each person had to do, but it also had an influence on the design and layout of homes, both in Europe and also America. Members

48

Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York: Pen-

49

Joseph M. Hawes and Elizabeth I. Nybakken, “Part I: An Overview of the American

guin Books, 2001), 173. Family,” in Family and Society in American History, eds. Joseph M. Hawes and Elizabeth I. Nybakken (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 4. 50

Hawes and Nybakken, “Part I: An Overview of the American Family,” in Hawes and

51

Clark, The American Family Home, 35.

52

Fuhrmann, Meteling, Rajkay, and Weipert, Geschichte des Wohnens, 107.

Nybakken, 5.

60 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

had to be careful to fulfill their duties as best they could in order to ensure the best for the rest of the family. A relatively heavy load was thus placed on even the youngest members of the family to perform reliably and successfully at all times. “Every member of the family from the age of three or so onward had a role to play; the family’s welfare to an extent depended on how he or she played it.”53 The importance of this systematic structure is underscored by family laws that commenced in a religious tone towards family structure and with time moved on to become a political one. The main emphasis behind these laws was to determine a higher purpose for American families and to justify that each respective model would produce only pious and later virtuous citizens for genergenerations to come. A law is generally implemented to introduce guidelines and to make certain that these are followed. The same holds true for the family laws that were established on the colonial and American landscape in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. As the New World was progressively being settled, the family constituted an important aspect of the newcomer’s lives. In most cases it provided support and security and a sense of a community in a land that was not yet densely populated enough to enjoy the reliability of numerous neighbors. To maintain and keep this community in order a family law expressed the ideal that the settlers should keep in mind. “Early colonial New Englanders conceived of family law as moral pedagogy in which law’s primary function was to articulate a religious ideal of hierarchy and patriarchy.”54 The religious aspect in the family law that stretched through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the key arrangement that the family should live by and it set the precedents for family configuration that good families were meant to put into practice. Overall, This body of law embodied and enforced basic religious and ideological beliefs: the hierarchical and patriarchal nature of familial relationships, marriage as a civil contract, an emphasis on family unity and interdependence, wifely submission to her husband’s will and children’s dependent and subordinate status.55

53

Hawke, Everyday Life in Early America, 60.

54

Steven Mintz, “Regulating the American Family,” in Family and Society in American History, eds. Joseph M. Hawes and Elizabeth I. Nybakken (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 9.

55

Mintz, “Regulating the American Family,” in Hawes and Nybakken, 11.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 61

This law was explicitly set up for upper- and middle-class families, the lower classes and the poor lived according to whichever laws allowed them to survive.56 The nineteenth century then steered away from the sacred view of the family and saw it more as a politically functioning unit. Once political views began going in the offensive and initiated presenting different views to the public, new ideas concerning the American family were brought to light. Early in the nineteenth century, a split between a republican ideological family model and a republican/democratic ideal discussed the roles of families and their position, as well as their member’s positions in the greater society. The republican ideology remained authoritarian and disregarded humanitarian aspects of familial relationships, deeming them instead as unwritten contracts that existed between certain individuals.57 This was a very primitive, unemotional, and, one might even say, secular perception of families and households and reflected a very old notion of the family that existed back in agriculture-based communities, which reduced its members to employees of an economic unit. In contrast, the republican/democratic take on families involved a more Victorian sensitivity whilst speaking of the matter. A more in-depth look at each of the positions was analyzed and certain traits were adhered to each of the family’s parts. Men were seen as the laboring and economic force in the family, whereas women were seen as being pious, virtuous, and in charge of the family’s domestic abode. Moreover, the idea of the “cult of true womanhood,” which expressed the woman’s place in the home and in society, was stressed. Children were perceived as vulnerable and immature, unlike their predecessors who had to behave as young adults. In addition, marriage was no longer solely a civil contract, but rather the demonstration of romantic love between a man and a woman.58 Each of the tracts that make up this latter family social order from the nineteenth century needs to be observed in more detail to attain a comprehensive understanding of family life in domestic households in Victorian America. Women in American Households The household hierarchy in the timeframe of this study was consistently dominated by men and divided not only the tasks of the family overall but also the house itself. “[…][D]omestic interiors are for the family’s use, and they are divided by gender[…]. In the masculine library, the extended family gathers,

56

Mintz, “Regulating the American Family,” in Hawes and Nybakken, 14.

57

Ibid., 15.

58

Ibid.

62 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

while in the maternal corner, the family extends to pets but excludes adult men.”59 The patriarchal order was explicitly highlighted in the seventeenth and eighteenth century through religious beliefs confirming the subordination of women to men and this was lived by the settlers and colonists without reason for disagreement. The nineteenth-century view put less weight on men being the top order while still implicitly implying so by determining the importance of a woman’s domesticity. The male domain became a financially securing one, which predominantly took place outside of the home. For this reason, the male position will only be mentioned with regard to understanding the social hierarchy of the home and his function, as we have seen, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the breadwinner and decision-maker. Occasionally in the nineteenth century, entertainment pertaining to the man’s business was brought back into the home and this aspect will be discussed here also. However, more attention will be granted the activities going on in the house and who was in charge of them and the men’s position will not be discussed in further detail. The matter of constant urban and national growth should not be ignored with regard to women that were seeking new opportunities in nineteenth-century America. If a young woman, as a single person, was on her way to the new country, her first years were rather unpleasant and consisted of hard work. Initially, women in colonial days were part of a farmer’s household and worked together with other members of the family. As the cities grew and industrialization set in women were assigned different roles upon their arrival: Nearly all the early incoming women came as indentured servants. The typical woman was single, between eighteen and twenty-five years old, and no doubt in search of a husband. First, however, she was obliged to serve out her indenture, and since the law forbade a servant to marry until she had completed her contract, that meant four or five years must pass before she could get a husband.60

Similar to her male peers, women had to work for their new existence in America while at the same time keeping an eye out for a potential suitor that would place her in a home of her own. Young women who had the privilege of being part of the first generation born on the Continent had an easier time settling down. “Life differed considerably for her native-born daughter. Seldom

59

Betsy Klimasmith, At Home in the City: Urban Domesticity in American Literature and Culture, 1850-1930 (Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire Press, 2005), 26.

60

Hawke, Everyday Life in Early America, 63-64.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 63

did she have to endure servitude outside the home. This freed her to marry younger[…].”61 All of these women were privileged in that they were considered part of a middle-class structure and had the comfort of being able to live and work in the home as opposed to lower-class women who had to continue workworking for the greater part of their lives. A further difference among women was whether they were part of a rural household in the nineteenth century or if they had located themselves in the city. As in its colonial beginnings, nineteenth-century women of rural households were a part of the line of production that the family required. “Rural households, even fairly affluent ones, all required the labor of daughters as well as wives. City daughters, on the other hand, were left free to attend school or learn domestic skills such as cooking and child care.”62 Other jobs were allocated to the women living in the cities that did not require them to work in the fields, but rather to take over duties that were to be attended to in the safety of the home. “These daughters of the Republic were responsible for child education, [and] moral instruction[…].”63 Furthermore, they were in charge of taking care not only of the persons living under one roof, but also the house itself and the chores that came with its upkeep. This task, which was highly praised, but also highly underestimated, was not always undemanding for women of normal means. The reaction to the cult of domesticity and the woman’s new role of taking care of the house was twofold. On the one hand, women were excited about their new tasks and welcomed the responsibility and respect that it brought them. “Turning submission into a noble virtue and self-sacrifice into a patriotic duty, the canon of domesticity defined a sphere where woman would demonstrate her moral superiority and power over men.”64 The extent to which this superiority was felt by both men and women is debatable, yet it defined a place where women belonged and, to those who took the nation improving propaganda towards this subject earnestly, it improved their view of their self-worth dramatically. On the other hand, although various sources romanticized this view

61

Hawke, Everyday Life in Early America, 65.

62

Susan Branson, “Women and the Family Economy in the Early Republic: The Case of Elizabeth Meredith,” in Family and Society in American History, eds. Joseph M. Hawes and Elizabeth I. Nybakken (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 74.

63

Branson, “Women and the Family Economy in the Early Republic,” in Hawes and

64

Susan E. Marshall, Splintered Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Campaign

Nybakken, 75. against Woman Suffrage (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), 19.

64 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

of the woman’s calling it did not always match up with the reality of the matter at hand: Running such a house, preparing meals and preserving food, cleaning the rooms, washing and ironing the clothes, caring for the children, and maintaining an array of flowers and plants that inevitably brightened the rooms was hard and time-consuming work. The imimage of the genteel middle-class woman, extolled by domestic reformers and plan-book writers, constantly collided with the persistent effort needed to run the mid-century Victorian house.65

As far as upper-class women are concerned, their ability to fulfill these demands was simplified by the additional fact that they could afford to hire help. Still, the middle-class woman observed her domestication as increasingly positive for her standing. A woman who was able to stay in the house and perform her skills was a clear indication of belonging to either the upper or middle class. “[…][T]he ideal had considerable appeal for middle-class women because it clearly elevated them in status over those in the working class who had to work outside the home.”66 Additionally, this was an important aspect in designing upper and middle-class houses with windows, in that she would be seen at home during the day signaling first, her rank in the upper strata and second, her proper dedication to her domestic duties. The societal hierarchy goes one step further in that upper-class women could additionally set themselves apart from middle-class women by installing servants that relieved them of some of their duties. Yet, middle-class women, much to the dismay of upper-class women, persisted in their quest to appear proper and of further blurring the boundary between upper and middle class. As urbanization, industrialization, and economization successfully reigned over American society in the nineteenth century, the concept of consumerism was, inevitably, not far off: The woman of the house often led the way in establishing commercial contact with the wider world beyond the local community, through her desire to introduce amenities into the rustic simplicity of her home[…]. So, despite occasional reproaches from neighbors that she was introducing unbecoming ‘luxuries,’ she initiated the democratization of refinement.67

65

Clark, The American Family Home, 63.

66

Ibid., 32.

67

Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 45-46.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 65

The purchasing of goods became both a liability and an asset to women and to the American historical landscape. The political implications that evolving consumerism brought with it enticed onlookers to initially attack women and later allowed them to be redeemed. The woman that lived in the colonies prior to the American Revolution, regardless of her class, was accused of frivolous consumption even though she was made mamaterialistically responsible for the upkeep of a household that was always meant to symbolize the highest possible status.68 It was the denial of this consumption that made her a political activist in the home and on the front shortly before and during the American Revolution: But participation in the empire of goods could have unanticipated consequences for women, indeed, for some even a growing sense of empowerment[…], for if the men who led the movement had been unable to persuade colonial women to sacrifice the pleasures of the marketplace, independence would have remained but a dream.69

The revolutionary boycotts may have slightly opened the door for women in early American politics but this door quickly closed again after the Revolution, locking them back into their household sphere. For the most part, women of upper and middle-class stature felt a sense of pride in being the woman behind the scenes that supported and backed her husband. Her role was clearly defined and made public and her position was important for the improvement of American society. “The complement to the independent competitive entrepreneur, the male prototype of an industrializing society, was the virtuous, domestic woman, an efficient engineer of the home and, most importantly, a moral mother.”70 As a consequence, the woman was also responsible for upholding the family’s good name outside of the home. In the manner in which the husband lured in business partners and closed off deals, she was to engage in a social world that also required her to mingle with appropriate social partners and close off deals, which advanced her family in society. “And while men as well as women engaged in the activity of visiting, it was an accepted part of women’s role to sustain this round of social interaction.”71 Although this reputational task was a part of both upper and

68

Tim H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped

69

Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution, 182.

70

Farrell, Elite Families, 16.

71

Ibid., 81.

American Independence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 173.

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middle-class women’s activities, the former acted even more exclusively in hanhandling contacts. The process of communication and integration in the upper ranks has to folfollow certain rules and traditions in order to avoid allowing conformity to exist among the other members of society. Women of high standing were very particparticular about who entered their social circle and middle and lower-class families seldom breached the lines of this exclusive lot. This specialty and exclusivity had its negative aspects, too, in that the elites were under a constant threat that other classes could assimilate and compromise the integrity of their select circle. Women were given the superb task of warding off this threat. “While men have primary responsibility for the maintenance of economic or class hegemony, socially prominent women, by their restricted interaction with outsiders and by supervision of the rituals of social intercourse, help define and protect status boundaries from incursions from below.”72 Furthermore, their popularity has a celebrity appeal, which makes foremost the middle class strive to emulate the ways in which they run their class and the social traditions that they follow. Ironically, their secrecy and recluse may make them seem arrogant and self-centered, yet they constructively counter this image by giving back to society and thus avoiding tensions from the less fortunate. “[…][W]omen are the gatekeepers of upper-class social institutions; they also set the cultural standards for the rest of the population and perform voluntary acts of charity that signify beneficence and forestall lower-class revolt.”73 Charity and other upper-class hosted events were held to ease the mindset of lower classes and possibly also to personally help these families improve their situation. Similarly, hosting and entertaining peers of the same rank was a device used by the upper class to further advance their families. Women and Strategic Entertainment in Upper-Class Households Businesses and their major contenders were shifting their locale from the protective environment that a home granted to the fast-paced and cosmopolitan aspects of downtown urban centers. The home, instead, was a place where the tensions from the day’s work could be put aside and attention was paid to the family and also to activities of personal interest. During the later timeframe of this research and pertaining to the upper class, this inevitably placed the woman inside of the home and the men, as businessmen, were free to venture out into

72

Marshall, Splintered Sisterhood, 34.

73

Ibid., 34-35.

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the business districts of their cities. Occasionally, the downtowns did manage to invade the domestic spaces that lay adjacent to its borders. Upper-class men would bring their work home with them in the form of entertainment and allow their partners to see the world that they had built outside of their daily business lives. On the one hand, this alleviated the strictness of normal vocational work and provided a more comfortable atmosphere for business partners to make important decisions. On the other hand, it also permitted the man and woman of the house to show off their possessions and their home and could further the reputation and the standing of the family as such. The home, therefore, had multiple purposes, the least of which being merely a shelter and a roof under which families could sleep. Especially in the upper class, this extension of functionality led to men and women taking on specific places and roles. “The adoption of this ideal by the upper classes plus the beginning separation of work from domicile in the cities were preparatory to the celebration of woman’s ‘place’ in the home that was to pervade nineteenthcentury America.”74 The late nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries deemed the domestication of women and the isolation of home work and housewifery as a crude degradation of women. However, women of the upper class in the eighteenth century understood the urgency and importance of their upkeep of the family and the home. The American Revolution and the resulting independence of the colonies taught women to take on the responsibility of forming adequate citizens. The nineteenth century, on the other hand, was more concerned with having them nurture vital dealmakers. “Most upper-class wives know that they can enhance their husbands’ position by running the house and by protecting their husbands from domestic concerns. Since the women take care of the domestic front, the men are free to concentrate their energies on business and community activities.”75 These women also had to take on the task of entertaining these business and community activities in their own domestic spaces. The prospect of entertaining the men who were important to a husband’s economic and financial well-being often had hidden benefits for the wives, as well. Women may have been restricted to the home for the most part, but they did gain certain freedoms regarding their inheritance from their husbands.

74

Chudacoff, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 18.

75

Susan B. Ostrander, Women of the Upper Class (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 43. Susan Ostrander was referring more to twentieth century upperclass women, however, these families were raised from their nineteenth century predecessors who implemented and succeeded in continuing these ideals.

68 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

Beginning during the Revolution, women gained more freedom in terminating a marriage. Although divorce was not praised it did occur upon certain situations such as adultery, desertion, or cruelty.76 “During the American Revolutionary era, divorce came to be defended as a republican right of particular interest to women, because it was sought by them more frequently than it was sought by men.”77 Not only was it easier to defend getting a divorce, but a part of the proprocess was increasingly dedicated to getting the plaintiff a piece of the property.78 Thus, “Interest, education, and ownership of property was often the reason upper-class women knew a great deal about their own and their husbands’ businesses.”79 Their effort in entertaining high-standing guests was in consideration of their husband’s success, but also in foresight of their own benefits regarding the family business venture. This form of business leisure as opposed to mere frivolous entertainment also caught the attention of the middle class. As the upper class threw dinner parties and invited important guests to their show-worthy homes, so did the middle class attempt to further themselves within their own class and into the next social stratum. Families of middle-class standing wanted to confirm their position to the other families and their fellow businessmen and often did so by entertaining them in the same manner that the upper class did. “Seit der zweiten Jahrhunderthälfte gehörten Geselligkeitsverpflichtungen fest zum bürgerlichen Lebensstil. Standen Abendeinladungen an, musste die bürgerliche Hausfrau selbst mit Hand anlegen und häusliche Harmonie inszenieren, freilich ohne sich ihre Mühen anmerken zu lassen.”80 As in upper-class households, the woman was responsible for ensuring that the party took place and that the home was prepared in an orderly fashion. At the same time, it was also important for her to look nice as well and as though organizing this event had been almost effortless. Perhaps this was required in order to simulate the appearance of the aid of servants, which could also deem beneficial for the family’s reputation. Upper-class wives most certainly had servants to help them organize, carry out, and also clean up after the entertaining was done. This was part of the

76

Linda B. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary

77

Kerber, Women of the Republic, 159.

78

Ibid., 170.

79

Branson, “Women and the Family Economy in the Early Republic,” in Hawes and

80

Furhmann, Meteling, Rajkay, Weipert, Geschichte des Wohnens, 111.

America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 163, 170.

Nybakken, 76.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 69

reason that they could set themselves apart from the encroaching middle class. However, as with many other aspects of their lifestyle, the middle class was quick to emulate their parties. It not only allowed them to move up the social scale, it more importantly showed their new peers that they were worthy of their new societal position. “For the newer upper-class families, then, entertaining is one of the ways to become accepted by the established upper class.”81 Thus, throwing parties at one’s home had more than one purpose; 1) it maintained and could also advance the man’s position in a business or the business as a whole; 2) it introduced upper-class wives into their husband’s business world and taught them valuable lessons in order to be prepared for a possible takeover; and 3) it could alter the position of middle-class families and ensure their intake into the world of the established upper class. There are two protagonists that can be made accountable for the success of the aforementioned purposes. First and foremost, as mentioned, is the woman of the house. She executed her task much like the one that she had been given in revolutionary times and provided her class with what it asked of her. Unfortunately, the fact that the upper class and the businesses that make it up sustained because of what women did is barely touched upon. “Therefore, the women’s role in creating and maintaining the economic and political power of the upper class is not typically recognized.”82 The second silent protagonist is the house with its design and interiors. Upper-class impressions were often formed through material possessions and lifestyles that were only affordable by a certain clientele. When entertaining guests who placed a lot of emphasis on the compatibility of class members and their businesses, it was required that the venue of their gathering be adequate. The design and the interiors had to cater to their expectations and provided for an initial first opinion to be formed. Children in American Households The bottom of the hierarchy was reserved for the children, who became a part of husbands and wives daily lives. Children, similar to women were always considered an important part of a family, especially because they brought with them working hands and could help sustain the family, but their position and their duties changed over the course of the centuries and adjusted to the sentiments that time brought with it. The role that childhood as a distinct phase in a person’s life played changed drastically throughout the eighteenth and more

81

Ostrander, Women of the Upper Class, 45.

82

Ibid., 140.

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so the nineteenth centuries. Also, it is important to view children amongst each other as being a separate society in itself and the differentiation that existed among and between children. Lastly, the position that children held in the home and in society as a whole was a vital part in reconfirming the status of the family in two ways; first, through the image that they displayed to onlookers, and second, in that the home was conspicuously altered in order to accommodate new members and it was made a point to present this to the public. Initially, children were seen as helping hands that could help their mother and father on the farm and thus, they were treated as an internal labor force that was of the same kin. This did not mean that there was no affection towards children in agriculturally based families, yet their role was already defined as having a specific job and so they were treated much like the adults. This attitude was not limited to farming families, but also integrated itself into urban communities. Children in the early eighteenth century were rarely allowed to have a carefree childhood that reflects that of modern times and instead had to prematurely prepare themselves for the adult life that lay ahead. “Parents were charged with the responsibility of breaking this willful spirit in their children and hastening their transition to the adult world. Children were even dressed as miniature adults.”83 The lives of a family’s offspring until about the mideighteenth century were not exactly what one pictures as being an adequate childhood as such, but it was important for families at the time to put their youngsters in their place at an early stage and to avoid future idleness and ensure the continuation of their own workforce. The mid-1700s brought about a change in this manner of thinking and manner of treating and raising children and childhood, as opposed to adulthood, was becoming its own phenomenon. People became aware of the fact that children were not miniature adults but, instead, were individuals that had to be raised, loved, and allowed a certain degree of frivolity and freedom before entering the more serious life of grown-ups. Even within the stricter family hierarchy, children were shown more leniencies and the traditions of subordination were no longer expected of them and were freer in living out their childhood ways.84 As a result, society changed accordingly and immediately saw a marketing opportunity that catered exclusively to children. “Childhood was coming to be recognized as its own separate stage of life with clothing, furniture,

83

James M. Volo and Dorothy Denneen Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America

84

Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: The

(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), 255. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 59.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 71

literature, and social activities developed specifically for children.”85 As the term childhood spread throughout society and became an acceptable part of an indiindividual’s development, the overall stance among members of all classes towards their children changed along with this maturation of thought. The eighteenth century, even before the American Revolution, instructed parents to let go of the antiquated thought of handling children in a harsh manner and gradually eased up on the strictness of disciplining children. “Toward the middle of the 18th century, this austere attitude began to soften and children were coming to be regarded as innocent, fragile beings. This enlightened view continued to expand into the 19th century and was embraced by the middle class.”86 Not only did this perspective expand into the nineteenth century, it actually became even more pronounced in the 1800s and the sentiments that were influencing society were also leaving their mark on this aspect of family life. Innocence and fragility were concepts that were immediately associated with infants and young children in that they had not yet succumb to the bad influences that their environment entailed. “It was further enhanced by a growing spirit of romanticism that viewed children as symbols of purity and innocence.”87 In addition to changes in attitude within the societal hierarchy, things were also changing among children and the way they lived their new, more liberal lives. Boys and girls received different treatment and placement from both their parents and also within society, even at such a young age. From the beginning, boys and girls obtained various traits that supposedly distinguished them according to their gender. “Girls were defined in terms of delicacy and dependence while boys were portrayed as rugged and aggressive.”88 As a consequence, boys in nineteenth century cities were allowed to be boys while girls had to learn early on their role in the family and in the household that they were born into and also the one that they themselves would later have to run: Boyhood was defined in opposition to the confinement, dependence, and restraint of the domestic realm. Boys were freer to roam than girls, and their chores, such as tending animals or running errands, took place free from adult oversight. Boys’ games – such as races, fistfights, sledding and skating, swimming, or ball games – invariably took place outside the home and emphasized physical play, self-assertion, physical prowess, stoicism,

85

Volo and Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America, 257.

86

Ibid., 255.

87

Ibid., 256.

88

Ibid., 265.

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and competition[…]. Compared with their rural counterparts, urban boys enjoyed more free time, more contact with peers, and greater freedom from adult supervision. Freed from farm chores, boys played in streets or fields. By midcentury, boys were also spendspending much more time with peers in schools.89

Girls, on the other hand, were more involved in the on goings in and around the house: For middle-class girls, lessons in femininity began early. From the age of six or seven, farm girls were initiated into certain gender-specific tasks. They worked alongside their mothers and older sisters, sewing, cooking, washing, and tending the dairy. In towns, too, where middle-class girls were relieved from onerous farm chores, there was a clear cut sexual division of labor, with girls responsible for making beds and caring for younger brothers and sisters. Even in wealthier families, parents sought to foster proper feminine behavior by encouraging their daughters to knit, sew, and perform fancy needlework. Girl’s responsibilities for childcare, sewing, and housework left them much less likely than boys to have time to themselves.90

Ironically, even though boys were given more freedom as kids and matured later than girls did, it was vital that their development as men was well documented to the public. The future men and leaders of the family, and to a degree the city or even country, were free in their ways as young boys, yet they still had to be presentable at all times. Although, when observing the path that girls had to take to womanhood and their restless integration into home work and housewifery, it seems as though they reached this stage prior to their male peers. Even if this was the case, it was never advertised to the public and, in its place, the process of boys becoming men became a spectacle that could clearly be followed. Families were able to show that a boy was gaining the knowledge that he required to be a man most conspicuously through what he was wearing. “A boy’s progress to maturity was much more marked by fashion than that of a girl’s. Boys wore a series of different age-specific styles of outfits as they grew older.”91 A boy’s dress was used to show his progress, but it also deemed as an instrument of society to officially end his childhood and show the approval of his entering manhood. “The change to ‘adult attire’ was taken quite seriously,

89

Mintz, Huck’s Raft, 83.

90

Ibid., 84.

91

Volo and Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America, 261.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 73

and it was a meaningful step in his social development toward being accepted as a man.”92 Boys and girls may have differed in their upbringing, but their relarelationship to one another within a family was always constant. In many cases, sibling relationships were the first forms of contact that girls and boys had with members of the opposite sex. Interestingly, these relationships were also amongst the most consistent of all the relationships between family members: The bond between siblings was idealized as well. This relationship was seen as the most innocent and longest lasting of all social relationships. With birth rates declining among the middle and upper classes, children were closer in age, and they remained home longer, thus giving sibling relationships time to develop more intensely than in the previous century.93

Equally important to this romanticized vision of sibling bonds was the notion of patriotism within the family. The traits that were implied through the relationship between brothers and sisters were the quintessential characteristics of the new republic; they “[…] signified loyalty, connection, intimacy, selflessness, and continuity over time.”94 These aspects of sibling childhood were supported in that nineteenth-century children, on average, remained under their parent’s roof until they reached their early twenties. A part of the reason that this was happening was because parents learned to have a more loving and nurturing relationship with their children, making life at home more comfortable. Moreover, houses were no longer crowded with numerous children because child birth had become a more regulated process and medical advances not only reduced the amount of children that a woman received in her lifetime, but also made pregnancies safer and more supervised ensuring better chances for both the child and the mother.95 In society, children still held a somewhat obscure position and their roles still seemed juxtaposed. As the eighteenth century came to a close and during the nineteenth century childhood was seen as a time to ease into one’s surroundings and slowly get accustomed to the ways in which adults ran things. The Enlightenment had taught parents to view their children as a figment of innocence that had not been corrupted by outside influences and whose character

92

Volo and Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America, 262.

93

Ibid., 256.

94

Mintz, Huck’s Raft, 86.

95

Volo and Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America, 257-258.

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could still be molded. However, some parents, pertaining more consciously to the upper and middle class, raised their children with the intention of using them as a vehicle of status sustainability or upward mobility. In these situations, young girls and boys were dressed to impress and learned skills and arts that could be used to entertain visitors. Overall, only a certain fraction of society participated in this ritual and it was usually frowned upon. These families were accused of prepping their youngsters for the purpose of adoration and were instructed to teach their kids in order to make educated and useful citizens out of them as opposed to concentrating their thoughts on the usefulness of their vanity.96 However, “Children’s clothing rivaled women’s fashion both in a complexity and an ornamentation that typified the period. These also served as conspicuous displays of a family’s financial success.”97 This attribute further encouraged parents to use a child’s vulnerability to fulfill their personal class enhancing desires. A family could also use their children in a less placated way to show off their wealth. Some families wanted their children to enjoy and get used to the luxuries of living comfortably and therefore built their homes with quarters belonging selectively to their children. The more thought that was put into the prospect of having children under one’s roof, the greater the virtue that one possessed and exhibited to society. “Under the growing influence of the Cult of Domesticity, the home was symbolically elevated to that of a familial temple.”98 This temple was superior if it included rooms that were intended for the youngest members of the home dwellers. It also signaled to the outside world, or more accurately to visitors who saw these rooms, that the owners understood how to properly raise their children. “Families who could afford it had a nursery for the children. The dedication of a room or rooms for children reflected the importance placed upon childhood.”99 In some cases nurseries were not limited to one space, wealthy families were able to implement play rooms and sleeping rooms into their homes to give their children separate areas in which they could do each of these activities. Also, upper-class households and their nurseries were accentuated by furniture and toys that were acquired for these rooms.100 Ironically, one of the republican ideals that women tried to follow was to shield their children from business and economic burdens, in order to elongate

96

Volo and Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America, 258.

97

Ibid., 260.

98

Ibid., 262-263.

99

Ibid., 263.

100

Ibid.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 75

their innocence, by creating a domestic sphere in which they would not be conconfronted by these outside influences. As a result, these rooms were often decorated according to a pure, natural, and guiltless world, as seen through a naïve child’s eyes. This decorative scheme also extended to the parts of the house that were frequented by the men, “Ihre Hauptaufgabe besteht darin, für ihren Ehemann und ihre Kinder eine Umgebung zu schaffen, innerhalb derer die Tauschgesetze des Marktes keine Gültigkeit haben.”101 Amusingly, to create this distractive environment the market did have to be consulted and exploited. Thus, a controversy within the family and the home ensues that attempts to block capitalism and industrialism from corrupting the members of the family and their values, while at the same time having to resort to these measures in order to ensure a secure and conspicuous place within its realm. “Damit steht die Familie zur sozialen Umwelt in einem zwiespältigen Verhältnis: Sie begreift sich als integrative Teil des Ganzen und findet sich doch dazu aufgefordert, ideelle Gegenwelt zu sein.”102 Nonetheless, the upper class continued to furnish their children’s own personal space letting them escape the business world while at the same time introducing them to it. In a way, the lower classes, by not being able to grant their children a capitalistic room of their own were actually being more protective and more intact with the enlightened ideal that the upper class was striving so hard to iterate. Conspicuously, having these rooms in a home gave children their own space and allowed them the freedom to do as they pleased. Especially children growing up in a city were privileged if they had their own room because it allowed them to escape the seriousness of their parents even in colder seasons. Poor households could not grant their kids this distraction but could give them more open spaces to roam around in if the weather permitted: The children of more affluent families enjoyed a greater degree of privacy in the home than their farming- or working-class counterparts. They spent most of their time in their nursery away from their parents but kept safe by their isolation. Poorer children, on the other hand, enjoyed more parental supervision and interaction inside the home, but they also had a great deal more autonomy outside where much of their play took place.103

101

Frank Kelleter, Amerikanische Aufklärung: Sprachen der Rationalität im Zeitalter

102

Kelleter, Amerikanische Aufklärung, 722.

103

Volo and Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America, 263.

der Revolution (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2002), 722.

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Either way, the nineteenth century brought about the stance that children should not yet have to confront the daily world of adults entirely and to make sure that this was followed families of all classes made provisions in their homes, lifestyles, and attitudes to let their children experience and appreciate childhood. Their place in society did not, however, receive modifications, “Children and servants ranked below husbands and wives in this hierarchical family and in the larger society, where power and property conferred status.”104 Neither children nor servants could attest to having either of these attributes, yet the former could attain these within their lifetime while the latter was not as fortunate in this endeavor. Servants The possibility of having servants in one’s household was one of the obvious signs of a family’s class membership. Having people help with the numerous chores that arose around the house required the family to have ample funds in order to finance these aids. Consequently, upper-class families were always privileged enough to have various servants that helped them on a daily basis and usually resided in the home to ensure their constant availability. Notably, this even went so far that, “Servants in the North were sometimes treated as members of the family.”105 The women of these houses were regarded a bit differently in the history of nineteenth century domestic life. “The Cult of Domesticity did not apply to all classes of women in America, and its advantages would not have been available to most upper-class women except for the leisure provided to them by the labor of the army of domestic servants.”106 It did not take long though for the middle class to catch up on having this luxury and, once again, an aspect of upper-class elitism was lost to the intruding middle ranks. The mid-nineteenth century changed the rhythm of servitude that had been present only in these elite homes since the eighteenth century and welcomed wealth into the middling ranks. As the economy changed, through the process of arising industrialization and the opening of positions in higher-paying jobs, the middle class grew enormously and they were able to afford more than they could before. One of their investments was hiring domestic servants that could alleviate the woman of the house from some of her chores and, at the same time,

104

Hawes and Nybakken, “Part I: An Overview of the American Family,” in Hawes

105

Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America, 129.

106

Volo and Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America, 351.

and Nybakken, 5.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 77

flaunted their wealth to others. In New England and Boston, these servants were paid or indentured workers who helped around the house: The character of the servants who immigrated during the colonial period left much to be desired[…]. But by the time of the Revolution they were of much better quality. Many respectable farmers and artisans indentured themselves, and the accounts indicate a large number of skilled workers among the servants.107

In the South, hired hands were not exactly hired, but rather forced to work on the plantations and the concept of slavery was still largely prominent. The 1700s had spread the theme of slavery into places that required extra hands in the large fields. “By the beginning of the 18th century, race-based slavery had firmly established itself in place of indentured service wherever large numbers of agricultural workers or menial laborers were needed.”108 The urban centers in general and the northern cities in the nineteenth century were not as reliant on this type of domestic help. Especially in the time leading up to and also during the Civil War, northern cities, and in this case Boston, did not fall back on slavery as a means to acquire cheap labor. “In cosmopolitan areas free blacks found opportunities for employment, exposure to black culture and religion, and the company of others of their race both free and bound.”109 They were hired with the same parameters that other domestic aids were, yet they faced other tribulations. “Black domestics could prove an embarrassment for some white families.”110 Upper-class families were rarely seen with a black domestic servant, instead they opted for other minority groups that they held prejudices against but that were less obvious to the normal passer-by. Interestingly, black servants and lower-class blacks did not let these facts down their spirits but, instead, created a life outside of their servitude. They, “[…] had their own decent, though inferior, society. In the cities Negro servants attended elegant balls, consumed conspicuously, and compensated for their lowly lot just as did the whites.”111 Immigrants served as an alternative for black domestics, especially if their skin color did not immediately reveal their inferiority. Although poorer women sometimes decided to work in other women’s homes in order to support their

107

Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America, 128-129.

108

Volo and Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America, 362.

109

Ibid.

110

Ibid., 356.

111

Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America, 127.

78 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

own families, these were rarely native born. “American-born, non-immigrant women particularly resented working as domestics.”112 As a result, upper and middle-class women wanted servants in their home that were white, nonimmigrant in appearance and preferably spoke English so that they could underunderstand and relay commands easily. One such group became readily available in the mid-nineteenth century: the Irish. “The Irish came to be the group most closely associated with urban domestics outside the South.”113 Although most people were not very fond of the Irish as a group and held plentiful prejudices against them, they welcomingly hired them for their household duties. “However, the Irish, being white, were less visibly offensive to the social and political sensibilities of the sometimes hypocritical upper-class Protestant households that employed domestics but did not interact with persons of another race.”114 Thus, the make up of domestic servants in nineteenth-century upper and middle-class families consisted to a small degree of blacks, Irish in the eastern cities, and after 1850 Asians in western areas.115 Overall, regardless of their race or ethnicity, the domestics in these homes were mainly female. Women were more closely associated with domestic work and it seemed to suit society more that these women fulfilled their duties in a stranger’s home. The women that took on servant jobs were regarded in a more positive light than the ones that went to work in mills or factories, which were jobs that were reserved for women and girls from the very poorest families. Men also took on jobs as domestic servants but were not as dominant in this vocation as women. The jobs that they carried out were sometimes more physically demanding and were thus handed over to males. “While the vast majority of domestic laborers were female, male domestics such as butlers, valets, gardeners, stable help, footmen, and coachmen may also have been part of the domestic household.”116 Even though a strict hierarchy still existed between men and women during this time, a different version of a hierarchy was implemented among the servants working within a house, regardless of whether they were male or female. Servants that all worked in one single house were not positioned according to their tasks, but rather through their seniority. Most upper-class homes had several servants with whom the women of the house did not want to

112

Volo and Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America, 353.

113

Ibid., 355.

114

Ibid.

115

Ibid., 354.

116

Ibid., 357.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 79

communicate with separately. In this case, a housekeeper was chosen as the head domestic servant whose position was determined according to certain criteria. “In homes with several domestics under the direction of a housekeeper, there seems to have been formed among them a formal hierarchy – almost a family within a family. The housekeeper was probably an older female worker or the worker whose residence in America was the longest.”117 The housekeeper seems to have been well established in the family and it was most likely someone that the family had grown accustomed to and felt comfortable around. The other servants had to follow her lead and got their duties assigned through her, making her the leading figure within the domestic servant household. “The housekeeper was probably the only domestic to interface with the mistress. All the other servants would have been ignored by the employer’s family except when being given commands, and many homes were built with hidden stairwells and passages to keep the servants out of sight.”118 This status also brought certain privileges with it, one of which may have been a secure living accommodation. An upper-class house usually contained at least one living quarter for its servants, which was possibly reserved primarily for the housekeeper. These quarters may also have been shared by a number of servants though, so as to have someone around at all hours of the day. These rooms were located away from the regular residents of the house and provided minimal comforts to its inhabitant(s). “At the end of the day the service staff generally retired to rooms in the attic, garret, or basement where a bed, a washstand, and a chair might be made available to them.”119 These sleeping quarters were considered a luxury for the servants by the family that employed them in that these living standards may have been better than the ones that the servants would be able to afford themselves, even though they were still quite rudimentary. The nineteenth century did not bring about alterations in the general make up of societal hierarchy and servants and their place remained intact. The hierarchy within the family, on the other hand, was gradually progressing away from their age and gender oriented ladder of rank.

117

Volo and Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America, 357.

118

Ibid.

119

Ibid.

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T HE S HIFT TOWARDS E QUALITY AMONG F AMILY M EMBERS The family hierarchy had been well established in the nineteenth century and provided each member with his or her own function within this private community. This positioning had developed throughout earlier generations and depended on the necessities of life that each respective family had to come by. In upper-class households, this was often placed on display and the exact strata within the family could be read off of the portraits in their home: The image of the American family as depicted in portraits changed significantly between 1750 and 1770. Before 1750, portraits presented the family as having two complementary components, one dominant over the other. This dichotomy was expressed in a polarized vocabulary of artifacts and conventions[…]. After about 1770, the image of the family became far more complex, albeit still hierarchical. A portrait of the last quarter of the eighteenth century could contain six separate types of family members, each distinguished by costume, artifacts, and conventions. The rather crude symbolism […] that set breeched males apart from all other family members was replaced by an intricate pattern that more precisely indicated each individual’s position in the family.120

As the century progressed and views changed these positions continued to level out. It was near the end of the nineteenth century that less weight was placed on the hierarchical order that had prevailed up until then. Family members were increasingly seen as individuals and their functions changed accordingly. “Although the mid-century ideal of the family had stressed the separation of public and private, the protective role of the household, and the importance of order and hierarchy in domestic life, the emphasis in the 1870s and 1880s on creativity and artistic self-expression placed a new stress on individual talents, the display of material possessions, and the equality of household members.”121 As the nineteenth century drew to a close, men, women, and children were finding new facets of their being and their meaning in family and societal life. Similarly, houses changed along with their inhabitants and the hierarchy that their designs displayed began to subside, as well. “Whereas the family had a

120

Karin Calvert, “Children in American Family Portraiture, 1670-1810,” in Family and Society in American History, eds. Joseph M. Hawes and Elizabeth I. Nybakken (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 117.

121

Clark, The American Family Home, 108.

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hierarchy that ran from the father at the top down to the children below, so, too, did the house with the most important rooms in front and the kitchen and the service areas relegated to the rear.”122 Yet, these rules of form and function would soon be relieved of their necessity.

E VERYDAY M ANNERS

AND

R ITUALS

The families and the houses that they lived in and adorned were the major contenders in the history of living that they produced. Yet, it is also important to look at exactly what they produced and the manner in which their daily lives were run. A few of the events that constituted lives in eighteenth and nineteenthcentury American households, especially those of the upper class, further confirm the positions that the members had in the family hierarchy and what they each had to do on a daily basis. These events include not only manners around the house but also rituals that defined the family and, of course, their standing in society. In the eighteenth century, the family still functioned as a stronghold for the overall good of all of its members. In most cases, these were farmer households that depended on each person to fulfill a certain task. In the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century, through developments such as the move away from agricultural sustainability, this family stronghold lost importance and a process known as fragmentation began taking place. “In many ways, population movement and urban expansion, coupled with industrialization and growth of the economic scale, promoted specialization and fragmentation.”123 Complementary to the allotment of new jobs among each individual within the household and the family but also on a much broader scale in the work force and society, this fragmentation transcended itself onto the make up of the city as a unit. “As early as the seventeenth century these same processes – migration, commercialization, diversification – were segmenting Boston economically, politically, and socially.”124 These processes increasingly influenced family and city life well into the nineteenth century. As we have seen, family life was responsible for changing urban development and cities likewise were responsible for influencing the way families worked. The main result of this gradual process of specialization, that

122

Clark, The American Family Home, 15.

123

Chudacoff, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 48.

124

Ibid.

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had commenced in colonial times and stretched through to the nineteenth and also twentieth centuries, is that families went from being a unit to being a unit of individuals. “The growth of economic scale produced as a major consequence the separation of place of work from place of residence. This divorce, which had always existed in cities but had become increasingly prevalent by the nineteenth century, ended the family’s function as an economic unit.”125 With this in mind, it is important to perceive the following aspect of everyday life as individual activities and to move thought away from family activities, which also directly influenced the set up and decorating of homes. The separation of the home and the workplace was not the only escape that eighteenth and nineteenth century towns and later cities offered their men. Upper-class women were essentially restricted to the home for the most part, unless they were running errands for their husbands or partaking in philanthropic or charitable activities and events. Men, on the other hand, were required to leave the house in order to go to work, but also had the freedom to leave and meet with peers and take a drink. The places that offered them recluse were known as public houses or more commonly, as taverns. Interestingly, although this route of distraction from home and work was appreciated by men of all classes, the public houses drew clear class lines and certain places only welcomed certain men. “The leatheraprons, or working men, went to their watering spots, shopkeepers to theirs, while certain taverns catered only to gentlemen, easily spotted by their embroidered waistcoats and ruffled shirts, their curled and powdered hair.”126 Additionally, as cities grew, these leisurely places of business settled in the respective neighborhoods of their clientele, further widening the gap between the rich and the poor. Another factor which thickened class lines was education. Early American children often did not receive an education in the classical sense in that they were taught how to execute their duties on the farm. As cities evolved and families lived in them without having a farm for children to work on, education became a more widespread topic. Initially, upper-class children were the privileged members of society that were allowed to go to schools, because their parents could afford it, and poorer children did not get this opportunity. However, in the early to mid-nineteenth century members of the upper class pledged that an education was vital for improving the citizens of the new republic. “Education was divine, and man needed only a correct knowledge of

125

Chudacoff, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 53.

126

Hawke, Everyday Life in Early America, 177.

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facts to reach perfection[…].”127 It was their way of combating poverty and dedelinquency and led to the opening of public schools for every child.128 “The impact of Jacksonian Democracy during the 1820s and 1830s ushered in an age of the common man in which education came to be viewed as a basic right and universal opportunity.”129 As a consequence, schools quickly became overrun because of the constant increase in population and education as a necessity, once again, became a privilege of upstanding families.130 Nevertheless, schools were considered essential and the prospect of being able to send one’s children to school steadily increased. It was important that the government did not ignore the basic need for children of all classes to receive an education and it recognized the urgency in doing so. Thus, “By 1876 all states had public elementary school systems, and public high schools were steadily replacing private academies.”131 Attending school had different implications for socially varying families, yet the conclusive similarity between them all was that an education was in one way or another a rewarding conquest: Immigrants saw education as a vehicle to ‘Americanize’ their children. Laboring and middle-class families began to demand high-quality schools for their children so that they could advance economically and socially. Social architects saw it as a means of producing moral and self-sufficient citizens.132

In all cases, it meant advancement in an intellectual, social, and economic environment and was a highly demanded service-commodity. Although members of all classes were being introduced into this educational system, some were still silently excluded. Boston was one of the most well-known places to disregard the rising sentiment against blacks in the middle of the nineteenth century. However, they did not make it a point to help these members of their community with regard to educating their children, instead they ignored that they also required establishments of academics in order to progress. “Yet, in Boston, the cradle of the abolitionist movement, there were only two primary schools for black

127

Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927), 33.

128

Chudacoff, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 41.

129

Volo and Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America, 278.

130

Chudacoff, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 42.

131

Volo and Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America, 304.

132

Ibid.

84 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

children in the 1840s.”133 A few years later, a legislative attempt was made to integrate these children into preexisting schools so that they would not have to invest in building new schools for them. Unfortunately, even though the law had been passed it was not necessarily endorsed. “In 1855 Massachusetts was the first state in the nation to pass a law preventing discrimination in schools, but most schools prior to the Civil War continued to reject the registration of black students.”134 Education was limited to the white population and to a large degree, it was also limited to the upper classes. Children leaving for school could symsymbolize their status in society through a normal daily activity and, in the process, draw even more attention to this fact by accurately selecting how they dressed. Most of the doings that made up everyday life consisted of leaving the house and being seen by other people. In this case, the architecture of the home and the interior design were not readily on display but, instead, the person had to be decorated accordingly in order to give off the right signal. Fashion, trends, and dress were clear demarcations of class belonging. The thought behind what people wore was not only restricted to females but also men and children who were miniature billboards of upper-class families. “Wives of the well-to-do, abetted by their husbands, imposed their standards of proper dress upon their children.”135 Yet, it was not only society and upper-class wives and husbands that wanted to keep their style of dress within class boundaries to avoid emulation by the middle or lower classes, but also the government was intent on being able to readily recognize a gentlemen and a lady on the street. “What people wore defined their social position, and every colonial government tried with sumptuary legislation to keep class lines clear.”136 The law may have been involved in style codes during colonial times, yet this lessened in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Instead, members of the upper class paid close attention to who wore what and constituted their own internal fashion police, making members aware of their mishaps and compromising their upper-class membership if need be. Colonists and later Americans and their families experienced many more daily on goings that are far too numerous to mention here. The ones discussed

133

Volo and Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America, 310.

134

Ibid., 311.

135

Hawke, Everyday Life in Early America, 112.

136

Ibid., 111. An example of such a law was implemented in Virginia in 1619, which stated that people of the poorer sort were to receive a fine if caught walking around in clothing that the gentry normally wore.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF L IVING | 85

depict a part of the scene that spread across the land- and cityscapes. Captivatingly, the similarity between the classes, in that they each had to deal with the same aspects of daily life and routines, set them even more apart from one another. Almost every activity that one engaged in and how they did so reconfirmed their position in society and sometimes even restricted their placement into another class. The changes and alterations in everyday American life were topics of scrutiny not only for the individuals living them but also for authors who wanted to capture the essence of it.

L IFE

AND

L IVING IN AMERICAN L ITERATURE

Urban spaces are the subjects of various pieces of American literature and also the subjects of criticism for many important writers from the nineteenth century. It is through these accounts that one can paint a better picture of what urban life was really like, while keeping in mind that these points of view are entirely subjective and can only partially show insight into American city life. In the mid-nineteenth century the transcendentalists were not wholly convinced of the advantages of urbanity and sought out the wide-open spaces of natural environments and chose to dedicate their writing to these. Other writers did look at urban spaces and differing points of view ensued about the positive and negative aspects of American city life. On the one hand, urban spaces were perceived as being detrimental to its inhabitants. Authors described the negativity of the city and the rehabilitative factor to be found in the countryside. “For [Herman] Melville, urban domesticity is fraught with threats of insanity, destruction, and death.”137 A more inviting picture was painted for those who decided to work and write about nature and the landscapes that were not muffled by the big cities and its people. “The natural environment served as a space for regeneration – a place to which the artist could escape from society and be shocked, inspired, calmed, or reassured.”138 On the other hand, while nature promoted isolation and the escape from the bad influence that city dwellers may have on one, cities often provided connectivity between people. Complete solitude was not something that everyone was seeking and many architects of the time expressed this trait as an important part of urban houses. “[…][N]ineteenth-century American utopian designs wove elements of urbanity, particularly opportunities for human 137

Klimasmith, At Home in the City, 17.

138

Ibid., 20.

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connection, into their public and domestic architecture.”139 The point to which this set in is somewhat debatable, but it reinstates the thought behind a growing urban lifestyle, in that people from all over could come together in one place. Another take on human connections and the availability of living space in growing cities was the organization of boarding houses and hotels, which was used in the literature of the time, such as by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the midnineteenth century, it was not uncommon for people, even of higher status to live in boarding houses even though it spoke against the older idea of domesticity, especially for women. Yet, not all women had the privilege of being married and could not afford their own home in which they could have practiced standard domestic life. “Further, a boarding house would have been the only respectable housing option for a single woman in mid-nineteenth-century Boston.”140 These residencies were set up to alleviate the pressure of having to form a family and at the same time allowed the tenants to uphold their class status, if residing in the appropriate boarding house. “Though downtowns were far more economically mixed in the nineteenth century than they are today, class distinctions separated neighborhoods from one another. And like all tip-top boarding houses, these lodgings confer status upon their dwellers.”141 A boarding house could be upper class while at the same time rejecting the thought of home ownership and domesticity, which was usually highly valued by nineteenth-century elites. An author who wrote about urban spaces pertaining particularly to Boston was Henry James, whose novel The Bostonians from 1886 gives an insight into his views on domestic spaces in Boston. The interesting take on James’s novel is that he describes how Boston is becoming increasingly modern and with that, he also means that class lines are becoming subtler. “Here, the Jamesian obsession with the fate of the waning aristocracy in the face of the rising middle class is written in and through domestic space. Olive takes real pleasure in her particular possessions and what they say about her.”142 The protagonist is very keen on what is remembered of her presence in Boston, more specifically her home and also the objects and interiors thereof, and James descriptively lets the reader take an excursion into an upper-class Boston home: […] Olive Chancellor (whose surname of course implies considerable social authority) proves very sensitive to Ransom’s observant glance, which takes in (and occasionally com-

139

Klimasmith, At Home in the City, 20.

140

Ibid., 31.

141

Ibid., 32.

142

Ibid., 69.

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ments on) the sumptuousness of his cousin’s day-to-day existence – the splendid location of her mansion ‘on that side of Charles Street toward which, in the rear, the afternoon sun slants redly, from an horizon intended at empty intervals with wooden spires, the masts of lonely boats, the chimneys of dirty ‘works’[…],’ while its inside is ‘illuminated […] by a lamp which the parlour-maid had placed on a table while he stood at the window’.143

James also refers to the urban space as being equivalent to the domestic space in that the possessions, the interiors, and the architecture that are used to identify upper-class spaces are easily available for middle-class homeowners, because modern lifestyles and technologies create a larger supply for these demands.144 The same holds true for urban centers in general because the middle class is spreading rapidly and implementing their trends and lifestyles on the cities. A piece of American literature, which pertains to the aspect of society and domestic architecture and lifestyles in urban centers, is The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) by William Dean Howells. It is interesting, however, that the main character, Silas Lapham, made his fortune with paint, which is used for decorating and beautifying private homes and thus also the urban landscape. Contrary to the work by James, Howells portrays the upward mobility of a simple persona into the higher ranks of society and the effects this has on him and his family. He was known for this type of writing and the literary thought of realism, “[…] as practiced by Howells it both affirmed and subtly questioned bourgeois values.”145 James, on the other hand, writes about an established member of the upper class and her home, surroundings, and beliefs. Both authors use the upper class as their literary playground and to a certain extent both of them also use aesthetics and design as an important aspect of attaining, keeping, and showing off this status. The aspect of living and society of the upper class was a theme not only in the real world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but also in the literary world of the latter. It is important to state this fact and to allude to it through

143

Gert Buelens, “Henry James’s Bostonians: The Power of Paradigm, the Power of Place,” quoted in Elaine Pigeon, ed., How One City’s Cultural Tradition Shaped American Identity in the Nineteenth Century: Essays on Henry James’s The Bostonians (1886) (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2008), 16.

144

Klimasmith, At Home in the City, 53, 69.

145

Gary Scharnhorst, “William Dean Howells 1837-1920,” in The Heath Anthology of American Literature: Late Nineteenth Century, 1865-1910, ed. Paul Lauter, vol. C of The Heath Anthology of American Literature, 5th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006), 257.

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these works as examples because it broadens the subject matter of the arts. The domestic architecture that was being built by upper-class citizens goes to show that aesthetic thinking was not only limited to visual representations, it also extended into the diction of the importance of material devices concerning homes. Additionally, displaying architectural thoughts and décor ideas in literature shows the universality granted these ideas. The upper class in general and the upper class in Boston were very welcoming to the portrayal of their lives and trends in this type of timeless image-inducing fashion. The effects of urbanization and continued growth were eminent in the eighteenth and nineteenth century as standard setting features for the lifestyle and the family life that evolved in early America. As the towns, cities, and states progressed, classes formed and divisions among the citizens according to various criteria took place. Even within the family hierarchies were formed and these units were structured in the most efficient and proper manner, respective of the sentiment of each time. Initially, family members were categorized according to their age and sex and received different roles to play. As times changed, so did these roles and the family became equalized, whereas society became increasingly divided. Everyday situations and processes added to the recognizable segregation of classes within society and demanded more cohesion within the family in order to forward themselves. This was further exemplified and guided by popular literature that catered to the upper class and supported their idea of supremacy. The family and their everyday lifestyle were vehicles of social mobility that took place and were intensified by and in the locale of their home in which they partook and displayed their refined, gentle values and lives.

The Upper Class in America and Boston

The upper class has become a marginalized part of American society even though they constitute an important part of the history and evolution of this particular civilization. However, the upper class needs to be investigated, especially with regard to architecture, interiors, and decorations of the home, because they set the trends which the middle and lower classes attempt to follow. It would be negligent to exclude this society and its hierarchy because they themselves, throughout American history, viewed a social order as necessary and divine. “Most colonists migrated or descended from European society where a definite hierarchy of status prevailed, and they accepted the existence of social distinctions in America. In fact, in New England a stratified society was justified as sanctioned by God[…].”1 With regard to the above mentioned aspects it would be inapt to assume that the upper class is not also a casualty within society in that an immense pressure rests upon them to be trendsetters without losing their patriotic and at the same time decadent face, in the eyes of a revolutionary American society. Additionally, they were constantly judged and threatened by the encroaching meaning of being middle class. “In the United States it seems that the dialectic of class identity swirled around differing notions about the meaning of the middle class.”2 Their inexhaustible struggle was thus to be the upper rank and to be readily recognized as such without having to succumb to a system of comparison. When speaking of an upper class it is important, not only to the upper-class members, but also to outsiders to know who constitutes this class. Put simply, the upper class is a group which is categorized as the highest ranking within a given society. In America, this method of ranking was often based on inheritance

1

Chudacoff, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 13.

2

Stephen A. Mrozowski, The Archaeology of Class in Urban America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 155.

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and later became a measurement of the accumulation of wealth. There is one aspect, which is consistently apparent across localities and eras though; that is that the upper class sets itself apart from the other classes in numerous ways and is the basis of emulation. “Furthermore, it seemed clear that the general populace not only wanted but also felt entitled to a class of people they could look up to, aspire to, gossip and speculate about, and try to copy in matters of fashion, speech, behavior, and interior decor.”3 These individuals and families aspired to being the focal point of their society. They were and are often times termed as being privileged and more substantially as the elite. In order to understand the general meaning behind this class one can look at each of these traits individually. The diction chosen to describe a particular group prematurely sets the standards that the group abides to. “The status achieved through class identity permits people to gain self-esteem from feeling as though they are part of a larger cultural group. Gender, ethnicity, and age also form the basis of both individual and group identity and, like class, often involve layers of meaning.”4 Once social groups in America had been established, using English society as a stencil, it was possible to organize traits that adhered to each specific class. Over time, these evolved from a family’s background on to their financial situation, which would later determine their accessibility to and utility of the consumer industry that also catered to architecture and interior décor. The majority of references and descriptions concerning the upper class allude to the concept of wealth, referring to it as the measure of one’s position in society. This may not have always been the case and it is possible that the upper class, or as Betty Farrell terms them, the “economic elite,”5 was an invention of necessity due to the rise of commercial, mercantile, and economic status occurring in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Another term representing the upper class, which is perceived somewhat controversially in American society past and present, is aristocracy. In its crudest form the characteristic of an aristocrat is accentuated by one’s descent rather than their family/individual fortune. The term itself was much too closely associated with the strict hierarchy of Europe and certain high ranking Bostonians

3

Birmingham, America’s Secret Aristocracy, 108.

4

Mrozowski, The Archaeology of Class in Urban America, 145.

5

Farrell, Elite Families, 179n.

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did not want to be the transatlantic equivalent of this faction.6 The word aristocracy is still used by many authors in coherence with the American elite upper rank in the societal hierarchy, however, it remains to be confirmed that an aristocracy openly existed in the American landscape and for this reason it will be, for the most part, omitted as a referential term. The terms elite and upper class will be used to describe the highest rank in the societal order and in the more specific case of Boston, the term “Brahmins,” as they were named by Oliver Wendell Holmes,7 will also be used. “A key sign of the emergence of an upper class is the development of a selfconscious style of life and set of shared values that act as symbolic markers of that class’s social and cultural boundaries.”8 The upper class wanted to and successfully did set themselves apart from the middling sort and the lower classes while at the same time enjoying the admiration that came from below. However, the lingering threat of emulation in all aspects of upper-class life was a constant concern and motivator for change within their rank. This differentiation started happening before the well-to-do even set foot on the new land and claimed their exclusivity: And Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis, when asked whether her ancestors had arrived on the Mayflower, is said to have replied, ‘Oh, no. We sent our servants on that. We came over on the second boat.’ Actually, if this tale is true, Mrs. Otis had a point. The second boat to arrive at the Plymouth Colony, the Arabella, carried a more distinguished passenger list[…].9

As Farrell mentions, there were boundaries and past as well as contemporary upper classes wanted to ensure that these remained intact. In addition to remaining an exclusive entity, it was also imperative to intermingle with members of the same rank. Seemingly more socially than economically beneficiary, well-to-do families came together with other well-to-do families and sought to expand these status securing positions:

6

The Bostonians being referred to were the Boston Associates who did not want to be compared to a European aristocracy. Robert F. Dalzell, Jr., Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 122.

7

Farrell, Elite Families, 1.

8

Ibid., 30.

9

Cleveland Amory, Who Killed Society? (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1960): 41, quoted in Stephen Birmingham, America’s Secret Aristocracy (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987), 157.

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[...][I]f families are seen as extended kinship networks with an interest in building alliances and maintaining economic continuity, then a broader measure of social class as rooted in a set of intermarrying families with similar economic location and shared socio-cultural characteristics is needed to understand the ways in which power can be consolidated and intergenerational placement assured.10

Two of these shared socio-cultural characteristics namely, domestic architecture and interior design, will deem as the dimensions of focus in this “broader measure of social class.”11 The definitions granted above have a considerably modern day tone to them. The attribute of wealth was not always an adequate way of measuring or ensuring class partisanship. The upper class was often termed an aristocracy in the early colonial period because their main point of consistency was the descent from a proper family: ‘Society,’ needless to say, is a tricky concept that has taken on different meanings to different generations. In its American colonial beginnings, it meant first of all, family[…]. In other words, America’s earliest aristocracy, like England’s, was based on family notions of self-worth and self-esteem [emphasis in original].12

Prior to focusing solely on the architectural and décor aspect of upper-class cohesion, it is possible then, on a larger scale, to see how the colonies closely adhered to their English counterparts with respect to building their own society. The manner of distinguishing oneself was based on this family line-up, which was also the case in monarchical England. One of the liberating points of the American Revolution was to evade these similarities and not to appear to closely adjunct to the mother country, in the sense of class. “Perhaps the very explicit repudiation by the Founding Fathers of the use of titles, even at the level of English knighthoods, is as good a symbol as any for the difference of the United States from England.”13 Gradually, this qualification would be displaced by an up and coming economic upper class, which still exists to this day. Notably, it was in the early 1800s that this new form of privilege arose, establishing itself

10

Farrell, Elite Families, 15.

11

Ibid.

12

Birmingham, America’s Secret Aristocracy, 13-14.

13

Talcott Parsons, “Some Highlights of the Historical Background,” in American Society: A Theory of the Societal Community, ed. Giuseppe Sciortino (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2007), 110.

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progressively after the American Revolution, “A transition was taking place from an aristocracy of family to an aristocracy of family and wealth [emphasis in original].”14 A change in attitude infiltrated the new independent republic and it subsequently severed its ties to the mother country: The ‘social class’ or ‘status’ order which the colonists brought with them from Europe was based upon a hereditary system of ranks, symbolized or identified by the discriminatory use of titles. This hierarchical society (which even in England was not inflexible) gradually disappeared in America partly because no European aristocracy was present to perpetuate it, but largely because of the actual condition of social equality and the remarkable ease with which the colonial could improve his position. Therefore, the old order was eventually replaced by one which developed out of the new economic circumstances. The indigenous class structure was based upon property rather than inherited status. When a new prestige order was created, it corresponded closely with economic classes.15

Consciously and to a certain degree also subconsciously, the new nation defined its own upper class through obligatory preconditions and also, as will be examined later, through its architecture and interiors. It is safe to assume then, that prior to the American Revolution a type of aristocracy existed that based itself on appropriate family membership. After the Revolution and throughout the early 1800s a slow yet noticeable change in belonging, due to financial means rather than kinship, was taking place. However, this unhurried transformation would require another war before it was tolerably implemented. Wealth alone was not the only method of attaining a position in the upper class, not yet at least. A suitable family name and a certain amount of financial support were both needed to belong, unless one had the advantage of being a clergyman, which was the only vocation that arranged an inevitable entrance into the upper social stratum. “Indeed, members of the clergy – a profession in which one does not customarily grow rich – stood very close to the top of the social scale.”16 Although this recent system of integration took some time, and two international wars to ascertain itself, it did become a rather important aspect towards the end of the nineteenth century:

14

Birmingham, America’s Secret Aristocracy, 112.

15

Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America, 282-283.

16

Birmingham, America’s Secret Aristocracy, 14. (Religious standing in the upper class will be discussed in more detail in later parts of this chapter.)

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The group of families who had achieved renown as a consolidated upper class by the late nineteenth century were primarily products of post-Revolutionary ascent, rather than descendants of Boston’s colonial elite. According to Cleveland Amory, the popular chronicler of the Boston upper class, the prerequisites for inclusion among the Brahmin ‘old families’ were an eighteenth century mercantile ancestor and a nineteenth-century fortune.17

As monetary means became increasingly central, a distinction was commencing to be made regarding its origins. In revolutionary society, occupations became connected to income, which became the adherence to a specific class. “The fundamental cause was the increasingly commercial character of the country as contrasted with the more prevalent subsistence economy of an earlier period.”18 The concept arising out of this new character was the confrontation between “old money” and “new money.”19 This new form of economic security shifted towards a society of investment groups such as the Boston Associates. Companies were not only used for making a profit for oneself but also to make monetary funds flow into other areas of business. “Not content with simply making money in textiles and shipping, the Associates invested their capital extensively in real estate, insurance, banking, railroading, and other enterprises.”20 As a result, by the early to midnineteenth century a subsistence economy based on agriculture and selfconservation had almost completely disappeared, a commercial economy based on self-interest and profit-making was still present but was receding, in its place was an investment economy which brought about new powerful alliances and old methods of achieving them. “In an era when the personal influence of any wealthy and socially connected individual was already considerable, the potential for economic influence and control by a consolidated group was even greater. The kinship network offered a basis for coordinating economic control under conditions of major social and economic change.”21 Marital patterns were important throughout both systems of upper-class strongholds. An aristocracy often times relied on the adequacy of a marriage in order to maintain their position in society through subsequent generations. In addition, the affluent (new money) upper class used nuptials as a way to stay

17

Farrell, Elite Families, 39.

18

Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America, 286.

19

O’Connor, The Athens of America, 15.

20

Ibid.

21

Farrell, Elite Families, 63.

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rich or get even richer.22 Families used marriages as a way to form coalitions and to grow stronger against existing kin alliances. These matrimonies were planned with, “reciprocal obligation, personalistic loyalty, and political [and economic] bands of solidarity”23 in mind. However, in the course of the era under scrutiny, these molds and responsibilities changed with time and became more liberal and less institutionalized only to be rolled out again at the end of the nineteenth century. The two opposing and sometimes combined ideals behind marital commitments were those of necessity (in numerous variations depending on the times) and romantic love. In colonial and revolutionary times, when subsistence farming prevailed, the commitment between a man and a woman was largely due to necessity. “A wife was an economic asset, for she could make many articles which the bachelor had to buy[...].”24 Presumably, the wife was equally cared for in that she readily had access to the food supply produced by her husband.25 After the war, in an increasingly commerce-oriented society, wives were chosen according to business partnerships and familial treaties. Nevertheless, a new liberal approach to marriage agreements was seen evolving in the nineteenth century. “By the 1830s an elite young woman’s decision to marry was ultimately her own, but family approval or censure still hovered around the edges of that decision.”26 This pattern remained until approximately the 1850s in which a young woman was less concerned with the involvement of her kin (which was still present yet hardly had an influence) and more concerned with the themes of love and domesticity.27 Romantic love within a marriage had fully evolved as its central theme by the 1870s and young women, “[...]express[ed] concern about the nature and experience of romantic love, reflecting the normative spread of a middle-class ideology among the upper class, as well as throughout the broad middle-levels of American society[...].”28 As a new century drew nearer, affec-

22

O’Connor, The Athens of America, 17.

23

Farrell, Elite Families, 8.

24

Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America, 116.

25

Notably, the word “husbandry” means farming and was used in colonial times as such, signifying the specific need for a woman to get married in order to have a husband/farmer who can take care of her and their children without having to provide large financial support. (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Encyclopedic Dictionary, 4th ed., s.v. “Husbandry.”)

26

Farrell, Elite Families, 92.

27

Ibid., 93.

28

Ibid., 105.

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tion and devotion were integral parts of marriages, nonetheless, economic opportunities and pre-nuptial planning were reinstated. The end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century introduced debutantes to the social scene in the United States, more specifically the eastern seaboard. The name allotted to their new, temporary position in society already connotes the economic background of its intention. The “courtship market,”29 which debutantes entered on the breach of womanhood, was a transition between being a bachelorette and becoming a wife, in which she was presented to the suitable bachelors of her class and made for the choosing. Progressively, this not only brought advantages to the male participant in that a strategic partner could easily be chosen, but also women who, at the beginning of the twentieth century were becoming more involved in the politics of their domestic lives, were able to make valuable bonds. “But the debutante experience was surely a powerful institution in shaping a shared culture and in defining a circle of friends who were members of a potential marriage pool of the Boston upper class.”30 An upper class had successfully been established in America and it was a privilege to those who belonged to it that they had made it this far. “Patterns of deference marked class relations and distinctions of wealth within class. Those who had persisted and survived in this new world felt, indeed, that they were the fittest, chosen by God and natural evolution.”31 The fittest Bostonian class is the society which will be scrutinized in detail here and which will use the progress of American upper classes as its template.

29

Farrell, Elite Families, 107.

30

Ibid., 111.

31

Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), 170.

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T HE U PPER C LASS

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B OSTON They belong to their cities just as persistently as, in their minds, their cities belong to them. 32 STEPHEN BIRMINGHAM, AMERICA’S SECRET ARISTOCRACY.

The English aristocracy left England as such and arrived in the New World as such. The way things were run in the old country was how they planned to continue running things in their new home. Naturally, this did not exclude the voyage either, and it seems that certain individuals prized themselves with sharing ancestral prominence with the members aboard the first ship that sailed (unlike Mrs. Otis), because it proved to the rest of the world that this was a land of opportunity and, a term which was coined much later may have had its beginnings here -- the American Dream: And yet the very fact that out of this ragtag and bobtail group of Pilgrim Fathers came men and women who would become business, political, and social leaders may account for the continuing appeal of claiming Mayflower ancestry on the part of Americans. The Mayflower and its scruffy load seem to encapsulate the American dream of the self-made man in an alien land[...].33

These individuals refer, on the one hand, to the farmer who became self-made in that the abundance of land granted him the opportunity to own property and live self-sufficiently. On the other hand, it can also mean those who rose in power and rank monetarily. These sea voyagers are given more historical significance34 than those that came to the New World on the Arabella, because they were the quintessential common men. In Boston, the passengers who would most likely have been aboard the Arabella will be taken into consideration and thus, we are initially presented with an aristocracy.

32

Birmingham, America’s Secret Aristocracy, 14. (“They” refers to members of the

33

Ibid., 156.

34

Ibid., 157. To this day a Society of Mayflower Descendants continues to exist (kno-

supposed aristocracy).

wn as The Mayflower Society), whereas a Society of Arabella Descendants seems to be obsolete (the passengers aboard the Arabella are briefly mentioned by The Winthrop Society, however, this society concentrates on various ships that sailed during the seventeenth century, not just the Arabella).

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The Boston elite evolved the same way that their English counterparts did on the opposite end of the Atlantic. Their name was the medium that escorted them into the realm of the new privileged section of society. This group of Bostonians was given a name that directly described their position in Boston’s society. The Boston Brahmins was a symbolic name that Oliver Wendell Holmes gave a social group, which represented not only its superlative rank but also the structure of Bostonian society.35 “‘Like the priestly Brahmin class of the ancient Hindus who performed the sacred rites and set the moral standards, the new leaders of Boston society emerged as the self-styled ‘Brahmins’ of a modern caste system in which they were clearly the superior force.’”36 The Brahmins were a superior force and some of their names still inhabit the streets of today’s Boston, yet they were a remnant of the old world, which was steadily being displaced with an economic upper class. “Thus branded an American aristocracy, anachronistic and socially exclusive, Boston Brahmins have only rarely been identified as key economic innovators of the early nineteenth century.” 37 They were the old, which was making way for the new and this new was always directly linked to money. Aristocrats were not disposed of entirely; instead, they adjusted to their new surroundings and began working with the means needed in order to maintain their position: Latter-day New Englanders, for example, who take severe pride in their descent from the celebrated ‘codfish aristocracy,’ have had, on occasion, to be reminded that the term originated in the late Eighteenth Century as a term of opprobrium; it denoted, of course, a class of nouveau riche who had acquired wealth from the codfishing industry.38

Not all of them succumbed to the notion of new money though; instead, some of them turned their old money into just that. As stated previously with regard to the evolution of American upper classes, their names still allowed them certain advantages and in combination with an economic background, the possibilities seemed impeccable. In accordance with the self-made man prerogative, they

35

Farrell, Elite Families, 1.

36

Thomas H. O’Connor, “history of city prepared for Boston Public Library 1976”, quoted in Stephen Birmingham, America’s Secret Aristocracy (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987), 137.

37 38

Farrell, Elite Families, 2. Cleveland Amory, Who Killed Society? (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1960), 64.

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made do with what they had and, “[...] since no legal, hereditary basis conferred special status as in Europe, Boston’s aristocracy founded itself on the materialism of wharves, counting-rooms and textile mills.”39 The organization of a group of entrepreneurs and investors who concentrated on the latter of these business ventures and who were not necessarily descendants from an aristocratic family, were the Boston Associates. On the contrary, they avoided being coupled with an aristocracy and did everything in their power to evade this stereotype of interconnectivity, which came about because of their upper class status. Additionally, due to the fact that they were establishing themselves a few decades after the War of 1812, they were intent on circumventing any further relations with European classes or class systems.40 The Boston Associates represented the new money, economic elite constituting the upper class in nineteenth century Boston. They were a different type of privileged individuals, who were more concerned with philanthropic deeds than with frivolous activities. They felt as though they had a debt to society and that their large profits should be used for the betterment of the whole community. “The accumulation of wealth, the cultivation of an appropriately modest style of life, the careful shepherding of family capital while most surplus income was given away to fund worthwhile projects – those were the lessons that a Rockefeller could learn from a Lawrence.”41 The move away from decadence was also a distinct move away from the ways and habits of the English aristocracy and on to the new ideals of the virtuous American citizen who longed to be seen as the common man, but without having to surrender all of life’s luxuries. The upper class in Boston took a similar path as was seen in the other colonies and later in the northeastern section of the nation as a whole. They came as an aristocracy, evolved into a mercantile upper class, and adhered to the concepts presented to them in their Constitution, while at the same time setting themselves apart. In a reverse order, another group which set itself apart succeeded to subsist in that it stereotypically belonged to the lower ranks, yet managed to grasp a piece of the white upper-class stronghold. Boston has never had a very extensive history of slavery; servitude may serve as a more accurate term to describe the circumstances throughout the eras at hand, perhaps in this case also following suit of their English ancestors. There are two groups which should be taken into closer consideration with regards to

39

Robert Rich, “‘A Wilderness of Whigs’: The Wealthy Men of Boston,” Journal of

40

Dalzell, Enterprising Elite, 122.

41

Ibid., 230.

Social History 4, no. 3 (Spring 1971): 264.

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serving a master other than oneself: certain immigrant groups and African Americans. The eighteenth century welcomed immigrants who chiefly came in from England and other European countries. These groups willingly and unwillingly left for the colonies prior to the Revolution.42 A similar constellation can be seen flooding the U.S. after the Revolution and especially during the 1800s. These consisted of persons coming from various European countries: England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and France. Immigrant groups had a rather hard time acquiring sufficient amounts of wealth and, “Few of the wealthy immigrants became real members of the elite[...].”43 Instead, a lot of Irish immigrants, and later also Canadians, became servants in white upper-class Boston homes.44 It was not uncommon for Europeans to immigrate into the colonies and become servants; in fact, this practice was actually copied from the practice of servitude in England. In the initial phases of the formation of the New World civilization, many settlers were able to afford their own piece of property and to establish an agricultural foothold in their new home. Often times their strength and energy alone was not sufficient to run their farms. The simplest solution was thus to request helping hands directly from the mother country or to immediately take advantage of the skills of the new arrivals. As a result, “After an initial decline during the third quarter of the seventeenth century, the final hundred years of the colonial period were marked by rising skill levels among those servants registered in England before their departure for the colonies.”45 Overall, New England was open to this form of indentured servitude, yet they received few of these laborers in comparison to other regions.46 Although Massachusetts and Boston remained largely exempt from a large slave influx, they did hire cheaper domestic employees and white servants no longer remained to be the norm. Therefore, during the eighteenth and most notably in the nineteenth century upper-class homes predominantly hired black servants, even if they often would have preferred being seen with white servants.

42

Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution: A History (London: Orion Books, Ltd., 2002), 3.

43

Rich, “‘A Wilderness of Whigs’,” 275.

44

Raymond H. Robinson, “The Families of Commonwealth Avenue,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, vol. 93 (1981): 85.

45

David W. Galenson, White servitude in Colonial America: An economic analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 63.

46

Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America, 86.

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Complementary to the white upper class, a black upper class did exist in the (relatively) liberal boundaries of Boston. Although Boston was an opportune maritime location for the slave trade, it differed in its sentiment towards the trade, “But slave trading as a business and maintaining slavery as a local institution were two entirely different things, the latter becoming gradually far less congenial to the Puritan frame of mind and local economic conditions.”47 Prior to the American Revolution, a significant black upper class cannot be said to have existed. According to Adelaide M. Cromwell, the war brought about an adequate setting for the surfacing of this specific upper class in the Boston cityscape. Slowly but surely, this class grew alongside the white upper class and became an intimidating counterpart to be reckoned with. Intimidating in the sense that it seemed, although they may have been equally ranked in their respective communities, racial discrepancies were still ubiquitous. “The Negro community as such was small, limited to the outermost parts of the North End, affectionately known as New Guinea; it was not until 1820 that it moved to the West End on the other side of Beacon Hill, known as ‘Nigger Hill’.”48 These racial tensions grew throughout the nineteenth century and resulted in an epic nationwide civil war. Boston became a symbolic location for freedom, once again, and although the black upper class was not of any importance at this point, black society had a safe haven in which it could establish itself. The Civil War became a distinct turning point for this specific class. Initially, the society as such, whether wellto-do or not was seen as a charity case. The co-existing white society was intent on saving blacks from the monstrosities of slavery. As a consequence, the upperclass African Americans chimed in, not only out of solidarity, but also to keep up with their white Samaritans. “From 1830 on, however, the unique experience began of whites of the better class seeking out and working cooperatively with the better class of Negroes to pursue their common interest in the cause of freedom.”49 This system of integration and acceptance worked well shortly prior to and during the war, yet the upper-class freedom gained from this multiracial experience quickly diminished once the war had been won in regional favor.

47

Adelaide M. Cromwell, The Other Brahmins: Boston’s Black Upper Class 1750-

48

Oscar Handlin, Boston’s Immigrants 1790-1865 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Universi-

1950 (Fayetteville, AK: The University of Arkansas Press, 1994), 26. ty Press, 1941), 100, quoted in Adelaide M. Cromwell, The Other Brahmins: Boston’s Black Upper Class 1750-1950 (Fayetteville, AK: The University of Arkansas Press, 1994), 27. 49

Cromwell, The Other Brahmins, 58.

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In her conclusion, Adelaide M. Cromwell describes four distinct stages, which the African Americans in Boston lived through from their beginnings in the colonies to the mid-twentieth century. Notable for this study are stages one through three, which adequately portray the emergence of the upper class, its climax, and also its decline. Stage 1 is named, “the Historical Period,” which allowed certain African-American leaders to establish themselves as elites depending on which servitude era Boston was experiencing. The second stage is named, “the Period of Integration,” and is split into two further groups by Cromwell because of the transition in sentiments circumscribing this time. There was, “the stage of protest,” a term which is self-explanatory for the black community before and during the Civil War. After the war came, “the stage of florescence,” which, according to Cromwell, is the phase in which an AfricanAmerican upper class was formed and flourished. This phase continued beyond the timeframe being analyzed and breached well into the twentieth century, which gave way to the next phase, “the Period of Decline.”50 Although the decline does not begin until the early 1900s, it may be important to list the reasons. “They [the black ‘Brahmins’] seemed unable to meet directly the challenges in their own structure produced by the sudden invasion of foreign-born and southern-born Negroes and were further confused by observing a different and unfamiliar alignment of forces within the majority structure.”51 The majority had changed, even in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and these changes, which resulted from new groups being admitted to Boston, forced them to undergo relocations.

U PPER C LASS N EIGHBORHOODS

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B OSTON

The urban center of Boston, as it is known today, is not the same topographically as it was when it was settled in 1630. As the city expanded and the population continuously grew, the space on the peninsula was becoming too sparse. Especially the upper class was having a hard time finding their place in the growing metropolis. They required adequate lots for their homes and a safe distance and clear-cut boundaries from the lower and middling sorts and, most significantly, from newly arrived immigrants. It was not until the later 1700s though, that elite Bostonians started detaching themselves further by having a city as well as a country residence, usually in accordance with the seasons, because Boston re-

50

Cromwell, The Other Brahmins, 197.

51

Ibid., 198.

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mained rural in character for quite a while.52 Initially, when the Puritans arrived on the eastern coastline, they set foot on a peninsula, which the natives had named the Shawmut Peninsula. Additionally, three mountains, later named Mount Vernon, Beacon Hill, and Cotton/Pemberton Hill,53 were seen rising from the landscape causing the name Trimountain to be used to describe the new found land.54 Conspicuously, these mountains fail to exist in their original form today because they were needed to make room for new residencies and were thus recycled to fill certain basins and create new neighborhoods. Solely Beacon Hill is still a prominent address, which alludes to the original geography of the city. As a result, the original peninsula was altered in order to cater to the European population infiltrating the land, specifically the upper class, which sought to live separately providing the least amount of confrontation with the lower classes as possible. Coming in directly from England, the new arrivals began to set up their city in the same manner that they were accustomed to from home. “Actually the oldest streets of Boston are perfectly decently laid out on the basis of English precedent […]” and, “[…] at the earliest possible moment houses, inspired by recognizable English models, were built.”55 As the eighteenth century progressed, the town of Boston became increasingly populated and, as is the case in any urban center housing people of different ranks, segregation, and the forming of distinct environs began taking place. As was the case in Europe, “Nicht mehr die Nähe zum Rathaus und zur Kirche, also Zentralität, war ausschlaggebend, sondern die Wohlhabenheit des Viertels und seiner Bewohner.”56 One of the main reasons behind the upper class’s constant moves was the encroachment of commercial and mercantile ventures, which logically located themselves near the harbor and the docks that they needed for their daily business. These ventures were also often times occupied with certain immigrant groups (mid-nineteenth century), which the elite wished to distance themselves from. “Partly in response to this perceived threat [(the Irish)], the Boston elite

52

Marion Madeira, Patterns of Upper Class Housing: The Country Seat (unpublished, 1985), 2, Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.

53

Farrell, Elite Families, 22-23.

54

Water Muir Whitehill and Lawrence W. Kennedy, Boston: A Topographical History, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 2000), 4.

55

Whitehill and Kennedy, Boston: A Topographical History, 8.

56

Fuhrmann, Meteling, Rajkay, and Weipert, eds., Geschichte des Wohnens, 110.

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began to turn their attention inland, away from the waterfront and the commercommercial heart of the city.”57 The neighborhood, then, provides ample information about the type of peopeople living there, similar to the domestic architecture. Being a part of a certain community shows newcomers, visitors, and outsiders who one mingles with on a daily basis and also that they are accepted in these circles. “Die ‘gute Adresse’ lieferte eine erste Vorinformation über den sozialen Status einer Familie. Außerdem offenbarte sich die Bonität der Familie in der Größe ihres Wohnobjekts[…].”58 Having or getting the opportunity to join these districts is not always a given right and a large responsibility rests on the residents in allowallowing appropriate new individuals to enter the area. “Gentlemen’s agreements were either explicit or implicit agreements among members of the upper class to not sell their property to anyone deemed unacceptable.”59 The neighborhoods were a microcosmic political society, which signaled exclusivity and privilege to the outside world. This is the first aspect of upper-class identity in which “[…] neighborhoods both foster and take on identities based on the preponderance of residents’ attributes.”60 It is vital to see that these expressions of privilege through architecture begin their statement before one is even confronted with the actual structure. Upperclass homes are pampered not only from the inside and the outside, but also by their placement in guarded areas, which provide the prerequisite of exquisiteness and the safety of uncorrupted design: Faced with the massive upheavals characteristic of the Victorian era – industrialization, immigration, and spatial expansion – the middle and upper classes of each city attempted to secure for themselves a stable social position and physical location in the city on which they could imprint their own values and aspirations. The cultural landscape of the city became a form of self-representation.61

57

Domosh, Invented Cities, 33.

58

Fuhrmann, Meteling, Rajkay, and Weipert, eds., Geschichte des Wohnens, 110.

59

Stephen Richard Higley, Privilege, Power, and Place: The Geography of the American Upper Class (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1995), 40.

60

Mary Pattillo, “Race, Class, and Neighborhoods,” in Social Class: How Does it Work?, eds. Annette Lareau and Dalton Conley (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 265-266.

61

Domosh, Invented Cities, 2.

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The upper class found and cultivated these areas of self-representation throughthroughout the evolving cityscape of Boston and, “[…] city people do not simply reflect their environment; they internalize its characteristics in surprising ways.”62 As different factors continuously interrupted their interpretation of their ideal neighborhood, they looked into relocating. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, various localities were deemed upper class, left behind due to unwelcome new residents, and new areas of privileged freedom were integrated and at the same time segregated. Only one area has managed to stay in the hands of the elite, notwithstanding having to undergo various manipulations, yet Beacon Hill was and is a privileged private address: Real estate investment particularly promoted group cohesion when it created patrician residential areas[…]. Residential proximity and retention of ancestral homes became a class emblem both for the elite and for outsiders. Arrivistes moved there to legitimize their acquired status and joined oldtimers in fighting to save the historical, genealogical and esthetic integrity of the neighborhood[…]. Cultural and class solidity preempted the profit motive and preserved Beacon Hill as an expression of Brahmin Boston.63

The other two districts, which are socially relevant, are the South End and later the Back Bay, one essentially substituting the other. The first upper class neighborhood to establish itself in the town of Boston was the South End however; this part of town was not necessarily where only the elite tended to settle. The South End Prior to being claimed by the upper class, the area was accentuated by a rather taciturn nobleness. “This South End of Boston was through the eighteenth century, and even into the nineteenth, an area of fields, gardens and large houses.”64 It was not until the city grew measurably that South End Boston became an upper class and upper middle-class enclave and was set up as such in

62

Klimasmith, At Home in the City, 37.

63

Frederic Cople Jaher, “The Politics of the Boston Brahmins: 1800-1860,” in Boston 1700-1980: The Evolution of Urban Politics , eds. Ronald P. Formisano and Constance K. Burns (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), 61-62.

64

Whitehill and Kennedy, Boston: A Topographical History, 34.

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the mid-nineteenth century.65 The fact that a part of the middle class resided there as well may have reduced its popularity among the elite and prominently well-to-do. In effect, the South End was an alternative to the wealthy Beacon Hill district, yet it was not as exclusive as the aforementioned because of its hetheterogeneity. Unfortunately, the South End was predestined to fail as a fashionable neighborhood. The area was vulnerable to the constant threats of the lesser classes invading their designated territory and, therefore, it did not remain quite as exquisite into the twentieth century. “The elite residential focus was turning toward the Back Bay region in the 1860’s and 1870’s, and this placed the South End on the periphery of the central elite and too close to the commercial areas of the city.”66 There are many roots leading to the decline of the South End as an exclusive neighborhood. As mentioned, the fact that it was not entirely reserved was indicative of its non-sustainability, but also the rise of an economic elite, which had power over these things, did not cater to the further development of the South End. Similar to the substance of belonging to the upper class or elite as an individual or family, the South End did not meet the requirements of an adequate, contemporary district and its corresponding origins. While momentarily disregarding the origins of the individuals that lived in each respective district and instead personifying these parts of town, the South End can be deemed aristocratic, old money by way of geographical descent. The Back Bay, on the other hand, is the new money, economic elite land, which grew out of the investments that were used to create it and also the economic, new money elite, which it housed: After the Civil War, the new South End began to decline as a residential district for the affluent. In part, public policy brought about the change as state government entered into partnership with private companies to fill the Back Bay for a new upper-class residential district more closely connected to Beacon Hill.67

Middle class, white-collar workers took over the South End and made it their new safe haven, usually renting instead of building or buying and so,

65

The South End was created in the 1840s with the intention of becoming an upper-

66

Domosh, Invented Cities, 30.

67

Edel, Sclar, and Lura, Shaky Palaces, 82-83.

class neighborhood. See Edel, Sclar and Lura, Shaky Palaces, 49.

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consequently, turning the South End into a “lodging house district.”68 Towards the closing of the nineteenth century, the South End deteriorated even further, “As the affluent middle classes moved out – either to the Back Bay or to the suburbs – the working classes, consisting primarily of immigrants, poured into the South End.”69 It was not until well into the twentieth century that the South End experienced an influx of re-gentrification and middle-class families rereclaimed this part of Boston. The Back Bay The Back Bay evolved into a thriving, elitist neighborhood from the onset. It was not negotiated until relatively late considering the density that was evident on Beacon Hill, as well as in the South End. Additionally, it took an extended amount of time for its completion and could only be settled gradually. In order to examine the Back Bay’s evolution chronologically, it is interesting to look at the various reasons behind the purpose of its proposal. It seems that there were three motives which contributed to the establishment of the Back Bay, all of which culminated into the filling of marshlands that were turned into an exquisite address not only because of the families which moved there, but also because of the architectural innovations it produced. First, a novel area, as an alternative to the South End, was sought after, which was in close proximity to Beacon Hill and which could be entirely exclusive of other classes. Second, the marshlands of the Back Bay Basin had become a sanitary as well as an odorous problem, which was endearingly named the “Back Bay nuisance” in 184970 and which was in desperate need of a resolution. Finally, through the emergence of investors, which were willing to provide for the filling of the Back Bay, a financial basis for the project had basically been secured.71 In order to get a better understanding of the success of the Back Bay as an upper-class architectural playground it is key to look at these three reasons in detail. The South End was no longer a fashionable address for the new elite by the mid-nineteenth century. If one was well-to-do and wanted to show it off they had

68

Margaret Marsh, Suburban Lives (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 50.

69

Phebe S. Goodman, The Residential Square Transplanted: London to Boston (selfpublished, 1994), 170, Courtesy of the Fine Arts Department, Boston Public Library.

70

Anthony Mitchell Sammarco, Boston’s Back Bay in the Victorian Era (Portsmouth,

71

Domosh, Invented Cities, 101-103.

NH: Arcadia Publishing, 2003), 7.

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to settle on Beacon Hill, which was difficult considering that there was rarely a vacancy of lots. With this in mind, a new neighborhood was taken into consideration, which was close to the already prominent Beacon Hill; however, the only space that was available was inconveniently filled with water. Additionally, a part of the area, namely the Common, was land and also entered the discussion as a plausible use for a residential district. The Common brought about ample amounts of controversy due to the continued discussion regarding its constituency as a park or its use for commercial and housing purposes. The discussion was partially halted in the 1830s with the construction of the Public Garden. In subsequent years it was further discussed whether the remaining acreage should be used more practically. The filling and constructing of the Back Bay and the so-called Back Bay Commissioners, who were assigned to this endeavor, ended the dialogue in favor of the garden. “It was to be kept free from commercial development to serve as a park, but also to ensure that it would be an ornament to the Back Bay housing development that was underway just to its west.”72 Shortly after the Public Garden had been established and securely fenced in for the use of the Beacon Hill and the expected Back Bay residents, the Common became more accustomed to its name. In the 1840s people of all classes used the Common as an escape from their daily lives and their fast-paced urban surroundings. “The Common provided the only expanse of open space for the immigrants living in crowded tenement districts in the North End and South End, and therefore served a vital function for expanding population.”73 Thus, the Common remained and the intent of cultivating a housing or commercial district on its lands had been overruled. This was legally confirmed by a legislative act from the year 1875, which stated that the citizens had to have a majority vote in which they consented to the construction of streets or roads through their parks.74 The efficacy of this decision to keep a part of the city green and to let the elite and common people keep their open spaces can be seen by the attempted expansion of the retail districts into the Common’s grounds. This was refuted by a strong and intent upper and middle class and retailers were forced to go north instead.75 In effect, the landscaping had been secured and the Back Bay had a

72

Domosh, Invented Cities, 135.

73

Ibid., 145.

74

The legislative act is derived from The Public Rights in Boston Common. See Domosh, Invented Cities, 135.

75

Ibid., 138.

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garden fit for its new arrivals. Construction could begin; the only things that were still missing were the actual land and the money to provide it. The second reason behind developing the Back Bay was due to the fact that it was becoming an unpleasant part of the town because of its prior uses. Originally, the Back Bay was directly connected to the Charles River. As the city of Boston was undergoing various changes, an additional alteration was implemented in the form of the damming of the Charles River, which was seeping into the region: With a large part of the city’s sewerage draining into the basin, it became not only a sanitary but a noxious offense, as it was under water at high tide, and at low tide it was a mud flat, reeking with waste and sewage. This hastened city officials to seriously contemplate the immediate filling of the basin. The area just west of the Boston Common had been infilled between Beacon and Boylston Streets and was to be laid out as the Boston Public Garden in 1837, but the Back Bay and its noxious odors had become offensive and demanded attention.76

Once again, the proximity to Beacon Hill, the up-scale neighborhood, further underscored the need to improve these conditions within the Back Bay marshlands. This provided an overly legitimate reason to earnestly look into the matter of creating a new residential area and the search for investors with appropriate intentions could commence. By the mid-eighteenth century, as sentiments for the Back Bay were in full swing, a few companies had already claimed a certain right on the area. Naturally, disputes ensued about the division of the land between the four major contenders. The Boston and Roxbury Mill Company, the Boston Water Power Company, the city of Boston, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts all fought for their share of the basin. In 1855, the Commissioners of the Back Bay were formed in order to determine which investors would be given ownership of the neighborhood and the soon to be built lots. The land rights were eventually turned over to three of the four; the Boston and Roxbury Mill Company, the Boston Water Power Company, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.77 In consequence, the new property remained within a public spectrum and private ownership was disregarded from the beginning:

76

Sammarco, Boston’s Back Bay in the Victorian Era, 7.

77

Domosh, Invented Cities, 101-103.

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That the upper class chose not to let private interests shape the new district had as much to do with their outlook on society and economy as on the material realities of construction. To develop the area privately would have conflicted with their ideological concern to create a benevolent society and with their need to see themselves as public servants.78

The filling could now begin, yet the formation of the Back Bay and the arduous process leading to its completion still required careful planning and, most significantly, a lot of time. The receiving basin, which made up the Back Bay area, had already been partially opened to a commercial enterprise: the railroads. Initially, a makeshift railway was created in order to transport materials from the northern parts of Boston into the towns across the basin. The 1830s then welcomed railroads intended for passengers, resulting in three railroad lines, which ran through the future Back Bay. In 1835, the Boston and Lowell Railroad, the Boston and Worcester Lines, and the Boston and Providence Lines began running.79 The railroad lines strategically intersected each other allowing travelers to go from Boston into the remoter regions of the area and vice versa. As the land was distributed among the new proprietors of the basin, the first step was to get rid of the marshlands and create land which could be built on. Thus, the basin had to be filled using land that was taken from other high-rising parts of the existing city. The original hills that protruded from the northern section of the peninsula were gradually leveled in order to gain usable soil for the filling. “On the main part of the peninsula rose the Trimountain, of which Beacon Hill is the sole, and greatly mutilated, remnant.”80 Beginning in 1857 and stretching across a large period of time, the Back Bay was filled and turned into the upper-class enclave which it destined to be. Throughout the approximately 30 years which it took to complete, lots were sold progressively and building began even before the basin was finished.81 “Despite the fact that the land of the Back Bay was sold in piecemeal fashion by the Commonwealth at auction and by private developers in individual lots, it was, from the first, defined as an exclusive residential area for elite Bostonians.”82 The stronghold over these districts as purely upper class and elitist would remain until the mid-

78

Domosh, Invented Cities, 104.

79

Whitehill and Kennedy, Boston: A Topographical History, 99.

80

Ibid., 5.

81

Sammarco, Boston’s Back Bay in the Victorian Era, 8.

82

Farrell, Elite Families, 28.

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twentieth century, after which some of the areas became historically preserved as an important aspect of American domestic life.83 Beacon Hill One of the most scenic and prestigious architectural regions in Boston, then and still today, is the Beacon Hill district. It is a statement of the historical upbringupbringing of the city of Boston and the modern-day respect granted to this history, while at the same time acting as the last piece of evidence of the way Boston’s topography has been manipulated. Interestingly, the architecture is used as a representation of the districts historicalness. Contemporary homeowners have to abide to certain rules concerning renovations, additions, and changes, which would cater to a more modern way of life.84 The neighborhood was one of the first places in Boston to become residentially elite and important to the general make up of the city. An impressive structure that puts an accent on the hill is the Massachusetts State House, which was built by Charles Bulfinch. After the completion of the State House the area became a landscape that quickly filled up with residential architectural milestones of elite Bostonians and the slopes to the west were gradually domesticated.85 Originally, the peninsula had three mounds, which appeared to the first settlers and visitors and can be located according to the neighborhoods that have depleted them. Copp’s Hill is the area known today as the North End, Fort Hill was located in the Old South End, and the Trimountain is now a singular hill that carries the name Beacon Hill. Today, this geographical three-mound hill does not exist anymore as such because the three hills were leveled in order to simplify the process of building on them and also because the soil was needed in other marshy parts surrounding the existing land to create more space. The mound, which would later become known as Beacon Hill, initially consisted of Mount Vernon, Beacon Hill, and Cotton/Pemberton Hill.86 Prior to the American

83

Farrell, Elite Families, 29.

84

In 1955, the Massachusetts General Court declared Beacon Hill as being a historic district (at first confined to the south slope and later referring to the entire hill) and instituted architectural guidelines to uphold its historical distinctiveness. This information was taken from the official Historic Beacon Hill District Architectural Guidelines, which can be found in Appendix II.

85

Boston Redevelopment Authority, Cambridge Street, (Boston, 2004), 7, Courtesy of

86

Farrell, Elite Families, 22-23.

the Trustees of the Boston Public Library.

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Revolution, the hill was in the hands of John Singleton Copley who owned the farmlands which made it up. During the Revolution, Copley returned to England and, in 1796, he and various other holders sold their acreage to the Mount Vernon Proprietors who decidedly turned the southwestern slope into a fine residential area.87 The area known today as Beacon Hill is actually the accumulation of all three original hills in a flattened form. Beacon Hill became a landfill project between the 1810s and 1820s and later, in 1835, Cotton/Pemberton Hill was leveled in order to create the ideal upper-class residential neighborhood.88 The area’s fashionability can be traced to various factors speaking in its favor. Betty G. Farrell divides these reasons into push and pull factors, which attracted the right people to set up their lives here. The pull factors include its strategic central location, the status symbol placed behind European architecture, which was already dominating the hill, and because of its familiarity in that the area had been in the hands of the upper class from the onset. Push factors behind relocating to the hill were the increasing number of Irish immigrants who settled in the North End and the Old South End, and that the business and commercial districts were rapidly approaching earlier upper-class areas.89 The elite wanted to move away from the realities of the industrial world and wanted to create a shield of exclusivity from these undeniable conflicts. Their neighborhood became a safe place in which they could ignore and deny the conflicts and problems that were arising in their city: Open privies, contaminated wells, and pools of rancid water created such dreadful conditions that many of the more prosperous residents had given up on any possibility of saving the old part of town; they were already moving into the West End where young Bulfinch provided them with new houses, or across Tremont Street into the new Beacon Hill area, where a fashionable residential district provided welcome relief from the fetid congestion of the waterfront.90

In a sense, they were becoming an entity surprisingly similar in its ways to an aristocracy. They lived in separate parts of town, conspicuously creating borders in the form of parks and fences, setting themselves apart architecturally, and by escaping the crude way of life forced upon the rest of society:

87

O’Connor. The Athens of America, 6.

88

Farrell, Elite Families, 23-24.

89

Ibid., 25.

90

O’Connor, The Athens of America, 28.

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The combined effects of population growth, land scarcity, and the impingement of ethnic neighborhoods placed substantial residential pressures on the Boston elite, simultaneously enhancing the prestige of a Beacon Hill address and raising new concerns about preservpreserving the kind of class insularity that had become characteristic of Brahmin experience by the mid-century.91

In the beginning, one of the decisive factors behind turning the area into its exclusive state and stronghold was the matter of ownership. The land was bought by a group of high-ranking individuals who knew exactly what to do with the farmlands and who would be interested in the groups venture. The Mount Vernon Proprietors established themselves as a group in 1795. Its members included well-known and well-established citizens of Boston and their intentions were clear: to create a residential area for the upper class in Boston using the land that they had bought from John Singleton Copley. 92 “The Copley purchase was quickly followed by purchases of adjoining lands on the hill[…]. This gave the proprietors title to most of the Trimountain region, with its undeveloped pasture lands, multiple peaks, and rich potential.”93 Thus, these men were able to generate an exclusive area and make those parts of the hill, which they had purchased, into an upper-class neighborhood and an architecturally symmetrical unit. However, the entirety of Beacon Hill was not in the hands of the well-to-do. The northern slope was a bit of a problematic area which remained so until the 1820s and which was somewhat appropriately given the name of “Mount Whoredom,” alluding to the types of business transactions taking place in this part of town. “Through the first quarter of the nineteenth century, this mangy area on the northern slope of the hill – well isolated from the handsome development of the Mount Vernon Proprietors – continued as a source of disorder and subject of complaint.”94 An important figure in the social and political history of Boston was the one who finally put an end to the bad parts of Beacon Hill. Josiah Quincy became the mayor of the town of Boston and almost immediately implemented urban reform measurements in order to improve the state of his city. “In a dramatic demonstration of how an upper-class Federalist mayor could work for the welfare of the ‘less prosperous’ classes of the city,

91

Farrell, Elite Families, 25.

92

Official Web Site of the City of Boston, “Beacon Hill,” City of Boston.

93

Edel, Sclar, and Lura, Shaky Palaces, 200.

94

Whitehill and Kennedy, Boston: A Topographical History, 70.

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Quincy set to work rescuing the oldest part of the city from decay and ruin.”95 The areas which were reserved for the upper classes profited from this movemovement as well, in that it beautified their surrounding or even adjacent neighborhoods and ensured a sense of safety: These initiatives reflected the juncture of political and economic power and blended priprivate gain with class interests and the public good. Banks, bridges, improved wharfage, widened streets, better markets and building construction facilitated transportation and trade, provided employment and upgraded land values. These achievements and their consequences served the interests of the upper class while benefiting the entire community. 96

Pompous buildings and houses were henceforth built in the appropriate areas and close enough for Boston’s best families to enjoy their architecture and nearby, worrisome districts were still distant and separate, but at the same time, not an issue because they were cleaned up and made relatively harmless. The upper class had completely taken their place or rather places in Boston by the late nineteenth century. Over the course of approximately two centuries, they were able to settle in, move to, or even create lands that were suitable for only the best families and made sure that this would remain to be the case. Having established their own localities it was now logistically and spatially accessible and convenient to spend one’s time discussing and laying down other important matters, such as politics and religious views, which members of the upper class deemed suitable for their ranks to be determining.

P OLITICS Political power and the elite upper class are two concepts which go hand in hand. In some cases, the upper class supported popular views and political concerns and in other cases, they separated themselves from the masses. However, in summary their politics were based on the following, The main concerns of Brahmin municipal administration were to prevent disorder, improve the business district and adjacent exclusive neighborhoods and rationalize public services to maintain low taxes. Public policy, therefore, reflected the interests and values of proper Boston – the group whose members and representatives dominated local

95

O’Connor, The Athens of America, 28.

96

Jaher, “The Politics of the Boston Brahmins,” in Formisano and Burns, 61.

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government. It was the Brahmins who had the most property to lose from lower class violence, deficient fire and police organizations and high taxes and the most to gain from a better business district, a House of Industry, a formidable jail house and a beautiful ComCommon that would raise property values in Beacon Hill.97

Their interests were quite self-centered in the form of political activism, yet the world around them was not always as oblivious to this fact as they would have liked. Although the elites in Boston voiced their main concern in life as being a philanthropic duty to society and the less fortunate among them, they tended to model their political party beliefs according to a homogenous upper-class society. In correspondence to this fact, there arose three important political parties directly linking and catering to the Boston elitists that need be mentioned with regard to class cohesion, urban reform, and architectural consistency. The fact that the upper class was heading a political government in none other than the city of Boston is particularly relevant considering the political turmoil and increasing tension towards Britain that was stringently centered and executed in Boston. Pre-revolutionary events that led up to the secession from England took place and were attributed to Boston. The Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party, by including the name of the city in which these events occurred in their historically perpetual names, tagged Boston as a centrifugal force in the preconception of the American Revolution. It was within this revolutionary stronghold that, “[…] all agreed that the Revolution had been won to replace the British monarchy with a natural American aristocracy of moral, well-educated property holders, the rightful governors over a licentious and disorderly populace.”98 The upper-class political leaders welcomed a rift from England, but still wanted to maintain their accustomed version of a proper society. The infatuation with freedom from the British was legitimate for the time leading up to and also during the Revolution, but it was expected that it would cease after the American victory. The political party that displayed this thought was the Federalist Party and their high-standing members. “In the enthusiasm of the 1770s and 1780s too many Americans, it was said, had allowed talk of freedom and equality to go to their heads; they had run wild and had violated the hierarchical order that made all civilized society possible.”99

97

Jaher, “The Politics of the Boston Brahmins,” in Formisano and Burns, 78.

98

Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 163.

99

Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 105.

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The Federalists were intent on reinstating this order without corrupting the thought of democracy in the eyes of a newly conceived republic. One of the leaders of the Federalists was Alexander Hamilton who, accordaccording to Cleveland Amory, was the “Revolution’s Aristocrat of Aristocrats,”100 and whose interest in Federalist politics had certainly brought with it self-interests and social implications. Accordingly, [Alexander] Hamilton’s policy of government by ‘the wise, the well-born, and the good,’ combined with his ‘stake-in-government’ principle that wedded the stability of the new nation to the prosperity of its financial leaders, were perfectly consistent with the views of those local Federalists who now directed the affairs of the town.101

Even a founding father reverts to those individuals who stem from the appropriate kin as well as those who belong to an intellectual elite as being suitable for the leadership of the newly acquired territory. As a result, Federalists had many prominent names in their roster and succeeded to survive and implement their politics in a growing and changing Boston. Especially economic interests geared their incentives and allowed the Party to remain intact and in power until the 1820s, all the while creating a state constitution as well as a city charter in 1780 and 1821, respectively.102 Having similar backgrounds and upbringings did not always lead to unity within the Party. The members and actors within Federalism did not necessarily follow the same path and purpose in their politics. The Party itself was known for its interests in the upper stratum of society, yet some members were also concerned with people from other ranks and their well-being. Two contrasting politicians illustrating this controversy within Federalism were Harrison Gray Otis and Josiah Quincy. Otis can be seen as a more grounded Federalist who followed the initiatives which were laid out by the Party. He followed the ways of the other members of the upper class, building homes in the right parts of town and supporting the economic, spatial, and societal interests of this privileged margin. The Federalist elite were intent on having Otis be elected as mayor of Boston versus his contender Josiah Quincy, also a Federalist.103

100

Amory, Who Killed Society?, 63.

101

O’Connor, The Athens of America, 2-3.

102

Farrell, Elite Families, 32.

103

Ronald P. Formisano, “Boston, 1800-1840: From Deferential Participant to Party Politics,” in Boston 1700-1980: The Evolution of Urban Politics , eds. Ronald P. Formisano and Constance K. Burns (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), 39.

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Quincy, in opposition to Otis, was equally concerned with the middle classes, who had organized themselves into their own version of a revolt against the FedFederalist elite, known as the “Middling Interest.”104 “Among the middling classes it was a genuine grass-roots protest against ‘party’ and against elite domination.”105 Apparently, this widespread interest in the population of Boston resulted in Quincy’s election as its second mayor (Quincy initially failed to get a majority vote and was mainly chosen to succeed Boston’s first mayor, John Phillips, because of his early death) and immediately he set out to work on the problems which he had observed.106 “Rich people, he observed in his inaugural address, could always move out of town during the hot summer months and seek refuge in ‘purer atmospheres.’ Poor people, on the other hand, were forced to remain in the city and inhale what he called the ‘noxious effluvia.’”107 Although Quincy contributed substantially to the well-being of the rest of Bostonian society and also to the overall improvement of the city, the decline of Federalism would soon be felt. At first, the Federalist Party remained strong even though various events put its legitimacy to the test. They were able to use the American Revolution to their advantage and established their state and cities accordingly. However, a new conflict with Europe was taking place during the Federalist’s reign: the War of 1812. Patriotic in essence, the elites and their corresponding political Party were not intent on severing the ties with Britain completely (not even in their architecture, as will be seen later). Yet, “[…] most Americans felt that the Old World had become so old, corrupt, priest-ridden, and decadent that it had little to offer the New World that had by now become confidently conscious of its own vigorous youth, its rugged vitality, and its free democratic spirit.”108 Many upper-class citizens were not very convinced by the spreading liberal sentiment and asserted the security they felt of clinging onto their old traditions. In a letter to her brother and sister, Charles Bulfinch’s mother expresses the upper-class view on the upcoming war: Our political system is pretty much as it has been we have two strong parties great talk of preparations for war, but as those things frequently end in proclamations & words the

104

Formisano, “Boston, 1800-1840: From Deferential Participant to Party Politics,” in

105

Ibid.

106

Robert A. McCaughey, Josiah Quincy, 1772-1864: The Last Federalist (Cam-

107

O’Connor, The Athens of America, 28.

108

Ibid., 99.

Formisano and Burns, 35.

bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 105.

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lovers of peace & Old England, sincerely hope this will be of that kind, we have at present great share of health peace & plenty even of English goods, The stores & shops are full & the prices not much rais’d.109

The upper class was anxious about the consequences the war had in store for them and thus convened in order to discuss their disapproval and tactic, an act which would essentially lead to the inevitable end of their Party: Fearing for their property, disgruntled over business reverses, disgusted with government policies and outraged at losing national influence, Perkins, Quincy, Lowell, Cabot, Otis and other Brahmins were at the forefront of the opposition to the War of 1812. The main vehicle of their protest was the Hartford Convention (1814).110

Acting in their best interest and in their justification mostly Federalists came together to discuss the events that had been going on since June of 1812. The Hartford Convention was a predominantly Federalist-run conference held in Hartford, Connecticut in 1814-1815 and aroused the nation because of the prominent talk of the secession of New England. Additionally, the convention’s participants expressed their desire to make changes in the Constitution and thus, ignited more unpleasant talk about the Party’s interests and intentions. “The undertaking begun at Hartford, so mild and purposeful in the Federalists’ own minds, had placed not just Otis and his colleagues but Federalists everywhere in an awkward position that lent itself cruelly to ridicule.”111 Having been ascribed to the Federalists, the Hartford Convention slowly led to their overall extinguishment in the political realm. The way was paved for a new tone in the impressive political world, “when John Quincy Adams, Democratic-Republican presidential nominee, took Boston[…].” But, it is important to add that, “The disappearance of Federalism, however, did not end Brahmin political power.”112 Instead, the end of one era led to the beginning of another, in this case termed the Era of Good Feelings. Additionally, “The demise of the Federalist Party had a significant ideological effect, extinguishing in

109

Susan Bulfinch, letter to her brother and sister, Boston, c.1811, Courtesy of the

110

Jaher, “The Politics of the Boston Brahmins,” in Formisano and Burns, 71.

111

Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 175.

112

Jaher, “The Politics of the Boston Brahmins,” in Formisano and Burns, 71.

Boston Athenaeum.

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America the tradition of statist conservatism that has been so strong in EuEurope.”113 This new era came into being after the end of the War of 1812, in 1816, and this one-party period was dubbed the ‘Era of Good Feelings.’114 The form of government, which brought about the good feelings, was underlined as NationalNationalism and the Party which came into prominence after the Federalists were the Democratic-Republicans.115 Yet, the Democratic-Republicans were unable to remain solid and thus, a division took place with the Democrats on the one hand, with Andrew Jackson as their leader, and the National-Republicans, on the other, who stuck with John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster.116 Moreover, the elite were not entirely detached from the political front, even though their influence may have been decreased. Instead, they attempted to find their place within the existing parties, but were soon relieved of this effort due to the formation of a new direction in politics: When all hope of a Federalist resurrection faded, most men of wealth became National Republicans, except for a few former Federalists who could not subscribe to the new party either because of economic or personality factors. These men flirted with Jacksonianism, but by the time the Whig party took final shape in the late 1830s, most of them had found refuge inside its boundaries with their social peers.117

The Whig party was in direct opposition to the Democrats and to Jackson and within a short time, by approximately the mid-1830s, the National Republicans were no longer on the political stage.118 The Whigs were more than present and especially the wealthy men living in Boston were able to support and act on this party’s behalf.

113

Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 95.

114

O’Connor, The Athens of America, 18.

115

Ibid., 20.

116

Ibid., 18-20.

117

Rich, “A Wilderness of Whigs,” 269.

118

Dalzell, Enterprising Elite, 179.

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Figure 1: Party Affiliation by Amount of Wealth

Robert Rich, “‘A Wilderness of Whigs’: The Wealthy Men of Boston,” Journal of Social History 4, no. 3 (Spring 1971): 264.

Whilst considering the political influence that the upper class had on the Boston scene in the nineteenth century, the Whigs cannot be excluded by any means in that they were omnipresent within the party, in Boston politics, as well as on a national scale: Wealthy Whigs participated at all levels of the party[…]. The seven Bostonians elected to Congress between 1829 and 1853 were all wealthy Whigs or men who became Whigs[…]. Between 1822, when Boston became an incorporated city, and 1852, there were fourteen mayors, eight of whom appeared on Boston’s wealthy citizens list. These men were either elected as Whigs, or if elected as Federalists, National Republicans or Independants, later became Whigs.119

Interestingly, being or becoming a Whig was a political inclination attributed to the leading economic elite. The amount of money one possessed was the frame of reference for belonging to a specific social class. According to Robert Rich, this aspect of personal fortune also directly led to a certain ballot. Evidently, wealth and Whiggery were two concepts that went together and the reasons behind this lie in the points of interest that the group specified. The alternative to the Whig party in the nineteenth century were the Democrats, who struggled to receive support from wealthy upper-class men, as seen in the table above. In order to understand the reasoning behind these party choices, it is important to comprehend what each party had in mind for mid-

119

Rich, “A Wilderness of Whigs,” 266.

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nineteenth century America, which Daniel Walker Howe more than adequately compares: Whigs had a different vision. They wanted to transform the United States into an economically developed nation, in which commerce and industry would take their places alongside agriculture[…]. Much more than the Democrats, Whigs worried about lawlessness, violence, and demagogy. Duties seemed to them as important as rights, and both individuals and the nation had a responsibility to develop their potential to the fullest. Causes like temperance and public education fostered these values and also helped produce a population ready for the demands of a developed economy. Whigs had a positive conception of liberty; they treasured it as a means to the formation of individual character and a good society. Democrats, by contrast, held a negative conception of liberty; they saw it as freeing the common (white) man from the oppressive burdens of an aristocracy [emphasis in original].120

Howe makes it clear that the Whig party catered to the economically and financially more fortunate members of society, while at the same time, the philanthropic characteristic of the upper class comes through as well. Notably, Howe mentions the positive attitude towards liberty expressed by the Whigs and their intent on the betterment of society. This is underscored by the Whigs antislavery sentiment, which was also shortly materialized through Abraham Lincoln. In contrast, the Democrats were intent on alleviating the white man from oppressive aristocracy, while placing oppression on black society through their pro-slavery opinion.121 The Jacksonians even placed a further public burden on the Whigs by considering the underlying sentiment behind the elections of 1828 to be, “‘a great contest between the aristocracy and democracy of America.’”122 The arising slavery issue was a concern, which brought about a division within the Whig party. In the 1840s, two groups of Whigs were formed running under the names of the Conscience Whigs and the Cotton Whigs.123 This

120

Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 583.

121

Ibid., 584, 597.

122

Jackson to John Coffee, May 12, 1828, in PAJ, 6:458, Edward [Edmund?] P. Gaines to Andrew Jackson, n.d., quoted in Robert V. Remini, The Election of Andrew Jackson (New York, 1963), 190, quoted in Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), 308.

123

Farrell, Elite Families, 32.

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cleavage within the Party led to the formation of new parties and as a result, the final term for the Whigs as such. In 1848, the Conscience Whigs became known as the Free-Soilers, who turned into the Republicans in the 1850s.124 The decline of Whiggery also brought with it the decline of the economic elite as the holders of power in politics. This fact made it difficult for Boston to retain its assertiveassertiveness in national influence and politics and provided a shift in the locality of American politics with the onset of the Civil War. “The upper-class component of rich officials fell sharply by 1860, a drop which reflected the waning political influence of proper Boston. The Whig collapse and the growing strength of the middle classes in city government accounts for this decline.”125 However, the decrease in power ascertained by the weight put on Boston’s cultural importance did not eradicate politics from remaining an important aspect of upper-class Bostonian life, instead, the war brought about a new political identification. “The Civil war healed the division and made Republicans of the vast majority of proper Boston.”126 The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries portrayed a time in which the upper class in Boston had the upper hand on politics, economics, and socio-cultural decisions. Overall, From the 1780s to the Great Depression the Boston Brahmins wielded considerable influence in the most important public and private activities in the city. At times, especially between 1800-60, this multi-functional upper-class, by dominating the foremost local business establishments, political organizations and cultural and philanthropic institutions, assumed the role of a ruling elite.127

As has been outlined above, this ruling elite was also responsible for authorizing and arranging certain political parties, usually with the purpose of tending mainly to their own needs. These upper-class parties were the Federalists, the Democratic-Republicans, and the Whigs. The time period that each party claims as its peak cannot be definitively laid down, yet in order to put these party politics into context; the Federalists stood out from about the 1780s to the 1820s, the Democratic-Republicans from the 1810s to the 1830s, and the Whigs from the 1830s to the 1850s.128

124

Jaher, “The Politics of the Boston Brahmins,” in Formisano and Burns, 76.

125

Ibid., 75.

126

Ibid., 77.

127

Ibid., 59.

128

Farrell, Elite Families, 32-33.

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The parties that were present in each respective time period also determined who would be a member. At the time of the Federalists, as increasingly upperclass patrons joined this party, it was a trend that needed be followed, as was the case for the Democratic-Republicans and even more dramatically so for the Whigs. A large incentive for joining a specific party was because of the other members who were already on board. For example, “[Henry] Lee took the sosocially proper position and supported the Whigs[…], although he opposed their policies on many substantive issues.”129 In some cases, not becoming a part of the appropriate party could lead to consequences regarding one’s position in society. On another note, the high rank of certain citizens did not necessarily guarantee an open invitation to join an upper-class political organization. “Rich men could be barred from elite status because of wrong political beliefs, and members in good standing could be expelled for embracing radical tenets.”130 Thus, not only did the elites determine politics for a large amount of time, they also determined who would be able to participate in their affairs of state, both in a political arena in that they could influence who became an official, but also in a social context, in that they could make or break one’s societal standing. As C.B. Macpherson came to recognize, “[…] all that was needed was an electorate consisting of the men of substance, so that the government would be responsive to their choices.”131 Similar to the political standing within the upper ranks was their religious affiliation. Proper Bostonians followed the apt religious sentiment of their peers and of the respective time period. Within the sphere of religion, as in politics, one could either confirm their position in society or destroy it. The eighteenth and nineteenth century ensured that there was enough religious turmoil and change to go along with the geographical, economical, and political adjustments already taking place in Boston and thus demanded further re-modifications within the upper class’s beliefs.

129

Rich, “A Wilderness of Whigs,” 270.

130

Ibid., 268.

131

C.B. Macpherson, The Real World of Democracy (Toronto: Anansi Press, 1965), 12.

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R ELIGION The origins of religious belief in the colonies stem mainly from the same countries as the majority of the new settlers. Although the influences that arrived with the new immigrants can be attributed to numerous European countries, the focus will remain on the United Kingdom and Ireland, which is directly significant for New England and also Boston. In order to fully appreciate the way religion and certain strains of belief were integrated into the New World it is also important to take a brief look at the on goings in Europe prior to the emigration of belief and the historical make-up of the religions that made it across the Atlantic. Reversely, new methods of worship were established and grew along with the new country, which had an effect on the division of beliefs that became directly tied to the political opinions during a time of widespread revolution. As a result, a system of values was formed, specifically also in the case of the upper class, which reflected the historical and migratory origins of the settlers, the influence of various religious events during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and was molded according to the political and also economic situation of each respective timeframe. Among the persuasions from abroad the Church of England played one of the most important roles in defining religious belief in New England and also Boston. Additionally, the controversies that dealt with Scotland and Ireland were imported into the colonies and further defined the establishment of religious groups. The English Reformation led to a secession of the Church of England from the authority exercised by the Pope in Rome. More significantly, it was Queen Elizabeth who endured a Protestant Church of England and, “Ever since Elizabeth I’s Protestant religious settlement of 1559, the clerical and lay leadership of the established Church of England had been divided between ‘Anglicans’ who were comfortable with a royally governed, Episcopalian, and highly liturgical church and other Protestants who were not.”132 Protestantism had thus been established and Roman Catholicism had largely been laid aside. In coherence to this quaint form of liberalism various groups began forming in England and another step towards heterodoxy was taken as a result of the

132

Gary S. De Krey, Restoration and Revolution in Britain: A Political History of the Era of Charles II and the Glorious Revolution (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 4.

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Glorious Revolution in the form of the Act of Toleration in 1689.133 This toleratoleration (the chosen diction already signifying the forced acceptance of these newly evolving groups rather than their officially pronounced legitimacy) led to the classification of distinct beliefs and also the open pronunciation of certain disbeliefs which ran under new names. One of these groups, known as the Puritans, became particularly significant for the colonies. However, Scotland and Ireland also profited from the Act of Toleration, although it took a few years longer to reach them. Initially, all three countries labeled the formation of new religious groups as radicalism, implying the absurdity of veering off of the course of regulated belief. In England this was caused by the discharging of ministers, which began taking place in 1662. Ireland followed suit and radicalism was said to have begun there in 1705 due to the Westminster confession. Lastly, Scotland became radical in 1712 when the General Assembly passed the law on patronage.134 The latter two countries thus produced Presbyterianism and their thoughts on Catholicism were made very clear. “The structure of anti-Catholic thought, as it was deployed in the cause of Scottish dissent of both varieties, was rigorously logical: Popery was tyranny; clericalism and establishments, even among Protestants, were remnants of popery. Therefore both must be resisted.”135 Ireland had to wait a while longer to officially register Presbyterianism among its dissenters in that the Act of Toleration of 1689 did not include its borders and thus they had to pass their own, the Irish Toleration Act of 1719.136 Alongside the Puritans, this group of Scots-Irish Presbyterians immigrated to the colonies. The ones that remained at home preached widespread support for the colonies, especially as these were struggling to gain their independence. One of the main reasons behind this was that, “By 1775 the majority of Presbyterians in Ulster had family members in the colonies, massive emigration continued apace, and hence it is not surprising that the Presbyterians were sympathetic to the colonists.”137

133

James E. Bradley, “The Religious Origins of Radical Politics in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1662-1800,” in Religion and Politics in Enlightenment Europe, eds. James E. Bradley and Dale K. Van Kley (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 187.

134

Bradley, “The Religious Origins of Radical Politics in England, Scotland, and Ire-

135

Ibid., 211.

136

Ibid., 223.

137

Ibid., 230.

land, 1662-1800,” in Bradley and Van Kley, 233-234.

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In the colonies, various religious events or happenings, which had a big imimpact on the course of religion, also took place. One of these was the Enlightenment, which brought about the controversy and also the connectivity between religion and society and the natural sciences. A new trend towards reason arose both in the colonies and also in England and other parts of Europe. “The Revolutionary Enlightenment began to take shape about 1760 in Europe and America, was stimulated and strengthened but not fully developed during the American Revolution, and became suddenly and fully manifest in Paris in 1793.”138 The upper class of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century belonged to an enlightened society, which entailed beliefs and thoughts that adhered to their personal and especially religious philosophy. “[…][The] Enlightenment was an unsparing sunrise, revealing the wickedness and folly of ancient ideas and institutions, illuminating also the fundamental goodness of man.”139 This move towards Deism and the goodness of man were traits which members of the upper class welcomingly attributed to themselves because they were modern keepers of the faith who strived and prayed for the overall good of society and implemented philanthropic deeds to ensure that this was to be the case. However, the partaking in enlightened thought was initially reserved for the elite. “Hierzu ist anzumerken, dass property laut Locke – und zwar im vollen Sinne des Wortes, d.h. unter der notwendigen Anwesenheit von possessions – tatsächlich eine grundlegende Voraussetzung ist, um am Vernunftdiskurs öffentlich (d.h. überhaupt) teilzunehmen.”140 It did not take long for the Enlightenment to spread beyond the precincts of the upper stratum and, as Gordon S. Wood contextually depicts, it “[…] could not be confined to the drawing rooms of the sophisticated gentry but spilled out into the streets.”141 In the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the Enlightenment continued to evolve and was accompanied by another religious stronghold on the new nation, which also shaped upper-class churches. The mid-eighteenth century experienced a brief period of new religious thought, which became known as the First Great Awakening. It was this religious fervor, trademarked by individual revivals of the faith that may have had a direct impact on the political front that lay ahead. “The practical experiences of the 1760s revivals helped the former radicals articulate two key

138

Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 153.

139

May, The Enlightenment in America, 153.

140

Kelleter, Amerikanische Aufklärung, 109.

141

Wood, Empire of Liberty, 579.

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tenets of the revolutionary age: the freedom of private judgment, and the liberty to separate from established powers.”142 It was not until the Second Great AwakAwakening in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, however, that the sides were reversed and the political thoughts, which were attributed to the democracy of the new nation, became a motive for religious heterogeneity. “By the early nineteenth century, American evangelicalism was devoted to the individual’s right to pursue religious happiness[…].”143 The era of the Second Great Awakening was a tumultuous time period in which personal salvation became the key to a religious experience. The movement itself brought religious freedom to the new nation and supported the religious choices made by all members of society, including those of the upper class. The American Enlightenment as well as the Great Awakenings played an important role in shaping the nation by contributing directly to religious liberty and indirectly also to political thought before and after the struggle for independence. The choice behind one’s belief was now open for the taking and the new found freedom of faith was exercised by everyone, including the upper class. The upper class depended on religion as a part of life, as a part of belonging to society, and also as a personal and public duty. Accordingly, the denominations of choice for members of the upper class during the eighteenth and nineteenth century were Unitarianism and Episcopalianism. When looking at a sample from the 1850s, the percentages of wealthy Bostonians and their religious affiliations demonstrates the presence and popularity of certain denominations over others. According to this sample, 66% of wealthy Bostonians who took part in the survey were Unitarian, 14.3% were Congregationalists, and 13.2% were noted as being Episcopalian.144 Members of the upper class chose Unitarianism as a part of Deism because, as mentioned, it seemed to fulfill their duty as upright and privileged citizens: Insgesamt fanden sich primär Angehörige der kolonialen gesellschaftlichen Elite, oft aufgeklärte Freimaurer, die sich dem Deismus zuwandten. In ihren Augen stellte er eine glaubwürdige Alternative zur etablierten reformatorischen Religion dar. Im Bereich dieser Eliten verband der Deismus vormals kongregationalistische Kaufleute aus Boston mit

142

Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 268.

143

Kidd, The Great Awakening, 287.

144

Rich, “‘A Wilderness of Whigs’,” 273.

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Quäkern aus Philadelphia und nominell anglikanische Plantagenaristokraten aus Virginia und Carolina.145

Deism, usually in the form of Unitarianism for upper-class citizens, not only brought together elite Bostonians, it also allowed a connection between highstanding members throughout the republic to exist, creating an even stronger sense of class cohesion through religion across state lines. Although Unitarianism seemed to cater to the upper class and was praised for its generosity, it was not always viewed positively. Especially the ministers and believers from other denominations frowned upon the power that had been handed to this new religious group. An example of their sentiments towards the Unitarians can be seen in an excerpt by Harriet Beecher Stowe describing her father’s impressions while in Boston in the 1820s, ‘When Dr. [Lyman] Beecher came to Boston, Calvinism or orthodoxy was the despised and persecuted form of faith. It was the dethroned royal family wandering like a permitted mendicant in the city where once it had held court, and Unitarianism reigned in its stead. All the literary men of Massachusetts were Unitarians. All the élite of wealth and fashion crowded Unitarian churches. The judges on the bench were Unitarian, giving decisions by which the peculiar features of Church organization, so carefully ordained by the Pilgrim Fathers, had been nullified[…]. The dominant majority entered at once into possession of churches and church property, leaving the orthodox minority to go out into school-houses or town halls and build their churches as best they could.’146

These accusations were not particularly bothersome to the upper-class Unitarians; instead, they continued to welcome the faith as theirs. “The Unitarian faith ranked as the most socially proper and ‘embraced the larger part of the men

145

Michael Hochgeschwender, Amerikanische Religion: Evangelikalismus, Pfingstlertum und Fundamentalismus (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2007), 69.

146

Lyman Beecher, Autobiography, etc. (New York, 1865), ii, 110, quoted in, Earl Morse Wilbur, D.D., A History of Unitarianism in Transylvania, England, and America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), 436.

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eminent for ability, worth, and beneficence, and most of the principal merchants, lawyers, and physicians.’”147 An interesting excursion to take when speaking of upper class religious bebelief is that, even though the clergy were also ranked as being of the privileged class, their salary was not exactly a suitable income for entry into the upper class. Ministers of various sorts lived in adequate houses and belonged to the appropriate circles, yet this was not financed through their own wealth but rather came with the territory of their ascribed vocation.148 The upper ranks still looked up to, included these individuals in their ranks, and always considered them as being respectable citizens. “Although clergymen sometimes were obliged to turn farmer or merchant to support themselves, their income ordinarily was sufficient to maintain them in the profession, while the greater respect in which they were held also made their calling more attractive[…].”149 The clergy must also be included in the spectrum of the upper class yet, in this study, the architecture of the domestic homes of clergymen will not be illuminated. As a consequence of the upper class’s stringent involvement in religious affairs, they were also highly involved in (church) politics, more specifically administrative policies. These internal politics were rather harsh and often times led to the exclusion or even ejection from a given church. Similar to the case presented in civil politics, membership in the wrong church, even though an individual may have had upper-class status, was not always guaranteed. “Several wealthy Bostonians practiced Congregationalism, but they seldom ranked with the elite.”150 These personal and internal decisions went against the doctrine of the Age of Enlightenment and also against the first Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified in the year 1791 and states that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof[…].”151 Although Congress was not responsible for these actions, members of the upper class certainly were and much like their decisions concerning who shared their political beliefs, who was able to visit their homes, and also who was able to be and also call themselves their neighbor, they were

147

Andre B. Peabody, “The Unitarians in Boston,” in The Memorial History of Boston, Including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Justin Windsor, ed., 4 vols. (Boston, 1886), 3:479 quoted in Robert Rich, “‘A Wilderness of Whigs’: The Wealthy Men of Boston,” Journal of Social History 4, no. 3 (Spring 1971): 264.

148

Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America, 92, 96.

149

Ibid., 96.

150

Rich, “‘A Wilderness of Whigs’,” 274.

151

U.S. Constitution, amend. 1.

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adamant about who shared their church with them (given it was the right church). On a different level, this also affected politics in general. The Whig party, which has also been typified as being upper class in essence, was seen as a Unitarian party. Influentially, there was no separation of Church and State. It was important to belong to the correct political party and share the same religious beliefs as the others on the ballot. “Boston’s wealthy Unitarians felt that the Whig party offered the best manner of expressing these beliefs politically, for they overwhelmingly supported that party. Of the 175 Unitarians 161 (92.0 percent) were classified politically, and 157 (97.5 percent) voted as Whigs.”152 The elites present in both England and the United States formed the upper class of the colonies and later the new nation in various aspects of societal life. This chapter has dealt with their origins, mainly stemming from Europe, and the traditions that these brought with them. Who they were and how they reached their position in the societal hierarchy depended primarily on their family origins and later came to be based on their household income. They spread themselves out in the best areas in the city of Boston and when these became too crowded they created new neighborhoods which catered only to them and their societal kin. Politically, they also formed allegiances and stuck together to get their mandates through within the government. Their influence became immense and they were able to secure a stronghold in political affairs. Also, their religious beliefs became an attribute to be recognized by and even in this aspect of their lives their conformity continued. In order to gain an enhanced understanding of the influences on their architecture and interior designs, it is possible to better identify the upper class in Boston using the prerequisites described. Their neighborhoods, their political inclinations, and also their faith are thematically important in scrutinizing their domestic architecture, because these were a part of their everyday lives and constituted decisions regarding their own four walls and their decorating schemes.

152

Rich, “‘A Wilderness of Whigs’,” 274.

The Profession of Architecture in America

The real meaning behind the word architect and the vocation that played an important part in shaping and distinguishing American landscapes was very ambiguous for all of the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth centuries. Initially, up until the early to mid-nineteenth century (the transition was rather gradual), architects in America were not architects but rather plain and simple builders and it seemed that almost everyone was capable of designing and constructing their own homes. The profession as such did not become distinct until domestic structures became associated with art and the symbolism behind designs and styles became a part of the national agenda. As the importance of architecture and architects grew, so did the general interest in their work, as well as the respectability towards their occupation, which increased among the American public. As a result, a hierarchy among architects was formed that catered to people of different social ranks that were in the business of building and also those who were in the business of emulating. The hierarchy of domestic architecture was designed according to the rank of the homeowner in greater society and his chosen locale, the status and prominence of the architect, and the appropriateness of the style and design of a given era. Constructing a home and taking part in building it was not considered a career that one actively pursued, instead it was a necessity of life in that homes had to be built somehow and who else fit the suit better than the person that would later live in its structure. Of course, some colonists did not have the necessary skills and had to have their homes built by someone else, but these were not architects but rather skilled neighbors. In fact, the American Revolution can be seen as the turning point in architectural professionalism and a well-known Boston architect may be viewed as its protagonist. “Architecture, as a recognized profession, barely existed in America before the Revolution[…]. Indeed, not until Charles Bulfinch began working in Boston in the 1790s would any Ameri-

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can succeed in earning a living simply by designing buildings.”1 Even once the term had been established a career as an architect did not equal success. Especially domestic architecture, its rather small structures and private as opposed to collective financiers, was not the most lucrative venture. The first considerable American architect was Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Latrobe was an English man who came to America in 1796 upon which he did not receive the warmest of welcomes, especially not from the upper-class members of society.2 This may have been due to the fact that his expectations as an architect were rather high in a country in which the profession was virtually unknown. The general sentiment towards architectural professionals was also exercised on Latrobe and, coming from a country that had already established the importance of architecture, he was taken aback by the naïveté that he assumed of Americans. “He would spend a frustrating amount of time attempting to persuade American clients that he was not a mechanic but a professional and an educated gentleman and attempting to extract from them proper compensation for his services.”3 Receiving the proper title of vocation and adequate payment was not the only problem that Latrobe faced on the American scene. As an Englishman, he was accustomed to the styles that he had remembered upon his departure and came to America realizing that a different culture required a different frame of design. Latrobe had the additional challenge of entering a society that was maturing politically, socially, and culturally at a swift rate and required domestic architecture that could keep up with the pace: In his American domestic practice […] Latrobe recognized that rational arguments about form and beauty were not always persuasive in a country dominated by expediency and practicality. Consequently, he developed more locally forceful, empirical justifications of this work by stressing functionality, comfort, and economy as derived from a proper response to the American context.

1

4

Robert F. Dalzell, Jr., “George Washington, Mount Vernon, and the Pattern Books,” in American Architects and Their Books to 1848, eds. Kenneth Hafertepe and James F. O’Gorman (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 37-38.

2

Mary N. Woods, “The First Professional: Benjamin Henry Latrobe,” in American Architectural History: A Contemporary Reader, ed. Keith L. Eggener (New York: Routledge, 2004), 112-113.

3

Michael W. Fazio and Patrick A. Snadon, The Domestic Architecture of Benjamin Henry Latrobe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 4.

4

Fazio and Snadon, The Domestic Architecture of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 185.

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OF

A RCHITECTURE | 133

Latrobe was not responsible for creating a distinct American architecture but rather for bringing professionalism to the American architectural stage. Although other architects were making an appearance, architect became a known occupational title through Benjamin Henry Latrobe, perhaps because of the stability that this position had in his home country. “[…] Latrobe is still pivotal to any history of American practice because he defined professionalism in his actions and writings. He also educated the next generation of professionals[…].”5 The starting flag for the profession of architecture had been waved and the oncoming opening of the nineteenth century welcomed an era of exclusivity and distinction within the architectural world. The very late eighteenth century was thus responsible for gradually bringing architects onto the American scene. Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Charles Bulfinch, and a few others may have been the epitome of the high-ranking architect but, in general, the profession remained very low-key. This may have been due to the fact that although many highly skilled and talented architects did exist, there were far more unprofessional builders that claimed that they also belonged to the architectural elite. “The term ‘architect,’ for example, was vague and imprecise. Almost anyone could – and often did – call himself an architect throughout the nineteenth century.” 6 The upper class was known for constantly trying to rise above the middle class and the same process took hold of architectural professionals. As increasing numbers of builders considered themselves to be designers as well, the upper class of architects set standards that ensured that only the trained and educated could be considered an elite within the profession and could righteously claim the title of architect. As with members of the established upper class, the high standing architects of the nineteenth century had to develop a method with which they could rise above not only the simple builders of their time, but also the builders that were calling themselves architects. A pricey education and restricted access to learning resources seemed to be an adequate manner with which to filter out the elite from the common. Notably, education was the standardized medium, which the upper class generally used to set themselves apart from the rest, and architectural elites were simply following customary procedure. “Drawing classes further established the exclusivity of the profession by defining a set of specific skills to be acquired through education. The library and school, then, served to bolster the argument for architecture as a profession rather than merely an occupation [em-

5

Woods, “The First Professional: Benjamin Henry Latrobe,” in Eggener, 119.

6

Clark, The American Family Home, 16.

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phasis in original].” 7 Formal training was the first aspect of becoming a true architect and the first sign of the dedication towards this field of art as opposed to a necessary or leisurely execution of it. Homeowners could use the educative background of an architect to decipher whether or not they were actually hiring a trained professional. A builder’s background and an official education was helpful in advancing a career, however, the real test of future success was the judgment and popularity that the buildings received. An architect showed versatility in the buildings that were erected; they could either be public structures built for large numbers of visitors or also private homes, which did not reveal themselves to all of society. In most cases, an architect worked on both types of structures and it was rather rare that the focus lay on domestic architecture alone. The significance of this domestic architecture should not be undermined, even though its symbolism may seem less substantial. “Our awareness of individual members of the design profession is more likely to center around their role in the creation and embellishment of shelter than to acknowledge their contributions to the architecture of capitalism, scholarship, or democracy.”8 The freedom of personal style and design could be exercised much more liberally in private structures than in public or governmental buildings. It was often the case that architects were judged according to their domestic contributions and less by their bigger, seemingly more imposing public buildings. Additionally, the home symbolized the place of refuge for Americans and the manner in which architects designed this significant place reflected on the way they viewed Americans and how they should be. The importance of an architect’s work in the domestic realm developed in sync with the profession of architecture. After the American Revolution, republican ideals and values were plastered onto every aspect of American life and homes were no exception. Generally, the architecture of homes and also public buildings painted a picture of the society that an American lived and lived in: ‘The perception of beauty and deformity, of refinement and grossness, of decency and vulgarity, of propriety and indecorum, is the first thing which influences man to escape

7

Martha J. McNamara, “Defining the Profession: Books, Libraries, and Architects,” in American Architects and Their Books to 1848, eds. Kenneth Hafertepe and James F. O’Gorman (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 82.

8

Samuel G. White, The Houses of McKim, Mead & White (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1998), 9.

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from a groveling, brutish character[…]. In most persons, this perception is awakened by 9

what may be called the exterior of society, particularly by the mode of building.’

Architecture in general was a recluse from the rest of society while at the same time forcing a confrontation with it on the beholder. An architect was made responsible for ensuring that this confrontation was as pleasant and utilitarian as possible. If the citizens of the new republic had to roam their cities in search of themselves and their Americanness, then it was vital to send them the correct signals. Architecture became a tool of influence and of self-expression and the architect was the only one who knew how to use it and had received ample training in doing so. The profession of architecture thus leaped from a non-existent occupation that people with varying skills participated in, either knowingly or not, to a label that skilled and unskilled builders used leniently, to a high-class vocation that only the truly educated could claim, and finally to a nation-improving political vehicle that championed man and America all in one façade. Architects no longer plainly designed and built structures, they also helped build the ideal American: Taste and the perception of beauty were inextricably related to the moral development of the individual […] the environment that surrounded the individual was a crucial force in shaping his personality. The morals, civilization, and refinement of the nation, according to the housing reformers, depended on the construction of a proper national domestic 10

architecture.

An architecture that defined America and its citizens and that helped to define the citizen himself and the virtues that he as an American was meant to possess. This self-improving attribute was not restricted solely to Americans, but was hailed to be betterment for humanity as a whole. One can only imagine the intensity of the pressure that American architects must have felt while designing homes that were intended to save the world one American family at a time.

9

C.E. Clark, Jr., “Domestic Architecture as an Index to Social History: The Romantic Revival and the Cult of Domesticity in America, 1840-1870,” in Material Life in America, 1600-1860, ed. R.B. St George (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988: 539, quoted in Keith L. Eggener, introduction to American Architectural History: A Contemporary Reader, ed. Keith L. Eggener (New York: Routledge, 2004), 3.

10

Clark, The American Family Home, 22.

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The domestic realm suddenly seemed a lot less cozy and the dimensions of architecture took a sociological, even psychological turn towards the greater good of mankind. “Cosmopolitan architects and architectural critics distinguished themselves through their acute interest in the way human beings felt or experienced the built environment in which they lived.”11 Their job, then, was to improve the nation, the citizens, and the way humans felt. It became evident that ordinary contractors were inadequate for the task at hand. The way to improve American society required research and an in-depth observation of other countries and democracies. Designing homes was based minutely on functionality in the conspicuous sense and began to focus on individuality and, at the same time, republican and human solidarity. The architect less traveled required exemplary sources in order to attain the full scope of wisdom that was necessary for this mode of building and the resources of a prior education no longer sufficed. Instead, new institutions of research were established with the architect in mind. Architectural libraries were rather novel considering that the profession did not take hold in America until the nineteenth century. As it became more involving and the symbolism behind design became more telling, a research haven had to be implemented. Accessing these bodies of literature meant that a certain status had been attained within the architectural world, as well as to interested onlookers from society as a whole. “The Collection of the Architectural Library of Boston, therefore, served the needs of a professionalizing occupation by articulating a body of knowledge to be mastered and a more elusive quality – taste – which would distinguish professional architects both from their clients and from other builders.” 12 Visiting a library to gain insight and inspiration signaled a professional sophistication that non-architects lacked. The elite architects of the nineteenth century could be found either in a reading room or in a collection of books that they had personally acquired. They had to continually educate themselves, travel abroad, and confront themselves with the newest trends; however, the same was expected from their clientele. “No improvement can take place in the Art of the present generation until all classes, Artists, Manufacturers, and the Public, are better educated in Art, and the existence of general principles is more fully recognised.” 13 Either way, it was the educated, well-read architects that succeeded in their trade and could count on the benefit of receiving a sufficient amount of commissions. 11

Rennella, The Boston Cosmopolitans, 145.

12

McNamara, “Defining the Profession: Books, Libraries, and Architects,” in Haf-

13

Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament: A Unique Collection of More Than 2350

ertepe and O’Gorman, 86. Classic Patterns (1856; repr., London: Herbert Press, 2010), 28 (Proposition 37).

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The education of formalities concerning design and construction were the factors that made an architect who he (or sometimes she) was. The libraries and schools provided historical, technical, and artistic lessons and motivations, which secured the integrity of a proper architectural standing. Historically, other cultures or even existing important American buildings and their architects could be studied. Technically, skills pertaining to the distinct process of designing and building were accurately taught and made consultable. Artistically, other fine arts were lectured and used as reference points for questions of style and taste.14 It was with these skills and the knowledge of taste and refinement that the architect achieved a pole position in the professional world. “In the process the architect became a school-bred designer divorced from the actual work of erecting a building. He listened to the client’s needs, drew the building on paper, and supervised the builder who executed his graphic directions.”15 The calling became an elitist field of work because of the training and talent involved and because of the meaning it had with regard to society. “The man who improved the dwelling houses of the people would make a lasting reform in the foundations of society.”16 It had already become a fact that only real architects could be left with the responsibility of laying these foundations, but as the progression of architecture took its path that standard became more competitive amongst trained professionals. The increase in training and in education also led to the improvement in design because of a higher placed emphasis on the drawing that the client would see. Beginning in the early 1800s, architectural drawings were slowly becoming more embellished because architects realized that the more detailed their drawn renderings were, the better they would be able to sell their design to the client.17 This phenomenon can be observed as running parallel to a change in trends, in that the Federal and Georgian drawings, like that of Charles Bulfinch’s drawing of the first Harrison Gray Otis house, were two-dimensional, whereas the Greek and Roman design drawings of the mid-nineteenth century were presented in a three-dimensional depiction.18

14

McNamara, “Defining the Profession: Books, Libraries, and Architects,” in Haf-

15

James F. O’Gorman, On the Boards: Drawings by Nineteenth-Century Boston Archi-

ertepe and O’Gorman, 85. tects (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 2. 16

Clark, The American Family Home, 28.

17

O’Gorman, On the Boards, 5.

18

Ibid.

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Figure 2: A rather simple front elevation architectural drawing by George M. Dexter, which he created in 1846. The minimal detail and simplicity of the drawing are normal for the time.

George Minot Dexter, Front elevations 63, 65, 67 Mount Vernon Street, Architectural Drawings Vol. 9, 1846, Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.

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Figure 3 and 4: A short time after Dexter’s drawing, Nathaniel J. Bradlee created these front elevation and longitudinal section architectural drawings in 1858. The detail and presentability to the client are much more expilict.

Nathaniel J. Bradlee, Front elevation, Walter Knight House, 7 Walnut Street, Boston, Massachusetts, and Longitudinal Section, Walter Knight House, 7 Walnut Street, Boston, Massachusetts, Architectural Drawings Vol. 7, 1858, Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.

The drawings by Dexter and Bradlee, even though they are only twelve years apart, explicitly depict this sophistication in drawing style. The architect of the mid-nineteenth century and beyond had to define himself as an artist in order to appeal to the clientele, especially to the high-society homeowner. Often times an architect was talented in envisioning a design but was unable to get it on paper the way he pictured it. Thus, in the later half of the nineteenth century, draftsmen were hired and they would work together with architects, drawing the house according to the architect’s rendering.19 And so it was that the man behind the design did not necessarily mean that he was the one behind the drawing, but the intentions corresponding with architecture remained in the architect’s mind and hands. Architects took the duty of improving society very seriously and they often frowned upon colleagues that did not fulfill this responsibility to complete satis-

19

O’Gorman, On the Boards, 11.

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faction. Often times this controversy was based on differences in personal taste and style but, nevertheless, architects created their own hierarchy within their profession: To improve their own position and undermine the competition, these self-styled architects in the 1840s seized upon the growing social discontent and aggressively asserted that new standards were needed for domestic housing and family life[…]. Insistent on higher standards, they asserted that the proper education and training of architects would raise building standards and thereby benefit the masses. In so doing, they hoped to create a professional architectural elite whose value would be recognized both socially and financially.

20

As the elite became pronounced, they were able to implement their own styles and influence the homeowner in most respects of his domestic architectural venture. A reliance on proper taste had been established among the upper ranks of society and they trusted that architects knew which style of design could further elevate them and also which trends may make them appear to be better Americans. An architect’s independence in the planning process had not always been the correct order of procedure. In the colonies, prior to the American Revolution and before the professionalization of architecture, builders were instructed by most homeowners on the manner in which the house was to be built. Most homeowners, in this case, were the upper-class members of society who were capable of giving the builder orders on the type of house they had envisioned for their family. Lower-class families did not have the freedom of choice and had to be content with the house plan that was suggested, which was usually affixed according to the most affordable price category.21 As architects became professional builders of tasteful design upper-class families relied on their input regarding the appropriate home to be constructed as opposed to insisting on their own taste. The middle class looked to the upper class for the correct domestic architectural influence and the lower class still housed according to the price that they were able to pay. The nineteenth century brought about another phenomenon within the rising popularity of architecture that enabled the people to become better acquainted with the possibilities of home design. The written and, in this case, also the illustrated pages of books publicized domestic architecture and allowed homeowners to inform themselves about the styles and trends of the day. These books did not conceal the fact that some homes were intended for certain people of certain 20

Clark, The American Family Home, 16.

21

Hawke, Everyday Life in Early America, 51.

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ranks and that it would be improper not to abide to these rules of the domestic architectural hierarchy. “They [architects] organized their books by social rank, usually going from bottom to top, and labeling each plan according to the social class for which it was designed. They were quite explicit about what was appropriate for the rich and what for the poor[…].”22 However, the simple fact of publishing these books and making them available for the masses contradicted the message of individuality of design which upper-class homes were still intent on relaying. The increase in book plans was an attractive refinement and building method for the middle class, the upper class, on the other hand, continued to put their trust in the hands of the architect that they had carefully chosen. Architectural design books became such a popular commodity that some authors decided it may be better, and also more lucrative, to alleviate domestic architecture from the burden of social rank and make it seem more collective. One of the most well-known architectural pattern book writers of the nineteenth century was Andrew Jackson Downing, who followed precisely this feat of commonness in his books. Although he did not deny the existence of a hierarchy, he applied it to architecture as opposed to society. “What is striking is the degree to which Downing generally avoided using the word class in reference to economic or social groups and instead employed it to designate types of dwellings: he was positing not a hierarchical society but a hierarchy of house types [emphasis in original].”23 His intentions were to try and rid society of the overpowering theme of class exclusivity, but he would not be able to achieve such a thing in that his hierarchy of houses directly complemented a greater class structure. “Nevertheless, while Downing argued that taste was universal, that its diffusion among all persons, no matter what the means, was one hallmark of republican social institutions, the hierarchy of dwelling types he advocated was in reality a reflection of a stratified society.”24 It was a noble attempt, but other architects and also homeowners were less sensitive about a social and architectural hierarchy.

22

Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1992), 273.

23

Schuyler, Apostle of Taste, 99.

24

Ibid., 100.

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W OMEN ARCHITECTS

IN

AMERICA

As with most public professions, women in America were not cordially admitted to the field of architecture until the profession had already been substantially established. Women within the architectural commissions market cannot have been said to have a sound foundation in the profession until about the 1920s, although a few did manage to make a name for themselves in the nineteenth century. These women were extraordinary in their understanding of the multifaceted occupation of architecture and were able to attain admittance as an apprentice in existing offices. “It need hardly be noted that this setting – an office run by a famous architect – was the ultimate ‘old boy’s club.’”25 Being able to partake and learn from these architectural boy’s clubs was a privilege reserved only for those women who truly proved their worthiness and excelled to the point that their male architectural counterparts could consider them equal. If a woman had the means and the potential she could open her own office, however this rarely happened prior to the twentieth century. Louise Blanchard Bethune was one female architect who did establish her own firm, which opened its doors to the public in 1881 and granted her, as the first female ever, membership into the American Institute of Architects in 1888.26 Many of these women were not married at the time that they began their careers as architects. This actually, in contrast to many other spectrums of their life, worked to their advantage. Women who were successful architects by the time they decided to enter a matrimonial commitment were able to continue their work and not be accused of relinquishing their domestic duties.27 In fact, domestic architecture became a loophole with which women were able to combine their gender-specific duties and their career. “Considering the power of this concept [the cult of domesticity], it is not surprising that many early women architects developed exclusively residential practices.”28 The first female architect in the Boston area was Josephine Wright Chapman who entered the professional scene in the late 1800s and, “[…] decided to focus exclusively on domestic architecture because she felt women were inherently better home designers.” 29 25

Sarah Allaback, The First Women Architects (Chicago: University of Illinois Press,

26

Allaback, The First Women Architects, 3, 7.

27

Gwendolyn Wright, “On the Fringe of the Profession: Women in American Architec-

2008), 2-3.

ture,” in The Architect: Chapters in the History of the Profession, ed. Spiro Kostof (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 280. 28

Allaback, The First Women Architects, 3, 5.

29

Ibid., 5.

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Women also opened the door for other minority groups to establish themselves as architects or domestic architects and they gained a certain degree of success in their undertaking. Especially women who additionally belonged to another marginalized group joined in on the possibility of making a living with a decent profession. Various women architects, who entered the architectural branch of work in the late nineteenth and more so the early twentieth centuries, were either immigrants or African American.30 It was extremely difficult for these gender- and race-based ostracized groups to get a foothold in this particular professional world, yet some very talented individuals were able to do so. As the twentieth century progressed, so did their standing in the profession, however it is evident that they always had to remain one step behind the men and their development as architects occurred much later than the original implementation of architecture as a recognized profession. Men who belonged to a minority group within society also faced similar hardships in gaining admittance to their professional calling.

AFRICAN -AMERICAN ARCHITECTS

IN

AMERICA

Vocational opportunities for African Americans were scarce from various perspectives. It was near impossible for them to gain admittance into a respectable occupation because they were denied access into the institutions that set the standards of obligatory prerequisites. The situation within the realm of architecture and design was not much different. Nonetheless, African-American architects were able to make a name for themselves starting in the mid-nineteenth century and even went so far as to eventually advertise their talent to the greater public. The introduction of African-American architects can be seen occurring shortly after the end of the Civil War. This time period was important not only for the development of architects who could finally receive the proper training, but also in that it produced members of the African-American community who could hire these new found professionals. “There were exceedingly more opportunities to gain an education, and nascent vocational schools, industrial institutes, colleges, and universities sprang into existence creating in their wake a clientele for Afri-

30

The first African-American woman architect was Ethel Bailey Furman, who officially began working as an architect in 1915. Allaback, The First Women Architects, 8n6.

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can American architects.”31 Interestingly, some of these professionals chose to use this to their advantage and to create an exclusive professional market for the African-American community, whereas others were inclined to keep the aspect of their race as discreet as possible while competing for commissions. Women architects, notably, had a similar stance and often times purposely failed to mention their gender prior to personally meeting with clients, sometimes leading to unexpected surprises among the latter. Architects within minority groups also experienced this indecisive attitude on the matter of revealing their background, Most of the male [African-American] architects and all of the female [African-American] architects felt that ‘race’ was crucial to their identity and relied on their ethnicity to obtain clients. For some race was seen as a negative factor in their professional advancement and therefore it was expedient to play down their ethnicity; for others, it was a philosophical stance – they felt an emphasis on race was divisive to national unity.

32

Regardless of their own point of view towards the matter of race, it was the client that chose who to hire and often times the decision-making process included an ample amount of discrimination. As the nineteenth century progressed and the prejudices towards minority groups became somewhat more lenient, African-American architects began to spread into this specific professional branch. The end of the nineteenth century even brought about the public display of their work at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia in 1895 and at the Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition in Nashville in 1897, at both of which so-called Negro Buildings showcased their architectural and design work.33 As the twentieth century opened up, opportunities for African-Americans within architecture and design were emerging and they were gradually allowed to partake in the building venture.

31

Dr.Wesley Howard Henderson, Simmona Simmons-Hodo, and Dreck Spurlock Wilson, introduction to African American Architects: A Biographical Dictionary 18651945, ed. David Spurlock Wilson (New York: Routledge, 2004), x.

32

Henderson, Simmons-Hodo, and Wilson, introduction to African American Architects: A Biographical Dictionary 1865-1945, ix.

33

Ibid., xi.

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AMERICA

Interior decorating as a profession, which separated from the more generalized theme of architecture, did not evolve until the twentieth century. Numerous individuals, usually women in this case, concentrated their design efforts on the interiors of homes, but were not known as a distinct entity in the occupational world. The overall thought was that interiors along with exteriors belonged to the house and the architect was responsible for designing both. It only seemed logical that there was no need for someone else to take care of the interiors considering that the architect was putting up the walls that laid the overall groundwork for the entire house. As with the beginnings of professional architecture, craftsmen that were skilled in other fields that appeared to be a part of interior design took over the lead in completing an architect’s fundamental work. As interiors and their symbolism became more complex, a new spectrum of house design became prominent. The first interior designers were men, but not because they specifically chose this line of work but rather because it fell under their vocational duties as architects. The interior designs of the late eighteenth century, when architecture was beginning to become a profession, until the very late nineteenth century was thus dominated by the architect: Before the waning years of the nineteenth century, the interior of a house was overseen by the designing architect. He would decide on every interior detail, the color of the rooms, and the arrangement of furniture. Under the architect’s supervision the furniture was custom-made by upholstering and woodworking firms. Curtains, also designed by the architect, were made by men who called themselves drapers. These decisions were made in company with the owner of the house. The owner’s wife had little, if any, voice in these decisions. This began to change when Candace Wheeler, who had worked with the designer Louis Comfort Tiffany, opened her own design firm and defined herself as an inte34

rior decorator.

Notably, Wheeler called herself an interior “decorator” seeing as the blueprint design of the interior rooms was still the task appointed to the architect. In consideration thereof, she did become well known as the first interior decorator and

34

Adam Lewis, The Great Lady Decorators: The Women Who Defined Interior Design, 1870-1955 (New York: Rizzoli, 2009), 12.

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opened her firm in 1883; seven years after a monumental exhibition influenced her and the career of interior decoration in general.35 The 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia can be viewed as the starting point for interior design/decoration as a new unique branch of architectural work. It was women, who ascertained and expanded on the possibilities of treating interiors individually from the elevations that distinguished the exterior of the house. Their perception was that the correspondence between the exteriors and their interiors should remain intact; however, the person responsible for each no longer had to be identical. “Beginning with the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, women discovered unusual design opportunities at expositions, where traditional boundaries were extended to include what might otherwise be considered of little value.”36 Candace Wheeler, as the pioneer interior decorator, visited the exhibition in Philadelphia and was impressed by this newfound opportunity and used it as her gateway to her domestic calling. However, even with the presence of Wheeler and her firm, the prospect of making a living by designing interiors did not pick up until the twentieth century, most prominently with Elsie de Wolfe,37 and most homeowners continued to trust their architect and his accomplices with the decoration of their rooms. The professionalization of decoration remained in the hands of women and many were limited to writing about it as opposed to following in the footsteps of Wheeler. The most outstanding of these writings came from Edith Wharton, who published her book, The Decoration of Houses, together with Ogden Codman, Jr., in the year 1898. In reading her book, which appeared on the American scene shortly before the turn of the century, it becomes evident that decorators had not become an integral part of the house building process: In the average house the architect’s task seems virtually confined to the elevations and floor-plan. The designing of what are today regarded as insignificant details, such as mouldings, architraves, and cornices, has become a perfunctory work, hurried over and unregarded; and when this work is done, the upholsterer is called in to ‘decorate’ and 38

furnish the rooms.

35

Lewis, The Great Lady Decorators, 14.

36

Allaback, The First Women Architects, 28.

37

Penny Sparke, “The Domestic Interior and the Construction of Self: The New York Homes of Elsie de Wolfe,” in Interior Design and Identity, eds. Susie McKellar and Penny Sparke (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 73.

38

Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman, Jr., The Decoration of Houses (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), xix-xx.

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Gradually, throughout the book it does become apparent that decorators are moving in on the professional world of architecture and readily taking over the responsibility of interior details in order to avoid their being hurried over and disregarded. Yet, she realizes and blames the tardiness of this field on its absence in all noteworthy writings concerning the field of interior design. “No study of house-decoration as a branch of architecture has for at least fifty years been published in England or America[…][emphasis in original].” 39 The impromptu appearance of interior decorators was seemingly not limited to the Continent alone. In England, and most probably also in America, the concept of decorating the interior of one’s house without the help of architects, upholsterers, drapers, and the like was not a foreign idea even before the 1876 Centennial Exhibition. Women were often involved in suitably establishing the rooms of their home; yet, they did not publicly advertise it nor ever contemplate making a career out of it. In Great Britain in the eighteenth century decorating the rooms of one’s house, “[…] played a key role in refining women’s ‘taste,’ a concept which was to remain central to the art of interior decoration [...] these early creative practices played a significant part in helping women to establish their social and personal identities.” 40 American women followed the same path; however, some among them soon realized the importance and the potential of creating a profession that encompassed one of their established domestic duties. The profession of interior design or decoration can be seen as an occupation that was reserved for and evolved into a female domain. Although the earliest interior designers were men in that, the architectural field did not welcome women until the late nineteenth century; these cannot be considered solely interior designers in the sense of the term that has progressed throughout time. Instead, the profession truly began with the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in which it was initially conceived and nurtured strictly through women. Conspicuously, with the start of the twentieth century and the continued advances in the professionalization of interior design men were eventually also interested in and introduced into this occupational realm. The case studies presented here fall in the timeframe before career paths catering to interiors were contemplated and the homes under scrutiny were largely designed inside and out by the same architect. However, it is important to perceive the evolution of this specific aspect of architecture and to keep this in mind retrospectively in that, throughout the nineteenth 39

Wharton and Codman, Jr., The Decoration of Houses, xx.

40

Katherine Sharp, “Women’s Creativity and Display in the Eighteenth-Century British Domestic Interior,” in Interior Design and Identity, eds. Susie McKellar and Penny Sparke (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 10.

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century domestic architecture became so composite that an additional field within it had to in due course be concocted. Domestic and public architecture and with it interior design continued to develop into an admirable form of a profession throughout the nineteenth century. Boston was one of the American cities that provides evidence of this progression and is still home to many of the requisites that resulted from an increasing number of skilled American architects that sprang up during this extended era. A few of these Boston-based architects transformed not only their own city but also other parts of the new republic and left a lasting impact on the urban and national landscape.

T HE ARCHITECTURAL C ANON OF N INETEENTH -C ENTURY B OSTON Boston was home to many architects and rising professionals in the nineteenth century and provided an urban setting that was looking to be architecturally domesticated. In the process, the cream of the crop rose above other prospective architects and formed the elite of their profession that catered to the elites of society. In a manner of speaking, these high-class architects became the canon of domestic architecture, and sometimes also public architecture in their region, and worked for a specific clientele for a specific salary. Notably, it was through their profession and their work that was important for the city and the nation as a whole, that they became vital members of American society. It is important to mention that all three of the architects and their domestic work that will be discussed here are listed in the historical edition of the Who’s Who in America, confirming their professional and also social superiority.41 Charles Bulfinch An architect whose work in Boston began in the late eighteenth century and whose architecture is often attributed to the formation of the metropolis as an urban architectural center is Charles Bulfinch. Charles Bulfinch was born on

41

Who Was Who in America, Historical Volume 1607-1896, A Component Volume of Who’s Who in American History (Chicago: Marquis-Who’s Who, Inc., 1963), Asher Benjamin p.52, Charles Bulfinch p.84, Edward Clarke Cabot p. 90.

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August 8, 1763 and died on April 15, 1844.42 He had a passion for architecture and a vision for Boston that evolved before the profession was even known to exist. Even he himself did not realize that he had a talent until the later years of his life, “Sein Interesse an der Architektur entstand in jungen Jahren, als er die durch den Krieg verwahrlosten Häuser seiner Familie instandsetzte. Alle Kenntnisse erwarb er autodidaktisch.”43 His interest in remodeling Boston as a city can be traced to his adoration of his hometown. “‘I expect to see you in the fall, and can assure you that, after all the variety of objects I have seen, Boston still retains beauties and attractions sufficient to make me chuse [sic] it as an abode [superior] to every other place[…].’[additions and omissions in original]”.44 He was a part of the Boston architectural elite from the start in that he began working for high-ranking clients, such as Harrison Gray Otis, from the onset. Even before architects were known for being architects, Bulfinch was known as a Boston architect and, literally, became a household name. “The two men [Thomas Dawes and Charles Bulfinch] were early examples of the ‘gentleman-architect,’ a type that was still fairly rare in eighteenth-century America when the architectural profession, as distinct from the builder’s profession, was in its most embryonic stage.”45 Bulfinch was categorized beyond the plain professional and given the extra accord of belonging to the upper class of architects. However, even though he was highly praised he could not rely solely on the commissions received by high-paying clients, mainly due to a personal incapability with regard to managing money, and could therefore not concentrate his professional life entirely on architecture. The house, the neighborhood, and, beginning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, also the architect defined one’s social standing. Elite Bostonians had the unspoken agreement that their architect of choice had to be, among few others, Charles Bulfinch. “Desiring a suitable physical environment in which to live, Bostonians commissioned architects such as Charles Bulfinch and Samuel McIntire to create homes and counting-houses of charm, dignity and 42

Ellen Susan Bulfinch, The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch Architect: With Other Family Papers, Rev. ed. (New York: Burt Franklin, 1973), 40, 305-306.

43

Baldur Köster, Palladio in Amerika: Die Kontinuität klassizistischen Bauens in den

44

Charles Bulfinch to Mrs. Thomas Bulfinch (mother), Marseilles, May 10, 1786, in

USA (München: Prestel-Verlag, 1990), 28. The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch Architect: With Other Family Papers, Rev.ed., Ellen Susan Bulfinch (New York: Burt Franklin, 1973), 54-55. 45

Catharina Slautterback, “Building an Architectural Collection,” in The Boston Athenaeum: Bicentennial Essays, ed. Richard Wendorf (London: University Press of New England, 2009), 194.

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taste.”46 The word spread that the young architect was capable and managed the task of building homes that conveyed the correct message to society. His popupopularity continued to rise and initially the commissions kept coming in, allowing him to select the homes that he felt inclined to erect. With time, the name Bulfinch automatically became associated with the upupper class. The range of clients whose houses he built became increasingly restricted to one sector of the social strata. This fact was apparent at the time and also left an imprint on the history of Boston, in which Bulfinch’s Boston was that of the upper class: Out of what historian Samuel Eliot Morison has described as a marriage between ‘the wharf and the waterfall’ came a new Boston aristocracy whose members Oliver Wendell Holmes labeled as the ‘Brahmins,’ and who could be identified by their ‘houses by Bulfinch, their monopoly of Beacon Hill, their ancestral portraits and Chinese porcelains, humanitarianism, Unitarian faith in the march of the mind, Yankee shrewdness, and New 47

England exclusiveness.

Evidently, it took a lot to become a recognizable Boston Brahmin, but the first trait on the list is a house built by the elite Boston architect, Charles Bulfinch. His income-securing patrons had been set up and continued to view Bulfinch as their architect, who not only defined them but also their city. In order to fulfill this task to the fullest the architect had to also define himself and choose a style of design that not only fit him but also his employers, the city of Boston, and, on an even grander scale, the signature of the American landscape and the national political agenda. Bulfinch was a patron of his city and he thought of Boston as the most important urban center in America during his lifetime and wanted to make sure that it lived up to this standard. Therefore, he did not concentrate all of his energy on architecture, but also on the state of the city and urban planning in general: Er plante daneben das Straßennetz von Boston und ließ nach Londoner Vorbild Häuserreihen mit einheitlicher Fassade bauen. Ihm ist es zu verdanken, daß sich Boston

46

Paul Goodman, “Ethics and Enterprise: The Values of a Boston Elite, 1800-1860,”

47

Unidentified source, quoted in Thomas H. O‘Connor, The Athens of America: Bos-

American Quarterly 18, no. 3 (Autumn 1966): 443. ton, 1825-1845 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), 17.

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von seinem provinziellen Charakter befreite und eine ansehnliche Stadt wurde. Um die 48

Jahrhundertwende war seine Karriere als überall geachteter Architekt gesichert[…].

In order to have a say in these plans and on goings of the town/city development he was elected junior member of the Board of Selectmen in 1789 and kept this position until 1793. A few years later, his position advanced significantly and he became the Chairman of the Board from 1797 until 1818. 49 The vital consequence of Bulfinch’s promotion to Chairman was the momentous improvement of Boston’s impressions and infrastructure. “During this long space of time, many changes were effected in the town: streets were opened and widened, low and marsh land was filled up and laid out in streets, sidewalks built, streets paved, and public buildings, as well as private, erected.”50 Although he will always be remembered as the Bostonian architect, his political position in the city council was equally important and in the city of Boston’s transfer records from 1806, while he was still an active architect, it lists his main profession as that of Selectman.51 His duties as Selectman covered a wide range of areas of enhancement in the urban core that led to the improvement of Boston as a well-planned city, because he took these duties very seriously and made sure they were taken care of properly. These included the planning and supervision of; the public water system, sewers, street lighting, the leveling of hills, the filling of marsh lands, bridges, wharves, public buildings, and streets.52 The public and private buildings that he oversaw as Selectman were naturally built either by Bulfinch himself or in the style that he contemporarily advocated. The position in civil politics had the advantage that it permitted Bulfinch to aid his salary as an architect by having a more stable position with good pay. 48

Köster, Palladio in Amerika, 28.

49

Bulfinch, The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch Architect, 92.

50

Ibid.

51

According to Jay Wickersham, it is believed that this political position was implemented specifically for Bulfinch in order for him to make a living and get back on his feet and not necessarily because the city of Boston required the filling of such a position. Whether or not this was the case, Bulfinch took his job very seriously and advanced the quality of life in Boston through this perhaps obsolete post. See Jay Wickersham, “The Financial Misadventures of Charles Bulfinch,” The New England Quarterly: A Historical Review of New England Life and Letters 83, no. 3 (September 2010): 434, (see also Transfer Book Wards 5-8, 1806, Ward 7, p.2, Boston Tax Records, Courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library/Rare Books).

52

Goodman, The Residential Square Transplanted, 131, Courtesy of the Fine Arts Department, Boston Public Library.

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Commissions were sometimes hard to come by and a concrete position was one that allowed him to regain strength from past mistakes. “My son [Charles Bulfinch] tho he has been unfortunate is much respected, he is president of the Selectmen for which he receives a small salary that with his employments in the Architectural line enables him to support a very excellent wife + five children (tho with [economy]) yet in a very pretty style.”53 Bulfinch never strayed too far away from architecture, but as necessity may have it, he did have to assume othother lines of work to support his family and to attempt to live in the standard, which he desired and also designed for others. Although Bulfinch was always considered an upper-class architect, this was based largely on his clientele and less so on his personal rank in society. He was welcomed as a designer and concontractor, but was excluded from entering the entertaining rooms that he put up after his work was finished.54 This was due to the result of his greatest failure, being the magnificent idea he contrived of a residential crescent that did not live up to his expectations and led him into financial ruin, as will be described later. The Bulfinch style adhered to the general trend in architecture towards the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. He was most commonly known for building homes in the Federal Style and paid attention to neoclassical attributes in design and thought. The reigning thought of the day was the American tribute to the common man which, ironically, the upper class sumptuously consumed. In architecture, this meant that unnecessary ornamentation should not be included on the façades of an independent society. “Public and private structures designed earlier by architects like Charles Bulfinch and Benjamin Latrobe rested on the implicit assumptions that forms were beautiful in themselves and that architecture should display the principles of simplicity, harmony, and proportion[…].” 55 These features became the essence of Federal Style architecture and were to be and are still found throughout the domestic architectural structures in the city of Boston. Markedly, Federal Style architecture was often associated with the Neoclassical Style that dominated the English cityscapes. The Neoclassical Style included influences from European architecture, such as the Greek and Roman Styles, and made its way to both England and America. 53

Susan Bulfinch, letter to her brother [?], Boston, 1803 [?],Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.

54

One of Bulfinch’s best clients and personal acquaintances was Harrison Gray Otis, yet he was never cordially invited to any of the parties given by Otis at the homes that Bulfinch had built for him. See Wickersham, “The Financial Misadventures of Charles Bulfinch,” 414.

55

Clark, The American Family Home, 21.

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Boston was one of the first cities to snatch the style and implement it and responsible for this feat was Bulfinch. “Bulfinch was widely credited, during and after his lifetime, for having brought the neoclassical idiom, popularized in EngEngland by the Adams, to Boston.” 56 Bulfinch spent some time in Europe getting to know the different styles that he would later use in the American urban vistas that he would design. He came back to America in 1787 and used the Roman Style of building as his chief influence of design until the mid-1810s.57 After this timeframe, his focus lay increasingly on the Greek Revival and the Federal Style,58 the former being used often in his public structures and the latter reserved more for the domestic sphere. With regard to his domestic buildings and urban planning, Bulfinch accentuated himself in yet another manner, When he was in London, the idea of uniting a lot of house-fronts, and decorating them in such a way as to give them the character of one large, imposing building, was still in its infancy. The further idea of introducing grace and grandeur into city streets, by deliberately planning them in large geometrical curves of uniform buildings, does not 59

seem to have been once actually applied.

Bulfinch invented and applied this dimensional use of space and continuity in Boston upon his return and this was the main characteristic of his celebrated urban structures known collectively as the Tontine Crescent and Franklin Place which, though architecturally sound, would also parallel as his demise. The Bulfinch Federal Style that was based on Neoclassicism and major influences from England were the most conspicuous attributes of the Bulfinch domestic architecture. However, Bulfinch excelled in his profession through an additional feature that pronounced his architecture, influenced the urban landscape of Boston, and proved his talent and novel creativity within his occupational realm. The multi-dimensional, urbane pre-thinking that went into his design for Boston exemplifies his elitist position in the architectural profession and his influence on American architecture as a whole:

56

Kevin D. Murphy, The American Townhouse (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 2005), 21.

57

James F. O’Gorman, “Bulfinch, Buildings, and Books,” in American Architects and Their Books to 1848, eds. Kenneth Hafertepe and James F. O’Gorman (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 94-95.

58

O’Gorman, “Bulfinch, Buildings, and Books,” in Hafertepe and O’Gorman, 95.

59

Bulfinch, The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch Architect, 100-101.

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He was responsible for developing or transforming large stretches around the Common along Beacon Park, and Tremont streets he erected single dwellings and terrace housing; the Tontine Crescent and Franklin Place brought London sophistication to Boston urban life; for the Mount Vernon Proprietors he projected a great square for John Singleton CopCopley’s lands on Beacon Hill, and for the Mill Pond development, a Neo-Classical layout of rectangular streets within a triangular perimeter. This mode of thinking in the urban dimension rather than in the detached unit was an important element of Bulfinch’s contribution to North American design.

60

The Tontine Crescent, in its prime, consisted of sixteen brick houses, which were all of a gray exterior with imposing white pilasters and a park area with numerous trees in the center. This noble structure was so novel that, “Harold Kirker has observed that although the famous crescent at Bath and perhaps the plan for another in London were Bulfinch’s inspiration, not even London had a crescent at this time.”61 Unfortunately, many of the above-mentioned examples of Bulfinch’s exquisite work fail to exist to this day, prohibiting the empirical observation of their design. Charles Bulfinch, as he has been described thus far, seems to be the role model architect of the early nineteenth century and of the profession in general, especially in his home court of Boston. Yet, his talent seems to be limited to architectural skill in that his great tragic flaw was his inadequacy as a businessman. His great financial downfall was the undertaking of the abovementioned Tontine Crescent and Franklin Place, which he imagined would be his claim to fame and which he believed in until the bitter end. This domestic architectural project was originally a joint venture between Bulfinch and other investors, among them also Harrison Gray Otis. However, as more and more financiers jumped off the sinking ship in that the homes were not being sold, Bulfinch continued to invest his personal assets. Once these were depleted, he turned to his friends and business partners and took up loans to further the project. This was risky not only because he could not have known the outcome of the project and whether he would be able to pay his dues, but also socially, being in debt was a calamity for the young architect striving towards local fame. “The strength of one’s financial credit was tied up with one’s personal honor; a

60

James F. O’Gorman, “Bulfinch’s Perspective Perusal,” in Das Bauwerk und die Stadt/The Building and the Town: Aufsätze für/Essays for Eduard F. Sekler, ed. Wolfgang Böhm (Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 1994), 252.

61

Douglass Shand-Tucci, Built in Boston: City and Suburb, 1800-2000 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 6.

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man who failed to honor a debt was putting his social standing at risk.”62 In order to avoid the embarrassment of not paying, Bulfinch had to give up everything to stay afloat. His social standing was ruined not by his failing to repay those that he was indebted to, but rather because he had to take from his family and publicpublicly announce his bankruptcy, 63 which degraded the name Bulfinch in Boston’s high society. The effects of Bulfinch’s miscalculations were detrimental most prominently to those he loved and was closest to. His business partners saw him as a liability with regard to their investments and not necessarily as a friend in need. The results of his continuous efforts in implementing a residential crescent in the city of Boston were the following, The crash devastated the family. Bulfinch lost all of his interest in the Tontine Crescent and Franklin Place. He lost his own house; he, Hannah [his wife], and their children had to share a small rented house with the Storers. The Bulfinch family gave up control of several large parcels on the back side of Beacon Hill that would, in the coming years, become highly valuable. Bulfinch’s parents were saved only by Coolidge’s generosity. After buying the Bulfinch homestead, he transferred its title into the name of his son, Joseph Junior. Joseph and his wife took in Bulfinch’s parents, who lived out the rest of their lives as guests in the house they had once owned. Finally, as we shall see, Bulfinch had to surrender his one-fifth share in the development of Beacon Hill, which would become the foundation for [Harrison Gray] Otis’s fortune.

64

After the disaster of the early 1790s, Bulfinch decided to shift gears in his architectural venture and concentrate his efforts on earning his money through his true talent: design. With each commission that was handed to him in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries he attempted to refurbish his mistakes, for his own and his family’s sake. However, his speculative tendencies brought about another financial mishap that would once again leave him in debt. The Beacon Hill flats were a similar undertaking and Bulfinch once again miscalculated the magnitude of his investments.65 Overall, these situations caused Bulfinch to lose a lot of money and also placed his family in a rather uncomfortable predicament. His position in Boston’s society may have been temporarily affected by these slip ups, but in 62 63

Wickersham, “The Financial Misadventures of Charles Bulfinch,” 424. Mary Caroline Crawford, Famous Families of Massachusetts (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1930), 2: 207-208.

64

Wickersham, “The Financial Misadventures of Charles Bulfinch,” 432.

65

Ibid., 463, 466.

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general he still enjoys a high standing within the urban history of Boston and even more so within the earliest architectural canon of the United States. The majority of historical literature pertaining to architecture praises his work and portrays him as a success in his field. Unfortunately, Bulfinch never saw himself as such and instead views the two failures that occurred early in his life as being the focal point of his persona: Perhaps the most poignant aspect of Bulfinch’s story is that he seems to have lived and died without fully appreciating the aesthetic quality of his own architecture. Today we regard him as one of the greatest American architects of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – and yet he seems to have viewed himself primarily as a failed businessman.

66

The fact that his name adorns a great amount of the most important public structures in Boston, not to mention his domestic structures, and his signature can also be found on the U.S. Capitol architecture is something that he did not allow himself to witness, but it remains a fact that posthumously he is one of the first and one of the greats in this profession. The architecture attributed to Bulfinch and his influence on Boston in his domestic architecture is the focus. Notably, however, Bulfinch was also involved with many public structures that were important for the image of national architecture. In Boston this included the Massachusetts State House, the reconstruction of Faneuil Hall, and on an even more elevated level, he also took part in the design and building of the U.S. Capitol in Washington. His involvement in the U.S. Capitol construction project was asked for after building had already commenced and he entered the construction site shortly after the end of the War of 1812. 67 His influence and his newly found appreciation of the Greek Revival can be felt in this structure, yet President Andrew Jackson reluctantly dismissed him from the project in 1829: As the law under which you have been employed makes the period of your services depend upon their necessity, it became the duty of the President, as soon as he was advised that the public buildings had so far advanced as no longer to require them, to notify you accordingly. But it was far from his intention in so doing to manifest the slightest disapprobation of the manner in which you had discharged your duties. The superintendent of the buildings had reported that they were so far advanced as not to require the employ-

66

Wickersham, “The Financial Misadventures of Charles Bulfinch,”, 479.

67

Bulfinch, The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch Architect, 235.

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ment of the architect. Of course the President, whose duty it is to guard against a wasteful 68

expenditure of the public money, was bound to direct his discharge.

Bulfinch’s release from the Capitol was an honorable one, as was to be expected, and although his services on the project received their due, it was the greater momentum of his planning, designing, and building in Boston that makes him a part of the nineteenth-century American architectural canon. Asher Benjamin Asher Benjamin was present on the architectural scene at approximately the same time as Bulfinch. He was born on June 15, 1773 in either Greenfield, Massachusetts or Hartland, Connecticut (his exact place of birth is not known) and died in Boston on July 26, 1845.69 He was quite young when he came to Boston in 180370 and remained there for the development of his career as an architect and as an architectural writer. Although he constructed many private homes, one of which will be looked at, he was well-known more so for the fact that he wrote books which gave functional and decorative advice to the less affluent homeowner, who may not have been capable of affording his services as an architect. Apparently, Benjamin even had a drawing school in Boston, but there is no specific information left about this institution and it was his books that really brought architecture to the masses.71 Benjamin’s works include: The Country Builder’s Assistant (four editions published between 1797-1805), The American Builder’s Companion (six editions published between 1806-1827), The Practical House Carpenter (seventeen editions published between 18301856, some editions posthumous), Practice of Architecture (seven editions published between 1833-1851, some editions posthumous), and Elements of Architecture (two editions published between 1843-1849, some editions 68

President Andrew Jackson to Charles Bulfinch, Washington, June 27, 1829, in The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch Architect: With Other Family Papers, Rev.ed., Ellen Susan Bulfinch (New York: Burt Franklin, 1973), 263-264.

69

Everard M. Upjohn, introduction to the reprint of the first edition of The Country Builder’s Assistant: Containing A Collection of New Designs of Carpentry and Architecture, Which Will Be Particularly Useful to Country Workmen in General, Asher Benjamin (1797; repr. of first edition, New York: De Capo Press, 1972), v.

70

Upjohn, introduction to the reprint of the first edition of The Country Builder’s Assis-

71

James F. O’Gorman, Drawing Towards Home: Designs for Domestic Architecture

tant, v. from Historic New England (Boston: Historic New England, 2010), 25.

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posthumous).72 The titles prematurely reveal the simplicity of these books and their intended readers, perhaps underscoring the popularity that brought about numerous editions of each one. Benjamin and Bulfinch were known for their similar style of building and it is no secret that Bulfinch was an inspiration to Benjamin’s work. Their upbringupbringing and the opportunities that each of them had in life and in their career paths varied greatly though. Benjamin was a carpenter’s apprentice and never went on a Grand Tour nor attended Harvard.73 He managed to refine his trade in the same manner with which he attempted to teach others how to become sophisticated house wrights. In the records of the city of Boston from the years 1804 74 and 1806 75 it lists his real estate value at $2000, which was a rather decent sum, and even more so when taking the 1806 transfer records into account, which list him as a simple carpenter. Benjamin was able to sustain a decent living through his carpentry and also his publications. These were widespread throughout Boston and beyond and, “Rural dependence on Benjamin’s books determined, to a high degree, the competence and a certain sophistication that otherwise might not have been found in cities and towns outside of more urban Boston.”76 The reputation that his books and houses had influenced his architectural standing and also his standing in society, both of which were quite reputable. He was a builder and a writer and both of these character traits made him a substantial member of Boston’s domestic architecture in that his influence stretches from the houses that he built and designed to other constructions that he was involved in through his words and drawings alone. The first architectural guidance book that Benjamin put on the market was The Country Builder’s Assistant, which was published and sold for the first time in 1797. At this time and also later, Benjamin was influenced by and looked up 72

Upjohn, introduction to the reprint of the first edition of The Country Builder’s Assis-

73

Anonymous, “Asher Benjamin (1773-1845): “The How-To Architect””, p. 1, 3,

tant, viii, ix, x, xi, xii. William Hickling Prescott House Papers, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 74

Tax Book Wards 5-6-7-8, 1804, Ward 7, p.5, Boston Tax Records, Courtesy of the

75

Transfer Book Wards 5-8, 1806, Ward 7, p.3, Boston Tax Records, Courtesy of the

76

Anonymous, “Asher Benjamin (1773-1845): “The How-To Architect””, 3, Courtesy

Trustees of the Boston Public Library/Rare Books. Trustees of the Boston Public Library/Rare Books. of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

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to the work that was being done by his colleague Charles Bulfinch. The difference between the two architects, however, lies in the manner with which they wanted to bring their architectural vision to the citizens of Boston. Whereas Bulfinch chose a political route and encouraged an appropriate urban plan with the systematic implementation of the correct architecture through his position as Selectman and relations with the Mount Vernon Proprietors, Benjamin sought to unleash the architect within everyone. He created books that simplified building instructions and allowed every homeowner/home-builder, whether trained or untrained, to partake in contemporary building styles in order to ensure the proper homogeneity of the city of Boston through affordable domestic architecture. “He gave the public what it wanted, always keeping careful proportion balanced with a gracious style.”77 The plates below are from his first publication and exemplify the simplicity of design and measurement with which he brought his architecture to the people.

77

Anonymous, “Asher Benjamin (1773-1845): “The How-To Architect””, 3, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

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Figure 5: Plate 25 of Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant, showing the architectural elevation and floor plan of one of his designs.

Asher Benjamin, The Country Builder’s Assistant: Containing A Collection of New Designs of Carpentry and Architecture, Which Will Be Particularly Useful to Country Workmen in General (1797; repr. of first edition, New York: De Capo Press, 1972) Plate 25, Courtesy of the Fine Arts Department, Boston Public Library.

Figure 6 and 7: Plates 10 and 11 of Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant, showing various rather detailed door designs including their measurements.

Asher Benjamin, The Country Builder’s Assistant, Plate 10 and 11, Courtesy of the Fine Arts Department, Boston Public Library.

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Benjamin followed the same stylistic path that Bulfinch did and was mainly influenced by neoclassical architecture. These influences were reflected in his pattern books and were meant to spread the intent of republican architecture, still containing the influence of taste from England, to the common man. “Following the lead of Thomas Jefferson, and echoing the new styles developed in England by Robert Adam, Benjamin filled his builder’s guide with examples of columns, windows, and doors in the fashionable Greek and Roman revival forms[…].”78 Prior to turning to Classical architecture as an influence, Benjamin relied heartily on the Georgian and Federal Style of building and it was not until 1825 that he looked to Greek architecture as his main influence.79 The house that he designed and built for the merchant James Smith Colburn is a unique example of his continuous respect for the Federal Style of building. The influence of the Greek Style trend can also be seen in two of the works that he published in the nineteenth century. The last works in his pattern book repertoire were Practice of Architecture and Elements of Architecture. The former was published for the first time in 1833 and explains and depicts the orders of Greek architecture that became an important accessory, or even a type of ornamentation, that can still be seen throughout the Boston cityscape. These orders were placed on the columns that adorned the front, and more specifically, usually the entryway of the house. The five orders that he discusses in his book from 1833 are the Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and the Composite (this last order will not be shown because it was a combination style that was not implemented as often as the four main orders shown below):

78

Clark, The American Family Home, 6.

79

Upjohn, introduction to the reprint of the first edition of The Country Builder’s Assistant, v-vi.

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Figure 8 and 9: The Tuscan and Doric order.

Asher Benjamin, Practice of Architecture: Containing the Five Orders of Architecture and an Additional Column and Entablature, With All Their Elements and Details Explained and Illustrated, For the Use of Carpenters and Practical Men (1833; repr. of first edition, New York: De Capo Press, 1972) Plate V and Plate IX, Courtesy of the Fine Arts Department, Boston Public Library.

Figure 10 and 11: The Ionic and Corinthian order.

Benjamin, Practice of Architecture, Plate XII and Plate XVIII, Courtesy of the Fine Arts Department, Boston Public Library.

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The Greek Styles, as can be seen by the plates shown above, are rather difficult to imitate in that their detail is quite extensive. In his last volume, Benjamin further simplified the Greek orders and also shows the column in its entirety, including any measurements and calculations that may be necessary to apply these practices to one’s own home. Figure 12 and 13: The Tuscan and Doric orders and the Ionic and Corinthian orders.

Asher Benjamin, Elements of Architecture: Containing the Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian Orders, With All Their Embellishments, Also, The Theory and Practice of Carpentry, [etc.] (Boston: Benjamin B. Mussey, 1843) Plate III, Fig.1and 2, and Plate IV, Fig.1 and 2, Courtesy of the Fine Arts Department, Boston Public Library.

Furthermore, his intention in making this architecture and this practice of design accessible to everyone becomes clear in the following example of instructions that he gives in calculating and measuring the appropriate individual scale of construction: We will now proceed to give rules by which the diameter of a column at a given height can be obtained. Suppose it be required to execute the Tuscan order to a height of fifteen feet. Divide the height A B, on Plate III., fig.1, into nine equal parts, and make the diameter of the column at c d, its base, equal to one of these parts, which will be twenty inches. Make the column seven diameters high, and the entablature two diameters. The diameter of the column for the Tuscan order, fifteen feet in height, is found to be twenty

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inches, which must be divided into sixty equal parts, which are called minutes, all the members of the order are figured both in height and projection.80

These guidelines may seem somewhat confusing to the reader of today, but Benjamin was intent on bringing the proper and organized method of construction to the reader and builder of the nineteenth century and if they were diligent enough to study his drawings and writings they would be able to construct these orders and other aspects of their home all by themselves. It was through this manner of spreading architectural know-how that Asher Benjamin became a well-known and respected architect in the nineteenth century. He was responsible for improving architecture through literary training and by encouraging its professionalization, If a young carpenter wished to improve his station by offering architectural services, his options were to train himself using various builders’ guides or find an established architect in whose office he could work. Until practicing architects became more common in the early 1800s, studying and copying from books provided the best means of developing 81

drawing skills.

Even though he contributed his understanding and spread the word of sophisticated architecture to all classes of society, or at least those that could afford to build, he was still highly influential to the concentrated domestic architecture of the upper class. Perhaps because of his conspicuous knowledge and literacy of carpentry and building, but also because he proved that in his own interest and in the interest of his career he still reserved his building skills for the members of the upper ranks. It is also for this reason that he may be considered a part of the echelon of the architectural canon of Boston, in that, like Bulfinch and as we will see also Edward Clarke Cabot, he improved the city of Boston through building and professionally supporting its architectural exclusivity in nineteenth-century America. Edward Clarke Cabot Edward Clarke Cabot was the least experienced of the three architects and perusing the information that is available, it seems as though he eased into the profession with artistic talent and quite a bit of luck. He was born on April 17, 80

Benjamin, Elements of Architecture, 16, Courtesy of the Fine Arts Department, Boston Public Library.

81

O’Gorman, Drawing Towards Home, 25.

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1818 and was part of a well-to-do and fortunate family, a factor that would make his various career choices easier to handle, and died on January 5, 1901. 82 Bulfinch and Benjamin had an inclination towards the art of architecture that captivated them early in their lives and endorsed the occupation to them. Cabot was interested in homes and buildings, but rather as a hobby and only after winwinning a contest to design one of the major buildings in Boston was his appetite for the profession stirred. The many attempts at finding his appropriate vocation are interesting in that they are hardly related to architecture in any way, but contributed to the development of his character. The first venture that Cabot took upon himself took him far away from Boston and architecture must also have been scarce in his new home. When he was seventeen, he left Boston and moved to Illinois where, with his father’s money, he attempted to keep a ranch: Of delicate health, Cabot did not attend college, but instead, at the age of seventeen, persuaded his father to let him run a sheep ranch, with a partner, George Curzon, in, what were then, the wilds of Illinois. After six lean years of this life, costing his father some 83

$12,000.00 he returned to Boston, perhaps for a whiff of culture.

Cabot seemed to be drawn to the idea of open fields and animals grazing as opposed to crowded urban streets and dense residential and public areas because a short time after he came back to Boston he left and went to Vermont to try his hand at sheep ranching once again.84 Apparently, Cabot and the sheep were not ideal business partners and after this second attempt, he finally decided to relinquish the idea of becoming a full-time rancher and moved on to architecture. Cabot got his big break in architecture without even asking for it. There were numerous circumstances, which all happened at the right time and even though he was not necessarily in the right place, they still acted in his favor. The first architectural milestone that placed Cabot on the scene was the design of the Boston Athenaeum. The design and construction for a new Boston Athenaeum in the mid-nineteenth century was actually already a done deal before Cabot 82

Margaret Henderson Floyd, Architectural Education and Boston: Centennial Publication of the Boston Architectural Center, 1889-1989 (Boston: Boston Architectural Center, 1989), 8. See also, Who Was Who in America, Historical Volume 1607-1896, A Component Volume of Who’s Who in American History (Chicago: Marquis-Who’s Who, Inc., 1963), Edward Clarke Cabot p. 90.

83

William D. Austin, A History of the Boston Society of Architects in the Nineteenth

84

Austin, A History of the Boston Society of Architects in the Nineteenth Century, 2.

Century (From 1867 to January 4, 1901) (FAIA, 1942), 1: 2.

166 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

became involved. The original plan was to buy a more centralized plot of land for the building of a new and bigger place for this expanding private library. The Trustees agreed on a plot on Tremont Street and they chose George M. Dexter as the designing architect and engineer.85 Shortly thereafter, the Trustees changed their minds concerning the new locale and instead decided to place the Athenaeum on Beacon Street. The determining of the architect and the building’s design were not automatically handed over to Dexter but, instead, a competition for the best design was held. The records of this competition no longer exist, but what is known today is that three individuals took part in the competition and registered their designs. Two of these individuals are known and one person remains anonymous. The two protagonists were Dexter and Cabot, the latter of the two actually still residing with his sheep in Vermont at the time.86 Cabot ended up winning the competition and his design was chosen for the future Athenaeum, which still stands today. The outcome of the competition is rather peculiar and was strictly based on Cabot’s design because otherwise he had minimal experience as an architect. “A watercolor artist of some accomplishment, and, like Charles Bulfinch, a gentleman, Cabot won the second competition for the building of the Boston Athenaeum in 1847. It was his first design, and the assistance of George M. Dexter was required to erect the building.”87 He was an artist and could paint an impressive design for houses and buildings, but he lacked engineering skills and the Trustees made him take on Dexter as a partner to ensure that the building would be stably built, a partnership that neither of the two men was too thrilled about. Before observing the relationship between Cabot and Dexter, who would go on to build some domestic structures together, as well, it is imperative to explain how Cabot even breached into this competition with practically no prior experience and considering the fact that he was not even in Boston at the time. Cabot was still in Vermont and an invitation to enter the competition was specifically sent to him. The reason behind this lies in the connections and status that Cabot enjoyed through his family and their rank in society back in Boston. Upon realizing that sheep ranching may not be the thing for him Cabot built a house in Vermont and boasted about this as his first accomplishment as an architect. He personally spread the word about his newfound talent and together 85

The Athenaeum Centenary, The Influence and History of the Boston Athenaeum From 1807 to 1907, With a Record of its Officers and Benefactors and a Complete List of Proprietors (Boston: The Boston Athenaeum, 1907), 35.

86

Austin, A History of the Boston Society of Architects in the Nineteenth Century, 2.

87

Floyd, Architectural Education and Boston, 8.

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with the influence that the family had in Boston, he was invited to enter a design. “Again there is an absence of all records, but this may be reasonably surmised. The Trustees of the Athenaeum consisted of some of the [most] scholarly, culticultivated, intellectual and well-to-do men of that day in Boston. Cabot, by birth, belonged.”88 In his design he had a great deal of luck, but also talent for detail in that he evaded altering the overall design of the building because of two gravegravestones from the Granary Burying Ground that obstructed the site. Cabot’s design was the only one of the three that did not let this small obstacle compromise the integrity of the building; unfortunately for Dexter, he would be the one who was left to figure out how to implement this structurally.89 Evidently, Dexter and Cabot could not have gotten off on the right foot considering that Cabot essentially took a large commission that was already in the palm of Dexter’s hand away from him and then proceeded to create a design in which Dexter would have to do the challenging engineering work that Cabot was not capable of. Yet, the two of them ended up working together on projects outside of the Athenaeum and at least one residential design exists that can be attributed to their partnership. According to a letter from Edward Boit who states, “Specifications of materials to be furnished and later to be performed in erecting and furnishing a house […] at Roxbury agreeable to the plans drawn under the direction of G. M. Dexter and E. C. Cabot,”90 his house in Roxbury, Massachusetts was built during their collaboration. The number of homes that were built by Dexter and Cabot are unknown, but their partnership did not last all that much longer after the Boit house was built.91 In what appears to be a form letter for Cabot’s clients, he declares the end of the firm with Dexter and instead takes his brother on as a partner. In addition,

88

Austin, A History of the Boston Society of Architects in the Nineteenth Century, 3.

89

Ibid., 3-4.

90

Edward Boit, letter to Huston and Foster, February 23, 184[8], Courtesy of the Bos-

91

In Rosamond Warren Gibson’s Recollections (Catherine Hammond Gibson’s daugh-

ton Athenaeum. ter-in-law), she mentions that she was a bridesmaid at Isa Cushing and Edward Boit’s wedding and that she knew him personally because he was one of her brother’s classmates at Harvard and “an intimate friend.” Perhaps Boit was responsible for recommending Cabot as an architect to the Gibsons in that the design for the Boit house stems from the year 1848, over 10 years before Cabot designed and built the Gibson house. See Rosamond Warren Gibson, Recollections of My Life For My Children (Boston: privately printed at Meador Press, 1939), 14, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

168 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

the letter describes the various services that their office in #19 Tremont Row offers: The partnership hitherto existing between Mr. Geo. M. Dexter and myself having been dissolved by mutual consent, I have associated with myself my brother, Mr. J. Elliot Cabot. We are ready to attend to all branches of Civil Architecture; Viz., To the making of Designs, embracing Plans, Geometrical elevations and Perspective Drawings, with Estimates; Working Drawings, Specifications and Contracts, and Superintendent of Work. Also, to Surveying, making Plans of, and laying out Grounds for ornamental purposes, or for sale. Also, to the Inspection of Buildings, to ascertain the amount of damage received or repairs required, in case of injury or decay. Also, to making all Drawings required by Engineers, Mechanics and Machinists.

92

The partnership with Dexter must have taught Cabot many new things, considering that at the time he designed the Athenaeum he could show no references to being trained in any of the above-mentioned trades. The architectural firm that he established with his brother was a successful business that ran from 1849-1858 and again from 1862-1865, 93 all the while Cabot also practiced his greater talent: watercolor painting. Cabot’s business during the four years that he did not work with his brother is largely unknown; however, he did act as a solo architect in designing the Gibson house during that time. Also, one of his paintings is of a house that was to be built solely by him in either Roxbury or Dorchester. Whether the house was ever built or not is uncertain, but the painting remains and shows the artistic talent that Cabot exhibited.

92

Edward Clarke Cabot and J. Elliot Cabot, form letter, February 10, 1849, Courtesy of

93

Catherine L. Seiberling, A Study Report of Gibson House Museum, 137 Beacon

the Boston Athenaeum. Street, Boston, Massachusetts (Boston: The Gibson Society, 1991), Book 3, p. 36, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

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Figure 14: A watercolor painting by Edward Clarke Cabot of a planned house in Roxbury or Dorchester created in 1846. The floor plans and the house are kept rather simple, while the background provides information concerning the house’s intended location.

Edward Clarke Cabot, Watercolor front elevation and floor plan, May 23, 1846, Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.

The painting above also displays an attention to detail that he had as an artist. On the lower painting, the one of the front elevation of the house, he portrays Boston in the lower right-hand background. One can see a hill with a dome on it, alluding to the Massachusetts State House. It is with this piece of evidence that he grants the viewer an assumption of the locale of the house, which in this case would be approximately the Roxbury or Dorchester region. The Gibson house is a design that he apparently put together himself in that it was during the time period (1859) in which he was not in partnership with his brother. The house located directly next door to the Gibson’s home, #135 Beacon Street, is also attributed to Cabot and it is often speculated that they were

170 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

meant to be twin row houses. These two were his first encounter with domestic architecture in the Back Bay and he would only go on to do one more house by himself, the rest of his residential work would always be in collaboration with a partner.94 Cabot would continue to work in the field of architecture for the rest of his life, often producing drawings as a result of his talent as an artist. In his later years, Cabot was also seemingly still involved in Boston’s domestic architecture and in 1867 he even became the President of the Boston Society of Architects (BSA).95 He was never trained professionally, but because he was a member of Boston’s upper class, he was able to make it in the world of architecture and become an architect that upper-class clients sought after. There are very few drawings and designs of Cabot’s that still exist, but the ones that do depict his aesthetic vision in both public and domestic architecture for his fellow elite Bostonians. These architects of Boston from the late-eighteenth and early- to mid-nineteenth centuries were all upper-class men themselves and catered to a clientele of the same rank. They were celebrated men in their profession, once it could be called that, and left a lasting impression on the city of Boston that is still visible today. They worked in both public and domestic spheres and excelled in both, which can be seen as a testament to their true talent and perseverance in a changing city, country, and architectural space. They were confronted with growth, expansion, and changes in trends and had to reinvent themselves as architects each time. Their upper-class domestic architecture with clients such as Harrison Gray Otis, James Smith Colburn, and Charles Hammond Gibson reiterate their position in the architectural canon of Boston and these homes are exemplary of the different aspects of urban upper-class domestic life.

94

Seiberling, A Study Report of Gibson House Museum, Book 3, p. 38, Courtesy of the

95

O’Gorman, Drawing Towards Home, 27.

Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

Domestic Architecture in America

An American version of domestic architecture is an eclectic gathering of various styles and trends that European settlers influenced in individual ways. “American settlers brought with them the building traditions of their home countries, so that the earliest architecture in the colonies reflected quite accurately the vernacular building traditions of the region of Europe where the settlers, or more accurately, the builders among them, had come from.”1 As time passed and new settlers imported new architectural styles into the colonies, homes were being built and designed according to what was already known. The changes occurring in Europe were directly transferred into the American sphere and made available to newly settled and to well-situated citizens. Yet, although the American domestic landscape was continuously influenced by the designs being produced across the ocean, an American style did eventually evolve and did not allow itself to be entirely influenced by trends from abroad, national or international political situations, or cultural ramifications that were previously deemed as the only ones appropriate and suitable for a nation stemming from the mother country. American domestic architecture evolved from an architecture that was imported from Europe, restored it according to geographical and cultural margins, and lastly sold and exported it as a distinct American lifestyle commodity. All the while, “Political rivalries aside, in aesthetic matters England was not considered a foreign culture, but nurturing parent to America’s.”2 As time went by and wars for freedom were fought, an evolution occurred within domestic architecture in America that endured a much longer fight for independence than any of

1

Janet W. Foster, The Queen Anne House: America’s Victorian Vernacular (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2006), 10.

2

W. Barksdale Maynard, “The Greek Revival: Americanness, Politics and Economics,” in American Architectural History: A Contemporary Reader, ed. Keith L. Eggener (New York: Routledge, 2004), 134.

172 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

the political struggles. Interestingly, most architectural styles were nominally reminiscent of the monarchy that ruled the mother country and although Americans had gained their independence and claimed to have discarded the aristocracy to make room for a classless society, their domestic architecture still welcomed the monarchial English rulers George (I, II, III, and IV), Victoria, and Anne into their most intimate spheres.

E RAS OF D OMESTIC ARCHITECTURAL S TYLES IN AMERICA Architecture is the material expression of the wants, the faculties, and the sentiments, of the age in which it is created.

3

OWEN JONES, THE GRAMMAR OF ORNAMENT, PROPOSITION 2

A prerequisite for understanding the way in which domestic architecture evolved in America and to better understand the houses that will be examined, it is necessary to put together a chronological overview of the styles that influenced American domestic architecture and when they were implemented. The timeframe being presented in this study ranges from approximately the mideighteenth century until the late nineteenth century. During this time, numerous styles from Europe and later nationally produced styles were seen as they ornamented the American urban landscape. While discussing the architectural time periods that made up cosmopolitan domestic structures, it is important to keep in mind that many of these styles overlapped each other and that the shift from one style to another was gradual. It is highly probable that the constant shift and simultaneous construction of various styles led to a certain eclecticism as well as the influence of various styles that eventually became known as an American style. The commencement of domestic architecture in America was termed Colonial Architecture, alluding to the political status granted the new continent. The era in which these types of structures were built is politically bound to the beginning of settlement by Europeans until the American Revolution.4 Consequently, vari3

Jones, The Grammar of Ornament, 23.

4

Encyclopedia of American Architecture (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1980), s.vv. “Colonial Architecture.”

D OMESTIC A RCHITECTURE | 173

ous styles form subcategories of this colonial architecture, depending on the settler and the way in which houses were built in each respective country of origin. An important sub-classification is the New England Colonial Style, which was and is recognizable by its construction, which consisted entirely of wood, save the chimney. This type of building was a remnant of English houses that could be found in rural areas and was rather rudimentary in its accommodations. A prominent example of a New England Colonial Style house is the Paul Revere House located in Boston and built around 1676.5 Other styles that made up Colonial Architecture included the Dutch and the French Colonial Styles. The most significant contribution to high-standing citizens’ estates was the subcategory of Colonial Architecture known as Georgian Architecture. Georgian Architecture was rather simplistic, symmetrical, and straightforward and was itself influenced by classical styles that preceded it. Conspicuously, it was named after Kings George I, II, III, and IV who were in power as the trend was popularized in England. In America, the style was introduced somewhat later by newcomers who had seen it at home and through the written word, which occasionally made its way across the Atlantic, as well. Chronologically, it parallels the broader Colonial Architecture, yet it extends until after the American Revolution. 6 Within this design, there are further differentiations, which adhere to the change in times, most notably because of the Enlightenment, which produced a sense of rationality and with it the trend towards natural symmetry, 7 and political situations. At the start of Georgian influence in America, during the mid-eighteenth century, the style was known as Palladian mid-Georgian and, “Balance and symmetry became of prime concern.”8 After the Revolution, a new attribute was added to the name and it became known as Late Georgian NeoClassicism.9 With a change in name came a change in attitude and, “[…] this style is also associated with a widespread change in social behavior based in part on the rising wealth of the non-aristocratic wealthy (the gentry) in the colo-

5

Encyclopedia of American Architecture (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1980), s.vv. “Colonial Architecture: New England Colonial Style.”

6

Encyclopedia of American Architecture (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1980), s.vv. “Georgian Architecture.”

7

Kelleter, Amerikanische Aufklärung, 116.

8

Harold Donaldson Eberlein and Cortlandt Van Dyke Hubbard, American Georgian

9

Eberlein and Hubbard, American Georgian Architecture, 41.

Architecture (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1952), 33.

174 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

nies.”10 As a result, a display of wealth through ornamentation and elaborations became a symbol of post-Revolutionary Georgian Architecture in America. As the Revolution passed and democracy was the word that was being spread, architecture attempted to follow suit in that they literally revived styles that complemented democratic thought and republican ideals. As a header, this direction within design became known as Classic Revival Architecture. As with Georgian Architecture, this movement had many diversions and influences and can partially be considered the era in which an American style was born. The various movements within the Classic Revival show a large time span in which they were inserted into cityscapes and it is difficult to define their exact coherence to this style era. Many of these styles overlap into another architectural era or were perhaps even present long enough to extend into more than one. Generally speaking, the Classic Revival can be seen as the time period in which the new was adorned with the old and an American democracy looked at southern European influences instead to produce their own style. “Classical architecture suited a new nation which hoped to represent the republican virtues of liberty, rationality, and democracy[…]. Simplicity, clarity, horizontal line, and symmetry were the artistic hallmarks of the classical style during the Federal period.”11 The Classic Revival has a quite pronounced starting point, namely the end of the American Revolution. “Sometimes called the neoclassical style, the movement began in the United States toward the end of the American Revolution, when architects turned away from the Georgian style architecture of England.”12 Politically, socially, and to a certain degree culturally, the American Revolution had severed the connection between the colonies and England and independence had been attained. Architecturally, Americans wanted to rid themselves from English influences, yet still felt the need to look at preexisting styles to further expand their cityscapes: The periodic revivals of historic styles in decorative arts and architecture are based on a perceived relevance to a society’s conception of its self and purpose. For example, the Classical Revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reminded Ameri10

Shirley Teresa Wajda, “Georgian Style,” in Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life, eds. Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2008), 215.

11

Colleen McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 30.

12

Encyclopedia of American Architecture (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1980), s.vv. “Classic Revival Architecture.”

D OMESTIC A RCHITECTURE | 175

cans creating their own nation of the political values of the ancient Greek and Roman 13

civilizations.

On their way to finding themselves through architecture, Americans called to life the Greek and Roman Revivals and sought to democratize their homes the way Athens and Rome had done. The Greek Revival was centered on a symmetrically imposing structural form that meant to show both simplicity as well as supremacy and domestically, in Boston, it was introduced and supported by the architect Alexander Parris.14 “The Greek Revival proper may be considered to have opened in 1818, with the competition for the design of the Second Bank of the United States in Philadelphia[…].”15 Although aspects of Greek architecture can be seen in domestic architectural structures, it was public buildings and more significantly government buildings that were built with the intentions of relaying a political message. “Americans found in Greek and Roman architecture the fullest expression of democratic and republican values and thus adopted the Classical Revival style in their first major government buildings[…].”16 Additionally, the Greek Revival rested upon the assumption that Greece had produced the sentiment of democracy and that all of its glory can be seen in the architecture that dominates. Imitating the architecture that framed the democratic ideal found in Greece was a demonstrative way of displaying the nation’s own democracy; much like domestic architecture was used to display other aspects of society and in Boston it was seen as a style that was liberal for Jacksonians and refined for Federalists, allowing supporters of both parties to build in the style. 17 “[…][I]t ‘symbolically linked the new democracy of the United States with its spiritual forebear, the

13

Rebecca S. Graf, “Antiques,” in Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life, eds. Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2008), 34-35.

14 15

Shand-Tucci, Built in Boston, 11. Marcus Whiffen, American Architecture since 1780: A Guide to the Styles (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 40.

16

Laura A. Macaluso, “Classical Revival (Neoclassicism),” in Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life, eds. Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2008), 101.

17

Shand-Tucci, Built in Boston, 13.

176 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

Athenian democracy of the fifth century B.C.’”18 The Greeks were not the only new influence on American public structures, Rome was also consulted in order to accommodate to republican superiority. The Roman Revival was seen less in a political sense and more so in an improving state of mind for the citizens of the new republic. While the Greek Revival focused on spreading and displaying democracy, the Roman Revival was fundamental in shaping individuals. This style was often used for government buildings but one vital domestic abode that is attributed to this Classic Revival style is Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. “For him [Jefferson], the Roman orders were the fundamental discipline of architectural design.”19 The Romans had a major impact on Jefferson and he preferred this ideal of domestic and public architecture over both the Greek and especially over the Georgian styles. Marcus Whiffen even goes so far as to make the Roman Revival an individually American style by renaming it Jeffersonian Classicism and attributing its influence to Jefferson alone.20 Although Jefferson was not the only one to use this style, he did perpetuate the thought that made the style so influential, especially in the public sphere. “Jefferson had read in Palladio that ‘Ancient architecture gives us a certain idea of Roman virtue and greatness.’”21 This virtue directly related to the lesson that the Revolution had taught and reinforced the common man, not only through Roman architecture but also through historical Roman references: In 1783, Revolutionary army officers, in order to commemorate and perpetuate their participation in the Revolutionary War, formed the hereditary Order of the Cincinnati, named after the legendary Roman republican leader, Cincinnatus, who had retired from war to 22

take up his plow.

It was through architecture that the virtue, that had become such an important characteristic to Americans, could be made transferable.

18

Roger G. Kennedy, Greek Revival America (New York: Stewart, Tabori, and Chang, 1989): 270, quoted in W. Barksdale Maynard, “The Greek Revival: Americanness, Politics and Economics,” in American Architectural History: A Contemporary Reader, ed. Keith L. Eggener (New York: Routledge, 2004), 137.

19

Whiffen, American Architecture since 1780, 33.

20

Ibid., 34-35.

21

Andrea Palladio, unidentified original source, quoted in Marcus Whiffen, American Architecture since 1780: A Guide to the Styles (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 34.

22

Wood, The American Revolution, 114.

D OMESTIC A RCHITECTURE | 177

Often times categorized within Georgian Architecture is the Federal Style, which was closely related to English conservative structures and which found a particular following in places such as Boston. The style also came into being during the American Revolution and lasted well into the 1800s. Ironically, it was accused of being too closely related to Georgian Architecture and thus, indirectly, as being too British.23 It is interesting then that the Federal Style was the most significant style used by Charles Bulfinch in Boston, the city that acted as the central point of independent thought in the late eighteenth century. Unlike the other styles arising out of the Classic Revival era the Federal Style was not a revival as such but instead a prolongation of a style that had immediately preceded it. At the same time, it integrated new, individual characteristics, which were more fitting in an American cityscape thus mixing aspects of the old Georgian Architecture and bringing in New World characteristics. It mixed symmetry and very little decoration and spread from the East into the Midwest, gradually adding bits and pieces of décor to the outer façade.24 Bulfinch’s designs and the Federal Style reiterated that, “[…]Boston sought no cultural declaration of independence.”25 The Federal Style may not have initially shown signs of a revival style within Neoclassicism, yet as architecture progressed and began moving towards the Victorian era another revival took place. Gothic Revival architecture was already present but perhaps not as widespread as other revival movements during the eighteenth century in America. However, it lasted longer than the other movements in that it spanned its influence all the way until the end of the nineteenth century, accelerating its construction most notably during the Civil War era. The Gothic Revival brought about a short return to Middle Age inspired architecture and was often used for public structures and less so for private homes. One of the main advocates of the Gothic Revival was John Ruskin, who postulated an interesting objection to the increasing industrialization of the Victorian era. “Ruskin’s analogy between Gothic architecture and the beauty in Nature -- God's own creation -- is significant, for it is in this context that he framed his impassioned condemnation of the machine and formulated his unique order for ornamental production and rules for its

23

Encyclopedia of American Architecture (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company,

24

Frances K. Pohl, Framing America: A Social History of American Art (London: Tha-

1980), s.vv. “Classic Revival Architecture, The Federal Style.” mes & Hudson Inc., 2002), 100. 25

Shand-Tucci, Built in Boston, 6.

178 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

proper application.”26 Ruskin’s main theory behind the beauty of the Gothic was that it emulated nature, even in its ornamentation, and thus imitated God and his magnificent creation.27 Significantly, it was for this reason that Gothic Revival Architecture was often used for churches and cathedrals and, interestingly, displayed in the English Houses of Parliament.28 In opposition to the other Classic Revival styles, the Gothic Revival placed more emphasis on this sacred ornamentation and less on simplicity, which was characteristic of the Greeks and Romans. Perhaps this is the reason that the style did not pick up the pace until the mid-nineteenth century in that it seemed more appropriate in the Victorian era and conform to the styles evolving then, as opposed to falling under the rubric of Neoclassicism. Prior to introducing the Victorian timeframe within architecture one must consider this point as a transition from the Classical to the Romantic. “The waning of the Federal and Greek styles of domestic architecture was hastened by the arrival of the Romantic movement from Europe. Emotion and sentiment became acceptable with the decline of the belief in the absolute power of reason.”29 It is difficult to underscore when exactly this occurred or what style of design may have induced it, but it is possible to clarify the differences between these movements: The qualities that characterize classicism are clarity, simplicity, restraint, objectivity and balance. The qualities that characterize romanticism are love of the remote and indefinite, escape from reality, lack of restraint in form and emotions, preference for picturesqueness or grandeur or passion. Classicism and Romanticism are fundamentally in opposition; what is Classic is not Romantic, and what is Romantic is not Classic[…]. The Classic is simple, the Romantic complex; the Classic is objective, the Romantic is subjective[…].

30

In congruence, the architectural breakup of the time before the Revolution, the time after the Revolution until the Civil War, and lastly, approximately the era encompassing the Civil War and the Centennial Exposition until the end of the 26

Debra Schafter, The Order of Ornament, The Structure of Style: Theoretical Foundations of Modern Art and Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 17.

27

Schafter, The Order of Ornament, The Structure of Style, 66.

28

Encyclopedia of American Architecture (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company,

29

McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900, 30-31.

30

Harry Devlin, Portraits of American Architecture: A Gallery of Victorian Homes

1980), s.vv. “Gothic Revival Architecture.”

(New York: Gramercy Books, 1989), 11.

D OMESTIC A RCHITECTURE | 179

nineteenth century can be generalized as colonial, classic, and romantic, respectively. The height of the Gothic Revival is usually considered the beginning of the era of Victorian architecture, which corresponded to the latter part of the monarchy of Queen Victoria in England and took its place in America between the mid-nineteenth century and breached over into the twentieth century.31 Victorian architecture encompasses numerous styles that all have ornamentation, in variations of all sorts, as a common denominator. The most fashionable styles on the continent included the Italianate, the Second Empire Style, the Queen Anne Style, the Eastlake Style, and the American Renaissance. There were further styles that originated in this timeframe yet, those mentioned are the most expressive of the movement and show the essence of Victorian architecture especially in domestic constructions. Additionally, Victorian homes automatically expressed the morals of its owners, “The home of the Victorian served purposes beyond shelter. It was the setting where Mother transmitted the higher ideals of religion, spiritual love, and general uplift. For Father the home was the symbol of his success, a statement to his neighbors of his status.”32 Italianate Architecture was influenced by homes in both Italy and France and added a touch of the Gothic Revival, as well. One of the features that catered to Americans was the straight-sided arch, which “[…] was, in short, thoroughly democratic (in the special American sense) and thus assured of the hearty reception this country gave to it when it crossed the Atlantic.”33 Less democratic but more eye-catching was the Second Empire Style which may have been a part of the Victorian era, but owes its name to the French Second Empire and the reign of Napoleon III (1852-1870).34 The design feature lay in the high mansard roof, which made the appearance of these homes, “[…] tall, boldly modeled, and emphatically threedimensional in effect.”35 This feature was also key to members of the upper class because, “[…] during the years of its popularity, the Mansard roof was a status symbol precisely because it suggested the presence of servants.”36 Both the Italianate and the Second Empire Style were both largely influenced by French structures and to a degree, also Italian homes, inversely, the next phases of the Victorian era returned to rather British persuasions. 31

Encyclopedia of American Architecture (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company,

32

Devlin, Portraits of American Architecture, 24.

33

Whiffen, American Architecture since 1780, 101.

34

Ibid., 103.

1980), s.vv. “Gothic Revival Architecture.”

35

Ibid.

36

Devlin, Portraits of American Architecture, 109.

180 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

The Queen Anne Style also draws attention to itself not because of its democratic arches and high roofs but, instead, because of the excess that accentuates these homes. The name was attributed to designs seen during the reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714) and, in part, Kings George I and II (1714-1760). 37 The homes were highly irregular in their construction, relieving the builder of the constant burden of symmetry and can be characterized as colorful, multi-level, large-scale homes that fundamentally deny the principles of democratic simplicity. “The Queen Anne style’s very insistence on ornament, on plasticity of form, on integral color, and on a multiplicity of design sources for details made it an easy target for those who preferred classicism, symmetry, and nationality in architecture.”38 Nonetheless, the Queen Anne Style had a large following in the U.S., not so much in the cities, except for the so-called Painted Ladies of San Francisco,39 but rather in suburban or rural regions. The beginning of the style was through a British edifice presented during the quintessential celebration of American independence. “The popular success of Queen Anne in America dates from the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876, at which the British government put up two half-timbered buildings to provide living quarters and offices for the British Executive Commissioner and his staff.”40 Queen Anne advocates often reduced the opposition to democratic values by terming their decorative additions as selective ornamentation, another style that was less reluctant towards adornment became known as the Eastlake Style. The Eastlake Style was not named after a King or Queen of England, but rather after an English architect by the name of Charles Locke Eastlake. The homes that evolved in America under his name, but not his construction, were highly embellished and became the epitome of ornamentation in an architectural sense. Interestingly, this went against what Eastlake preached and he disapproved of the dimensions that his architecture took on in the U.S. and more so that his name stood for it.41 Eastlake’s initial entry into the U.S. architectural world was through writing as opposed to building. He wrote two books concern37

Evie T. Joselow, “Queen Anne Style,” in Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life, eds. Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2008), 377.

38 39

Foster, The Queen Anne House, 10. Roger G. Reed, Building Victorian Boston: The Architecture of Gridley J.F. Bryant (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 35.

40

Whiffen, American Architecture since 1780, 117.

41

Shirley Teresa Wajda, “Eastlake Style,” in Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life, eds. Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2008), 166.

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ing architecture and furniture, which were published in England and later in the U.S., where they became extremely well read. The first of his books was A History of the Gothic Revival, which remained irrelevant to American building trends but his second, Hints on Household Taste, published in 1868 in England and in 1872 in Boston, had a significant impact.42 Even more interesting than his influence on American architecture was his reaction hereto, ‘I now find, to my amazement, that there exists on the other side of the Atlantic an ‘Eastlake style’ of architecture, which, judging from the specimens I have seen illustrated, may be said to burlesque such doctrines of art as I have ventured to maintain[…]. I feel greatly flattered by the popularity which my books have attained in America, but I regret that their author’s name should be associated there with a phase of taste in architecture and industrial art with which I can have no real sympathy, and which by all accounts 43

seems to be extravagant and bizarre [emphasis in original].’

Unfortunately, for Eastlake, the style in American architecture and furniture has been patented with his name and continues to be recognized as his influence. The closing of the Victorian era was marked by the American Renaissance Style, which continued well into the twentieth century but was surpassed by another movement known as the Arts and Crafts or Eclectic era. However, the American Renaissance is equally important in mentioning in that it was a style of building within domestic architecture that was often entertained by the wealthier citizens of the nation. The American Renaissance began in the mid1870s closely parallel to the Queen Anne Style, climaxed in the late 1880s, and lasted until the late 1930s.44 It was an attempt to create a distinct American style whilst including aspects of other styles that were either decreasing in popularity or slowly on the rise. Thus, it overlaps into the era known as the eclectic age in that it uses various trends and puts them all together. “Across the landscape in expositions, monuments, public and private buildings, and City Beautiful campaigns American architects, landscape architects, painters, sculptors, and craftsmen joined together to create an iconography that would represent their nation as

42

Whiffen, American Architecture since 1780, 124.

43

Charles Locke Eastlake, California Architect and Building News (1882), quoted in Marcus Whiffen, American Architecture since 1780: A Guide to the Styles (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 124.

44

Richard Guy Wilson, “Architecture and the reinterpretation of the past in the American renaissance,” in American Architectural History: A Contemporary Reader, ed. Keith L. Eggener (New York: Routledge, 2004), 228-231.

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the rightful heir to the great themes of civilization.”45 The major theme behind the American Renaissance was the reevaluation of the past and in so doing the architects and builders of the time attempted to produce an architecture that would be seen as classically American in that past events and styles were more closely linked to the United States than had previously been assumed. The combination of styles was a type of American eclecticism, so to say, because previous styles were reinterpreted to be deemed distinctly American. A complete shift towards eclectic usage of architecture sums up the given timeframe and shortly introduces Arts and Crafts Architecture. The most marked style within this movement is the Colonial Revival and reiterates what the American Renaissance had attempted earlier, in that it reinstates an earlier style (evident through the use of the word revival) and claims it as being American. “What is uniquely American about the Colonial Revival is the obsession with the period prior to becoming a country, when many of our arts, including architecture and the decorative arts, were still indebted to foreign cultures.”46 The question that arises when speaking of the Colonial Revival is whether it can be American seeing as Colonial Architecture was, as is openly admitted, an amalgamation of various European styles and thus, its resurgence would consequently be a renewal of various European styles that came together in one geographic region. Answering this question truthfully is not very likely to happen yet, overall, the sentiment prevails that the Colonial Revival is prototypically American. The trend was partially initiated by local draftsmen, who studied the architectural drawings and structures of their country, perhaps due to a patriotic ideology that was culminating prior to the Centennial, and used these features in their designs.47 The style was also called to life at the Centennial Exposition in 187648 celebrating the independence of America and not, as it may seem, through this revival style, the retroactive pursuit of colonial life. It is considered American in that, “The Colonial Revival is an attitude or a mental process of remembering and maintaining the past that generations of Americans have quite consciously

45

Wilson, “Architecture and the reinterpretation of the past in the American renaissance,” in Eggener, 227.

46

Richard Guy Wilson, introduction to Re-creating the American Past: Essays on the Colonial Revival, eds. Richard Guy Wilson, Shaun Eyring, and Kenny Marotta (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2006), 8.

47

O’Gorman, On the Boards, 12.

48

Shirley Teresa Wajda, “World’s Fairs and Expositions,” in Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life, eds. Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2008), 479.

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created.”49 The past, then, as in the American Renaissance, had to be redefined in order to make it a national past. The controversy remains whether this form of reinstating past architecture that had European origins can be termed American. On the one hand, the influence that the colonial era had in shaping an American identity is undeniable. “The idealization of colonial styles and forms provided a nation of immigrants with object lessons in group identity over the course of two centuries and remains a profound influence today. From spoons to chairs, houses to towns, the Colonial Revival is a distinct and dominant American idiom.”50 On the other hand, the original is considered a replica of styles and thus the revival is of the same breed: The Colonial style is referred to as such because it was the prevalent style during the founding of America. However, one finds that that style was, in a manner of speaking, a revivalistic attempt itself. The colonies were attempting to imitate something of their English homes and cities. They wanted to emulate as best they could, given lesser materials and skill, some sophistication of the Old Country.

51

As a result, the safer word to describe the Colonial Revival would be eclectic, which fits more suitably into the era that heralded modernism and the styles that dominated the twentieth century. The term eclectic also faced abuse because it was linked to the picturesque, a term that constantly reminded builders of the over-exaggerated Romantic era. 52 It was not only the styles themselves that brought about controversy regarding architecture, but also their political messages and implications, especially during phases of turmoil and ambiguities.

49

Wilson, introduction to Re-creating the American Past: Essays on the Colonial Revival, 3.

50

Thomas Andrew Denenberg, “Colonial Revival,” in Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life, eds. Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2008), 108-109.

51

Rod A. Miller, “Jens Fredrick Larson and Colonial Revival,” in Re-creating the American Past: Essays on the Colonial Revival, eds. Richard Guy Wilson, Shaun Eyring, and Kenny Marotta (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2006), 53.

52

Devlin, Portraits of American Architecture, 139.

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T HE C ONTRADICTION BETWEEN U PPER C LASS D OMESTIC ARCHITECTURE AND D EMOCRACY Viewing houses as simply providing shelter and nothing else is a mindset that ceased to exist a very long time ago and was certainly far from the thoughts that lay behind building in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in America. A house was never just a house; it had numerous functions, which essentially made it a home and an expression of individualism. This individualistic approach to home ownership and home building subconsciously included established principles regarding the emotional position of a house in the owner’s life as well as the factors that influenced the manner and design of its construction. The trends depicted through domestic architecture generally mirrored political, social, and cultural proceedings. However, when speaking in political, social, and cultural terms controversy usually ensues and ambiguities arise and the same holds true for the sentiment behind domestic architecture and its supposed meaning. Architecture in a domestic sense has always meant something to the owner and the beholder beginning already in pre-historical times with the convenience and habitation it provided. Even the expression household, which in modern-day usage defines the family within a given home, was originally granted a more structural definition. “The use of the term household ignores the potential kinbased nature of the group and concentrates on the functionality of the unit physically defined by the architecture.”53 The domestic architecture then, if it is still intact, can give historians a better understanding of the people who lived there and one can use this information and read it as a text in order to reach conclusions concerning the society at large. While observing this architecture it is also important to integrate the external influences that had repercussions in the form of building going on at specific times. Conclusively, “Understanding the significance of houses requires an analysis of their use, and in particular, the organization of their internal space.”54 Not only their use is an important fact to consider, but also their decorative elements both inside and out. Jumping ahead into a more recent timeframe, but still geographically staying rooted in Europe, the expression of architectural elevations took on a more illustrative stance in industrial times. In one way, this can be seen through the

53

Niall Sharples, Social Relations in Later Prehistory: Wessex in the First Millennium

54

Sharples, Social Relations in Later Prehistory, 207.

BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 187.

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increasingly decorative exteriors that were literally illustrative in that they enenhanced an already artistic object. In addition, picturesque outer walls illustrated the owner’s position in society and the accessibility to contemporary design. “Reich verzierte und gegliederte Fassaden ließen auf reiche Bewohner schließen.”55 Along with architectural styles and designs, the reaction that they evoked was another feature that Americans imported from Europe. As will be shown later, domestic architecture took on a central role in characterizing its owners and their accomplishments. The way houses were designed was a consideration that Europeans had established over several centuries and passed along through subsequent generations. This was also taken over by the colonists that came to the New World and set up their communities accordingly and it became an integral aspect for American homeowners. After taking a short excursion into the realm of prehistoric architectural meaning and the importance of design standards in industrial Europe, it is now appropriate to travel into the American sphere of domestic architecture. Prior to analyzing the architectural development of homes however, it must be stated that the actual possession of a home was the first and foremost sign of liberty and independence. Home ownership was and still is a chief aspect in being American and living the American Dream that the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had sermonized and instituted. “Homeownership is equated with other strongly held cultural values such as freedom, industriousness, and individualism.”56 In fact, the mere right to one’s own property was a basic element of American individualism. Homeowners were involuntarily granted a higher position in society if they were in custody of this type of asset. “To a nation founded on the principle that real property ownership was the basis for good citizenship[…]”57 it was vital for Americans to go out and buy a house in order to seem adequate for their peers and neighbors. Hence, before even considering the way the house appeared and the architectural design that was used, the tenure of it already acted as a status symbol for the proprietor. Uniquely, this part of the American Dream is regarded as a high standard of citizenry to the American himself and his 55

Fuhrmann, Meteling, Rajkay, and Weipert, Geschichte des Wohnens, 110.

56

William M. Rohe and Harry L. Watson, “Homeownership in American Culture and Public Policy,” in Chasing the American Dream: New Perspectives on Affordable Homeownership, eds. William M. Rohe and Harry L. Watson (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 3.

57

Lawrence J. Vale, “The Ideological Origins of Affordable Homeownership Efforts,” in Chasing the American Dream: New Perspectives on Affordable Homeownership, eds. William M. Rohe and Harry L. Watson (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007),17.

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onlookers, to this day. “Homeownership, it is argued, is a sign of success in American society; thus, homeowners have a greater sense of accomplishment than those who do not own their own homes[…].”58 Once the home had been acquired, it was time to build it according to the standards of the day and to ensure that it reflected the appropriate class membermembership. Various points of view within societal ranks, as well as among homeowners, politicians, and architects, produced a constant debate on how to build. The important factor in this contemplation was what the exterior of one’s home was meant to declare to guests, visitors, and passersby. In a societal sense, many members of the upper class wanted to express the availability of leisure that their lifestyle presented them. “Domestic refinement was in this sense a façade that gave to the family an appearance of ease, as if they were truly ladies and gentlemen who had no need to work, while the creation and maintenance of the house was known by all to be the result of intense labor.”59 In a nation in which the important claim was the independence from a monarchy and an aristocracy and the complete implementation of a democracy, this type of refinement and expressive leisure connoted a false message in that it declared a return to class-based society. Upper-class elites could not only afford a chic façade but also a way of life that did not require much effort, or so it seemed. In contrast, the common man could not afford to live in such luxurious splendor and was not encouraged to do so. Domestic architecture and city planners attempted to blur this picture of inequality by implementing uniformity instead. Although this may have seemed more republican in essence, it denied the thought of individualism at the same time. “The similarity between the elements in the row [row houses] was thought to correspond to the equality guaranteed by the Republic. This Republican egalitarian claim drew attention away from the real limitations to equality that existed, based on race, gender, and social and economic status.” 60 A noble attempt, yet domestic architecture was still one step ahead and came up with new designs to define class lines. Not to mention, forced consistency became obsolete because members of each rank had already restricted themselves to certain neighborhoods in which the homogeny of domestic architectural styles further confirmed class cohesiveness as opposed to societal equality. 58

William M. Rohe, Robert G. Quercia, and Shannon van Zandt, “The SocialPsychological Effects of Affordable Homeownership,” in Chasing the American Dream: New Perspectives on Affordable Homeownership, eds. William M. Rohe and Harry L. Watson (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 215.

59

Bushman, The Refinement of America, 262-263.

60

Murphy, The American Townhouse, 17.

D OMESTIC A RCHITECTURE | 187

The style of choice for Americans after the battle for independence was homage to the classical Greek and Roman democracies. More specifically, Americans regarded the Classical styles, and particularly the Greek, as a means to underscoring their freedom: This appetite for Grecian themes had been further stimulated by the sympathetic response of many Americans to the outbreak of fighting by Greek nationalists against the rule of the Ottoman Turks. Throughout many parts of the United States, statesmen and citizens expressed sentiments of friendship and sympathy for the patriots of Greece whom they viewed as fighting for the same principles of freedom that had inspired Americans in their 61

struggle against Great Britain.

There are other theories regarding the possible reasoning behind the popularity of the Greek Revival in architecture, yet all of them are linked to the thought of gaining liberty and democracy. The link to Greece was particularly pronounced in Boston and the way that they viewed Greek architecture and its message. “Visitors[…], who came into Boston Harbor by ship, would now see before them on the waterfront of the peninsula, an impressive kind of architecture that resembled the ancient Parthenon in Athens.”62 In domestic architecture, as seen in Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, these principles of republican simplicity and directness were also followed with the use of columns, pediments, and other Greek attributes found in public and private buildings. The Classic Revival supported the overall sentiment after the Revolution and fit well into the American landscape. The Victorian era did not gain as much praise, however, and instead was accused of denying the values that the Republic had fought so hard to establish. Denying the thought of architectural standardization and utterly repressing the quality of minimalism, “The ideal Victorian house was […] expected to be an instrument of display.”63 Victorian homes were intriguing because they were not as straightforward as Classic homes were and they enticed visitors to take a closer look especially because owners of these types of homes wanted messages of social rank to enrich their elevations and interiors. Victorian homes possessed a type of aristocratic arrogance, which was maximized by the amount of decorative extremities and royal colors that accentuated them. It was a style that Americans were not prepared for early on in their self-rule, but rather one that could only unfold in the Romantic era of the mid-nineteenth century. 61

O’Connor, The Athens of America, 96.

62

Ibid., 33.

63

Clark, The American Family Home, 114.

188 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

Culturally, architecture was hailed and condemned according to society’s contemporary inclinations. The values that Americans considered their unique destiny were molded by a country that experienced rapid progression and transition. While keeping the focus on architecture, the major political and cultural events that led to the maturity of these values need to be looked at in detail. Domestic Architecture and the American Revolution The American Revolution, the War for Independence, was responsible for the political severance from Great Britain. After feeling the burden of oppression from the mother country, the colonists stood up for their rights as free and independent citizens and for the purpose of political autonomy. Overall, the Revolution produced the feeling that, “In this new republican society no one wanted to be dependent on anyone else.” 64 In addition, the move away from Great Britain symbolized not only a political change, but also the desire to improve society as a whole. The contempt towards a defined hierarchy produced the ideal of the common man as the typical American and what the nation strived to teach its citizens. “The Revolution shattered traditional structures of authority, and common people increasingly discovered that they no longer had to accept the old distinctions that had separated them from the upper ranks of the gentry.”65 This point of view was not quite compatible with the Federalists, but rather reiterated early eighteenth century oppositional British Whig sentiment by men such as George Mason, who believed in the privileged common man, but was also afraid of having too many of these in positions of power. 66 Architecturally, a silent battle was going on which was not won in the Americans favor, but rather continued the reliance on English role models as well as other European influences: Einmal war durch wirtschaftliche Stagnation und Kriegszerstörungen ein gewaltiger Nachholbedarf entstanden, zum anderen wuchs die Wirtschaftskraft durch den weltweiten Handel bis nach Indien und China im rasanten Tempo. Das alles entlud sich in einem Bauboom zu Beginn der [17]90er Jahre. Auch hatte die Unabhängigkeit bei den amerikanischen Bürgern ein ganz neues Selbstbewußtsein geweckt, das dem Volumen der nun in Angriff genommenen Bauten ganz andere Dimensionen gab und die ameri-

64

Wood, The American Revolution, 115.

65

Ibid., 126.

66

Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 35-36.

D OMESTIC A RCHITECTURE | 189

kanischen Architekte beflügelte, den Stolz der Nation in ihren Bauten auszudrücken. Trotz allen Umuts gegen die Engländer löste man sich noch nicht von englischer Lebensart und Kultur, und man sah am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts Kultur und Baustil noch nicht so sehr aus nationaler Sicht, wie es wenige Jahre später üblich wurde.

67

Initially, the Revolution signaled to homebuilders and architects that the separation from Great Britain should also be taken to heart in their endeavor. The move towards the Classical Style of building shows that English styles became less popular but a complete disconnection from Europe was not the case. Georgian architecture and the Federal Style of building were not only quite frequent in American cities, but also seen being erected during and directly after the war. Europe was still an architectural muse for American architects, but specifically English styles of building may have only temporarily been put on hold even though they still had a following in some sectors of American society. Notably, […][T]here was also significant irony here. For at the very moment Washington was marshaling his forces to conduct what had become an all-out struggle to secure American independence from Great Britain, the dining room chimneypiece he was fretting over was being crafted – at his express instruction – to duplicate a plate in Abraham Swan’s British 68

Architect, an English architectural pattern book[…].

The personifications of the Revolution as well as the metropolis of its beginnings were evidently still closely connected to their architectural roots. Boston was among the most patriotic of places in the revolutionary era, calling to life events prior to the war that influenced the other colonies in their pursuit of happiness. Other major cities and colonies, like Boston, had important members of the community who may not have been wholly supportive of a separation from Great Britain in ventures that were outside of the political realm, such as their domestic architecture. “[…][T]he American uppermost class has always looked to the British class system as its most satisfactory model. Even at the time of the American Revolution this was true[…].”69 They looked at their class system as a model, the upper class as such as a model, and the domestic architecture that this class used. While others were steering towards a classical mode of building, many members of the upper class stuck with the Georgian 67

Köster, Palladio in Amerika, 28.

68

Dalzell, “George Washington, Mount Vernon, and the Pattern Books,” in Hafertepe

69

Birmingham, America’s Secret Aristocracy, 6.

and O’Gorman, 36.

190 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

architecture that they were used to and that they continued to see back at home. Even political leaders turned to Georgian or Federal styles (which was often seen as a slightly altered version of the Georgian) and did not let themselves get enentirely influenced by and reeled into the Classical Revival that was being called appropriate. A prime example is one of the case studies that will be presented, the Harrison Gray Otis house, which was built in the Federal Style in 1796. Interestingly, it was not only domestic architecture that clung to the English styles but also representative government buildings that did not feel the need to be classicized. Even after attaining their self-government, an important building in Boston was turned over to English architecture: The memory of Boston’s English heritage would be revived even just a few years after the Revolution in one of the most prominent buildings in the city: the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill by Charles Bulfinch (1795-1798). Although it shared the Neoclassicism of most the capitol buildings of the western states, its Neoclassicism was based on an extant English building, Somerset House in London.

70

Bulfinch sometimes reverted to Classical styles especially because his employers expected it of him, but his general style was the Federal Style. He was known for constructing public and private dwellings all over the city of Boston, among other cities, and created a Federal cityscape within Boston that is still present today. The focus here lies on Boston and the domestic architecture that it contains then and now. The interesting perspective that Boston offers during and postRevolution is that it was known as the center of liberating activities but kept its Englishness nonetheless: In addition to the vestiges of English sixteenth-century and Neoclassical urban design that contributed to its character, Boston’s cultural and architectural heritage reminded nineteenth-century Bostonians of a time when Boston was an English colonial city. Although Boston’s residents in the late twentieth century still proudly commemorate the city’s role in breaking away from English rule in the late 1700s, the age and the shapes of the buildings all over New England, the winding streets in Boston, and even the names of the surrounding towns such as ‘Essex’ and ‘Gloucester’ have constantly reminded 71

Bostonians of their English cultural heritage.

70

Rennella, The Boston Cosmopolitans, 153.

71

Ibid., 153.

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In a way, it seems as though Bostonians, and even more so upper-class Bostonians, did not feel the need or the desire to break with their English ways. The Georgian and Federal architecture appealed to them and made it apparent that they were English-Americans. Conversely, perhaps it may not have been the Revolution that was responsible for sufficiently severing the ties, neither politically nor culturally. Domestic Architecture and the War of 1812 Architectural tendencies did not change right away after the Revolution. As with all shifts within domestic architecture, these occurred gradually, but can be traced back to the political influence that the Revolution had had. Thus, although governmental buildings were built according to neoclassical blueprints, domestic architecture remained in an English stronghold. Nineteenth-century Bostonians, when strolling through their urban environment, were prone to think that an English Revival was going on. However, other countries were also consulted for advice on the construction of homes and even on complete city planning. The most conspicuous trend in domestic architecture in the colonies and in Boston was still English. This process began prior to actual houses being built and can be seen in the overall urban structure. “[T]he standard approach to urban planning in Boston had been to follow the English precedents of using small semi-private parks or squares to break the linear pattern of street layouts.”72 Residential squares and long avenues with side streets ensued and became the perfect place to build English style row houses in a Georgian or Federal manner.73 In addition to the continuation of English house building, there was an extensive interest in French styles, as well. The difference between English and French was that row houses were most commonly built in a British manner whereas French styles applied to apartments that had a definite spatial advantage in growing cities. Even “[…]Boston was being transformed, architecturally at any rate, from the ‘Athens of America’ to the ‘Paris of America,’[…].”74 Yet, most wealthy Bostonians stayed within the English styles of building, mainly because they preferred houses over apartments. Even as the War of 1812 came into being and anti-British sentiment was highly evident throughout the United States, Federalism and its elite members kept their anti-British tone down to a minimum. Other members of Bostonian

72

Reed, Building Victorian Boston, 124.

73

Ibid.

74

Ibid., 130.

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society felt the same way and, “Thus, the citizens of the town tended to follow the old ways and the old fashions as if nothing had changed.”75 The fashions of domestic architecture were aspects which definitely continued in much the same manner as before the Revolution and hence, also before the War of 1812. Two of the case studies to be presented in this study will confirm this tendency among the upper class in that both the Harrison Gray Otis house (built in 1796) and the William Hickling Prescott house (built in 1808) stayed true to their Federal Style, regardless of the political separation and upheaval that was going on between the United States and Great Britain in both wars. While the Bostonians and their Federalists were not intent on cutting off the British completely, other cries of liberation were sweeping the nation. Some upper-class men, “[…]but primarily […those] from the aspiring yet humble middling sort, the self-designated ‘productive’ classes”76 were more in tune with the Democratic-Republicans, who supported French political ventures. Perhaps it was for this reason that also the architecture became increasingly French in design. However, as the war unfolded and continued, the renewed aspiration for freedom and independence from every European counterpart became more evident with each day and people developed a new disdain for the mother country, or rather countries. “By this time [end of the war, 1816], most Americans felt that the Old World had become so old, corrupt, priest-ridden, and decadent that it had little to offer the New World that had by now become confidently conscious of its own vigorous youth, its rugged vitality, and its free democratic spirit.”77 Special emphasis has to be placed on the word decadent because it not only refers to class membership but also to architecture and domestic architecture. Classic architecture can by no means be accused of ever being decadent and thus it became important to steer away from features that were perceived as being excessive. Georgian and Federal architecture were also not self-indulging forms of building, but reminded the nation of the English styles that they consumed earlier and tried to avoid now. Many Bostonians, and Federalists, did not feel it necessary to follow this trend and continued to construct their Federal habitations. Political events were unmistakably responsible for influencing American domestic architecture at the end of the eighteenth and again at the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. As the nation evolved, political turmoil did not cease to exist, but it put less palpable stress on domestic architecture in New England. Instead, it was a cultural event which introduced old and new styles to the 75

O’Connor, The Athens of America, 7.

76

Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 56.

77

O’Connor, The Athens of America, 99.

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American public that found resonance in late nineteenth century domestic architecture. Domestic Architecture and the Centennial Exposition Philadelphia, 1876 One hundred years after the American Revolution had been won; the nation celebrated a century of independence and self-government. This celebration was carried out in Philadelphia at the Centennial Exposition in 1876 in which one of the major themes on display by the countries that were present was their architecture. There was no question about the fact that Americans had rightfully achieved their sovereignty, but they still adopted their architectural styles from Europe, more specifically Great Britain, while at the same time showcasing their pride and patriotism as Americans a century after their victory. As with the constant debate over Classic versus Romantic, the Centennial Exposition and its re-introduction of English styles refurbished the necessity to be American in one’s domestic architecture as opposed to emulating Britain. The Victorian era of architecture had already been around a few years in the United States by the time that the Centennial Exposition was taking place. Therefore, the overall tendency was already leaning towards Romantic and picturesque architecture and the styles that underlined this trend were taken up readily. One of these styles was the Queen Anne, which made its debut in America at the Centennial Exposition by none other than the British. “In 1876, however, the ‘Queen Anne’ came to America, in the form of the British government’s exhibition of three buildings at the Centennial Fair in Philadelphia.”78 The Queen Anne, as well as other high Victorian forms such as the Gothic Revival, took their inspiration from various sources including medieval and, to a certain degree classical features: Instead, following in the footsteps of Richard Norman Shaw and other British architects, they incorporated elements drawn from the entire gamut of pre-modern architecture, ranging from medievalisms, like half-timbering and leaded glass windows, to classical features such as scrolled cornices over doors and windows and pedimented dormers.

78

Foster, The Queen Anne House, 14.

79

Murphy, The American Townhouse, 35-36.

79

194 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

It was for this reason that the Victorian style was often criticized in that it blended too many things together and did not follow the one hundred years’ worth of common man values that were being celebrated. The Queen Anne became particularly appalling in the eyes of many because it so drastically repudiated classical symmetry and republican simplicity. On the other hand, it became one of the most popular and mass-consumed domestic architectural styles in the United States. Janet Foster goes so far as to suggesting the Queen Anne as the American vernacular, even though it juxtaposes the ideals of the nation at a rather vulnerable occasion within American history. “Queen Anne architecture could become a national vernacular style because the parts and pieces that made it were produced by machine. The turned porch posts, the lattice-work, the finials and cresting on rooflines, and the interior stairs and mantels were not the product of local woodworkers and a handcraft tradition.”80 The middle class readily consumed this mass-produced architectural style because it allowed them to follow the upper-class footsteps of using Victorian architecture and through its availability to the common man, it immediately found a large following. The same process was responsible for a similarly ostentatious style, which gained popularity in America parallel to the Queen Anne: the Eastlake Style. Perhaps because of the rapid spread of the Queen Anne among the middle class, the style never found a significant following in the upper ranks of society, which preferred a less frivolous form of Victorian design. As a larger crowd opted for the Queen Anne Style, the uniformity that was at one point so vital in urban design and American public display became outdated. The cityscapes had façades of all variations lining their streets and houses gained an individual character through design and color that had rarely been seen before: The Queen Anne movement, with its emphasis on the ‘picturesque’ appearances of buildings contributed to the repudiation of consistency as an aspect of rowhouse and townhouse design. Regularity came to be considered less important as a variety of historicist styles came to the fore during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

81

While the middle class looked to include this individual character within their domestic design, the upper class was rather subtle in its use of the Victorian in their architectural elevations. The Victorian interiors in upper-class homes, on the other hand, were as ornate as could be, as will be seen in the third case study: the Gibson house. 80

Foster, The Queen Anne House, 18.

81

Murphy, The American Townhouse, 37.

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It was through the time, which was marked by industrialization, and through the trend of the Victorian style that the Centennial Exposition underscored the need and the possibility of consumption. “[…][M]iddle-class Americans who began to fill their homes – cramming them, in fact, according to the Victorian aesthetic of ‘excess’ – with goods which were once considered a luxury but which, thanks to industrial production, were increasingly becoming accessible to the average consumer.”82 This was the most distinguishable reason for the large amount of emulation by the middle class of upper-class styles in the second half of the nineteenth century and brought about an overconsumption of decorative objects intended for households. After the Civil War, in the era of Reconstruction, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner termed this time period the Gilded Age, in that American culture was becoming a consumer culture. 83 Although this material necessity had a stronghold on upper and middle-class households, another architectural thought evolved along with and through the Centennial Exposition, which negated this excessive and decadent notion towards consumption. In disagreement with the aesthetic venture within architecture, there was a loud cry for something more American around the time of the Centennial Exposition and the later nineteenth century. As Americans were looking back and rejoicing their past and their past successes, they figured they could celebrate their past architecture, as well: As it had been a generation earlier for those like the poet Walt Whitman, cultural definition, the meaning of Americanness, now became a preoccupation of many. Interest in the American scene was widespread around the time of the nation’s Centennial celebrations in 1876, as indicated by a surge in publications on American colonial 84

architecture.

82

David Scobey, “What Shall we do with our Walls? The Philadelphia Centennial and the Meaning of Household Design,” in Fair Representations. World’s Fairs and the Modern World, eds. Robert Rydell and Nancy Gwinn (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1994): 111, quoted in Astrid Böger, Envisioning the Nation: The Early American World’s Fairs and the Formation of Culture (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2010), 78.

83

Astrid Böger, Envisioning the Nation: The Early American World’s Fairs and the

84

Keith L. Eggener, introduction to American Architectural History: A Contemporary

Formation of Culture (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2010), 98. Reader, ed. Keith L. Eggener (New York: Routledge, 2004), 6.

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Instead of looking at England and Europe, the colonial past seemed a more American perspective to be taking on architecture. Although architectural styles derived from the time in which America was still a collection of colonies were also European in nature, the Colonial Revival became a style that Americans saw themselves in. The reinterpretation of the various colonial influences that made up the first communities on the American continent was the American past that the Centennial was celebrating and so, it was this past that architecture decided to relive. If the Aesthetic Movement 85 within Victorian architecture symbolized the possibility of availability and mass-consumerism, then the Colonial Revival rereminded Americans of the work that went into forming the nation and the archiarchitecture of the colonies. It was celebrated that the Colonial Revival was not a mass-reproduction but, instead, called upon the values of discipline and diligence that the colonists had brought with them in the eighteenth century: Torn between wanting to celebrate their ancestors’ endurance of hardship paired with the simplicity of their lives, and wishing to promote an illusion of gentility, Colonial Revivalists found an uneasy compromise in viewing work-centered artifacts as finely designed objects in their own right. Such implements could also be seen as evidence of patriotism, inasmuch as their makers built a new country through their willingness to 86

work.

The reproduction of Colonial architecture ventured to bring back the lifestyles and life values that early Americans had documented. It was rather a reassessment of their lives in the colonies than the architecture of their origins. The Colonial Revival can be viewed as a historical movement that did not rely on aesthetics as a marking feature, but rather on the implications that the history of colonial designs brought with it. As the sentiment grew that colonial was essentially American, the movement spread and was difficult to refute. Urban centers did not witness the Colonial 85

The Aesthetic Movement came to America in the 1870s and presented a more subtle take on dark colors and massive furniture that was common in Victorian interiors. See, Edgar de N. Mayhew and Minor Myers, Jr., A Documentary History of American Interiors: From the Colonial Era to 1915 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980), 268.

86

Marilyn Casto, “The Concept of Hand Production in Colonial Revival Interiors,” in Re-creating the American Past: Essays on the Colonial Revival, eds. Richard Guy Wilson, Shaun Eyring, and Kenny Marotta (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2006), 328.

D OMESTIC A RCHITECTURE | 197

Revival as much as the suburbs or rural areas, but the message was conceived by all. “[T]he term ‘Colonial’ was broadly applied to any form or element that evoked traditional American building, or features derived from classical archiarchitecture.”87 The Classics were thrown into the larger meaning of Colonial and thus, in that they represented the architecture of democracy, they became, in this sense, conspicuously American. The Colonial Revival was therefore also an eclectic style, much like its Victorian counterpart, but it combined styles that were republican in design and could therefore be American. As the style proprogressed and lasted approximately until the 1930s,88 it consistently remained an architectural deference to the history that constituted the United States. The Centennial Exposition aroused the revolutionary beliefs that underscored the history of the nation. It was not only festive but also educative by showing Americans the past and where they had come from and how far they had gotten. Architecture used this opportunity to instruct its lessons from the past, as well: Colonial and Classical architecture is traditional, that is, it refers to history. It is connected with previous structures, and previous values, so as to form a continuity, a link with the past. This link demonstrates the relationship of knowledge and learning to other times. It suggests that other periods, other voices, have something of value to teach us.

89

The lesson behind the Colonial Revival was to use the past as the source of being American. This movement was quite strong and influenced the American mindset regarding domestic architecture, allowing the Colonial Revival to exist well into the twentieth century and it was not until Modernism extended to architecture that the Colonial Revival had to give up its throne. American culture and politics had an interesting effect on the domestic architecture that lined the progressing country. With regard to society, architecture had the upper hand and influenced the way that citizens from different classes built their homes in order to reaffirm their place in the societal 87

Betsy Hunter Bradley, “Reviving Colonials and Reviving as Colonial,” in Recreating the American Past: Essays on the Colonial Revival, eds. Richard Guy Wilson, Shaun Eyring, and Kenny Marotta (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2006), 173.

88

William B. Rhoads, “The Long and Unsuccessful Effort to Kill Off the Colonial Revival,” in Re-creating the American Past: Essays on the Colonial Revival, eds. Richard Guy Wilson, Shaun Eyring, and Kenny Marotta (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2006), 19.

89

Miller, “Jens Fredrick Larson and Colonial Revival,” in Wilson, Eyring, and Marotta, 65.

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hierarchy. Culture and politics may have influenced domestic architecture, but it was this architecture that influenced American and Bostonian society.

D OMESTIC ARCHITECTURE

AS A

S IGN

OF

S TATUS

Status as seen through and with the use of domestic architecture started through the initial acquirement of a home. Home ownership was a part of the American Dream and a symbol of class membership starting at the lowest point in, at the least, the middle class. Indeed, there was certain esteem for the family that could afford their own home and property and decorate it the way that they thought proper. 90 Domestic architecture has evolved with different styles adorning different periods of time and classes, but the statement that it makes has remained the same. The house that one builds, buys, or rents is a declaration of one’s own and their family’s position in American society and the success that one has had as a virtuous, pious, hard-working American. A house is not simply a house; there are many renditions of the home that set it apart from other individual or families’ houses. There are even idioms, which accentuate the status that a house portrays, usually through the measurement of its size. One of these idioms is the term mansion, which prematurely places the house in the category of an upper-class abode. Even in the early beginnings of America, in colonial days, the mansions were attributed to the elite colonists. “All of the early mansions were built for men whose English experience enabled them to transmit the new styles to the colonies. Though not recent immigrants, the mansion people continued to be the richest and most prominent members of colonial society.” 91 As Richard L. Bushman so endearingly calls them, the mansion people became a category that he uses to characterize the wealthiest and most socially outstanding colonists. There are no further traits in Bushman’s sentences that confirm their status in colonial society other than their homes. Domestic architecture was seen as an art, a decorative artistic manner in which homes were built and embellished. The importance of this art form is the everyday confrontation that it summons. Whereas other arts are restricted to galleries and theaters, architecture is seen on a daily basis in every possible location. Using this art as a metaphor of one’s standing in society has been a means that people have used in all spans of history and its use seems to be preconditioned. “Of course the art of architecture has been one of the most

90

Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America, 283.

91

Bushman, The Refinement of America, 113.

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important of the fine arts since ancient times[…]. The symbolism, both of resiresidential architecture and of internal furnishings of course very much includes a status-dimension.”92 Evidently, the upper class used this to their advantage and built their houses according to the scale and decoration that their neighbors would recognize as belonging to the same class. The middle class often tried to do the same thing, not necessarily among their own ranks, but in order to appear more sophisticated and upper class. Appropriate domestic architecture may also have become a burden to the upper class, though. Since the correct display of one’s home had become well established throughout history, the upper class became dependent on it. The wrong use of style and design could oust one from their societal rank even if their monetary means were still intact. “The genteel life depended on the creation of proper environments, made up from mansions, pictures, silver spoons, teacups, and mahogany tables.”93 Notably, all of the features, which are meant to fabricate the effect of an apt upper-class setting are reduced to the home, its architectural elevations, and its interiors. This magnifies the weight of the manner in which a homeowner constructed his home, for his own sake. The homeowner, and the architect, additionally had a debt to lower ranking members of society and the consequence that their seeing the home would have. The status that these homes portrayed was just one feature that made upperclass domestic architecture a multi-faceted part of American society. It was also an improving force for the nation in that it allowed all members of society to partake in handsome architecture. “The first principle that most [Boston] Cosmopolitans believed in was that beautiful architecture, like any work of art, could enhance the lives and appeal to the senses of most of the people who walked by or through these structures.” 94 The beauty then, that was so often criticized because of its lack of simplicity, may be seen as a way to better society and to grant everyone a picturesque environment, even if indulging in it was reserved for only a few. Affordability played a major role in which parts of lavish living the middle class could partake in and which parts they could not. In the colonies, the mansion people were a clearly defined group who were not always ranked according to their wealth. However, as time and domestic architecture progressed so did the mansion people. The upper class constantly came up with new prerequisites that their future members had to bring with 92

Talcott Parsons, “The Gemeinschaft Complex II: Kinship, Religion, Style of Life, Education,” in American Society: A Theory of the Societal Community, ed. Giuseppe Sciortino (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2007), 369.

93

Bushman, The Refinement of America, xviii.

94

Rennella, The Boston Cosmopolitans, 143-144.

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them. As this turned from name-based to wealth-based criteria, the background of the elite changed accordingly: The owners of the later mansions, although not always involved in public office like the eighteenth-century gentry, were without exception the elite of their districts, successful professional men, merchants, industrialists, high military and government officials, and large planters. The houses embodied their wealth, achievements, and cultural aspirations, notably the desire for genteel culture.

95

The more money that was involved the less readily was the middle class in emulating all of the upper class styles, seeing as they could only partially finance what others had no problem paying. Wealth thus became a separating factor in domestic architecture of the middle and upper classes and it was not until the late nineteenth century and the market for mass-production that the factor of wealth diminished. As the upper class’s domestic architecture changed with them and as industrialism made new materials available, these houses and mansions received distinctive new looks. The material used in the colonies for building was mainly wood and remained so for a long time in New England. Other eighteenth-century regions saw the introduction of bricks, which had an individual appearance and some structural restrictions. It was also a case in point for the upper class to set itself apart from the rest of society and their houses were a vehicle in doing so. Therefore, while everyone else in the community still used wood in constructing their homes, the upper class turned to this newfound material. “Red bricks clearly marked the houses of the gentry as they stood upright on the landscape. In New England brick was far less commonly used, even for the best houses, and color was achieved by painting.” 96 Wooden homes needed the extra hue of adding color in order to stand out whereby bricks were naturally a reddish-brown that highlighted a home without any additional effort. The middle class, however, was restricted to continuing with the use of wood as their building material, yet they looked to other marks of gentility that were more easily traceable than the fundamental foundation that was not always readily alterable. The upper class scrutinized the middle class as threatening to their identity that they had so meticulously constructed, because of the way they claimed aspects of the elite lifestyle as their own. Middle-class homes could never completely resemble those they were striving to emulate but they did select affordable and striking aspects with which they could garnish their homes. 95

Bushman, The Refinement of America, 242.

96

Ibid., 133-134.

D OMESTIC A RCHITECTURE | 201

“Middling people borrowed from the upper ranks of society, but less by exact imitation than by assembling impressions of refinement and propriety from many sources, incorporating elements that suited them. Though derivative, the result represented their own taste, not a simple minded aping of the rich and powerful.” 97 The middle class did have their own taste, but it was still eclectically borrowed. The upper class saw this as a threat and had the constant need to reinvent themselves in view of society as a whole. It was also in this that an immense amount of pressure was placed on upper-class homes to be unique and idiosyncratic. As the nineteenth century came to a close the power of the symbolism of domestic architecture and its design was clearly defined within all ranks of society. It prolonged to be figurative for the status and superiority of the owners over other lower ranking homes while at the same time bringing all classes together in that domestic architecture was one’s private contribution to art. “Both [the house and the family] shared the emphasis on the house as the expression of personality and as an exhibition of personal standards of beauty.” 98 A family could prove its worth fiscally, socially, and culturally with their individual knowledge of aesthetics and the application thereof on their home. The upper class as well as the middle class was able to experiment within their own perceptions of beauty and, in the case of the former, to set new trends and standards. The lower class was usually exempt from this expressive art form because of the lack of home ownership, but they were able to partake in the individualistic domestic architecture movement visually. The construction of homes was primarily effective through its exterior magnitude. Another more discreet part of house construction was the spatial and organizational integrity that characterized American homes. The floor plan and the rooms that some homes housed were additional indicators of the status of American families.

F LOOR P LANS Spatial organization within homes was a utilitarian consideration before it became a defining and ornamental issue. In the colonies and the United States, as in Europe, floor plans followed functionality at first, but later played the supporting role in the status confirmation that was alluded to by the exterior of

97

Bushman, The Refinement of America, 259-260.

98

Clark, The American Family Home, 120.

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the house. In the beginning, the layout of the house did not have many variavariations. The set-up of the house in the 1600s and early 1700s was usually restricted to one room where every part of life took place: Despite local and regional variations a few generalizations can be made about these early floor plans. There were no rooms with assigned functions, no bedroom, as such, no dining room, no bathroom[…]. The loft was for sleeping but also served as storage space. There were no closets; the few garments were packed in chests or hung from pegs scattered about the house[…]. As a rule, however, the seventeenth-century house had no room for privacy.

99

The hall, as it was known, was essentially an all-purpose room and was a space used for sleeping, eating, and any kind of chores or leisurely activities.100 It was not a very comfortable living situation but the colonists got by and as the eighteenth century came about changes and expansions on the house were undertaken. It may not have been a possibility in the early colonies, but as comfort levels rose homes were organized according to social principles. The allocation of space, like the exteriors, took on a similar symbolic worth that underscored hierarchy within the family as well as the family’s position in the social hierarchy.101 The 1700s were most distinctly marked by expansion and extensions on homes. As the colonies grew and influxes of new settlers were extending the borders of the colonies, so did their houses extend beyond single room limitations. “The development of the center hall plan in the eighteenth century represents the aspirations of the eastern seaboard mercantile house owners to emulate Georgian houses of England, for example.”102 The hall became an entry into the home from which the rooms could veer off from and not everything was presented to the visitor from the onset, but instead had to be explored. However, Until about 1730, a person of local note could remain in a single-cell house or expand to a simple hall-parlor plan without compromising his respectability. But as versions of the 99

Hawke, Everyday Life in Early America, 52.

100

Hugh Howard, Colonial Houses: The Historic Homes of Williamsburg (New York:

101

Parsons, “The Gemeinschaft Complex II: Kinship, Religion, Style of Life, Educa-

102

Kerry Dean Carso, “Architectural History and American Architecture,” in Material

Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 2004), 10. tion,” in Sciortino, 370. Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life, eds. Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2008), 38.

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new Georgian mansion style went up on every side, local leaders could not disregard the 103

new housing standards for long.

The lower classes, on the other hand, were often confined to their single room houses throughout the eighteenth century. As the number of rooms increased, each room was granted a specific purpose and often times, if a house had a sufficient number of rooms, their functions were rather trivial. Old versions of space allotment used the single room or sinsingle hall as the place in the house where everything took place and in rare cases, these homes had one separate room, which was used to sleep in and to keep valuables hidden from visitors and guests. New building styles housed numerous rooms, some of which served the purpose of being available to entertain guests, and additional floors were being added to extend the house upwards. These were connected by stairways and created a clear-cut boundary between rooms that were intended for guests and the private quarters of the family. Of course, the more recent style of building was more expensive and thus reserved for members of the upper ranks.104 Upper-class homes in Europe had a different room distribution system than lower-class homes could afford. As in the United States in the nineteenth century, the rooms were split up according to family and service spheres, yet Europeans had an additional system of classification: Die Geschlechtsspezifik der Räumlichkeiten reicher Adelshäuser war nicht zu übersehen. Der Hausherr verfügte über den meisten Wohnraum. So stand ihm ein Herren- oder Rauchzimmer, manchmal auch ein Billardzimmer zur Verfügung, wohin sich die Herren nach Diners zurückziehen konnten. Hier und in Dielen schmückten Gehörne und Geweihe als Zeichen männlicher Wohnkultur die Wände. Der Trophäenkult signalisierte Waldbesitz und Jagdrecht, ein uraltes Adelsprivileg, das den Adel aus der übrigen Gesellschaft 105

hervorhob und nach innen gemeinschaftsbildend wirkte.

Judging from the case studies that will be presented, American homes only slightly exhibit signs of gender diversification in the spatial continuity and interior decoration of their floor plans and rooms. It seems as though in the Otis and Colburn/Prescott homes the spaces were more communal in their usage and although they may have appeared either feminine or masculine in design, they were never referred to as being for either male or female guests. Only the Gibson 103

Bushman, The Refinement of America, 116.

104

Ibid., 120.

105

Fuhrmann, Meteling, Rajkay, and Weipert, Geschichte des Wohnens, 119.

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house, which is of the Victorian Style, has rooms that were used respectively by either just men or just women. The generalized scheme behind floor plans in late eighteenth and nineteenth century upper-class American homes was displaying the family rooms while hiding the service areas from view of the public. It became a hallmark of belonging to the upper social stratum to be able to have and split up these two areas of the house: Although the differentiation between public and private spaces in the house had been well underway by the end of the eighteenth century, by the middle of the nineteenth century such divisions had become an obsession. In the vast magazine and plan-book literature, the house grounds and floor plans were carefully designed to mirror this contemporary 106

social preoccupation.

Conspicuously, having a subconsciously detached area where the work was done, usually by servants, meant that the family belonged to the leisure class and thus only used its leisurely rooms. In Europe, the practice of splitting the house according to leisure and utility had already existed in the same form, in that the servant’s area was relegated to the back of the house, out of sight from the owners. “Das Personal musste einen separaten Hauseingang und Treppenaufgang benutzen, um nicht mit der Herrschaft in Berührung zu kommen.” 107 The hierarchy of the home could therefore be constructed prior to anyone even living within its walls. Isolating the servants from the family and guests was a method used to let visitors understand that someone else was doing the work and that the family could afford to not have to do it themselves. It even became a standard for later generations that, if complying with Edith Wharton, public and servant quarters should by no means intertwine within the interiors of the home.108 No one had to actually see this in order to understand that it was going on and upper-class families preferred to shield their guests from the crude confrontation with work. “This creation of separate and unequal halls and stairs mirrored the segregation of ceremonial and utilitarian functions within houses and the division of

106

Clark, The American Family Home, 42.

107

Fuhrmann, Meteling, Rajkay, and Weipert, Geschichte des Wohnens, 111.

108

Gary Totten, “Introduction: Edith Wharton and Material Culture,” in Material Boxes and Guarded Interiors: Edith Wharton and Material Culture, ed. Gary Totten (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2007), 8.

D OMESTIC A RCHITECTURE | 205

nineteenth-century society into two broad classes: served and servant.”109 The exterior of the house was also decorated according to class divisions and the servants had to succumb to a tedious façade as opposed to being able to view the house in the same manner that the owners and other passersby could. “Designs for facades of houses appeared in architectural books in great numbers, but backs were rarely shown, for the front belonged to ceremony and first impressions, but the rear only to utility.”110 Little attention was paid to the areas of the house that served the sole purpose of work, even the rear façade was neglected, but the rooms that guests stepped foot into were given a lot of thought. The Victorian era really excelled in this venture in that each room and its function and decoration was diffusely contemplated. “One of these [cultural conventions of use and meaning] was the premise of specialization, a cornerstone of capitalism and a pervasive characteristic of Victorian material culture. In Victorian America, each room of a house was understood to perform a distinctive set of functions.”111 A floor plan had to cater to these functionally adapt rooms by creating a path through the house that seemed suitable. There were variations concerning these hall plans but in general, the purpose of leisure and the easy accessibility of entertaining rooms for guests were at the forefront. The design that lay behind the choice of floor plan was usually associated with the overall architectural design of the home. Georgian, Victorian, and Colonial Revival homes all proved to abide to the style by implementing a Georgian, Victorian, or Colonial Revival floor plan, respectively. The first floor plan, which was used in both Georgian and Victorian homes, included a long hallway upon entry into the house which was the first room or space that one entering the house was ambivalently invited into. This long central hall plan was introduced in the eighteenth century along with the Georgian Style of building and its blueprint stretched through until 1880 as the popular style. 112 The use of this floor plan experienced many domestic architectural styles throughout its lifespan and it continuously accommodated to each style individually. “Although frequently obscured by an overlay of complicated ornament or lively asymmetry, Georgian concepts of spatial

109

Kenneth L. Ames, “First Impressions: Front halls and hall furnishings in Victorian America,” in American Architectural History: A Contemporary Reader, ed. Keith L. Eggener (New York: Routledge, 2004), 161.

110

Ames, “First Impressions: Front halls and hall furnishings in Victorian America,” in

111

Ibid., 158.

112

Ibid., 160.

Eggener, 161.

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organization were perpetuated in Victorian houses[…].”113 The long hall allowed the family and visitors to enter the home in a communal area of the house and from there they could disperse into their allocated spaces. Uninvited guests would not be able to trespass into the rooms that were preserved for actual guests, but could still receive a proper reception indoors. The Centennial Exposition in 1876 brought new styles of domestic architecarchitecture to the American market and dethroned the extended hall floor plan from its long reign in domestic construction. The most significant style with reference to floor planning was the Colonial Revival, which called for secession from the Georgian/Victorian hall and a return to something that could appear similar to the single room house without having to sacrifice nineteenth-century spatial opulence. The hall in the aforementioned homes was long and narrow and was regarded as a route leading to certain points in the home. In Colonial Revival homes, the hall was significantly widened and became more like a living room that one immediately entered in upon. 114 This floor plan was “Derived from medieval great halls and the multifunction rooms of pre-Georgian dwellings in colonial America and associated with the English reform movement[…].” 115 The living-room-upon-entrance style replaced the previous style and continued for the remainder of the nineteenth century and beyond. Parlors The prime feature within proper domestic architectural floor plans, which not only set the upper class apart from the other classes, but also set the standard for middle-class emulation of the elites, was the integration of a parlor. The parlor was a status symbol in homes of the high-standing citizens of Europe even as early as medieval times and served many purposes pertaining to the lingering of guests. “Ein so ermöglichter ‘Saal’ konnte zu einer Art öffentlichem Raum gestaltet werden, der die besondere Stellung des Besitzers demonstrierte.” 116 American parlors became first signs of status classification, as well, yet they appeared much later. The first homes in the colonies consisted only of one solitary space, it would have been near impossible to use this as a parlor-type room in the same manner that Europeans used their Saal. In fact, the parlor on the American scene was defined as, “A room used principally for the 113

Ames, “First Impressions: Front halls and hall furnishings in Victorian America,” in

114

Ibid.

115

Ibid.

116

Fuhrmann, Meteling, Rajkay, and Weipert, Geschichte des Wohnens, 15.

Eggener, 160.

D OMESTIC A RCHITECTURE | 207

entertainment of guests.”117 The room in colonial abodes was used for a number of things but entertaining guests was certainly not at the top of the list. Symbols of gentility through domestic architecture could be seen in two definitive ways when gazing at a house from the outside. The first is the architectural style that catered to certain classes at certain times within American history. The other is the evident placement of a parlor in the front of the house, to be the room that could be seen from a street view perspective. “The single most telling indicator of a household’s commitment to genteel values was the presence of a parlor with no apparent function but to sustain visiting, conversation, and genteel rituals.”118 The size of the parlor and the magnitude that it exerted on the house were relatively obsolete, but just the fact that the home had purposely integrated this room into their floor plan designated them into the higher ranks of society. The message that this room portrayed to the outside world was so strong that parlors became necessary for the elites and an upper-class home could by no means persevere in its rank without one. This meaning of pure entertaining was willingly taken over by the upper class and having a parlor became an absolute necessity for members of the upper ranks and their domestic architecture. It represented the luxury of giving up a few square feet of the house for their guests and furnishing, cleaning, and managing an additional room that was only used on special occasions. “The very name of the room, parlor, suggests a purpose beyond sleeping. In the eighteenth century this label descended to the room given over entirely to talk and entertainment.”119 The domestic architecture of the 1700s showed the first sign of the picture presented to the public through room usage and the enhancement it provided to architectural elevations. Rooms could be put into homes that had purposes that not all members of society could understand or ever even experienced. The function of entertainment may have been a weekly, perhaps even daily, routine to upper-class households but the middle and lower class were somewhat unpracticed with this spectrum of lifestyle. The nineteenth century, and the spread of parlors, familiarized the rest of society with the implications that a room could have. Accentuating and individualizing a parlor was a privilege that some had more control over than others. Having the room was a leap up the social ladder, but in order to really make an impression a large investment was necessary to 117

Steven J. Phillips, Old House Dictionary: An Illustrated Guide to American Domestic Architecture (1600-1940) (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994), s.vv. “parlor.”

118

Bushman, The Refinement of America, 121.

119

Ibid., 121.

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complete the confirmation of belonging to a specific class. “These rooms rereceived the most concentrated attention as well as the highest degree of decoradecorative elaboration. The parlor cost more than any other room and all for uses with no economic purpose.” 120 An economic purpose was certainly not the intention behind parlors but a social purpose was the inducing factor in integrating it at a high cost into one’s home. The extent that a parlor represented the family of the house and their position in society varied through the furnishings, wallpapers, use of color, and many more attributes that it contained and that reflected on the owner. “Commercial parlors, appearing in the nineteenth century with the Market Revolution, were public spaces in which middle- and upper-class Americans could ‘see and be seen’ as well as purchase services and goods meant to confirm and enhance their physical appearance and social status.”121 Thus, the parlor and its interior were what really set the upper class apart from the rest seeing as they really had nothing more to prove. Middle-class homeowners, on the other hand, had to work hard in order to furnish adequate parlors for a chance at upward mobility. The parlor was more than just a status symbol to be viewed from the outside; it was a space in which the individuals that entered the house could be controlled by the invitee. Entertaining guests may not always have been an undemanding vocation, considering that a large number of people with different social origins could act in a manner that did not suit the entire company. Once inside a parlor however, universal rules applied encouraging the correct and courteous interaction among individuals. “In a society where immigration, a highly transient population, and the desire to move up the social ladder sometimes strained personal relationships, the front parlor helped fill the need for a more controlled social environment in which the rules governing social interaction could be formalized.”122 It offered the upper class a recluse from the world that was encroaching in on them and let them mingle among their own kind in a sheltered place. Parlors also served a political purpose, a trend that could be seen towards the end of the nineteenth century, in that meetings were sometimes held in private homes. Organizations were also keen on a more homely atmosphere to discuss their matters of business and a parlor fit the bill quite well. “Parlor meetings were the norm for most associations even into the new century, and some leaders 120

Bushman, The Refinement of America, 120.

121

Shirley Teresa Wajda, “Parlors,” in Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life, eds. Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2008), 335.

122

Clark, The American Family Home, 42-43.

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with palatial residences hosted large luncheon meetings with hundreds of invited guests in attendance.”123 Smaller parlors may not have been able to hold such an enormous number of guests but the general procedure was comparable in execuexecution. A parlor in one’s home thus supplied society with three very influential tasks. First, it was a social mechanism for confirming or introducing a homeowner’s rank in the social order through the presence and ornamentation of said room. Second, it was culturally relevant to the progress and development of domestic architecture in America and the expansion of floor plans within new design eras. Finally, it was a political environment, which brought business partners and public office holders together in a single space and permitted them to domesticate their affairs. Taking all of these furthering tasks into consideration, which mostly occurred in upper-class households, it is feasible that the middle class wished to copy the device that made all of these things possible. The middle class wanted to be upper class in their domestic architecture and followed the rules of floor plans and spatial management as best they could. As the word spread that parlors were the ticket into a higher class they did everything in their power to fit the mold, even if it meant forfeiting some of their comfort. “[M]ore and more of these people learned that parlors were essential and moved the beds upstairs and the work equipment into other rooms, leaving only good furniture and the accoutrements of gentility in the family’s formal best room.”124 If a room had been established that could be termed a parlor, it had to be furnished as well using the funds that were available. Often, middle-class families had to make do with what they had and improvised the decoration of the parlor. The well-to-do were not particularly amused with the mass-interest in parlor adorning and were taken back by threat of emulation from the middle class, which they pictured as offensive. In their attempt to improve their societal position, middle-class families followed the sentiment of quantity over quality and overemphasized their parlors. “Everywhere the realms of refinement bordered on the realms of vulgarity, and the borders could not be sealed.”125 As if the imitation of upperclass parlors was not enough, the well-to-do were afraid that the middle class was getting it all wrong and, as a consequence, ruining aestheticism overall. The rift between upper and middle class took a turn to the worse and the earlier intimidation felt by the upper ranks turned into a sense of repulsion. “As the geography of refinement enlarged, the boundaries between gentility and 123

Marshall, Splintered Sisterhood, 188.

124

Bushman, The Refinement of America, 251-252.

125

Ibid., 369.

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barbarism grew more rigid in a vain attempt to end the tensions between the two cultures in the nineteenth-century city.”126 The tensions were to persist and the general end of the parlor was drawing nearer. The parlor was an instrument of societal success in eighteenth- and ninenineteenth-century America and corresponded closely to the announcement that the domestic architecture of the home had previously made about its owners. With the twentieth century came a more pronounced emphasis on the comfort and efficacy of a house and the time of the parlor came to an end. It was seen as an uncomfortable, disposable room and was replaced by living rooms, drawing rooms, and other areas set aside for the family and the leisure activities that they partook in. The receiving of guests overlapped with other occasions and activities and it was no longer necessary to have an extra room solely for this purpose. 127 Remnants of parlors do still exist even though their historically embossed functions may have changed; domestic homes in Boston still have exemplars of these status-securing capacities.

D OMESTIC ARCHITECTURE

IN

B OSTON

Overall, the general trends in domestic architecture and the styles that were followed ran chronologically at the same pace in Boston. The Georgian, the Victorian, and even the Colonial Revival, to an extent, were not necessarily always introduced to the nation through Boston, but they were picked up there by homeowners and architects within the timeframe of each respective specific era. The timeline of architectural styles and eras that was discussed at the beginning of this chapter thus also applies directly to Boston and will not be reexamined. However, Boston had some peculiarities in that some styles dominated over others, which was not the case in other American cities, and because Bostonians viewed their architecture and domestic architecture in a unique way. As far as the dominating domestic architectural style goes, the Federal Style had a large impact on the cityscape, especially because of one of the most prominent Boston architects: Charles Bulfinch. The fact that individualized Boston’s domestic architecture was not so much the extensive use of the Federal Style, but rather the attitude that the city and its citizens had towards their architecture. Their approach to their own city was that it was a cultural place and should be seen as such. “And the homogeneous,

126

Bushman, The Refinement of America, 370.

127

Wajda, “Parlors,” in Sheumaker and Wajda, 337.

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discrete, and ornamental environment that they had created was an unambiguous statement to the city, and to outsiders, of their ideological commitment to culture and commerce. Boston’s elite simultaneously secured its investments and creatcreated a cultural heritage.”128 The elite used their private home architecture to institute a culture of domestic architecture that fit to their own and the city’s heritage, often times being of English descent. While on the one hand eluding to historical tradition, these homes also displayed their monetary legacy in that they were built according to styles that appropriated to the upper class. The upper class in both eighteenth and nineteenth-century Boston continued to refer back to England or Europe in general for these appropriate styles, further emphasizing a specific trait in the cityscape. Ironically, Bostonians followed the republican dichotomy of simplicity and straightforwardness of their domestic architecture in the early nineteenth century through the application of Georgian and Federal Style architecture, which essentially reinforced the un-revolutionary appearance of England in the streets of Boston. “People built upward, and except for rounded fanlights over doorways and an occasional wrought-iron balcony, left exteriors largely unadorned. The result resembled the better sections of Georgian London, as foreign visitors sometimes noted with approval.” 129 Even after the Revolution and the War of 1812 had been fought and the consistency with English appearance was frowned upon, it continued throughout nineteenth-century Boston. The upper class did not sacrifice this aspect of their own culture and their class recognition; instead, they wanted their enclaves to reflect the dominantly English lifestyles that they still lived. “Given the general cultural climate in Boston, and the direct emulation of London’s fashions and literary tastes by the Boston elite, it seems likely that the layout of the Back Bay was fashioned after the model of the new West End in London.”130 The Back Bay, being constructed in the mid-nineteenth century, shows the extent of the English influence on domestic architecture in Boston, especially in upper-class neighborhoods, and how little this matter of fact was disputed. Building English was never seen as unpatriotic in Boston, but rather underscored the uniqueness of the city. In a way, Boston was a step ahead of the rest of the American architectural world. They considered their English past as a part of their Americanness and therefore saw no sentimental conflict in conspicuously using, as Americans, the architecture of their English past. “Boston’s relative cultural homogeneity 128

Domosh, Invented Cities, 119.

129

Dalzell, Enterprising Elite, 123.

130

Domosh, Invented Cities, 112.

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ensured that those generations growing up immediately after the Revolution could look back to a common cultural past, a past that could serve as the basis of cultural identity[…].”131 The same rhetoric would be used almost exactly a cencentury later to defend the Colonial Revival as an American form of architecture in that the past was the common factor in being American. Boston’s continued emphasis on culture is what separated it ideologically from other growing AmerAmerican cities such as New York or Philadelphia, whose harbors may have become increasingly more frequented than Boston’s, but whose cityscapes were turned over to the merchants. Although merchants became an integral part of the upper class in Boston as well, the weight that was put on culture exceeded that which was put on commerce. The city of Boston used both, culture and commerce, placing the former in a higher position than the latter, to signal durability and sustainability to foreigners and to other growing American cities. Their respect came not from the embellished aggrandizement that Bostonians could have encouraged but from the prospect of history, culture, and intellect: All these new private residences, public buildings, marketplaces, warehouses, town houses, and churches not only provided the old town with a neighborhood of sturdy and impressive structures, but they also emphasized the fact that Boston was moving into a more prosperous and substantial period of its historical existence. With a body of highly respected members of the local Federalist elite in control of public affairs, a rapidly increasing population swelling the size of the town, and a thriving mercantile economy fueling physical growth and reconstruction, the leaders of Boston had every right to feel that their own future was secure and that the town’s permanence was well established.

132

The town or city rather, had established its foundation on American soil and wanted to further this in a variety of ways in the nineteenth century. One method of keeping the city’s cultural prerogative intact was through the domestic architecture that its best neighborhoods implemented. The upper class presented the houses that could be seen by the public in an urban space and was a vehicle for expressing cultural dignity through style and ornamentation. These upper-class homes had no choice but to turn to Europe for architectural inspiration because an emulation of home building from lower ranks within the social order was not part of the genteel résumé. As with domestic architectural styles in general, the upper class moved along with the English styles that they saw lining the streets of London and elsewhere. As styles 131

Rennella, The Boston Cosmopolitans, 188.

132

O’Connor, The Athens of America, 6-7.

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in England changed, the upper ranks of Boston made sure to revise their archiarchitectural elevations, as well. “In this sense, the social status of Boston’s elite families began to keep pace with their economic achievements, as residential areas reflected a new, more sophisticated, taste for European architectural styles.” 133 Imitating Europe was a matter, then, of financial possibility and a display of wealth. The upper class had the means to incorporate aspects of Europe into their building styles and they had the access to communication to learn of these styles. As changes occurred in domestic architecture in Europe, the elite were among the first to be informed and were therefore capable of inserting this information. The middle class, looking to the upper class for architectural guidance much like the upper class looked to Europe, reconstructed and often redefined this stencil of gentility. The architecture of the home usually came with an integrated form of a floor plan that fit to the style. This was also often the case in America, but less so in some parts of Boston. As the city grew and houses were built adjacent to one another, floor plans had to be altered in order to fit the proper amount of rooms into a condensed space. Houses that were not confined to a lot, such as the Harrison Gray Otis house, conformed to the usual floor plan that belonged to their architecture. Row houses, on the other hand, such as those that dominate the Back Bay, had to abide to the rules of more logical space allocation. “But because of the land use restrictions and the similar lot sizes, most of the houses followed several simple floor plans.” 134 The floor plans were simplified and custom-designed to cater to the narrow row houses that extended back instead of to the sides. Although the houses may have been smaller in width and larger in length, they remained to be single-family homes in which one family resided and the entire house belonged to them. The middle class was not always capable of affording such an exclusive home, but still wished to live in the correct architectural style of the day and appear genteel. Whether the house stretched to the sides or to the back did not necessarily have an effect on the overall living space that was available. Each floor could basically have the same square footage regardless of which way the structure was facing. The separate floors could be very large then, so that row houses could accommodate more than one family placing them each on individual floors. It was the compromise that the middle class readily took to live in an upper-class type row house while staying within their budget. The late nineteenth century saw the opportunity of evoking a distinct style that could house these various parties under one roof and all the while keeping the face of 133

Farrell, Elite Families, 23-24.

134

Domosh, Invented Cities, 112.

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the house uniform. “In New England the predominant style was the three-decker; a long, narrow, frame building, consisting of three stories and a loft. Pleasantlooking, substantial three-deckers housed one family to a floor, and often apappeared in middle-class neighborhoods.” 135 The attempt was valid but the picture was destroyed once visitors were invited into the home and noticed that the family only owned or perhaps even rented a part of it. The middle class’s drive continued but it was often superficial and real upper-class homes had to be authentic inside and out. The First Harrison Gray Otis House Figure 15: The exterior of the first Harrison Gray Otis House located on 141 Cambridge Street, Boston, Massachusetts.

Harrison Gray Otis House, Front Exterior, picture taken June 2011, Courtesy of Historic New England.

Harrison Gray Otis had a total of three houses constructed for himself and his family in the city of Boston. The house that will be examined is the first of his

135

Chudacoff, The Evolution of American Urban Society, 102.

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houses that was built in 1796 by the Boston architect Charles Bulfinch.136 The house has had various successive owners, the most recent being Historic New England, a society committed to the preservation of historic properties and their use to the public as museums. Prior to examining the architectural elevations implemented by Bulfinch, the homeowner Harrison Gray Otis and his place in Boston’s society will be scrutinized. Harrison Gray Otis was born in Boston on October 8, 1765 and died here on October 28, 1848, at the age of 83. He attended Harvard and graduated there in 1783, going on to take the bar and becoming a successful lawyer in the state of Massachusetts. His occupation in law was a good starting point for his career however, his true calling and the reason that he has become such an important part of Boston’s history was because of his political involvement and his business ventures in land development and real estate. He was married to Sally Foster in 1790 and they went on to have eleven children. 137 Otis’s most interesting achievements, playing an important role also in his architectural ventures and the city’s in general, were his political ambitions and his talent as a land speculator. As a Federalist, his political life and local and national affairs were aspects that influenced him throughout his entire life. He was born at a crucial time in the nation’s history and experienced firsthand the connection and removal from England. It is imperative to perceive his political views and actions before going on to linking his business world with the architecture of upper-class Boston. Harrison Gray Otis belonged to the Boston elite and held a high political position within the Federalist Party, which enhanced his rank in the societal order. Cleveland Amory supports the notion that if an aristocracy were present in Boston in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, it would be represented by Harrison Gray Otis.138 One of his greatest gambles as a Federalist was the efforts that he put into the Hartford Convention during the War of 1812. According to Otis, his leading role and overall participation in this event, which would later be accused of wanting a separate New England and challenging the thought behind liberty that had theoretically already been won, was for the good 136

Anne Grady, “Section V.A.,” in Harrison Gray Otis House, Historic Structure Report, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, ed. Richard Nylander (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1998), 45, Courtesy of Historic New England.

137

Who Was Who in America, Historical Volume 1607-1896, A Component Volume of Who’s Who in American History (Chicago: Marquis-Who’s Who, Inc., 1963), Harrison Gray Otis, p. 389.

138

Amory, Who Killed Society?, 62.

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of the people and his intentions were honorable in every sense. The Convention, however, was not taken as such by the people and he, along with the Federalist Party, was extensively criticized for meeting secretly to discuss the future relarelationship with England. Feeling very passionately about the politics that he had practiced for many years, Otis felt betrayed and falsely convicted by these public allegations. Judging by his other personal correspondence letters, Otis was a rather emotional man and fired back in an expressive manner that some saw as his temporary expiry. It was not until 1824 that Otis had fifteen letters published on his personal defense of his partaking in the Convention that may not have been to his political advantage at the time and were perhaps even a response to losing the mayoral election in 1823. In one such letter he even speaks rather insultingly by supposing that, “The history of the Convention and of all the material facts connected with its institution and proceedings, have from the beginning been in possession of all who have seen fit to consult public documents.” 139 His national politics sometimes seemed questionable, yet his regional position as mayor and his efforts in the city of Boston elevate him into a political arena that he is still recognizably famous for. Significantly, he stands for a political upper class and even used his home as a political haven. “In 1830 […] he sent word to the members of the city council that he was ill and wished them to convene at his Beacon Hill residence [his third house]. There were protests from the other members that a municipal inauguration should not be held in a private home – but held there it was.”140 Otis was a representation of political elite life in Boston, especially during his time as mayor from 1829-1832,141 and so were his homes. It is not accidental that his homes were built by Bulfinch who was also responsible for other government buildings such as the Massachusetts State House or even in part for the Capitol in Washington D.C. This strategic choice underscored the political message that he stated through his domestic architecture. The strategic business of Otis, which no one ever dared to criticize because there was never a case in point, was his real estate undertakings that projected his talent as a businessman. In order to attain a sound financial basis, Otis and other real estate speculators teamed up and created the Mount Vernon

139

Harrison Gray Otis, Otis’ Letters in Defence of The Hartford Convention, and the People of Massachusetts (Boston: Simon Gardner, 1824), Letter 2, p. 7.

140

Amory, Who Killed Society?, 62.

141

Who Was Who in America, Historical Volume 1607-1896, A Component Volume of Who’s Who in American History (Chicago: Marquis-Who’s Who, Inc., 1963), Harrison Gray Otis, P. 389

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Proprietors in 1795.142 The conciseness of his speculations became clear when he was still very young and purchased a large amount of land, which he conceived as being valuable parcel, from the famed John Singleton Copley. On February 24, 1796, as Otis was just thirty years of age, a sale agreement was signed bebetween Copley, Otis, and Jonathan Mason, Jr., in which Otis and Mason purpurchased the Copley land, comprising most of the modern day Beacon Hill area, for the sum of $18,450. 143 Upon purchasing this land, Otis and the Proprietors strategically contemplated the manner in which plots were to be arranged and the land to be sold or used: According to a private agreement, each of the proprietors was to build himself a mansion along the highest ridge (Mount Vernon Street) of Beacon Hill, thus setting a standard for the subsequent architectural development of the project, which was to consist of large detached houses set in spacious gardens.

144

Otis, being the precise business leader that he was, kept extensive log books in which he shows which parcels are still available and which lots are occupied, by whom, and when they were bought and sold.145 The entire Beacon Hill building endeavor would take years to really get going, in part also due to a minor unsettlement between Copley and the Proprietors about the legitimacy of the sale agreement, and thus, Otis placed his first house not on Beacon Hill but, instead, at the head of his acquired land, on Cambridge Street (formerly known as Lynde and Chamber Streets) in the West End. After marrying Sally Foster in 1790, Otis wanted to use the money that he had acquired thus far through his practicing of law, and build a comfortable abode for his wife and their future family.146 This first house that he had built is 142

Boston Redevelopment Authority, Cambridge Street, (Boston, 2004), 7, Courtesy

143

Sale agreement by John Singleton Copley, February 24, 1796, Harrison Gray Otis

144

Boston Redevelopment Authority, Cambridge Street, (Boston, 2004), 7, Courtesy

of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library. Business Papers, Courtesy of Historic New England. of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library. Notably, the only one of these mansions that remains to exist is the second house that Otis had built at 85 Mt. Vernon Street. 145

An example of Otis’s logbook entries can be found in Appendix III.

146

Anne Grady, “Section III.A.,” in Harrison Gray Otis House, Historic Structure Report, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, ed. Richard Nylander (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1998), 8, Courtesy of Historic New England.

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the one that will be looked at in further detail in this study. It is evident from the tax books of the year 1797, in which the house was first assessed, that the Otis family could invest in a house that had something to say about their financial and societal situation. The Taking Book tax records for the city of Boston from the year 1797 list Harrison Gray Otis’s real estate as being a “large new house” and the monetary worth is estimated to be $8000. The magnitude of this mansion can be made more relatable to contemporary readers through comparison of the other taxpayers listed on the same page, in that the closest amount to Otis’s $8000 is by the merchant Joseph Blake, listed right above Otis, with a real estate value of $4500, only amounting to slightly more than half of Otis’s worth. 147 The architect chosen further elevated the worth of this large new house. The first Harrison Gray Otis house was from a design by Charles Bulfinch, who had recently suffered his personal failure with the Tontine Crescent and Franklin Place (1793-94). However, the relationship between Otis and Bulfinch, though both were a part of the Mount Vernon Proprietors and shared common upbringings, was not an easy one. The two men were intent on beautifying Boston by creating as many upper-class residential areas as seemed fit for the city. “The relationship between Bulfinch and Otis is one of the foundation myths of American architecture, for rarely have two men collaborated to shape a city as Bulfinch and Otis shaped Boston between 1794 and 1817.”148 Thus, both of them worked together on the Tontine Crescent project, yet Otis recognized the problematic early on and was able to save himself financially from the ruin that Bulfinch dove into headfirst. Perhaps Otis chose Bulfinch as his architect because he still had a high-ranking name in the field because of his obvious display of talent, or perhaps he also somewhat pitied his fellow Bostonian. Jay Wickersham entertains the notion that Otis used Bulfinch as a constant example of how not to do business and that his motivation in hiring him may have been in order to be able to control and implement his ideas of the manner in which he wanted his house built to the entirety.149 Otis’s first house is actually modeled after a mansion that was previously built in Philadelphia. Bulfinch had traveled to Philadelphia in 1789 and saw the William Bingham mansion that his client, Otis, wanted the design for his home to be based on. 150 With slight alterations, Bulfinch designed the exterior 147

Taking Book Wards 5-8, 1797, Ward 7, p.12, Boston Tax Records, Courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library/Rare Books.

148

Wickersham, “The Financial Misadventures of Charles Bulfinch,” 413.

149

Ibid., 414.

150

Boston Redevelopment Authority, Cambridge Street, (Boston, 2004), 9-10, Courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library.

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elevations according to his clients’ demands and the result of the plan and the execution can be seen below. Figure 16 and 17: The original architectural drawing by Charles Bulfinch, 1795-1796 (left) and an exterior photograph of the front side of the Harrison Gray Otis house (right). The inscription at the top of Bulfinch’s drawing is assumed to have been written by Sally Foster Otis and reads, “Designed by C. Bulfinch about 1796 for Copley land and excepting the second story windows, precisely the front of what Mr. H.G. Otis called The Brick House on Lynde & Chamber Street.”151

Front Elevation of the First Harrison Gray Otis House, Boston. Ink, wash, and watercolor on paper by Charles Bulfinch, [1795-1796]. Massachusetts Historical Society. Harrison Gray Otis House, Front Exterior, picture taken June 2011. Courtesy of Historic New England.

The intriguing history of this house starts with the difficult and skewed relationship between the architect and the owner. In most cases clients relied on the architect to help them stay within the correct styles of the day and choose the appropriate manner in which to have their home constructed. This was an important prerequisite for choosing one’s architect in that architectural vanity was a characteristic of being upper class.

151

Massachusetts Historical Society, Witness to America’s Past: Two Centuries of Collecting by the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1991), 126.

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Otis had chosen the correct architect of the time, but he also knew that he could control Bulfinch’s design: The design of the [first Harrison Gray Otis] house reflects the client’s aspirations more than the architect’s artistic leanings, for it lacks the exterior pilasters, curved room shapes, and other Adamesque features that characterize the Tontine Crescent and Bulfinch’s other designs from the period. Instead, the conservative Neo-Palladian façade and plan copy the Philadelphia mansion of Federalist Senator William Bingham, the richest and most cultivated grandee of the Federalist Party, who served as a mentor and role model for Otis. Bulfinch had sketched the Bingham mansion several years earlier, on a visit to Philadelphia; at the time he criticized the style of the house[…]. But Otis’s desire to 152

emulate Bingham evidently overcame the architect’s scruples.

Correspondence letters between Otis and Bulfinch concerning the house fail to exist however, considering that building on this house commenced shortly after the Tontine Crescent debacle, it seems adequate that Bulfinch had to be grateful to Otis for receiving a well-paying commission from one of the most notable citizens of post-Revolution Boston. Having to put his subjective design inclinations aside seems like a small sacrifice for a man that considered his financial affairs to govern his position in society. The style of the house is rather Federal, which is why it is easily attributed to Bulfinch. This may have been his influence on Otis at the time of planning, but also because the Bingham house (1786) was built in the same style in that it was just the popular trend at the time. The question thus remains whether Otis followed Bingham or was in fact partially influenced by Bulfinch’s designs. Regardless of where the true inspiration came from, the house is designed along Federal Style guidelines in that it follows the principals of symmetry and exhibits a slight bit of ornamentation. According to Anne Grady, the ornamentation of the exterior and other decorative elements could have been placed in the hands of craftsmen and was not necessarily left to Bulfinch.153 However, in observing the details of his design drawing, he includes decorative elements such as the Corinthian capitals on the pilasters that were meant to have been placed next to the Palladian window, reiterating that Bulfinch was in fact also responsible for the ornamentation of the exterior. 152

Wickersham, “The Financial Misadventures of Charles Bulfinch,” 439, 441, 442.

153

Anne Grady, “Section V.C.2.,” in Harrison Gray Otis House, Historic Structure Report, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, ed. Richard Nylander (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1998), 58, Courtesy of Historic New England.

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Otis, although he may not have looked up to Bulfinch as a business partner, was rather impressed with him as an architect. It is no coincidence that he chose Bulfinch as the architect in charge for designing his two subsequent houses and even sent out a letter of recommendation for Bulfinch’s commission as architect of the U.S. Capitol. The second house that Bulfinch built for Otis and his family was located at 85 Mount Vernon Street. Otis sold the first house on Cambridge Street to John Osborn and the family moved out on April 15, 1801, which Otis discusses in a letter to his wife: Now how will you like to hear that your house is sold? It is at length gone—The purchaser Osborn. The price less that it ought be, but such as it is for my interest not to refuse— After the 15 April you must bid adieu to your poplars and Chestnuts, and live in a hired house for at least one year—The next house is to be entirely to your mind so that you will do well to digest the plan in your own mind before I break ground [emphasis in 154

original].

Bulfinch was responsible for the elevations, yet it seems from this letter that Sally was left to determine the layout and the interiors. The new house on Mount Vernon Street was completed in 1802 155 and the Otises resided there for approximately four years before building and moving into their third and final house by Bulfinch.

154

Harrison Gray Otis to Sally Otis, 6 February 6 1801, Harrison Gray Otis Papers,

155

Anne Grady, “Section V.A.,” in Nylander, 45, Courtesy of Historic New England.

Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

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Figure 18 and 19: The second Otis house at 85 Mt. Vernon Street and the third Otis house at 45 Beacon Street.

Second Harrison Gray Otis House, 85 Mount Vernon Street, Front Exterior, Boston, Massachusetts, picture taken June 2011 (author’s own). Third Harrison Gray Otis House, 45 Beacon Street, Boston, Front Exterior, Massachusetts, picture taken June 2011 (author’s own). The Third Harrison Gray Otis House is currently the Headquarters of the American Meteorological Society, which bought the house in 1960.

The last house built by Bulfinch for the Otis family was located at 45 Beacon Street, directly across from Boston Common. It was completed in 1806 and it seemed more Bulfinch than the first two houses. “In plan each house was increasingly more elaborate, as Bulfinch became bolder in incorporating specially shaped rooms and staircases of more complicated geometry into his urban houses. In exterior elevation, each house was increasingly more sophisticated in proportion and restrained ornament.” 156 Otis put trust in Bulfinch’s design and was not afraid to employ him as an architect even though he may not have thought too highly of him. It is in large part due to Otis that Bulfinch was able to exercise his domestic architectural talent in the city of Boston and it should be attributed to him that he brought the opportunities to Bulfinch, also with regard to other homes that were to be built on the Beacon Hill lands that Otis owned. In addition to dropping the Bulfinch name whilst planning the city of Boston, Otis also broadened Bulfinch’s scope by recommending him to the President to finish the building and designing process of the U.S. Capitol and by mentioning

156

Anne Grady, “Section V.A.,” in Nylander, 45, Courtesy of Historic New England.

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that, “I did not know whether his place could be supplied without looking to Boston[…].”157 He goes on to explain in his letter to Bulfinch that he gave an account of his relationship and experiences with the architect and at the end enencourages him to take on this commission: I then gave him a full statement of my acquaintance with you and your family, your character, qualifications, former prospects and present circumstances and my opinion, that you would accept the appointment if it could be made an object[…]. There must inevitably be some incidental advantages attending the appointment and it appears to promise a respectable establishment for yourself and interesting [?] family, suited to their merits, which it would give me real pleasure to see realized.

158

Shortly after this letter from Otis, Bulfinch did take the job in Washington and the power that Otis seemed to exert in all of Bulfinch’s architectural accomplishments surfaced once again. The letter is almost manipulative in its diction in that it plays on Bulfinch’s weaknesses and past disappointments by mentioning that this project may restore the respect that Bulfinch had lost and had taken from his family in the past. On the other hand, it is high praise that Otis believed in Bulfinch enough to put his name on the line, as well, by choosing him as the appropriate substitute to the Capitol’s former, wellestablished architect, Benjamin Henry Latrobe. The relationship between Otis and Bulfinch has many levels that all culminated to influence the architecture that was designed by the latter for the former. Disseminating this relationship in full is important to understanding the essence and multiple layers of upper-class domestic architecture in this, or rather these three, specific houses. Otis was a man that wanted to leave an imprint on Boston in various ways. He was passionate in every aspect of his life: his politics, his marriage,159 and his architecture. His architecture refers not only to the houses that he resided in, but also to the great house of Boston that he occupied. Otis was a major player in upper-class society his entire life and he 157

Harrison Gray Otis, letter to Charles Bulfinch, December 2, 1817, Courtesy of the

158

Harrison Gray Otis, letter to Charles Bulfinch, December 2, 1817, Courtesy of the

159

The letters that Otis wrote to his wife paint a picture of a very endearing relation-

Boston Athenaeum. Boston Athenaeum. ship, at least from his side. The letters that Sally Foster Otis wrote to her husband unfortunately have been lost over time and one can only interpret their relationship from Harrison’s perspective. However, judging from the correspondence he seemed to be a very affectionate, loyal, and kind husband to Sally.

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proved this fact through his own houses and the ones that he approved of being built on his land. He wanted Boston to be upper class and together with Bulfinch, he was intent on structuring it in the same manner that he constructed his life in his three houses. “In the early 1790s, in short, both Bulfinch and Otis were looking about for ways to be active and make money[…]. This growth fueled a demand for housing among well-to-do lawyers, doctors, merchants, and other professionals and businessmen who wanted a comfortable and attractive house in town.”160 In a broader sense, Otis and Bulfinch wanted to be responsiresponsible for the upper-class stronghold over residential architecture and neighborhoods. Domestically, Otis wanted to be seen as upper class, which he was through and through. He was aware of Bulfinch’s capabilities and he saw the talent in the young architect. However, attending Harvard at the same time as Bulfinch, he came to recognize early on that Bulfinch was both an asset and a liability to his societal ranking. He let Bulfinch design all of his houses and made him the main architect of the Beacon Hill lands that his fortune had bought him. He thus established Bulfinch as the architect of the upper class while at the same time guiding his pen. All of the three houses that Otis had built were according to the trend that was forming architecture in Boston and in the United States. Even if Bulfinch wanted to establish his own style, it was difficult for him to do so with Otis’s commissions. Especially the first house, which Bulfinch did not necessarily want to model according to the Bingham mansion, was conceived as such because Otis believed it would raise his standing in society. The Otis houses were and still are prime examples of upper-class houses that reflect the standing of their owner’s position and fortune. They were all built in the right neighborhood, in the right architectural style, and by the right architect, three aspects of urban construction that were largely controlled and sculpted by Otis and Bulfinch in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

160

Wickersham, “The Financial Misadventures of Charles Bulfinch,” 420.

D OMESTIC A RCHITECTURE | 225

The William Hickling Prescott House Figure 20: The front exterior of the William Hickling Prescott House.

William Hickling Prescott House, Front Exterior, picture taken June 2011, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

The William Hickling Prescott house was not built for the person who it is named after, instead the original owner was a merchant by the name of James Smith Colburn. Colburn hired architect Asher Benjamin to build this exquisite home for him in 1808. The house actually consists of two halves, which are located at #54 and #55 Beacon Street, an elite address then and now in Boston. They were built in the neoclassical style and present an imposing structure on the Beacon Street front.161 The relevance of the first owner, Mr. Colburn, is his profession. He was a merchant and represented the new money elite that were infiltrating Boston. Unlike Harrison Gray Otis, Colburn let his money and not his name speak for him. James Smith Colburn was a wealthy man in Boston, but not as well-known as other upper-class Bostonians of the time. He spent a significant amount of time abroad and he ran his business by situating himself in England and purchasing his supplies there. One of the only sources that remain of his life and

161

Murphy, The American Townhouse, 75.

226 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

his person, therefore, are his memoirs, which give an account of the life of a successful Boston merchant. Colburn was born on March 22, 1780 in Concord, Massachusetts and at the tender age of 17, he entered into the world of sales by establishing a business partnership with Thomas Otis, 162 known as “Otis & Colburn”. Unable to boast about experience in the world of trade, yet exhibiting a keen talent for the selling of dry goods, Colburn took the risk of borrowing money to start his business, taking up a loan of $1000 from Benjamin Bussey, Esq. On December 27, 1798, he departed for England in order to set up shop in London, pick out quality goods from various merchants, and ship these back to Boston where they would be sold to high-paying customers. His idea and the execution of it became an instant success and Colburn was able to repay his debts and make a profit in a very short amount of time.163 Colburn remained in London until 1802, marrying his first wife Susan Lorimer there in 1799. On the return trip to Boston he intended on taking his wife back with him, however, she did not take well to the sea and died from the effects of serious, long-term seasickness on October 24, 1802, while still at sea. One week after her tragic death, their ship, the Sampson, arrived in Boston.164 Susan’s death is an important aspect of Colburn’s development and career choices thereafter and played a part in his construction of a house in Boston. After his arrival, “It was my intention when I left London, to return, but now my views were altered and I must now think of becoming a Boston merchant.”165 He did become a Boston-based merchant and a successful one at that. The partnership with Thomas Otis did not last long after Colburn returned, but they split on good terms. He commenced a new partnership with Mr. Gill, a man that 162

It is unclear whether the Thomas Otis of “Otis & Colburn” was related to Harrison Gray Otis or not. No records exist stating the family origins of this particular Thomas Otis and it was not possible to ascertain whether he was a part of the same Otis ancestry. However, considering the close-knit relationships in Boston at the time, one could speculate that there may have been a distant familial relationship of some sort between the two.

163

James Smith Colburn, The Personal Memoirs of James Smith Colburn 1780-1859, who in the year 1808 built 54 and 55 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts (Boston: original memoirs in the possession of his great, great granddaughter Mrs. Wilberforce Hill of Augusta, Georgia who graciously permitted copies to be made by the Massachusetts Society of the Colonial Dames of America, 1949), 1-10, Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.

164

Colburn, The Personal Memoirs of James Smith Colburn 1780-1859, 51, 60-61,

165

Ibid., 63.

Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.

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would go on to marry Colburn’s sister, Rebecca.166 It is here that the story of their house at #55 Beacon Street begins. Figure 21 and 22: An exterior photograph of both houses from 1915 does not have the shutters (left), whereas an exterior photo from 1985 shows one half with and one half without (right). As there are no records it is not certain whether window shutters were part of the original design of the house or not.

Frank Cousins Art Co., Salem, MA, “54-55 Beacon Street,” February 24, 1915, Courtesy of Historic New England. Anonymous, “54-55 Beacon Street,” April 28, 1985, Courtesy of Historic New England.

The house consists of two halves that were mirror images of each other on both the outside and the inside. Originally, Colburn’s intention in having the house constructed in this manner was to have him living on one side (#55 Beacon Street) and his sister and Mr. Gill on the other (#54 Beacon Street). 167 Interestingly, this is not the first house that Colburn resided in, neither in Boston nor in London, but it is the only one that he describes in great detail in his memoirs, alluding to his pride and rootedness in this home:

166

Colburn, The Personal Memoirs of James Smith Colburn 1780-1859, 51, 63-64,

167

Anonymous, “Paper on 55 Beacon Street,” p. 1, William Hickling Prescott House

Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum. Papers, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

228 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

About the year 1807 I purchased a lot of land of Jonathan Mason, Esq. [one of the Mount Vernon Proprietors], in Beacon Street, enough for two houses, and had two beautiful houses built thereon. One I intended for myself and the other for my sister. They were planned by myself and the work executed by A. Benjamin, Architect. They were two superb houses with two bowfronts, circular dining rooms, and drawing rooms over, with folding doors. They were finished in 1808. Mr. Gill finding his too large for him, purpurchased the next door above, where he resided for many years until he removed to 168

Philadelphia.

It is quite peculiar that he mentions that he himself planned the house and that the construction was left to Benjamin. It is not certain whether Colburn possessed the skills required to compose an architectural design and unfortunately, none of the original drawings for these houses exist to recount who was responsible for the actual plan. The houses show many features that are attributable to Benjamin, so perhaps Colburn and Benjamin worked closely together on the design, but Colburn may have considered it his work. The house itself is unique in that it is actually two houses, making the size and effect on passersby that much greater. It also has traits known from Europe that coalesce into the American landscape that it was built on, While the Colburn houses shared features with smaller townhouses of the period, such as brick construction and contrasting wood trim painted white, their scale and degree of finish set them above the others. The bowed sections of the facade are set off by pilasters and the doors are surmounted by fanlights. The interiors have elaborate door, window, and fireplace surrounds. As in other luxurious residences in both England and the United States, here the most important rooms are elevated to the second story above street level, sometimes referred to in the European manner as the piano nobile. The second-story rooms enjoy commanding views of Boston Common. Their bow fronts also make for variously shaped rooms, forms that were highly prized in the period.

169

The extent of the merchant Colburn’s influence can be seen by the houses elevations, its location, and the architect that was chosen to construe it. In the year 1809, the first tax assessment after the house’s completion lists Colburn’s real estate value at $6000. 170 As with Otis, this property value gives a good 168

Colburn, The Personal Memoirs of James Smith Colburn 1780-1859, 66, Courtesy

169

Murphy, The American Townhouse, 75.

of the Boston Athenaeum. 170

Tax Book Wards 5-6-7-8, 1809, Ward 7, Boston Tax Records, Courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library/Rare Books.

D OMESTIC A RCHITECTURE | 229

indication of the relative worth that Colburn’s house had and placed him in the same ranks as the Otises. It is by far one of the grandest domestic homes on Beacon Street and it was the second owner, a historian and writer, that gave it its contemporary name. Mr. Gill, who did not choose to live in #54 Beacon Street, sold his half to Nathan Appleton for $13,500. Colburn owned the house that he had built until 1819, the year in which he sold it to Samuel D. Ward for $12,000 out of personal financial grievances. 171 Prior to the arrival of William Hickling Prescott, the house was sold from Ward to Augustus Thorndike in 1833 and Thorndike sold it to Prescott in 1845 for $28,000.172 Prescott resided in its walls until 1859, the year that he passed away. 173 William H. Prescott was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1796 174 into a prominent family in which his father was a famed lawyer and his grandfather was known for his military achievements as a Colonel leading American soldiers at Bunker Hill. 175 Prescott became well known for the work that he did as a writer and more specifically as a historical writer, concentrating his works on Central and South America. “But he has distinguished himself above all the honors of wealth, by his ability as a historian – one of the first (perhaps the first) of the age. His Histories of ‘Ferdinand and Isabella,’ the ‘Conquest of Mexico,’ and the ‘Conquest of Peru,’ have achieved European reputation. American books are read, and praised [emphasis in original].”176 The work that he has done was primarily important in its reception in Europe and secondarily the fame that it brought him in the American sphere. Prescott was an upper-class breed that had a fortune to his name and could concentrate his efforts on writing without having to worry about making a more sustainable living. However, he did not have this course in mind; he attended Harvard with the thought of becoming a lawyer much like his father. While there, an unfortunate incident occurred in which during a food fight a stale piece 171

Anonymous, “Paper on 55 Beacon Street,” 1, Courtesy of The National Society of

172

Ibid.

173

Murphy, The American Townhouse, 75.

174

Anonymous, “William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859),” p. 1, William Hickling

the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Prescott House Papers, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 175

Thomas L.V. Wilson, The Aristocracy of Boston; Who They Are, And What They Were: Being a History of the Business and Business Men of Boston For the Last Forty Years By One Who Knows Them (Boston: Published by the author, and for sale by all dealers in cheap books, 1848), 28.

176

Wilson, The Aristocracy of Boston; Who They Are, And What They Were, 28.

230 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

of bread hit him in one eye and partially blinded him. His other eye developed rheumatic inflammation, essentially leading to his complete blindness.177 PresPrescott was unable to continue his studies in law and instead began his writings on history. Later in his life, as upper class philanthropy often demanded of its members and because of the Harvard bread affair, Prescott opened the New EngEngland Asylum for the Blind in March 1829, an institution that he felt very passionately about and a charitable undertaking that he could directly relate to.178 James Smith Colburn and William Hickling Prescott are the two most famous inhabitants of the house at #55 Beacon Street. They were both upper class, well-to-do, and intelligent men that fit into the growing atmosphere on Beacon Street perfectly. Colburn is the protagonist with regard to the architecture of the house and ensuring that it was built according to upper-class standards. He bought enough land to build more than just one house and displayed his generosity and wealth by having two grand homes erected. Apparently, he also helped Benjamin design the exterior, not like Otis who had the upper hand over Bulfinch, but because he was a meticulous businessman who never relied on or trusted another individual with his transactions. The home that resulted from his perfectionism was a symbol of his success as a merchant that made his fortune by importing English goods. The bow fronts that penetrated the sidewalk of Beacon Street were Colburn’s statement that he had infiltrated Boston’s high society and could afford two plots on their land. Prescott may not have had to work as hard as Colburn did to get to the house at #55 Beacon Street, but he gave it a new façade. The two completed the placement of the house in the great Boston domestic architectural landscape in that they put commerce and intellectualism under one roof. The merchant and the historian showed that old money and new money could revel in the same taste and shared the same refinement.

177

Anonymous, “William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859),” 2, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

178

William Hickling Prescott, Biographical and Critical Essays (London: G. Routledge & Co., Farringdon Street, 1856), 44.

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The Gibson House Figure 23: The Gibson House (on the right).

The Gibson House and #135 Beacon Street, Front Exterior, picture taken June 2011, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

The Gibson house is the Victorian example within these case studies that also paints a picture of the neighborhood that it was erected in: the Back Bay. Building on the house commenced in 1859 and it was completed in 1860. The architect who was responsible for the Gibson house was Edward Clarke Cabot. A unique attribute of the house is the use of two types of stones in that it creates a contrast on the exterior that is presented to the street. The bottom part of the front façade is made of brownstone whereas the top is of layered brick. This aspect of Victorian building was not typical and made the house stand out from the rest.179 The Gibson family was the owner and builder from the beginning up until the house became a museum and it is for this reason that the exteriors and interiors have been kept precisely as they were in the nineteenth century. The property on which the house was built is in the beginning section of the Back Bay and complements the house next to it, #135, which was most likely

179

Murphy, The American Townhouse, 139.

232 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

also constructed by Cabot.180 These houses were both built on the site that they occupy today and are among the first structures to be put up in the landfill area that became the fashionable neighborhood known as the Back Bay. 181 At the time that the house was built Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., had not been born yet and it was his grandmother who bought the property, for $3,696,182 and was involved in the process of hiring an architect and general construction. This was a novel thing, even in the mid-nineteenth century, that a woman bought property and decided to build a house there. In fact, Catherine Hammond Gibson was the first property owning female in the Back Bay development in Boston.183 When the Gibson’s moved into the completed house in the Back Bay they brought with them their son, Charles Hammond Gibson, then still a bachelor, but going on to marry Rosamond Warren in 1871 at the Gibson house. 184 It was also at the Gibson house that its future preserver was born to Charles and Rosamond, Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., on November 21, 1874.185 The Gibson house, as a museum and preservation of Victorian domestic architecture, has been open to the public for over fifty years, because of this young member of the line of Gibsons. The contributing factor in the upkeep of this house and the perpetuation of its historicalness was this younger generation of the Gibson family. Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., who attended the architectural school at M.I.T for a short time from 1893 to1894,186 had the idea and the dream of continuing the family home as a museum to later generations and therefore made it a point to leave everything the way it was originally decorated and designed: Preserving the house and its collection of mid-nineteenth century fine and decorative arts was the vision of Charles and Rosamond Gibson’s son, Charles Jr. Known in Boston as a writer and traveler, as well as an ‘eccentric’ and ‘bon vivant,’[…]. Not only does the house show the furnishings of a fine Victorian residence, but it also preserves the service 180

Seiberling, A Study Report of Gibson House Museum, Book 1, p. 1, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

181

Catherine L. Seiberling, Introduction to A Study Report of Gibson House Museum, 137 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts (Boston: The Gibson Society, 1991), I, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

182

Seiberling, A Study Report of Gibson House Museum, Book 2, p. 5, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

183

Ibid.

184

Ibid., Book 2, p. 17.

185

Ibid., Book 2, p. 5, p.20.

186

Ibid., Book 2, p. 3.

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areas and technological gadgetry that attended the transformation of the American home at the middle of the nineteenth century.

187

The essence of Victorian domestic architecture can be felt on the inside and outside of the house and, even to this day, visitors experience the sensation of walking in from a twenty-first-century outdoors into a nineteenth-century home just by climbing up a view stairs. The visualization that Charles, Jr. had had in mind certainly fulfilled its intention and prolonged the nineteenth century well into modern times. The exterior of the house is not discussed in any of the primary pieces of work as much as the interior. Although Charles, Jr., made it a very important point to document the way things were on the inside of the house it seems to have been obsolete to observe the original elevations. The drawings by Cabot no longer exist, so the derivations concerning the front elevation have to be seen from a more general perspective. The outside of the house was the normal manner of building at the time and, even though the Gibson house was one of the first homes to be built in the Back Bay, the others soon followed suit and most of the exteriors along Beacon Street in the Back Bay are quite similar. The materials used, brownstone and brick, were typical building materials for urban houses in Boston as well as New York and Philadelphia. “Brownstone would come to epitomize luxury and architectural sophistication in New York City by the late 1840s […] Boston and Philadelphia were still favoring brick.” 188 An important feature in this new, trendy Boston neighborhood was the use of grass and landscaping in front of theses row houses, a small front yard, so to say. New York and Philadelphia brownstones do not necessarily have the space to include a bit of greenery before their front steps, but Bostonians included this aspect to make city life somewhat more natural.189 Additionally, part of the tendency to move to the Back Bay was to live near the water and more greenery, which was underscored by Frederick Law Olmsted’s “Emerald Necklace” undertaking in Boston, which brought small parks into the Back Bay through the implementation of the Commonwealth Avenue Mall and the Charles River Embankment.190 There are two features on the Gibson house that let it stand out among Victorian urban structures that were being built in other cities during the mid187

Murphy, The American Townhouse, 140.

188

Seiberling, A Study Report of Gibson House Museum, Book 3, p. 4-5, Courtesy of

189

Ibid., Book 3, p. 5.

190

Domosh, Invented Cities, 148.

the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

234 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

nineteenth century. The first aspect is not unique to the Back Bay, but can be said to have become a trend here. The mansard roof can be seen on the houses in the South End, which were built in the late 1850s, while the Back Bay was still being developed, but it became the norm in the Back Bay in the 1860s and 1870s.191 The Gibson house has a mansard roof, and considering that it was one of the first houses in the Back Bay, it signalizes the beginning of the trend for the rest of the area. While walking through the later streets of the Back Bay, such as Commonwealth Avenue or Marlborough Street, one notices the prevaprevalence of this type of roof. This aspect was influenced by the Second Empire Style that was currently on display in Parisian neighborhoods and, to stay with the trend, it became a part of upper-class Bostonian style.192 There are hardly any homes that were built with a non-mansard, flat roof and the ones that do not possess this French coronation are usually structures built in the twentieth century or later even. The Gibsons obviously had a sense of taste and refinement and were able to spot the newest trends and immediately implement them in their domestic architecture. The second feature is not as widespread as the mansard roof, but it is also an aspect of design that was very novel to the Back Bay region. The central entry is an intriguing feature of the Gibson house and other Back Bay houses that were designed later, that adds to the dark, Victorian features that one experiences upon entering the house. Prior to breaching the interior of the house, this type of entry gives the visitor the feeling of being lured in and pulled into the house through its architectural features. “This commanding early block employs arched, recessed entries on the ground level, with central oriel windows on the second floor, and a diminutive mansard roof-line.”193 It is in keeping with the Victorian tradition that architects used a variety of styles and bits and pieces of different trends to construct their houses. It is also for this reason that the Victorian was often criticized in that it did not have a concrete set of features that distinguished it from other styles, instead, it often appeared like a chaotic conglomeration to the trained eye. The Gibson house adhered to this eclectic manner of style usage and incorporated Classical, Renaissance, French, and even Egyptian features into the visible elevation. The rear is kept relatively simple in comparison and is constructed entirely of bricks. The exterior of the house probably received a lot 191

Bainbridge Bunting, Houses of Boston’s Back Bay (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap

192

Shand-Tucci, Built in Boston, 35.

Press of Harvard University Press, 1967), 70-71. 193

Seiberling, A Study Report of Gibson House Museum, Book 3, p. 10, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

D OMESTIC A RCHITECTURE | 235

of attention as it was being built and before the rest of the street was as populatpopulated with row houses as it would be shortly thereafter. As the Back Bay became a stronghold of Victorian domestic architecture, the significance of the Gibson house elevation may have diminished somewhat and it was no longer considered to be a unique feature of the Back Bay because of its outer front. The real Victorian features of the house do not become apparent until one has been enveloped by the dark, heavy interior style. However, the exterior is important with regard to the innovative mansard roof and central entry. The Gibsons and Cabot seem to have been well informed about the newest on goings in the architectural world and took the risk of constructing their home according to a new trend. They were able to afford this monetarily, but also socially in that they took the giant leap in building a home in a brand new development, which had not acquired class membership yet. Their societal standing prior to moving to the Back Bay ensured that they were moving in the right direction and their choice of architect, their investment in a house of that magnitude, and their spontaneity kept them within the right circles. The domestic architecture of the United States during the time of colonization, as well as during the beginnings as an independent nation, changed significantly according to vicissitudes in society, politics, and architecture. The years between 1760 and 1880 brought old and new trends and a constant influx of transformation to the domestic architectural landscape that was rapidly developing in Boston and beyond. Revolutionary Boston saw a politicization of domestic architecture through the use of neoclassical trends that were reminiscent of Greek and Roman structures. The Harrison Gray Otis house, being built in 1796, exalted these features and celebrated twenty years of independence through a simple, straightforward yet ostentatiously upper-class exterior elevation. His position in society as a man of means who served as a lawyer, politician, and real estate developer was reconfirmed through his justified, conservative, and organized style of domestic architecture. The house that James Smith Colburn built during a time of mixed feelings of trade versus independence reflects his upper-class success that was brought about by trade with English goods that he brought to Boston and was reluctant to relinquish

236 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

even during the ensuing War of 1812.194 The Gibson house represents the most significant change in Boston’s upper class through its placement in the newest elite enclave, the drastic switch to the Victorian Style, and the emancipation from values and standards regarding persons and their choices. Each of these houses was also defined by some aspect of luxury visible to all of Boston, “Res“Residents were willing to pay more for the following features: brownstone instead of brick [Gibson], bowfronts instead of plain flat fronts [Colburn], elaborate ornamentation on the entrance and windows [Otis], quoins, and cupolas.”195 All three of the houses presented describe the face of the nation and the events that were influencing the upper class during each respective time through their intentional, contemplated designs and façades and protrude an important century in the history of America onto the streets of Boston.

194

Colburn had a true profit-seeking merchant’s blood flowing through his veins and came up with new ways to get his goods into the country during the hard times of trade that escalated during the War of 1812. In his Memoirs, he mentions that he had his goods shipped from London to Halifax or St. Johns, then proceeded to get them to Montreal from where he was able to bring them over to the United States. In addition, he had connections to Privateer Captains that sailed during the war and managed to get them to buy goods and smuggle them in, some of these goods even having been stolen from other captured vessels. According to him, he was the largest seller of British goods in Boston during the war and made a fortune during this time. See Colburn, The Personal Memoirs of James Smith Colburn, 69-71, Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.

195

Goodman, The Residential Square Transplanted, 166.

Interiors and Furnishings There are but two ways of dealing with a room which is fundamentally ugly: one is to accept it, and the other is courageously to correct its ugliness.1 EDITH WHARTON AND OGDEN CODMAN, JR., THE DECORATION OF HOUSES, 1898

The upper-class homeowners of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries most certainly always opted for the latter option and proceeded with their proper design etiquette on the inside of their homes, as well. As with domestic architecture and its exterior elevations, the interiors of homes followed a regiment of design that changed with the times. However, although it was usually viewed as being important to have the same style of design which was used for the outside to be omnipresent on the inside of the house, the trends of interior design did not always run parallel to general architectural trends. Styles overlapped with those used on exteriors, but interiors left more room for experimentation and also allowed a certain amount of eclecticism. The historical and chronological evolution of interior decoration needs to be reviewed in order to be able to visualize and understand that some homes evolved differently on their insides than may be presumed by observing their outsides. It must also be taken into logical consideration that families resided in their homes for many generations and consequently lived through various trends within architecture and design. The possibility of constantly changing the existing elevations of one’s home was less perceivable, and also less affordable, than modernizing the interiors. So, to keep with the times and the changes in style, it was legitimate for upper-class families to redecorate their homes while keeping their original façade.

1

Wharton and Codman, The Decoration of Houses, 30.

238 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

As with architectural trends, the interior styles can be more generally divided into the Georgian era, which includes the design styles from the eighteenth century until approximately the mid-nineteenth century and the Victorian era, which consumed the majority of the nineteenth century. Judging by the styles that were encompassed by the Georgian era, the overall sentiment was classical and still very utilitarian. “Eighteenth-century rooms were designed, perhaps unconsciously, to be taken at eye level and upwards, rather than at eye level and down.”2 This exemplifies the belief in having things placed within reachability, catering to functionality and so that they can be readily used, while placing socially important items, such as portraits of the residing family, at a superior position in order to be looked up at. Functionality seized to be of utter importance during the Victorian era and many homes that were decorated during the nineteenth century were preferably ornamental in nature as opposed to being practical. Victorian homes were about status and sacrificing logical spatial attributes of a home for the purpose of improvement in the display of rank was a key feature in these constructions. The chief characteristics of Victorian design include heavy ornamentation and a clear differentiation between the private and public (and also service) areas of the house.3 Notably, the design era that partially overlapped and came after the Victorian was the Arts and Crafts Movement, which appalled industrialization and mass-production and applauded the utility of everyday objects within the home. This rethinking and return to commonality did not take place, however, until the late 1890s.4 Within the division of the Georgian and the Victorian there also lay various subcategories of design styles that further complemented the overall sentiment or, in some instances contradicted aspects of the general era, perhaps in preparation of what was to come next. These subcategories will be appraised briefly in order to gain a better understanding of the extent of eighteenth and nineteenth-century American interiors. As one may recall a rather ornamental style of building which evolved and became popular during the Victorian time of American architecture, thus the mid-nineteenth century, was the Queen Anne Style. In interiors, this style was used prior to the American Revolution and was known in the colonies from circa 1715 until 1750. Queen Anne Style rooms and furnishings emerged in England

2

John Cornforth, Early Georgian Interiors (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 7.

3

Ames, “First Impressions: Front halls and hall furnishings in Victorian America,” in Eggener, 160-161.

4

Pamela Todd, William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Home (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2005), 16-17.

I NTERIORS AND FURNISHINGS | 239

in about 1695 and as “It is now often assumed […] it sometimes took a decade for British fashions to cross the Atlantic[…],”5 explaining the relatively late arrival of the style in the colonies. Queen Anne signified a continued use of ornamentation but, at the same time, a new version of elegance in that décor was to be used sparingly.6 In comparison with subsequent styles, the level of decoration was still very explicit. The Queen Anne interior was followed by the Chippendale Style, which was most pronounced in furniture that was currently being produced in England. Chippendale interiors were in demand for quite a while, from 1750 until 1810, and the furniture was already being reproduced in Philadelphia and New York in the late 1740s and in Boston and Newport in the 1750s.7 The original design and also the style’s name were attributed to Thomas Chippendale, an English cabinet maker from the mid-eighteenth century. His designs, “[…] offered the opulence that the upper echelon of the American market wanted[…]. The majestic appearance of the new furniture, intricately carved in rich mahogany and finished to a glossy luster, fit perfectly in their world.”8 Although the Chippendale Style persevered beyond revolutionary times, it was overlapped by a style that seemed more politically correct in post-Revolutionary America. The Federal period gained sovereignty both within architecture and interior design at approximately the same time. Interiors were ruled by the Federal Style from 1785 until 1810 and, like the architecture, were influenced by the Neoclassical that was also being used in England.9 In addition to classical attributes pertaining to both Greece and Rome, the American interpretation of Federal interiors also included many patriotic symbols such as stars, eagles, and occasionally even the faces of founding fathers or revolutionary war heroes.10 The style became increasingly seen and known as a distinct American style and even imported consumer culture was influenced by the profit that was to be made with an American design style. “Profits predominated over politics, as Liverpool potters produced jugs celebrating American victories over the British.”11 Ironically, this American design era induced the production of goods made in England celebrat-

5

Mayhew and Myers, A Documentary History of American Interiors, 29.

6

Jeffrey P. Greene, American Furniture of the Eighteenth Century (Newton, CT: The

7

Mayhew and Myers, A Documentary History of American Interiors, 57.

Taunton Press, Inc., 1996), 54. 8

Greene, American Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, 65.

9

Ibid., 87.

10

Mayhew and Myers, A Documentary History of American Interiors, 93.

11

Ibid., 95.

240 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

ing the American triumph over the British who exploited their colonies, essentially refueling the British economy. As the Federal period came to a close and the War of 1812 became the protagonist on the political agenda, the designs of the day became increasingly American. From 1810 until 1830, interiors were arranged in the Empire Style, also known as the American Empire Style.12 Similar to the Federal Style, a large influence came from classical styles such as the Greek, but the Empire Style also added new, exotic influences into the mix. American Empire interiors and furnishings still relied on Europe as a general guide. However, instead of concentrating solely on England, designers glances shifted largely towards France, while at the same time incorporating aspects of Greek design and Egyptian motives.13 England and France were the largest influences, which can be seen primarily by the name of part of the style, emulating the so-called French Empire Style, which was very influential to and extensively used by Napoleon Bonaparte. In essence, American Empire looks mainly towards the English Regency and French Empire. This is due to the popularity of the books on the one hand of Thomas Hope (Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807) and George Smith (Collection of Designs for Household Furniture, 1808), and on the other hand, Pierre La Mésangère (Meubles et objets de goût, 1802) and Percier and Fontaine (Recueil de decorations intérieures, 1801).14 Politically, the Democratic-Republicans may also have left their mark on this style in that they supported the French Revolution15 and were perhaps rather keen on Napoleons personal style. Overall, it was a very interesting mix of characteristics that were reflected in American Empire designs, especially that, “There was nothing comfortable or inviting about the French Empire style. Its geometry was sharp and severe, and its decoration was stiff and imperial.”16 The main manner of instant recognition of this style is the overwhelming implementation of animals, perhaps signaling the increasing attempt to connect with nature. Natural elements were important for most of the remaining nineteenthcentury styles. In general, as with architecture, this time frame can be termed the Victorian era, however, there are numerous interior styles that accentuate the character of the Victorian that should be treated individually in that they could appear separately or simultaneously throughout mid and late 1800 interiors. The

12

Mayhew and Myers, A Documentary History of American Interiors, 100.

13

Ibid., 119.

14

Ibid., 103.

15

Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 41.

16

Greene, American Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, 103.

I NTERIORS AND FURNISHINGS | 241

Victorian Classical ran from 1830 to 1850, the Gothic and Elizabethan Styles from 1836 to 1870, the Rococo Style from 1850 to 1870, and the very vaguely termed Eclectic decades began in 1865 and remained popular until 1900.17 The interior of one room did not necessarily have to coincide with the interior of another and, seeing as all of these styles were in demand at approximately the same time, it is not uncommon to see more than one under the same roof. There is one vital aspect of the Victorian era in design history that brings together all of the above-mentioned designs and that is the introduction of mass-produced furniture and other luxuries of living. As an unfortunate consequence, The 1830s marked the end of cabinetmaking as it had been known since the end of the 17 th century. The Industrial Revolution that had brought labor-saving machinery to the craft required a large capital investment. To cover the cost of that investment, furniture had to be made in quantity, and quantity required simplicity and homogeneity. As a result, furniture designs were largely stripped of their labor-intensive decoration and detail, and reduced to a manufacturable form.18

The Victorian era, evolving directly during the time of industrialization, thus also brought with it the accessibility of emulation. The widespread availability of luxurious furnishings and interiors permitted the middle class to partake in the same decorative venture that was previously reserved for their upper-class counterparts. The Victorian Classical (1830-1850) was among the most reproducible of the Victorian styles. It was rather simple in design combining embellishments in architectural elements and plainness in furniture, making at least the latter of the two readily attainable for the general public. If decoration failed to be added to such things as door and window frames, mantels, or ceilings,19 it made it possible for the attentive visitor to determine that this may have been an attempted as opposed to a genuine Victorian home. The Gothic and Elizabethan Styles (18361870) may have been somewhat more difficult to emulate in that they required attention to be paid to more minute details. Gothic interiors required dark colors, dark tapestry, exaggerated light fixtures, and numerous requisites that were to be placed throughout the room, thereby remembering that flowers were not to be

17

Mayhew and Myers, A Documentary History of American Interiors, 125, 159, 181, 193.

18

Greene, American Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, 108.

19

Mayhew and Myers, A Documentary History of American Interiors, 136.

242 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

placed in a Gothic interior.20 The Elizabethan interior was rarely seen in AmeriAmerican homes and can only truly be recognized by an extensive use of porcelain on such things as doorknobs or tiebacks for curtains.21 A style that adhered closely to architectural guidelines of the era was the Rococo Style (1850-1870), which was influenced by the elevations of the Italianate Style. Rococo design and furniture was much more prominent than the Gothic and Elizabethan interior and exhibits aspects of both Italian and also French contemporary design. Rococo objects were highly embossed and usually quite expensive, “In an elaborate profusion of intricate decoration, the rococo offered expensive-looking (and expensive) furniture, which appealed to the socially and financially established and hopeful alike.”22 Many of these rooms and objects are closely associated with the true spirit of the Victorian in that they demand such overwhelming amplification. The last thirty years under Victorian influence that extended until shortly before the turn of the century, defined themselves through a mixture of styles that were often used individually and also collectively. The Eclectic decades introduced a popularity of oriental designs and the constant continuation of previous ones, “The 1860s and 1870s saw the addition of many new styles and the disappearance of none.”23 The influential decorations that developed in these thirty years included the Renaissance, English, French, Egyptian, Pompeian, Byzantine, Aztec, Moorish, Eastlake, Romanesque, and Colonial Revival. The spectrum of interior design ran geographically through Europe and Asia and chronologically from antiquity to the most modern contemporary designs. These last years of the Victorian era accentuated the non-existence of a distinctly American interior design, but rather expressed the fact that American interiors were a true melting pot of national and historical designs. A Victorian home could place Egypt, Japan, and France under one, perhaps even neoclassical, roof. Not only did this describe the plurality of American domestic interiors, but also the diversity of the nation that was recently underscored through westward expansion and through the Civil War. A new form of freedom was hidden within the walls of the Victorian home, a liberty of choice that Classical and Federal styles were never able to adequately achieve. Regardless of the exact era in interior history, the message remained the same both in Europe and in America. Objects and the way a room was designed

20

Mayhew and Myers, A Documentary History of American Interiors, 160.

21

Ibid., 179-180.

22

Ibid., 182,184.

23

Ibid., 193.

I NTERIORS AND FURNISHINGS | 243

and furnished was a social obligation that had to be executed properly. “Klavier oder gar Flügel, Bücherschränke und Klassikerbüsten unterstrichen die Kulturfähigkeit der Familie. Wuchtige Möbel und wuchernde Dekorationen, Tapeten, Vorhänge, Glasvitrinen, Bilder, Spiegel und Vasen zeugten von dem Bemühen, Wohlhabenheit zu demonstieren.“24 A family could display not only their wealth and luxurious standard of living, but also their higher education and their familiarity with intellectual subject matter. An interior was appropriately staged for every private and public occasion to ensure that those who saw it rereceived the proper message concerning the family and their status. In this sense, choosing the person responsible for placing the proper décor in an adequate interior was equally important to having the correct items and decorations which were to be placed. In most cases the director accountable for this staging of objects was the architect himself and only towards the very end of the nineteenth century interior decorating professionals. This fact was widespread and even architects, such as Andrew Jackson Downing, assured his readers that the person responsible for the outside was also the one responsible for designing, furnishing, and decorating the inside.25 Thus, deciding on the architect that was to build one’s house was a deeply rooted decision that was not to be taken lightly. The home from inside and out had to not only represent the family and its achievements, it also owed something to society and to the nation as a whole: In a nation, such as the United States, which celebrates the sacredness of one’s own private space as an extension of individual liberties, while at the same time advocating control over the most private aspects of people’s lives, the type of house one chooses to inhabit, and the way one manages it, reveals more than economic situation, social status, and familial contingencies. It is a measure of one’s loyalty to the nation, a sign of how well one fits into the ‘American way of life.’ A discourse of the home, then, is also a discourse of nationhood and citizenship.26

24

Fuhrmann, Meteling, Rajkay, and Weipert, Geschichte des Wohnens, 111-112.

25

Schuyler, Apostle of Taste, 148.

26

Anna Scacchi, “American Interiors: Redesigning the Home in Turn of the Century New York,” in Public Space, Private Lives: Race, Gender, Class, and Citizenship in New York, 1890-1929, eds. William Boelhower and Anna Scacchi (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2004), 17.

244 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

This statement holds true for citizens of American cities throughout the nineteenth century, whether at the beginning or the end, and also throughout the various time periods and design styles that went with it. Architects and designers were well aware of this and took on the task and the pressure that architectural elevations and interior design mechanisms brought with them, all the while keeping in mind that a whole nation (amongst others) was paying attention to their work. Their profession may once have been largely ignored and considered a task that every homeowner could and should do by himself, but as the meaning involved in constructing the nation rose to new levlevels, the act of decorating became a celebrated vocation. “The architect and decorator are often aware that they are regarded by their clients as the possessors of some strange craft like black magic or astrology.”27 The architect and the designer certainly did possess a supernatural power that distinguished their profession from others and the higher this power elevated them the more demanding their clientele became.

U PPER -C LASS I NTERIORS AND THE R ISE OF C ONSUMERISM Interiors, decoration, and the artifacts that added to the overall statement made by the rooms of a home were responsible for alluding to the status, or aspired status, of the family but also for another, more widespread phenomenon: consumerism. While architectural elevations also required wealth and the appropriate exteriors of a house were usually only affordable to a certain community in society, interior design brought luxury to (almost) every home and created the possibility of acquiring material goods to all members of society. “The development of a domestic ideology based on family structure and home design assumed families to have at least the economic resources to express their domestic sentiments through the manipulation of physical space.”28 As a result, quality was often replaced by quantity and it was necessary to differentiate between limited originals and overproduced remakes. Interior design and room décor brought about a more intimidating threat of emulation of upper-class styles in that throughout the nineteenth century, but also already in the eighteenth century, industrialization and consumerism created the availability and affordability of extravagance.

27

Wharton and Codman, The Decoration of Houses, 19.

28

McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900, 51.

I NTERIORS AND FURNISHINGS | 245

An upper-class interior was not identifiable solely through the objects it bebeheld, but rather through the intense examination thereof and the confirmation of their originality, and costliness for that matter. The nineteenth century required a visitor to an American home to investigate his or her surroundings in order to determine whether their hosts were of the proper social rank. “Like a good mystery story, the meaning of the rooms was to unfold gradually. The visitor was a detective, and part of the enjoyment of visiting someone else’s house came from trying to understand the symbolic meanings of the furnishings[…].”29 The furnishings adorned the rooms that also carried a message within their walls. Although utility was placed in the back of the line in nineteenth-century homes, the rooms did have to be recognizable in their function. This may seem trivial in some cases in that the bedroom, for example, through the presence of a bed, was usually very easily recognizable, but other rooms demanded a closer look. In addition, it was important for visitors to keep in mind that not only the presence but also the absence of certain rooms made a distinct statement about their owners. Having established which rooms were provided by the house it was time to turn the attention towards what these rooms displayed. “In Victorian America, each room of a house was understood to perform a distinctive set of functions. These functions were revealed, served, and advanced by an equally distinctive set of artifacts[…]. The movable material culture – that is, culture in visible, tangible, and portable form – made all the difference.”30 Seeing as the objects in the room were the most communicative to the guests of the house it becomes understandable that the mass-production of these small items of decadence leading to a society of superficial refinement was feared. Even the origins of the products of display were questioned in that everything could and was eventually replicated regionally. As furniture and artifact production were not limited to handicraft work anymore, the process of elimination through the scrutiny of the family’s home had to rely on other measures of social distinction for confirmation. Furniture was the largest and most evident form of display in any given room. Contemporary and fashionable forms of furnishings were being produced in the colonies as early as the mid-seventeenth century and their designs were almost exclusively borrowed from European styles, especially those that were to

29 30

Clark, The American Family Home, 116. Kenneth L. Ames, Death in the Dining Room and Other Tales of Victorian Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 9.

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be found in England at the time.31 As time progressed and political upheavals reduced the amount of artistic influence that came from abroad, American furnifurniture came into fashion. However, prior to the early nineteenth century, imported goods were reserved for the upper class and imitations were bought regionally by the middle class. In many cases, it was not visible whether a piece of furniture was produced locally or shipped from overseas and thus, other indicators of luxury had to be made evident. Partially in the eighteenth century and excessively so in the nineteenth century, the best way to prove one’s standing was through size and lavishness. The bigger, the better is the device that allowed homeowners to express their societal standing through their furniture. Chairs were the most prominent pieces that worked according to this ritual, acting perhaps as a throne of achievement. “The size and scale of the armchairs mirrored the implicit hierarchical view of the family.”32 However, at some point furniture could not be made any bigger than it already was and the trend that regulated rank through size disappeared in the late nineteenth century. A somewhat more discreet method of showing off one’s interiors was through obvious indications of wealth that could not be copied as easily as furniture. Certain artifacts were rather luxurious, remained so even throughout the nineteenth century, and gave a room a significantly upperclass appearance. “The overall opulence of the room, with its myriad patterns and gilded mirrors and chandeliers, suggests the wealth of its inhabitants.”33 A middle-class home may have attempted to organize a similar interior, however, it would have been difficult to purchase a chandelier or acquire the appropriate pattern design for the walls. Thus, upper-class homes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries managed to not have to relinquish all of the trends and objects that made their interiors unique, yet the Industrial Revolution and the constant strive towards upward social mobility in an advancing American culture made this feat increasingly more difficult. The fear of emulation through American interiors also became a national concern in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It had been established at this point that the interior of one’s home represented the American’s self-

31

Pohl, Framing America, 61.

32

Clark, The American Family Home, 125.

33

Pohl, Framing America, 269. Pohl is referring to the William Carson House in Eureka, California, which was built in 1884-1885. It exemplifies a High Victorian style house of the late Victorian period and houses aspects of upper-class interior design, which were hardly to be found in middle-class Victorian interiors.

I NTERIORS AND FURNISHINGS | 247

expression34 in all manners of his existence: socially, culturally, and politically. If the interiors that diversified the nation and that allowed the American to reprerepresent himself through design became uniform as a consequence of increased consumption, then the celebrated heterogeneity of American culture would gradually disappear, as well: This corrosion of national sentiments will eventually transform houses into disposable objects, for, as the neglect of interior design spreads, it can only diminish the importance of the domestic. If all houses replicate the same patterns, then no one will have any particparticularized sense of his or her own domestic identity.35

In essence, emulating the interior design for the purpose of social mobility would be to sacrifice one’s identity, and furthermore, it compromises one’s Americaness in that forming self-representation through the continued act of consumption would be to disregard and distance oneself from the ideal of the common man. Striving towards a superlative based on possessions and fortunes also brought with it the reevaluation of consumer products and their necessity. What purposes actually required the purchase of certain items and what could be considered pure frivolity? In the late nineteenth century, it became clearer that articles bought for decorative, status-improving purposes, without a specific function were merely a squandering of money, and disrupted the interior and the house as a whole and the identity of the family that suffered from the addiction of consumption: With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper. In an industrial community this propensity for emulation expresses itself in pecuniary emulation; and this, so far as regards the Western civilized communities of the present, is virtually equivalent to saying that it expresses itself in some form of conspicuous waste.36

Although pecuniary emulation, as Thorstein Veblen calls it, may seem like it leaves no room for differentiation, wealth did not automatically amount to wealth. Consumerism and material possessions, along with the appropriate

34

Faherty, Remodeling the Nation, 34.

35

Ibid., 168.

36

Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (Champaign, IL: Project Gutenberg, 1899), NetLibrary e-book, 45.

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architecture and interiors, were ornaments of status, yet whether one belonged to the elite or not could only be determined upon closer investigation. Refinement came to mean excessive possessiveness in the second half of the nineteenth century and interiors were the locale of choice for displaying these items. Yet, the meaning of being rich was not restricted to monetary wealth, members of the upper strata of society knew that a truly refined citizen was not only financially sound but had to be culturally polished also. Some members of the middle class that were desperately arranging to be accepted into this circle of elitism failed to recognize that material goods were not the only commodities that were necessary. “The sophistication they could not achieve within themselves by education they could borrow or amass for themselves by possession.”37 This active consumerism was not novel to the American continent, though. The marketplace that encouraged overt consumption had been open for business well before the American Revolution took place. Through advertisements, newspapers, and commercialized shops, the American concept of consumerism that catered to anyone with money, regardless of their class, had already been established while the nation was still in the making.38 Even during the time of the American Revolution, as boycotts were being called to life, the concept of one’s buying power was not eagerly sacrificed, even if it meant denying the freedom of acquiring an identity.39 By the nineteenth century, consumerism had become an American way of life that was exercised by all classes of society. The accumulation of material goods and commodities may have been criticized and frowned upon by many, but most Americans had already accepted it as the norm. “In this respect the control exerted by the accepted standard of living is chiefly of a negative character; it acts almost solely to prevent recession from a scale of conspicuous expenditure that has once become habitual.”40 The act of stepping back from an accustomed trade was not simple, as was the case already during the Revolution, but with the dawning of a new mind set it became fashionable to be reasonable. As the Victorian era ended so did the urge to consume. Conspicuously, the marketplace did not turn itself over entirely to subsistence commodification, but instead reestablished itself according to the new demands.

37

Wendell Garrett, Victorian America: Classical Romanticism to Gilded Opulence

38

Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution, 58.

39

Ibid., 70.

40

Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, 43.

(New York: Rizzoli, 1993), 130.

I NTERIORS AND FURNISHINGS | 249

As the nineteenth century came to a close an architectural trend termed the Colonial Revival gained popularity. It emphasized a return to the styles that dominated the colonies before the Revolution and underlined their simplicity and functionality. A similar phenomenon occurred within interior design and interestingly, it was the uniqueness and the originality of colonial design, which was underlined: […][T]houghtful Americans believed that beauty and taste were crucial in shaping characcharacter and shared the view that the general public was being degraded by tasteless, graceless, mass-made products in their homes. These new collectors were seeking American antiques that would express the spirit and shed light on the daily habits of their forefathers. Antiques could not only represent the spirit of those earlier times but also transmit it with their fine workmanship, high-quality materials, and design.41

Interior designs, also amongst the upper class, had a return to innocence, so to say, after the immensely overpowering Victorian era. The original Colonial designs shifted to the Georgian in the late eighteenth century, then to the Victorian in the nineteenth century, and back to the Colonial after the Victorian had simmered down. These collectors of the original Colonial were logical in searching and reinserting pieces from that time period that had survived into the American home, however, their recycling method was not limited to individual items. If remnants from before the Revolution could make a room relive colonial times, then why not re-use entire rooms also. These architectural salvages, as they were called, began appearing on the American interior-scape in the early nineteenth century out of necessity, and later, during the Colonial Revival, out of nostalgia. “In general, an interior before c. 1830 was of its time, but because of scarcity of materials, architectural salvages must always have been re-used.”42 It is difficult to determine the price range for these rooms and items, yet it is probable that those purchased during the Victorian era were not considered luxurious in that they were simply seen as second-hand interiors. Later, and especially after the Centennial, which focused on a return to colonial relics, these antiquities rose in their worth and became trophies of historic times that formed the nation. With the proper price tag attached, these relics became upper-class commodities that may have signaled a patriotic interest and a historic knowledge

41

Garrett, Victorian America, 173.

42

John Harris, Moving Rooms: The Trade in Architectural Salvages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 201.

250 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

of the nation, whereas previously they may have been deemed by some as primiprimitive and outdated. The floor plan of a house is an individual division of interior space, which separates the home into numerous smaller areas. These rooms possess a functional and decorative individuality that expresses their social, cultural, and political function with regard to the family that resides in the home. As interior design trends changed and the message that they were meant to deliver was altered, so did the arrangement and adornment of each integral space.

R OOMS

OF

AMERICAN D OMESTIC I NTERIORS

Each room within a house was to be treated differently and according to the rules and trends laid out during each era. Although some houses contained more rooms than others, the most important and most frequent ones will be touched upon here. The rooms will be presented in no particular order, even though it was customary to increase the worth and extent of ornamentation from room to room, leading up to one exceptionally important room of choice.43 The descriptions are intended to give a collective overview of the proper manner in which rooms were to be designed in the very late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They are mere guidelines for the upper and middle-class members of society on how to decorate their interior spaces, yet, as will be shown in the three case studies conducted in Boston, each house could retain its individuality and slightly alter these guidelines to meet personal tastes and needs. Kitchens The kitchen is interesting to mention because it was usually reserved for the servants of the house and upper-class families hardly ever set foot in this space, much less ever used it in any way. In most significant houses of the nineteenth century, these quarters were relegated to the rear of the house, out of sight for visitors or passersby. The kitchen was usually quite large due to the fact that many servants had to be present and working in this area at one time and because, in an upper-class home, it was common that meals catering to numerous guests had to be prepared requiring ample room for several courses to be fixed simultaneously.44 Even though the kitchen was already rather spacious,

43

Wharton and Codman, The Decoration of Houses, 24.

44

Clark, The American Family Home, 62.

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most homes of well-to-do Americans additionally required a pantry. The pantry was also a service area, however, it served solely the purpose of storage and was not exactly considered a working space. Interestingly, the pantry and the kitchen were not necessarily located in close vicinity of one another, requiring the servservants to have to walk through the house in order to get the food supply that they needed to cook the meals. Basements Both cellars and basements were originally used as storage space and were to be found underneath the house in an underground level, concealed from street view. Middle-class basements were large areas used exclusively for storage. In upperclass homes, these basements were transformed into service areas and often times provided a sleeping space for live-in servants. Occasionally the kitchen was also placed in the subterranean level in order to keep it out of view from visiting guests and also to have the servant’s working place as close as possible to their quarters. “Keeping the kitchen and servants below the main floor hid the productive activities of the household, as was middle- and upper-class practice.”45 The basement provided the ideal space that was relatively detached from the rest of the house but did not require having to step out of doors to reach it. This allowed the family to live separately from their servants and most of the service areas, but nevertheless ensured that they were close enough to be available to wait on the family or guests at any given time. Bathrooms Another service area, so to say, was the bathroom or bathrooms that were located throughout the house and that underwent considerable changes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The bathroom did not actually become a part of the house until the nineteenth century, unless one was very wealthy and could afford to have a separate room for cleansing purposes, which was hardly ever the case. In most homes, prior to the nineteenth century, outhouses were the norm and washing basins were located in the house. The families of better homes were less keen on going out of doors and instead had bed pans in their

45

Pamela Dorazio Dean, “Cellars and Basements,” in Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life, eds. Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2008), 79.

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bedrooms, which the servants had the pleasure of emptying.46 Modernized bathbathrooms and toilets and general indoor plumbing did not reach the American scene until the mid- to late nineteenth century and only the very wealthy were able to afford bathrooms which had bathtubs and sinks.47 Notably, the Gibson house, which was built in 1859-60, was a very early example in the Boston area of a home with fully functioning indoor plumbing. Libraries Libraries are rare specimens of rooms that very obviously exemplify the motive of social display through interiors across the centuries. “The library and parlor were essential in conveying to the visitor the respectability and status of the family.”48 Even before the timeframe discussed here, libraries were a purely decorative room. Although, considering the content of these rooms as one knows them today, it may seem absurd to discern the library as a room entirely succumbed to decoration, but until approximately the mid-seventeenth century this was the case. Only European upper-class households were able to afford libraries in the seventeenth century and this was not intended as a means to demonstrate their literacy and education, but because book covers were embellished so endearingly that they nicely bejeweled the shelves of a room. Indeed, in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries books truly were judged by their cover in that they were immaculately bound in gold and detailed covers that were so ornamental that they were used as the source of décor for this particular room.49 Architects in Europe even calculated this into their design for libraries and, “[…] the French architect always preferred to build his bookshelves into niches formed in the thickness of the wall, thus utilizing the books as part of his scheme of decoration.”50 The books were used as a visual source to be observed and admired as opposed to a literal supplement, which could have been read and discussed. Fortunately, towards the end of the seventeenth century, there was a change in tides and the books were valued according to their content and not their

46

Janet Tyson, “Bathrooms,” in Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life, eds. Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2008), 62-63.

47

Tyson, “Bathrooms,” in Sheumaker and Wajda, 63.

48

McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900, 27.

49

Wharton and Codman, The Decoration of Houses, 146.

50

Ibid., 147.

I NTERIORS AND FURNISHINGS | 253

bindings. In the nineteenth century, this sentiment of reserving a room in the house for reading purposes was finalized and the library became a room that did justice to its contents. The interior design followed this alteration and applied new rules of functionality to libraries. “It is usual for the lower shelves alone to be enclosed by doors, the upper ones being left open for easy access to books.”51 The easy access to books was only necessary if one were to remove the book from a shelf for the purpose, one would assume, of reading it. Unfortunately, the specific content of the books that were read and that served more than just a decorative purpose in upper-class libraries has not been contextualized. The only written indication of what nineteenth century upper-class members were reading is through Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr.’s inventory of his library in which he states, In the bookcases are most of the original books. The first bookcase on the right of the doors contains old Gibson sets of Shakespeare and English poets, Scott, Byron, Burns, Thomas Moore and others which have been in this room since 1860 and belonged to Mr. Gibson’s Grandmother who built the house. Those on the left contain old family sets of Warren and Gibson books – rare volumes of histories, poetry and novels, among them. A set of Abbott’s Histories published by Harper’s in the mid 19th century. Also Albums of Punch and illustrations of Rome and Europe [emphasis in original].52

He also mentions some more modern novels that were put in drawers and scripts to theatrical plays along with family photo albums that were also in the library shelves and drawers.53 The rather comical progression of libraries from places of décor to rooms of literacy was mainly restricted to Europe. Only very wealthy and prominent Americans had the privilege of having a library in their home and Edith Wharton, writing in 1898, disregards the American library in that she writes, “In America the great private library is still so much a thing of the future that its

51

Charles L. Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste: The Classic Handbook of Victorian Interior Decoration, 4th ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 1878), 129.

52

Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., The Library at Gibson House, 137 Beacon Street, 1938, The Gibson House Papers, 2, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

53

Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., The Library at Gibson House, 137 Beacon Street, 1938, The Gibson House Papers, 3-4, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

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treatment need not be discussed in detail.”54 Perhaps Wharton was more conconcerned with the general public while making this statement for the homes that were researched here, being upper class nineteenth-century houses, did have a rooms that strongly resembled libraries. Bedrooms The bedroom became the most private and secluded of all the rooms in the house, but this was not always the case. Eighteenth-century domestic spaces did not grant its inhabitants separate spaces for rest and relaxation. Instead, houses consisted of one single room, which was used for various purposes, none of which allowed for any form of privacy. The “chamber,” as it was commonly known in early eighteenth century well-to-do households, was actually the room originally reserved for entertaining guests during the day and sleeping and resting at night. The chamber eventually became the parlor, which was still used as sleeping quarters in some households, but most upper-class homes were able to afford to have both a parlor and a bedroom by the late eighteenth century.55 Even as houses developed and added more rooms to their general floor plan, having individual bedrooms was a luxury that no one implemented into their architecture until a later time. “Domestic space was not democratic space. The heads of the household slept in the parlor, while other members of the household (family members, visitors, servants, and slaves) slept in the hall or in the unheated spaces under the roof.”56 Upper-class families soon realized that they were not content with this type of arrangement and felt the need and urge for more intimacy. Gradually, architectural floor plans and designs permitted houses greater spatial freedoms and bedrooms became a matter of fact in well-to-do houses. As the nineteenth century came about and houses increased in size, it became possible and also legitimate to have a bedroom for each member of the house. Upper-class households even viewed bedrooms as a necessary luxury for the purpose of the formation of character in that to be able to retire into a room of one’s own provided a sense of personal liberty. The bedroom as a nineteenthcentury interior must-have was also elevated through advertisements and

54

Wharton and Codman, The Decoration of Houses, 151.

55

Howard, Colonial Houses, 10.

56

Shirley Teresa Wajda, “Bedrooms,” in Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life, eds. Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2008), 64.

I NTERIORS AND FURNISHINGS | 255

encouraged consumerism through the possibility of letting each member of the household create their own individual interior. Naturally, while doing so it was important to follow the guidelines of proper bedroom decoration and to steer away from earlier décor mistakes, especially those made in Europe. American designers emphasized the fact that the bedroom was a private sphere and should remain so at all times. A popular trend in England, which lasted until the late eighteenth century, was to ornament the bed so extravagantly that the lady of the house would be lying down in the bed of her dormitory showcase of wealth while receiving guests.57 This trend was never picked up by American designers or homeowners, but rather the reverse was encouraged. An American bedroom was to be arranged and decorated as simply as possible because it was a room that would never be shown to guests. Additionally, there was to be no furniture placed in the bedroom other than that which was necessary for lying down and sleeping.58 Some upper-class families followed this regulation of simplicity, yet others interpreted these guidelines more leniently and gradually added other furnishings that did not necessarily provide a function vital to the act of sleeping. As interior design became a more serious business, the considerations involved concerned not only social status, but also became a matter of overall well-being. Creating bedrooms that were simple in design was one thought, because it was one of the few rooms that did not have to serve the function of impressing guests and therefore embellishments were completely obsolete. A second factor that became popular in the late nineteenth century was a trend towards healthier living. The bedroom was a place that meant recluse from society and one’s daily routine and should therefore be as accommodating as possible. “A room intended for repose ought to contain nothing which can fatigue the eye by complexity.”59 Earlier Victorian bedrooms may have had exaggerations that complemented the design of the rest of the house, but the late Victorian period bedrooms took a turn towards low maintenance and the functionality of the room, as was the trend overall in the late nineteenth century, could be seen first and foremost in the manner of design regarding bedrooms. Drawing Rooms If ever there were a gender-specific room in a nineteenth-century house, the drawing room would fit the bill. The library or smoking room was often reserved

57

Wharton and Codman, The Decoration of Houses, 163-164.

58

Ibid., 171.

59

Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste, 206.

256 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

for the gentlemen of the house and served as a room that they could collectively retire to after a meal. The women were not permitted to further accompany the men during this time and instead a room was designed for them to retire to. The name given this specific type of room was from medieval England and was known as the room that one would withdraw to, later evolving into the “withdrawing room” and eventually being abbreviated to the “drawing room.” These English and also French versions of the drawing room were exclusively designated for the ladies in each respective country.60 In American drawing rooms the custom was to keep this space as feminine as possible and thus to use light colors and to spread the theme of elegance, which would ideally be associated with the woman of the house.61 In Victorian homes, these usually stand out as the brightest, least daunting rooms of the house. Dining Rooms This domestic space is appropriately named for the task that should be accomplished within its walls. The dining room was intended for dining, either as a family or with guests that were entertained over a well-set table of elegant food. However, the dining room and the procedure of eating was a complicated matter that required a lot of attention in matters of design and also matters of etiquette. Seeing as dining was the quintessential portion of the evening devoted to entertaining guests, it was vital that this room be decorated and arranged down to the last detail. The first dining rooms that also served the purpose of entertainment were seen on the American landscape in the mid-eighteenth century and were a part of upper-class societal life.62 At their beginnings, they were probably not as overladen as they became in the nineteenth century. A table and chairs were initially the obvious pieces of furniture that sufficed for the taking in of a meal. Later, the dining room came to represent the room which every guest would see and also be able to peruse throughout the duration of an entire meal and so it became important to place more emphasis on dining rooms. The first impression of the dining room was through its furnishings. An imperative aspect for the family to keep in mind while arranging their dining room was to estimate the correct average number of guests that they would have to entertain at future gatherings. It would be fatal to invite guests over for a meal and not have sufficient seating in the dining area to accommodate them or for

60

Wharton and Codman, The Decoration of Houses, 122-123.

61

Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste, 162-163.

62

Howard, Colonial Houses, 10.

I NTERIORS AND FURNISHINGS | 257

them to feel cramped and crowded at a table that is too small. Therefore, “The dining room […] typically contained a suite of a table with extra leaves, at least eight chairs, a china cabinet, and one or two sideboards laden with equally spespecialized linens, dishes, and utensils.”63 The extra leaves on the table were a security in case more guests were invited than the table was originally laid out for. This was standard practice for dining room tables, but only those extendable tables that did not have to sacrifice their design in the name of size were acacceptable.64 The extension of these tables should, conspicuously, remain as unnoticeable as feasible to visitors of the house. The second impression was won whilst observing the family of the house and also the other guests while they were eating. There were suitable ways in which the devices prepared for the process of taking in food were to be handled and it was a key aspect of upper-class life to be familiar with these. “Etiquette guides and household decorating and management manuals prescribed proper behavior in the ritual of dining through complicated explanations of the uses of tableware.”65 Failing to follow these rules of the knife and fork could potentially lead to the ignoring of the family’s next invite or the exclusion of certain guests. The dining room, then, was not only a complex interior with regulations concerning the furnishings that it boarded, but also a room in which one of the most important customs of nineteenth-century life took place, which had to abide to a precisely planned and executed screenplay. Halls Similar to the dining room, the hall played a major role in leaving an impression on guests that came to see the house. In the eighteenth century, the hall was used as an all-purpose area in which numerous activities took place. It was, at this time, not necessarily the first room that one would want guests to pass through, but it usually was the area of the house directly connected to the entrance making this inevitable.66 As homeowners and families became aware of the fact that one had to permeate the hall in order to get to other parts of the house, it was reduced to a simple corridor, which connected to the rooms that needed to be

63

Janet Tyson, “Dining Rooms,” in Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life, eds. Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda (Santa Barbara: ABCCLIO, Inc., 2008), 152.

64

Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste, 77-80.

65

Tyson, “Dining Rooms,” in Sheumaker and Wajda, 152.

66

Howard, Colonial Houses, 10.

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reached. Needless to say, “Hall furnishings were widespread and prominent components of the Victorian system of impression management.”67 By the late nineteenth century (ca. 1880), the hall had become a passage way through and through and its only fundamental purpose was the connecting but also segregating of certain rooms.68 Through this, it allowed the other rooms to return to their original function and to alleviate certain spaces within the home of their uniformity. “By providing a separate entry into each room, it preserved the privacy and specialized functions of the other spaces.”69 The added effect of the hall as a path to those rooms that were of importance was the power that it allowed designers and homeowners to exercise. Prematurely guiding the people that entered the house to exactly those spaces that they were permitted to trespass into was a system of control and power that made the hall a very important device within upper-class homes.70 Halls were also very versatile in that they could be both service area and entertaining area. The hall was where guests were received and once they had entered the house, it became the area where the servants could remain while the entertaining was going on so that they were in close proximity in case anything was demanded of them. “With this arrangement, social peers of the homeowners could visit in the formal spaces of the house, while social inferiors remained in the hall or were directed elsewhere and kept from intruding on the family or its guests.”71 As houses added second stories, the hall was usually connected to a staircase at its end, which became an even clearer demarcation of the private and public spheres that the house embodied. Floors and Walls The floors did not receive as much attention as the walls and their coverings, but it was still important for homes to follow the correct manner of treating floors. The nineteenth century marked the beginning of recognizing and using floors as an additional surface for decoration. The general consensus in the Victorian era was that floors should not interfere with the furniture that was placed on them, thus demanding a minimal use of patterns or dominant colors. An ornamentation

67

Ames, Death in the Dining Room and Other Tales of Victorian Culture, 7.

68

Ibid., 9, 11.

69

Clark, The American Family Home, 45.

70

Ames, “First Impressions: Front halls and hall furnishings in Victorian America,” in

71

Ames, Death in the Dining Room and Other Tales of Victorian Culture, 13.

Eggener, 161.

I NTERIORS AND FURNISHINGS | 259

of the floors, in any manner of course, was to be avoided entirely.72 In the late Victorian period, carpets with patterns became popular and especially oriental design patterns prevailed over other patterned carpets. Stair carpets also became popular in the late Victorian era and these were to be kept monochrome and patpatterns were absolutely not allowed.73 Overall, the floors were somewhat neglected when it came to interior design because guests rarely paid attention to what they were treading on. The walls, however, were at eye level and had to be considered more intensely with regard to the impressions that they left. In contrast to the floors, walls were often highly decorated with patterns. The simplest form of producing symmetrical patterns on walls was through the use of wallpaper, a commodity that was reserved for the upper class. The first documentation of wallpaper was to be found in a Boston shop selling stationary and it stems from the year 1700.74 The eighteenth century shows evidence of the use of wallpaper in wealthy households and they, “[…] purchased it either from stationers or booksellers who dealt in an entire range of paper goods or from merchants as special orders.”75 Regardless of where these papers were bought, they were always imports and the American manufacturing of wallpaper did not commence until later in the eighteenth century. The real boom in the wallpaper business came after the American Revolution and its origins were national as well as international. Once the War for Independence had been won, trade with Europe and Asia allowed various styles and patterns for wall coverings to be imported. However, American wallpaper printing also made a significant name for itself and was well situated in the cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia by the year 1790.76 The nineteenth century was well equipped with designs, patterns, and imports that helped to supply the increasing demand in wall design that the Victorian era provided. The amount of pattern decoration that was suitable was a controversial topic amongst Victorian designers. On the one hand, designers viewed wallpaper as a decorative element by itself that should suffice as the sole wall embellishment in a room if the pattern is appropriate enough and amply extravagant. If the room is meant to have other wall coverings, as well, wallpaper can still be used but must be plain so as not to interfere with pictures

72

Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste, 112-113.

73

Wharton and Codman, The Decoration of Houses, 100-102.

74

Jane C. Nylander and Richard C. Nylander, Fabrics and Wallpapers for Historic

75

Nylander and Nylander, Fabrics and Wallpapers for Historic Buildings, Book 2: 31.

76

Ibid., Book 2: 43.

Buildings (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005), Book 2: 31.

260 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

or artifacts that should be the dominant form of ornamentation.77 On the other hand, some designers perceived wallpaper rather negatively in that it caused a distraction within the room and the proper way to cover a wall should be using pictures and portraits. In the late 1890s, some even went so far as to degrade the use of wallpaper because of hygienic reasons: It was well for the future of house-decoration when medical science declared itself against the use of wall-papers. These hangings have, in fact, little to recommend them. Besides being objectionable on sanitary grounds, they are inferior as a wall-decoration to any form of treatment, however simple, that maintains, instead of effacing, the architectural lines of a room.78

Both points of view on the use of wallpaper were well known in the Victorian era and it seems as though homeowners opted to continue to support their use up until the turn of the century. The diversity of patterns and possibilities granted through the use of wallpapers brought about a phenomenon in the late 1800s that spread these papers through an entire house. Covering the walls in embellished designs was not only reserved for the rooms of entertainment, but also stretched into nearly every other room as well, including service areas. “Most residential rooms were papered, including kitchens, closets, attic staircases, and even privies.”79 This practice became so popular that wallpaper became an integral part of the design process of interiors. This, furthermore, elevated wallpaper design and printing into belonging to the decorative arts and it became an artistic venture to paper a room.80 Fireplaces The fireplace is obviously not a room to be analyzed, but it deserves a listing in that it was present in almost every room. Moreover, it was the most important accessory in each room in that its framework became another element on which to pursue a decorative undertaking. In the nineteenth century, as fireplaces became additional signs of wealth and luxury, their mantels were decorated with

77

Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste, 119.

78

Wharton and Codman, The Decoration of Houses, 44.

79

Nylander and Nylander, Fabrics and Wallpapers for Historic Buildings, Book 2:

80

Ibid.

143.

I NTERIORS AND FURNISHINGS | 261

the use of marble and the sides were often planned according to current architecarchitectural and design trends, such as the use of columns or further enhancement through garlands or other contemporary motives.81 It was important to have a fireplace in each room because it signaled to visitors that the family used and lived in every room of their house, either by themselves or when they invited guests over and provided them a warm venue. Middle-class homeowners wanted to imitate these extraordinary mantels, but often did not have the means to pay for materials such as marble. Instead, they produced mantels that consisted of wood causing designers to shake their heads and agree with the statement made by Edith Wharton: “There is indeed something of unfitness in the use of an inflammable material surrounding a fireplace.”82 The fireplace was an integrated furnishing in upper and middle-class homes, which required adequate decorative elements to complement it. In accordance to the fireplace, which only adorned one single wall of a room, designers and homeowners could now turn their attention to the center of the room, the true interior space, and had to acquire further items that would properly fill it.

F URNISHINGS AND O BJECTS IN AMERICAN D OMESTIC I NTERIORS Interior design is often closely associated or paralleled with furniture design. The design phases that influence the interiors inevitably also determine the trends that furnishings follow in that these have to harmonize together in one room. Furnishings, however, also have additional characteristics that accentuate their individuality in a room and it is important to investigate, identify, and be able to place these within eighteenth and nineteenth-century homes. The furniture styles that were present during the timeframe of the mideighteenth until the end of the nineteenth century are the Queen Anne Style, the Chippendale Style, the Federal Period, the American Empire Style, and the broadly termed Victorian. Furniture often acted as the protagonists in a room and it was important that their style fit the times as much as the rest of the interior. Queen Anne Style furniture was in fashion from 1725 until 1760 and had a vertically elongated format, was manufactured with heavy wood but made to appear very light, and contained some, but not too much ornamentation.83 Chippendale

81

Wharton and Codman, The Decoration of Houses, 82.

82

Ibid.

83

Greene, American Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, 110.

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furniture was similar to Queen Anne Styles and was modern from 1760 until 1785. It was evidently more massive, more ornamental with surfaces that concontained carvings and other decorative elements, and the furniture was generally of a deeper, richer nature.84 The Federal Period from 1785 until 1810 lightened up the appearance of furniture, ornamentation was sparingly used, and in the case that it was it was kept very classical and symmetrical.85 It was also the time in which manufacturers in New England flourished and the Federal Style pieces quickly became regionalized.86 The American Empire Style was present from 1810 until 1830, was completely classical in format, and was influenced by French styles that were rather light in appearance, yet included a lot of ornamentation especially with references to nature.87 The later part of the nineteenth century and its furniture, the Victorian, is more difficult to classify in that this time period was underscored by the theme of mass-production. This led to the manufacturing of numerous styles and also a wider clientele. The style of furniture allows one to determine approximately when an item was purchased. The more pressing issue with regard to the social implications of furnishings is which pieces were there and what this had to say about the homeowner’s societal affairs. The pieces of furniture that allude to the family’s schedule and frequency of events are to be found immediately upon entering the home, namely in the hall. This placement served both a functional as well as a demonstrative purpose in that the hall became an entering corridor where guest’s personal belongings could be deposited during their stay and because these furnishings, which were acquired solely for having a specific place to put other people’s things, signified that there were often visitors to the house. Two very telling items, to be found in any nineteenth century upper-class hall, were the hallstand and the card receiver. These two pieces were directly linked to the rituals of receiving and selecting guests for entry into upper-class society. The hallstand was introduced to Victorian households and became very popular in the 1860s/1870s, remaining in American halls until the 1920s.88 It was basically a more sophisticated version of what today would be recognized as a coat rack, but it meant more than just having a place to put one’s coat when

84

Greene, American Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, 110.

85

Ibid.

86

Monica Obniski, “Furniture,” in Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life, eds. Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda (Santa Barbara: ABCCLIO, Inc., 2008), 204.

87

Greene, American Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, 103.

88

Ames, Death in the Dining Room and Other Tales of Victorian Culture, 17.

I NTERIORS AND FURNISHINGS | 263

coming in from outside. Each hallstand had to have four distinct characteristics, which could be arranged in various ways. These included a place for umbrellas, usually in the form of a bucket, hooks or pegs, which could be used to hold nunumerous hats or coats, a mirror, and a small table.89 Evidently, these hallstands were intended for visitors, giving them a personal space within a public space. The hall was where people entered the home, but through the hallstand it also became a place where guests could leave their things making it collectively priprivate. The card receiver could also be integrated into the hallstand but was surely to receive more attention if placed in the hall by itself. This piece catered to a very specific social ritual that could determine a person’s societal standing simply by dropping off a card. The card receiver could be simple or also elaborate. Generally speaking, it was a type of basin that was elevated through one centrally located foot. The basin was where cards from visitors could be collected and at the end of the day these would be reviewed by the lady of the house. “Card leaving was a way of entering society, of designating changes in status or address, of issuing invitations and responding to them, of sending sentiments of happiness or condolence, and, in general, of carrying on all the communication associated with social life.”90 It was a method of correspondence on all matters concerning the family and at the same time it was a rite of passage, which, on the surface, allowed one to enter another person’s domestic space, but also connoted a breach into the upper stratum of the community, granted the card that was left received a response. If social mobility was denied and associations with the card leaver were undesired then the card was ignored and no further contact was necessary. The hall, therefore, through its function and its furnishings was the locale of American societal formations. Receiving a response to one’s card and being able to hang one’s coat and hat on the hallstand meant more than just coming in from the cold, it symbolized entering a new, improved position in the community, which had been discussed and accepted by the established elite. The hall was one of the focal points in American domestic social interiors and following closely behind it was the parlor. The parlor was a lively place in the eighteenth century and became a desolate place in the nineteenth century that was reserved for guests. The furniture that was acquired for the parlor was usually quite expensive and fashionably proper, but it need only be used when entertaining guests. Thus, it was common custom for the furniture in parlors to be pushed

89

Ames, Death in the Dining Room and Other Tales of Victorian Culture, 17.

90

Ibid., 38.

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back against the walls when the room was not in use and often times it was covcovered with large drapes of cloth in order to avoid the accumulation of dust or the general wear and tear of these fine pieces.91 Prior to the arrival of guests the furniture would be uncovered and pushed into the center of the room and arranged in such a manner that guests could mingle and sit and deplore the feeling that the room was always prepared for the constant anticipation of company.92 During times of vacancy the room was essentially arranged in such a way that it was uninviting for the family to spend their leisure time in and the parlor became the room of the house set aside for the sole purpose of entertaining. Middle-class households often had a parlor as well, however, their parlors did not remain entirely vacant when guests were not around, but instead served other functions for the family, denying the true concept of a parlor. The hall, the parlor, and to a certain degree also the dining room and the furnishings that each contained were the symbolic rooms that concluded the statement of the family’s social rank in late eighteenth and nineteenth-century American homes. The other interior spaces of the house may also have been frequented by guests but they were not as impressive and conspicuous as the aforementioned. There were specific smaller items that aided impression management within domestic spaces that could be found in a variety of interior spaces of the house depending on where the family chose to place them. Discovering these pieces in any house can also hint at the societal placement of the residing family without having to concretely investigate the hall, the parlor, or the dining room. These accessories were linked to rituals that the family evidently took part in on a regular basis and even if this was not the case, these items could be put on display to showcase social activity and obligations. The intake of certain beverages was a descriptive form of wealth, which, through its containers, exhibited the rate of recurrence of gatherings that the family held. Tea was one of these beverages and the teapot was a status symbol that was implemented as early as the eighteenth century in upward striving American households. “Having the proper accoutrements was not only of practical importance; it was important for symbolic purposes as well. If a woman in eighteenth-century colonial America aspired to ‘gentlewoman’ status, a tea table and fine china were requisite[…].”93 This practice of tea drinking continued on into the nineteenth century, taking a short leave of absence during the revolutionary years, and continued to determine status amongst Americans.

91

Bushman, The Refinement of America, 123.

92

Clark, The American Family Home, 12.

93

Mrozowski, The Archaeology of Class in Urban America, 145.

I NTERIORS AND FURNISHINGS | 265

Teapots could be produced so intricately so as not only to be telling of the status of a family, but to allude to their character, as well. Regional differences proproduced diverse designs of teapots and each one made a unique statement about the whereabouts and personality of its owner: A Colonial-style teapot produced in rural Connecticut, c. 1777-1818, with an ‘organic, breastlike form’ links the ritual of tea drinking to notions of human ‘generosity or charity.’ In contrast, a more angular teapot from the urban Boston area, 1740-1814, ‘can deny the humanly anatomical or personal aspect of giving, or charity, and by using purely inorganic, intellectual, geometric forms deny personal involvement and emphasize the cerebral character of the act. In so doing it conveys something about the different character of a different culture.’94

Regardless of the individual message given through these teapots, the collective message was clear; the owner and user of this teapot belonged to the upper class. Another popular category of beverages was those containing alcohol. Alcohol has an extensive history in the early republic, especially in New England were it was always viewed rather controversially. In the late eighteenth century it was normal to consume a rather large amount of alcohol (in comparison to modern standards) and it would be served with virtually every meal.95 As cities grew and drinking establishments were created, a rift between the clientele of these taverns occurred. “Although taverns were not exclusively distinguished by class until the eighteenth century, colonists had always ranked them by their level of respectability.”96 Thus, the taking in of alcoholic beverages took place in locales that suited the upper class and were often also relegated to the home, especially when entertaining guests. Drinking alcohol at home or at a tavern, a place where peers were sure to be present, it even became a sign of status whether one could consume an adequate amount. “Demonstrating the ability to consume great quantities of liquor in the company

94

Jules David Prown, “The Truth of Material Culture: History or Fiction?,” in History from Things: Essays on Material Culture, eds. Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), ii, quoted in Gary Totten, introduction to Memorial Boxes and Guarded Interiors: Edith Wharton and Material Culture, ed. Gary Totten (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007), 4.

95

W.J. Rorabaugh, “Alcohol in America,” Organization of American Historians Mag-

96

Sharon V. Salinger, Taverns and Drinking in Early America (Baltimore: The Johns

azine of History 6, no. 2 (Fall 1991): 17. Hopkins University Press, 2002), 49.

266 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

of friends and/or acquaintances also offered one measure of a man’s worth.”97 However, this testimony to one’s insobriety was soon challenged by the demand for abstinence of alcohol, or so-called teetotalism.98 Alcohol became a contested topic in the nineteenth century and upper-class households most likely continued to serve it to their guests, but were perhaps a little more conservative regarding the quantity that was poured. Portraits and pictures were decorative and informative aspects of the househousehold that ornamented plain walls, placed the family in their most impressive depiction of themselves, and designated their cultural and educational familiarity with the arts. This is where the dining room’s social function comes into play in that it was appropriate to hang portraits on these specific walls. “It is an old English custom to hang family portraits in the dining-room, and it seems a reasonable custom.”99 Perhaps it was a logical thought that led both English and American elites to this placement in that visitors could spend their time eating in another useful way, namely in admiring their entertainers in their most sublime and dominating pose. Portraits were also hung in other rooms but the most prominent ones and the ones that the family wanted to have seen were hung in the dining room. In addition to the importance of the room of the interior where the portraits were hung, there was also significance placed on the portrait’s form and artistic and social techniques that were used. A portrait was not just a realistic representation of the person it depicted; in fact, it was hardly ever a realistic version of its protagonist. Portraits, like interiors, were often embellished in order to gain a better social acceptance from those who viewed them. Artists were carefully chosen by members of the upper class according to their skill and interpretation of exaggerating personal appearances. It was vital to have an experienced painter who knew which devices brought about the appropriate reaction from the proper audience. For example, a man who was painted with one hand placed on his hip indicated that this was a man of authority and elegance.100 A family could further enhance their outward status by having portraits of their children painted, and of course, also measurably embellished like those of their parents. The upper class was the only class that could afford to have their entire family portrayed and if this was the case it was imperative that each individual representing the family be put in the

97

Salinger, Taverns and Drinking in Early America, 70.

98

Rorabaugh, “Alcohol in America,” 17.

99

Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste, 185.

100

Calvert, “Children in American Family Portraiture, 1670-1810,” in Hawes and Nybakken, 113.

I NTERIORS AND FURNISHINGS | 267

best, if not always accurate, light. The means to achieving an impressive portrait was through the depiction of contemporarily trendy clothing, the pose and position of the individual or group, and the props that they were surrounded by.101 The last characteristic included the proper backdrop, which was usually the interior of the most suitable room of the family’s residence. Although these were usually kept within the realm of the recognizable, the interior would also include massive embellishments to advance the social prominence of both the character in the portrait and his or her socially accepted domestic space. There are probably thousands of artifacts that have similar meanings and social functions as the hallstands, card receivers, teapots, and portraits, yet they are too numerous to mention here. Overall, while analyzing the interiors of the following homes, the focus lay more on the items that were obviously placed and available for the analysis of the family’s attention towards impressions. Each home shows traces of individually assorted furnishings and decorative elements that carry their own weight with them. Therefore, the case studies that were performed are less a comparison of the items that each house contained, but rather the observation of the uses and messages of the items that were present and what they meant to convey. These interiors and their furnishings, “[…] represent key consumption choices that reflect not only personal preferences, but also the value systems that underlie the wider culture.”102 Through these consciously made decisions concerning the interior domestic space, it is possible to disseminate the emphasis that these families placed on their acquisitions on the marketplace and how these choices were made according to the social implications that these items bring with them. Accordingly, the interiors, which complement the domestic architecture of eighteenth and nineteenth-century American families, gave their peers at the time and later provide historians, a detailed, well-documented insight into their personal and public lives. The Interiors of the First Harrison Gray Otis House The interiors of any house include numerous rooms that usually have a specific function. These functions can further be divided into the categories of utilitarian or service areas or those for entertaining purposes. “Because the home had

101

Calvert, “Children in American Family Portraiture, 1670-1810,” in Hawes and

102

Amanda Girling Budd, “Comfort and Gentility: Furnishings by Gillows, Lancaster,

Nybakken, 117. 1840-55,” in Interior Design and Identity, eds. Susie McKellar and Penny Sparke (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 27.

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important communicative roles, to present the proper image to guests, visitors, and business associates was crucial [emphasis in original].”103 Although it was essential for any upper-class home to have service areas, these will not be looked at in too much detail but, instead, the focus will be on those rooms that were fundamental to having guests over at the house and those that were missing. It is interesting to note that the first Harrison Gray Otis house did not have a library, a room that was considered very important in an upper-class household. Instead, behind Sally’s bedroom there was a small room reserved for taking care of the children and for her to sit and read.104 Apparently, the Otises were so well off and the house already included enough indication of their status that they did not require a library for Harrison Gray, who during their residence in this particular home was usually out of town anyway. It is not clear whether his second house had a library or not and the third house, which is now home to the American Meteorological Society, could very well have had a library in Otis’s day considering the fact that the house has 37 rooms in total.105

103

McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900, 27.

104

The small room behind Sally’s bedroom is currently used as storage space for Historic New England. The information regarding its original use was conveyed by the docent giving the tour of the house. There is no written confirmation of the exact purpose of this particular room.

105

American Meteorological Society, “The House at 45 Beacon Street: Third Harrison Gray Otis House on Beacon Hill,” History of the House at 45 Beacon Street.

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Figure 24: This is a photograph showing an interior space in the Second Harrison Gray Otis House taken ca. 1882. The bookshelves and reading table indicate that this was perhaps the library, however, considering that this is the earliest picture available of the interior of the house, it remains unclear whether this was originally and also during Otis’s residence used as a library.

Anonymous, “Interior, 85 Mount Vernon Street, Boston, Massachusetts,” ca. 1882, Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.

In the first Harrison Gray Otis house, the main rooms that were meant for entertaining and that are still very original in their décor and set-up are the drawing room, the dining room, and the parlor. A service area that is worth mentioning is the back staircase and the attention to detail and also the inattentiveness to proper decoration that was implemented in this recluse part of the house. The Drawing Room The entertaining rooms mentioned have a hierarchy of their own and will be analyzed accordingly from the top to the bottom of this interior ranking system. The drawing room was seen as the most important room for having guests in the Otis house and it was located on the second floor with street view. Even though it was the grandest room, it may not have been well visible to the public passing by in that it was at an elevated position. According to Anne Grady and Linda Willett, this was the style in England at the time and Bulfinch was attempting to

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introduce it in Boston upper-class homes.106 Placing the most important rooms on the second story was a manner of uplifting oneself above the rest that would walk on the street and was a trend that was developing in Europe. Also, the dindining room, located directly beneath the drawing room, took the ground floor slot because it was closer to the kitchen, requiring less travel with food and beverages when guests were being entertained at a dinner. There is no evidence remaining, which justifies the exact use of these particular spaces in the Otis house, therefore it is not possible to confirm the exact purpose behind their location in the house. One can only assume that in this instance spatial management was in part trend setting and partially had to succumb to form and function as opposed to form alone. Figure 25 and 26: (Left) The center of the ceiling of the Otis drawing room with the detailed oval central leaf medallion and grape vine design adorning the chandelier. (Right) The doors in the drawing room are the only ones in the house that are made of original mahogany, a very luxurious type of wood to use for doors, and which each have four mirror panels.

Harrison Gray Otis house, Drawing Room, pictures taken April 2010. Courtesy of Historic New England.

The drawing room may have been relegated to the second story, but it regains its position in the room hierarchy through its ornamentation. The décor applied to

106

Anne Grady, “Section V.E.6.i.,” in Harrison Gray Otis House, Historic Structure Report, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, ed. Richard Nylander (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1998), 185, Courtesy of Historic New England.

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all aspects of the room made it the most imposing on first glance. The use of expensive and rare materials crowned its reputation on a second and closer look. In the Historic Structure Report of the Otis house, the interior design and original materials of the drawing room are described as follows during the Otis’s time, The plasterwork is treated more elaborately than in any other space. The cornice features modillions shaped like acanthus leaves and a frieze in which Medusa’s heads alternate with urns. The ceiling has perimeter moldings and an oval central leaf medallion surrounded by a grape vine. This is the only room that was fitted originally, and is the only room in the house where the wooden dado was trimmed with applied moldings. The amount of composition ornament in the dado cap and on the door friezes exceeds that in any other room. The doors, fitted with mirrors in the upper four panels, are solid mahogany, where elsewhere doors were grained to simulate mahogany.107

The room was ostentatious and also, at the same time, designed to be the most comfortable space in the house. The decorations were meant to be seen and any guest that had the pleasure of being invited to this room after one of the Otis dinners could marvel at the detail and effort put into its walls and objects. The features mentioned were rather obvious to the untrained eye and caught one’s attention on impact. There are also other details in the room that may not have been detected by most guests, but which Otis used anyhow and which reconfirm not only his position as distinctly upper class, but also the use of his wealth in decorating his home with only the best materials. The doors in the drawing room, as mentioned, were made of mahogany and the pricey wood was only imitated on the other doors of the house. The wallpaper in this room is also something that Otis invested a large sum in even though most people, then and now, may not readily recognize this fact. If one moves in closely, it is evident that the paper consists of a silky material that glistens with a nice shine, especially when the sun touches the walls of the drawing room. In fact, “[…] Otis chose a pattern imitating an all-over floral damask, printed in white on yellow satin ground.”108 This particular wallpaper was imported by Otis directly from England, which can be seen by the duty stamp that was placed on the

107

Anne Grady, “Section V.E.6.i.,” in Nylander, 184-185, Courtesy of Historic New

108

Richard C. Nylander, Elizabeth Redmond, and Penny J. Sander, Wallpaper in New

England. England: Selections from the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1986), 95.

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backside of the paper.109 As an additional adornment, there are also borders that run along the fireplace mantel, the doors, the windows, and the frieze, which basically give the objects directly on the wall a distinct outline. This wallpaper accessory contains a colorful floral design that is quite detailed when perceived from a short distance. As will be shown, the other wallpapers that accentuate the public use rooms in the Otis house are similarly polychromic and intriguing at first sight, but are indeed rather plain in comparison to the drawing room damask and floral combination. Figure 27: The fireplace located in the second story drawing room is kept in light colors and surrounded by the floral wallpaper border that was chosen specifically for this room.

Harrison Gray Otis house, Drawing Room, picture taken April 2010. Courtesy of Historic New England.

In addition to its visible appeal, it was also the room most fitted to the seasons. Most rooms in the Otis house were quite contented in the summer months, yet the harsh Boston winters could be felt in some of the lesser rooms that were not necessarily heated properly. The drawing room however, was meant to envelope guests in its warmth, with regard to its decoration and climate, even when outside temperatures plummeted. In a letter to his wife, Harrison Gray Otis even recommends that Sally sleep in the drawing room during one of her pregnancies

109

Nylander, Redmond, and Sander, Wallpaper in New England, 95.

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in that the fireplace in her bedroom seemed to be defect. “It is quite important that the inconvenience arising from a bad chimney in your bed chamber should be cured […] and if all does not answer the proposed end, you had better deterdetermine on the drawing room for your confinement.”110 Whether or not the chimney was fixed or Sally really did move into the drawing room for the 1797 winter is unknown, however, regardless of the room’s status and comfort it seems that it was the most desirable area for both guests and the family alike. The Dining Room Ranking second in the interior order is the dining room, which is located on the first floor on the left-hand side when looking straight at the house. The dining room was essential to any upper-class home in that the main purpose for entertaining and inviting guests into the home usually required some sort of food to be served. A distinct area had to be available in which a table and numerous chairs could be placed and a large party could dine with the owners. The dining room probably also served the purpose of taking in meals when the family was by themselves in that there is no evidence of a breakfast room or an area with a smaller table that could accommodate the family during its meal times. In the case of the Otis family, which eventually had 11 children, as was common amongst many families in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a large dining room and table was necessary nonetheless. However, the décor in the dining room was not intended for the family and the children, but the guests that required a distinctive room in which to have their elaborate meal. The elements of the dining room appear similar to those of the drawing room with the exception being that some materials may have been exchanged and more affordable sources used. This initially becomes clear when entering the room through the imitation mahogany door that is not embellished with mirrors. Other ornamental aspects of interior design were used to enhance the appearance of the room accordingly: Its treatment, therefore, was only slightly less elaborate than that of the drawing room above, and featured, like the drawing room, a variety of decorative elements inspired by classical antiquity: door pediments that included both carved wood and applied composition ornament; a dado cap frieze with fret dentils; a guilloche molding running across the window embrasures; and a mantelpiece of which the central panel was a depiction in composition of the Triumph of Mars. The mantelpiece ranks with the parlor

110

Harrison Gray Otis to Sally Otis, 27 November 1797, Harrison Gray Otis Papers, Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

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as one of the finest surviving examples of Federal period composition work. Paint research indicated that ornaments and moldings on the doors, dado and mantelpiece were picked out originally in white in contrast to a blue ground color. The doors were grain painted to simulate mahogany. The dining room is one of three spaces in the house to be embellished with cast plaster or ornaments in the cornice and ceiling.111

The effect of these characteristics made the dining room an elegant and intriguing area for taking in meals. The detail granted its overall design was just a step behind the drawing room, which may have been a distinct device of design. The guests would indefinitely see the dining room first and then retire to the drawing room, after which they would leave and return to their own homes. Thus, the grace of the room would escalate throughout the evening and the interior of the drawing room would go on to top that of the dining room. The final room that guests would lock into their memory and their opinion of the house would thus be the one that was most sophisticated and refined. It was not only the room, in the Otis’s case, that was quite exceptional, but also the functions that they held. Their great dining room was the venue for extensive dinner parties and it was a known fact that at the Otis house no one would leave the table hungry. This confirmed their knowledge and fluency with the ways of the upper-class lifestyle: After these [dinner] courses the tablecloth would be removed, dessert and fruit plates set at each place, and the desserts served with additional wines. Tea for the women would be brought to the withdrawing room after they had left the dining room. Such elaborate service implied familiarity with socially correct table manners.112

The Otis’s knew how to entertain and their first house had the means to accommodate their entertaining. Otis, who excelled as a lawyer, a politician, and a real estate developer knew that he could not, and did not want to for that matter, settle for less with regard to the home that he would present the men and the families that he associated with. The dining room properly designed and

111

Anne Grady, “Section V.E.6.b.,” in Harrison Gray Otis House, Historic Structure Report, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, ed. Richard Nylander (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1998), 140, Courtesy of Historic New England.

112

Jane C. Nylander and Daniel L. Viera, Windows on the Past: Four Centuries of New England Homes (Boston: Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown and Company, 2000), 163.

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refined as it was, allowed the Otis family to reconfirm their high-standing position in society. Figure 28: The dining room table was placed in the center of the room with a portrait of Harrison Gray Otis at its head. The detail of the ornamentation on the doors, walls, and dado becomes apparent when looking at the room in its entirety.

Harrison Gray Otis House, Dining Room, picture taken April 2010. Courtesy of Historic New England.

The Parlor The parlor was necessary in every home of the upper class and later it even became a necessity of middle-class dwellings. It was conspicuous that the Otis house would have a parlor and a visible one at that, located on the first floor on the right-hand side when entering the house. Although the parlor was often seen as the symbolic interior space that defined upper-class cohesion, the Otises were in a position where they did not have to make the parlor the most embellished room of the house. It was clear that they were a part of the upper-class community in late eighteenth-century Boston and it was almost as if they did not have to flaunt it as some less well-off middle-class families may have had to. They had an elegant, properly decorated parlor, like they were supposed to, but

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they also had even more magnificent rooms to show off with. While touring the house in the twenty-first century the parlor was on display in the way it would have looked when no entertaining was occurring and the room was in an idle state. The factor alluding to the non-usage mode of the room is the wide open space that one encounters upon entering. The furniture is pushed against the walls and would be placed in the middle of the room prior to the guests’ arrival. This was quite normal in that, “Open space seemed to please the owners. The preferred furnishing pattern in genteel parlors up through the early years of the nineteenth century was to push furniture back against the walls, leaving the center of the room open.”113 According to the docent of the tour, the furniture would normally also be covered in order to preserve the wood and upholstery and avoid dust from accumulating. Upon further investigation the other characteristics making this the third most important room in the Otis house became palpable. Figure 29 and 30: (Left) When guests were not being entertained the parlor furniture would be pushed against the walls in order for the room to appear tidy. The fireplace mantelpiece (right) is similar to the one in the dining room and is kept in the light color scheme that is evident throughout the house, as well as on the walls and dado of the parlor.

Harrison Gray Otis House, Parlor, picture taken April 2010. Courtesy of Historic New England.

The central point of interest in this otherwise somewhat bland room was the mantelpiece. Similar to the dining room, this object that takes up a large part of one of the walls is the focal point of decoration. It is assumed that both mantelpieces, because of their distinct similarities, were manufactured by the

113

Bushman, The Refinement of America, 123.

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same craftsman; however, it is not for certain in that no records of their production exist.114 The other features of the room are again limited to the walls that enclose this space. “A wide board dado with ornamental fluting in the frieze of the dado cap and a plaster cornice elaborated with bead and real and egg and dart moldings added to the elegance of the room. There has been a suggestion that parts of the cornice may have been gilded originally.”115 The parlor does not have too many instances of pretension in that it was a room that allowed people to mingle amongst each other, permitting less attention to be paid to the interior design. The dining room and the drawing room were places that allowed guests to reflect on their surroundings while eating their meal or drinking their tea making it more important to adequately furnish and garnish these rooms. Like its higher-ranking contemporary, the dining room, the parlor had plain colored walls as it base and a border that outlined the room. This particular border was in the “Etruscan style”116 and is seen in slight variations along the ceiling, the doors, and the dado. The attention to detail is also carried over into the parlor and gives the room a sense of sophistication as the others received the same. The three rooms, then, are in line with the standards of upper-class interior design guidelines. They all exhibit the elegance that they require for the occasion that guests and visitors to the house will witness their insides. The Otises, together with Bulfinch, knew their position in society and sought to strengthen it through the interior build up and design of their home. In addition to paying close attention to the manner in which the “guest” rooms of the house appeared, they also implemented the service areas that they required in the right place and according to proper design etiquette. The Back Staircase The Otis household at #141 Cambridge Street could not have survived without the help of servants. They were an integral part of the Otis family’s life and they were necessary not only because of the constant entertaining that went on at the house, but also because of the large number of children that Harrison (often abbreviated to Harry) and Sally parented. Servants were also fundamental to upper-

114

Anne Grady, “Section V.E.d.,” in Harrison Gray Otis House, Historic Structure Report, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, ed. Richard Nylander (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1998), 155, Courtesy of Historic New England.

115

Anne Grady, “Section V.E.d.,” in Nylander, 155, Courtesy of Historic New Eng-

116

Nylander and Viera, Windows on the Past, 93.

land.

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class lifestyles and so were their quarters and their occupational areas in the house, which had to be integrated from the onset. In fact, “[…] domestic servants were regarded as part of the family[...]”117 and were sometimes treated as such by the Otises, who set up separate quarters for them in their home and made their service areas rather comfortable.118 The Otis family, and also Bulfinch, knew during the designing and building process that this would be a house requiring every type of servant area present in domestic architecture of the time. The Otis household actually needed more space than most upper-class homes in that they had two adult male’s attending their daily requests, a tally that only the most exclusive circles could boast of having. “If a staff of servants was a marker of social status in Federal Boston, a sampling of elite households with real estate values of $5000 or more in the period 1797-1801 reveals that the Otises were among the highest echelon of Boston society.”119 Their house, naturally, had to cater to this above average number of helping hands. A household such as that of the Otis family in their first house had live-in servants and those that came in on a daily basis. Otis seems to have been a rather lenient master and was trusted upon to help others find adequate serving hands. In a letter from his friend John Rutledge, who required Otis’s help in finding a runaway servant and a substitute for the fugitive he writes Otis, I give you an infinite deal of trouble my dear friend about all this unpleasant kind of business but I am encouraged to be so importunate by the abundant expense I have had of your considering it as a delightful thing in life to yield to the better feelings of the Heart, to cherish social affections and render kindly services.120

117

Michael McKeon, The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Divi-

118

Unfortunately, the relationships and emotional connections that the Otises had to

sion of Knowledge (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 181. their servants are not mentioned in the letters from Harrison Gray. Perhaps Sally mentioned them in her letters, seeing as she was in direct contact with her servants, more so than Harrison Gray was, but these letters no longer exist. Only the letter from John Rutledge to Harrison Gray, described in this chapter, allows one to speculate on the general stance that the Otises had towards their helping hands. 119

Linda Shoemaker, Women, Servants, and Domestic Life at the Otis House, 17971801 (Boston: The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 2002), 2, 35.

120

John Rutledge to Harrison Gray Otis, 17 July 1803, Harrison Gray Otis Papers, Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

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The words by Rutledge seem to describe Otis as being a kind master, even in the “unpleasant kind of business” of dealing with servants. His help is asked for with regard to finding a decent servant for his friend, perhaps also because he is trusted as an employer and treated with respect by his own servants. According to the records of their lives in the first house, they had at least four servants in total, two of which lived in the house and could be called on at all times. The information on the Otis servants varies, yet a few names overlap in the literature. Linda Shoemaker lists the following servants and their services in the Otis house between 1797 and 1801; Betsy (cook), Harlow (nursery maid), Abraham Francis (footman), and William Burges (coachman).121 Two of these names also appear in the Historic Structure Report on the house, which also remarks on their race; Abraham Francis (black) and William Burges (white) in addition to George Dove (black), William White (white), and Ned (black).122 Notably, the female servants are not mentioned in the latter report. These domestic aids provided help around the house but also came with a bit of work, an assignment that Sally was confronted with upon moving into the large estate. In a house the size of Otis’s, Sally could rely on help but was still left to take care of certain things herself, especially when her husband was not around. “Their tasks included hiring, training, and directing their servants, and supervising (and often joining in) their work. Even with full-time domestic servants, women like Sally Otis spent a considerable about [sic] of time engaged in routine domestic tasks and larger, seasonal household projects.”123 This was normal in all upper-class households, but the size of the house and their respective position in society still entailed the presence and employment of servants, even if some work still had to be taken into one’s own hands.

121

Shoemaker, Women, Servants, and Domestic Life at the Otis House, 29.

122

Anne Grady, “Section IV.A.2.,” in Harrison Gray Otis House, Historic Structure Report, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, ed. Richard Nylander (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1998), 22, Courtesy of Historic New England.

123

Shoemaker, Women, Servants, and Domestic Life at the Otis House, 29.

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Figure 31: The wallpaper in the back staircase area is an imitation of an embellished French paper that was probably replicated locally by Boston papermakers.

Harrison Gray Otis House, Back Staircase, picture taken April 2010. Courtesy of Historic New England.

The servants that the Otises housed and put to work had sections of the house that were intended for their daily routes through the rooms and as a place for them to occasionally linger. It was never a case in point to make the service areas particularly aesthetic in form, yet Otis put thought and money even into these spaces of his home. He was intent on forming his house above even upper-class standards, in the hope of setting trends that would get transcribed to the rest of his real estate holdings. Therefore, he did not stop at the back stairs but instead also gave this area a refined taste, slightly subdued, but still elegant considering that it would be an area that visitors would never get to see. The wallpaper that Otis chose for the back staircase and also one with which he plastered the walls of the kitchen were French in design, signifying a conscious and tasteful choice for these lesser areas. However, Otis did not spend the immense sum that these papers would have cost if imported from Europe, instead he purchased them locally and both papers appear to be Boston made replicas dating from circa 1795-1796.124 Along with the embellished wallpaper also came a rather sumptuous staircase and an overall finesse throughout the entire flight of stairs. 124

Nylander, Redmond, and Sander, Wallpaper in New England, 97-98.

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“[…][T]he staircase was trimmed with turned newel posts, a molded hand rail and cut out step ends; the door frames were given double architraves; and the walls fitted with a dado of wide boards with a molded cap.”125 Servants in the Otis house were evidently exposed to superior design of the day, even if it was just authentic on the surface. The interiors of the Otis house, whether formal or informal, were upper class and exclusive in every respect. The rooms that were to be judged by the high society were ornamented proportionately to their importance in the house and provided a guest of the Otis family with the proper message of his or her host’s standing. The service areas were conspicuous enough to ensure awareness of their presence, and concealed enough to keep the reality of domestic work hidden from public view. The interiors, like the exterior of the house, were a decisive statement by the Otis family confirming and celebrating their growing status and popularity in late eighteenth-century Boston. The Interiors of the William Hickling Prescott House Studying the interiors of the Prescott house in the twenty-first century is a rather difficult task. There have been numerous renovations, meaning that the general floor plans have been altered and spatial arrangements are different from how they would have been if James Smith Colburn or William Hickling Prescott would have lived there. Also, the furnishings are Prescott’s mainly and Colburn’s interior furnishings have been removed entirely. The bigger problem in attempting to reconstruct the original interiors is that no records exist which portray the original floor plan and arrangements of rooms, furnishings, and other objects. The research materials that come closest to accessing the interiors retroactively pertain to Prescott only. However, some of the renovations have been documented and it is possible to retrace the alterations that were made and get an idea of the earliest decoration schemes in the house. As far as Colburn’s interiors go, the only source left to work with are his memoirs, which occasionally mention the inside of his house on Beacon Street. The house on Beacon Street also had an emotional background that influenced Colburn’s personal attachment and dedicated his writing on the house. In October 1808, after construction was finished and he had moved into

125

Anne Grady, “Section V.E.6.H.,” in Harrison Gray Otis House, Historic Structure Report, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, ed. Richard Nylander (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1998), 180, Courtesy of Historic New England.

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the house, he married again. His bride was the very young Sarah Dunn Prince and on the same day as their exchange of vows, she moved into the Beacon Street home:126 We went immediately home to my new house in Beacon Street, which I had furnished with new and elegant furniture, where I continued to reside as long as I lived in Boston. The house was well calculated for company and dinner parties and gave several splendid balls there. We lived in a great deal of fashionable style, as I could well afford it, for I was then worth over a half a million dollars. I kept the handsomest carriage and the most beautiful pair of dapple gray horses ever seen in Boston, with a coachman named Miller, well known, with a foot man, all in livery, and two leopard dogs, one before and the other behind, that always followed the carriage. It was the most splendid turnout that was ever seen in Boston in those days.127

Colburn was by no means modest and this must have been reflected in both the interior of his house as well as with the outdoor luxuries that he flaunted around town. Fireplace Mantelpieces The only remnants from Colburn’s time in the house are two fireplaces that are still in their original composition.128 They have been cleaned and generally wellkept and they remain in the house the way they initially were. The Colonial Dames, who have been the rightful owners of the house since 1944, conducted a study of the twin house, #54 Beacon Street, which has not been altered all that much, together with Charles Strickland who specializes in historical homes. The investigation of #54 makes it possible to recreate some of the rooms as they would have been before the renovations took place. The only room in #55 that remains almost entirely intact is the third floor bedroom, which has one of the original fireplaces.

126

Colburn, The Personal Memoirs of James Smith Colburn 1780-1859, 67, Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.

127

Ibid., 67-68.

128

Anonymous, “Some Architectural Notes on #55 Beacon Street,” p. 4, William Hickling Prescott House Papers, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

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Figure 32 and 33: The only original pieces of the house are the fireplace mantels in the second and third floor. They appear almost identical and were strategically placed, for the benefit of all, in the entertaining area of the second floor and the family space on the third floor.

William Hickling Prescott House, Drawing Room Fireplace and Bedroom Fireplace, pictures taken May 2011, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

The Third Floor Bedroom The most beautiful aspect of this room, then and now, is the amazing view of Boston Common from an elevated position that allows one to see all the activities going on in the grassy pastures and on Beacon Street. These rooms are now known as the Federal parlor and the small bedroom that is located directly next to it. Unfortunately, the only accessible room is the small bedroom, which used to be connected by a door to the Federal parlor, but this passage between the two has been removed.129 This is the only piece of information that remains of these spaces. It is unclear who slept in the small bedroom when the Colburns lived there, but it was apparently one of the more desirable areas of the house because it was one of the warmest due to the fireplace. Colburn does not mention this room in his memoirs, nor does he mention who the occupant was during his time there. In the paper written by the Dames about Prescott’s time in the house the bedroom is not mentioned, perhaps because it was not redecorated, also what the room was used for or who resided in it during this later period is not mentioned either. This room may not seem like an important aspect of upper-class domestic architecture, but it may have served as a domestic space that supported family 129

Anonymous, “Some Architectural Notes on #55 Beacon Street,” 4, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

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cohesiveness. The room was very cozy, especially in the winter because of the fireplace, and it was directly connected to a parlor, which was often used in homes for family activities. Large areas of the house had already been devoted to entertaining rooms and Colburn could obviously afford to add yet another level that would be exclusively for the members of the house. The fact that it was located rather high up from street level allowed the Colburns to keep an eye on society and leisurely actions and for society to look up to them. The Front Room/Lower Level Library Today, the front room in #55 is an oval shaped room, which encompasses the bowed out window and the bow front, which can be seen from the exterior. This same room in #54 does not have the same shape internally, but instead has a bowed wall in place across from the window, showing the symmetry that could very well be an aspect of Asher Benjmamin’s design. The rest of the rooms in both #54 and #55 that are within the bow front, including this front room in #54 do not match the oval that the front room in #55 has and backs the notion that the room was drastically altered at some point. It is with certainty that the front room at #55 was also this shape and was adjusted into an oval room at a later point in time.130 In his memoirs, Colburn calls this front room, which was his dining area, as being circular, but Strickland conceives this as being a more general term used for ovals and curves as they were just coming into style.131 It is unclear whether the remodeling of the front room can be attributed to Prescott or not in that, he had a separate library installed and a study with specifications that allowed him to work on his writings even with his detrimental blindness. Similar to the Bulfinch design for the first Otis house, the circular room that was located in the front and on an eye-to-eye level with the street was the Colburn’s dining room. The entertaining and having of guests was meant to be seen and the location of Colburn’s plot gave him ample opportunities to show off his parties. Anyone walking in the Common would notice if the Colburns had company and perhaps even who was invited into their lives. Like Otis, Colburn used this as a billboard room to display to all of Boston which part of society he was dining with and therefore also belonged to.

130

Anonymous, “Some Architectural Notes on #55 Beacon Street,” 2, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

131

Anonymous, “Some Architectural Notes on #55 Beacon Street,” 2, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

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The Ballroom Colburn alludes to having balls at his Beacon Street home, yet the modern layout of the second floor does not provide enough space in one single room for this to have been the case. It is not quite definite which room was the ballroom or rather were its borders were, the only fact remaining is that Prescott turned this apparent gathering space into his library. Strickland, in the report he helped compose for the Dames, mentions only that the ballroom was one large room on the second floor.132 Today, there are three large rooms that comprise the layout of this floor and it cannot be said if one of these areas was restricted as the ballroom or if the entire floor served as a dancing area. The Dames now have the room set up as a dining room, perhaps because the Prescott’s later used it as both a library and an additional family sitting room.133 The second floor exemplifies the difficulty in restructuring a home that is over 200 years old, has had various owners, and has been altered numerous times. Yet, it is also necessary because, unlike the Otis house, which was put back in its original state for the purpose of historic preservation, and unlike the Gibson house, which was intended as a Museum by one of its owners thus prohibiting alterations to be made, the Prescott house shows the normal life cycle of domestic architecture. The majority of homes in Boston proper underwent similar processes and were constantly in transition. The Prescott house, which in the time period that is under analysis was always an upper-class residence, is a documentation of changing styles in interior design. The merchant Colburn had to have a dining room out front to put his wealth and success on display. Prescott, as a historian and as a writer, was more concerned with implementing storage spaces for his books and areas to conduct his research. They were both upper class and they both chose to build or occupy a house that fit their standing, however, they were different personalities growing up in different times. The Colburn interior supplied an upper-class merchant from the early nineteenth century with a place to entertain, the Prescott interior provided an upper-class intellectual from the mid-nineteenth century with a place to study and write.

132

Anonymous, “Some Architectural Notes on #55 Beacon Street,” 2, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

133

Anonymous, “William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859),” 31, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

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The Staircase The backbone of interior space in multi-level homes is the main staircase. This may not seem important to the study of upper-class domestic architecture, but it is vital because it is the aspect of #55 Beacon Street, which has been altered most significantly. The manner in which it was modified is prototypical of the change in styles that old house interiors experienced. The staircase was originally a spiral staircase that has been replaced by a style known as the Colonial Revival. Figure 34: The Colonial Revival staircase is not the original that Colburn had positioned in the house, but instead replaced the original spiral staircase in 1872.

William Hickling Prescott House, Staircase, picture taken May 2011, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

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This new link between floors was done by John Hubbard Sturgis in 1872, just as the style was slowly emerging.134 In addition to a new staircase as a means of reaching the upper floors, an elevator was installed in 1916, deteriorating the historic interior.135 The staircase is the last remodeling, besides the elevator, which changed the interior of the Prescott house. Although the Dames may use some rooms for different purposes than their prior tenants did, there has not been a change in interior architecture as imposing as the staircase. The interiors have gone through an array of styles and trends that constantly had to be updated in order to remain in sync with upper-class design fashions. These were both functional, such as the new rendering of the dining room into a library or the installation of a separate library, or as a vain testament, as in the staircase that had to be Colonial Revival to stay prevalent. In any case, each owner had his own ideal interior and used this house as their design playground. Regardless of which owner lived in whichever interior, the house at #55 Beacon Street was always an exciting place to live and visit. Colburn speaks of the great parties and festivities that he organized at his house after he was married to Sarah and how grand their life there was. Restraint was not one of the character traits that Colburn expressed in his memoirs and life in #55 during Colburn’s days was certainly not unpretentious either. The house was also a sprightly place during Prescott’s era and many important guests were entertained in these walls. Literary as well as political figures roamed the rooms of #55 and in 1842 Charles Dickens stopped by, the presidents of Harvard were regular guests, and apparently two Presidents of the United States were among the prominent guest list of the house.136 William Ticknor says of the Prescott house that it was the place to be in mid-nineteenth-century Boston, because of its popularity among important upper-class members, but also because Prescott was rather lenient when it came to the guidelines of having company and would let

134

Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architecture, vol.4 (New York: The Free Press, 1982), s.v. “John Hubbard Sturgis.”

135

Anonymous, “Some Architectural Notes on #55 Beacon Street,” 4, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

136

Anonymous, “William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859),” 21, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

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friends through his doors whether they were invited or not.137 The Beacon Street house served its purpose of upper-class living and entertaining in both gentlemen’s lives, even though its interiors were often modified. The Interiors of the Gibson House The Gibson house is perhaps one of the better homes to work with, with regard to the authenticity of the interiors to this day. The floor plans have been kept the same, there were no alterations made in the general set up of the house as was the case in the Colburn/Prescott house, and the rooms are furnished with original pieces that belonged to the family. Nonetheless, it is important to keep in mind that although these spaces have been said to be kept in their original way, the furniture has most likely been moved around within the house. Some pieces have been identified as period pieces, but they may have been placed in an entirely different part of the house than they are in now. It is impossible to keep the house the way it was over a more than 150-year time span, and although the Gibson house is the most original, it must be realized that the true state of the interiors can never fully be attained. One aspect of the interiors that can be confirmed is that they were and are completely Victorian in essence and design. One factor that is missing from the tenor of the interior is a religious tone, which was very widespread in the Victorian era and especially in the 1880s.138 The Gibson’s, however, do not have a large amount of religious paraphernalia in the house. Although the outside of the house had Second Empire and other aspects this, “[…] did not survive the decade of the 1860s in which it had reached its zenith […and it] could not for long check the Victorian infatuation with the picturesque.”139 The picturesque was to be found throughout the Gibson interior and creates a very arresting ambience. Prior to looking at the Gibson house, another interior description can be consulted in order to get an overview of the inspirations of the interior design and also the origins of some of the objects. Rosamond Warren married Charles Hammond Gibson and moved from her parent’s home, #2 Park Street, into the house at #137 Beacon Street. She must have adored the first house more than

137

Anonymous, “William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859),” 24, Courtesy of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

138

McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900, 42.

139

Shand-Tucci, Built in Boston, 44.

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that of the Gibsons in that she gives a very detailed description of its interiors in her Recollections: No. 2 Park Street proved a delightful house. One entered a large hall, with a fine winding staircase at the rear. A large room on the left was used as my father’s office, and an alcove on the right made a waiting-room for the patients. Above, in front, were two large rooms, the drawing-room and dining-room, connected by mahogany folding doors; at the back, on the right of the stairs was the large oval library, running out towards the Granary Burying Ground[…]. [In the Library,] Crimson satin curtains decorated the windows, while an oldfashioned mahogany desk, long tables, and comfortable chairs constituted the remaining furniture. The large bedrooms upstairs allowed plenty of room for the family[…].140

The house on Park Street was filled with objects and heirlooms that Rosamond took with her when she went to the Back Bay and they became part of the inventory in the new house. Much to the dismay of Rosamond her mother later sold the house and also moved to the Back Bay. It was rented to numerous tenants and at some point after 1876 the house was destroyed and the property sold.141 The Gibson house was influenced by these furnishings and interior objects that slowly made their way over to the Beacon Street house and can still be found there. An example is a painting that made its way from Beacon Hill to the Back Bay during the Great Fire in 1872.

140

Gibson, Recollections of My Life For My Children, 7, Courtesy of the Gibson

141

Ibid., 25.

House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

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Figure 35: This photograph of the interior of #2 Park Street in Boston, Massachusetts, was taken sometime in the early 1870s and contains the painting (upper left corner) that was saved during the Great Fire of 1872 and taken to #137 Beacon Street.

Anonymous, “No. 2 Park Street,”ca. 1870s, Gibson House Museum, Boston, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

In the upper left-hand corner of this photograph of an interior at #2 Park Street is the painting of Cleopatra Dissolving the Pearl, by Guido Reni, which was a family heirloom and was an important object to the Warren family.142 Fearing that the fire would also reach their house, Rosamond rushed to pick up some silver and this painting and brought it to safety at #137 Beacon Street: When it looked as if the fire would spread as far as our house, he sent for me to come and remove the silver from a secret cupboard which he could not find. Many of the horses at that time were ill with epizoötic, but Lawrence Curtis secured a Kenny & Clark hack and called in the middle of the night to take me up there. Charlie also said we could take his horse, which was harnessed to an express cart. On arriving, I found the silver, most of which consisted of my own wedding presents, in a large wooden and silver chest. This with other precious things, too large for the hack, was put in the cart, after having placed on top the picture of Cleopatra Dissolving the Pearl, by Guido Reni, a family heirloom 142

Gibson, Recollections of My Life For My Children, 22, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

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from my Grandfather Crowninshield. Having secured all we could and the cart having been sent off, we started for home in the hack. Imagine my horror, on reaching the State House, to find Cleopatra lying in the road with the chest on top of her! It seemed that someone had run into the cart and upset it, and the horse, breaking away, had run back to the stable. Kind friends, however, came to the rescue, picked up the treasures, righted the cart, and dragged it to No. 137. There, to my despair, we found that the corner of the chest had gone through Cleopatra’s hand, and I trembled to think what my mother would say. Fortunately, we had it beautifully restored, but as the fire never reached Park Street after all, the picture would have been much safer where it was.143

There are ostensibly numerous other objects that made their way across the Common from one house to the other however, this usually occurred in less critical circumstances. The Otis house exhibited a hierarchy of rooms, which was followed in recounting its interiors. The Gibson house also had several spaces that had a larger meaning in the Gibson’s societal obligations, but there is no direct ranking that will be followed. Instead, this house will be analyzed from the bottom up, commencing with the entrance area and the front hall, an important welcoming and initiation area in the nineteenth-century upper class, the dining room, also located in direct connection to the front hall, and the library, a space on the second floor that was both public and private. Fortunately, while Charles, Jr., was preparing his written recollections and inventories of the rooms at #137 Beacon Street, he managed to compile one paper concerning the library. Aside from this and the music room, he did not succeed to finish descriptions of the other rooms and a full recounting of them from his eyes is therefore not available. The inventories and arrangements that The Gibson Society, the official proprietors of the museum, have installed in the other two areas, the front hall and the dining room, are the most authentic in the entire house. The Front Hall As mentioned in the Gibson house’s domestic architecture, the entry was a central entry from the outside that enticed guests into the home before they were physically inside. The front door was pulled back into the arch and covered additionally with the roofed window above it and was almost like an outdoor vestibule to the house. Once inside the front hall, a rather dark interior either welcomed or dismissed the guest that was currently entering. If large festive

143

Gibson, Recollections of My Life For My Children, 22-23, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

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events took place at the Gibson home, a line would form in this area, guests could be welcomed one by one, and servants could line up as valets to relieve the guests of their personal belongings.144 The most imposing part of the front hall was the large staircase on the left-hand side when entering the house. This main staircase was made of black walnut, which, “[…] was both stylish and fitting for a contemporary Boston row house before and immediately after the Civil War, and even as late as the early 1870s.”145 The theme of dark colors in Victorian interiors is especially pronounced through the use of this type of wood and encompasses most of the woodwork, including paneling, throughout the Gibson house. Another staircase can be found when walking past the main staircase and in the direction of the dining room, on the right-hand side. This was the rear staircase, or servant stairs, that connected the basement with the first and second floor and continues all the way up the rest of the house, into the fifth floor. The main staircase only reaches the second floor, the furthest elevation that any guest would be invited into.

144

Seiberling, A Study Report of Gibson House Museum, Book 3, p. 25, Courtesy of

145

Ibid., Book 3, p. 23.

the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

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Figure 36 and 37: (Left) The front hall of the Gibson house and the main staircase give an indication of the dimness and enormity of the entrance that guests would have experienced when paying a visit. The detail of the Japanese Leather wallpaper (right) shows the decadent shimmer that covered the walls throughout the entrance space and the second floor, essentially all the spaces that were scrutinized by guests.

The Gibson House, Front Hall, pictures taken April 2010, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

The wallpaper in the main stair and entrance area is another luxurious feature that gained prominence in the nineteenth century. The paper is Japanese Leather Paper, which was usually very extravagant and, “In this version, butterflies replace the dragons, and the more rounded and flowing curves of the scrolls give a less art nouveau feeling to the design.”146 The wallpaper was believed to have been hung in the late 1880s, the original paper that the Gibson’s used for this area is not known, but the Japanese design was perfectly in line with late Victorian design trends.147 The combination of the gilded animations and the dark backdrop add to the gloominess of the entrance interior while at the same time expressing elegance and fortune through the use of color. The wallpaper continues throughout the entrance and front hall, up the main staircase, and in the hall on the second floor. It envelopes the entire area that guests would see except for the dining room, which had another spectacle on the wall for its

146

Nylander, Redmond, and Sander, Wallpaper in New England, 245.

147

Seiberling, A Study Report of Gibson House Museum, Book 3, p. 27, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

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guests. Before moving on to the dining area though, the objects of the front hall should be taken into consideration because they confirmed the Gibson’s standing in society and the daily routine of social life that nineteenth century upper-class families led. Card receiving was the manner in which one could subtly decide who would be able to enter the house, be invited to future events, and generally, to establish an upper class with proper members one household at a time. The Gibsons had two objects in the hall that were used for the card receiving ritual. One of these was listed as a “Blackamoor” statue that was holding a tray for card receiving and the second was just a tray by itself. Figure 38: The Gibson house has two types of card receivers in the front hall, which were probably not used simultaneously, but instead placed on display by the vivacious collector Charles, Jr., or by the current museum proprietors. Either way, at least one card receiver was certainly always present in the front hall when the Gibson’s lived here.

Gibson House, Front Hall Card Receiver, picture taken June 2011, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

The card receiving statue is listed in the most recent inventory taken as an original family piece, it does not state when it was aquired and what year it was produced. The tray, which is not clearly stated which tray of the three it is, is also listed as a family piece and the year of production shown as 1896.148 The tray, consequently, must have been aquired after the family had already lived in 148

The Gibson Society, Inventory of the Front Hall, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

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the house for quite a while. The ritual of card receiving was a distinct part of the Gibson’s family traditions and it was evidently passed along through the generations. The front hall was the first interior space that anyone had to pass through; the family, guests, and even servants. If one continued straight down the central corridor of the front hall they would reach the next space intended to be shownoff, the dining room. This is one of the main entertaining areas in the Gibson house, in that they excluded a room that used to be central to upper-class homes; the parlor. Due to the central entry of the house which was quite narrow, the Gibson house did not have enough room to place a parlor in the front of the house, but instead had to work their rooms into the back. This pattern of spatial management continues onto each subsequent floor in that one room is located in the front and one in the back and these are connected by a narrow hallway. The first floor had to be designed differently because the front door and entrance took up the space in the front and thus, only one main room exists on the first floor, being the dining room. The Dining Room The dining room continues the dark color scheme that the front hall started and is only briefly interrupted by a window directly in the center of the back wall. It is said to be the most unaltered space in the house and gives the visitor of today a good indication of how the Gibsons dined, either by themselves or with guests: Both in function and in décor, the Dining Room is typical for the original period of the house and has probably changed very little. The placement of the room immediately above the Kitchen is not by chance but for pracitcal reasons as food could easily be transported via dumbwaiter. As plans of this kind didn’t allow for breakfast rooms, it is important to note that this room was the location for all family meals, although children may have had meals in the nursery by tray. At formal dinners, guests were greeted in the Entry Hall and often led immediately into the Dining Room, thus its prominent location on the First Floor.149

The use of the black walnut extends into this room as well and the other furnishings are of a similar color and make. In the inventory that was taken shortly after Charles, Jr.’s death, the list of furniture in the dining room includes five pieces that were made of black walnut and five pieces that were made of

149

Seiberling, A Study Report of Gibson House Museum, Book 3, p. 27, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

296 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

mahogany, another type of wood exhibiting that the Gibsons could afford the finer things in life.150 Figure 39: The dining room continued the Victorian revelry of darkness in that the dining table is surrounded by dark furniture.

The Gibson House Museum, “Dining Room East,” Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

The photo shown above may not show a very spectacular room to have guests in and serving extravagant meals, but this room has dramatically suffered from the wear and tear of time. The case in point here are the walls, which look like they are a gray-olive tone, rather unsuitable to a dining area. However, the walls were originally a gold burlap pattern which has been tarnished over the course of the last few years.151 During the Gibson era in the house, these walls must have glistened and given the guest a magnificent, luxurious feel and every event that took place here was probably directed into this ornamental space.

150

Harold M. Hill (Appraiser), Inventory and Appraisal of House Furnishings and Personal Property, Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., 137 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts, December 1954, 4, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

151

Seiberling, A Study Report of Gibson House Museum, Book 1, p. 10, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

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One such occasion is mentioned in Rosamond Warren’s personal Recollections in which she comments on her marriage to Charles Hammond Gibson and the celebration that was given at #137 Beacon Street. The room that was specifically decorated was the Drawing Room, however, it is very likely that the Dining Room was used to serve food during the celebrations. “I was married the following winter. The ceremony took place on December 12th in our drawing-room, with white ribbons drawn across to include the wedding party.”152 Rosamond mentions a few other instances in which parties were held at the Gibson house, however, most of her attention in her Recollections is paid to the house that she inhabited previously, #2 Park Street. The Gibson house never lacked entertainment and they always had guests at their city house. These guests were sometimes also invited into one of the more reserved rooms that particularly appealed to Charles, Jr., in which, as the drawing room was the after-party room for the women, so the library was for the men. The Library The Library was one of the rooms that Charles, Jr., was able to complete his inventory paper on. It was written in 1938 and he speaks of himself in the third person throughout the paper. The interesting aspect about the library paper is that Charles, Jr., was an aspiring writer who thought of his own work a little more highly than the rest of Boston and his works were never openly published. The majority of the text thus consists of the books that stem from his hand and where they were and should be located on the bookshelves. According to the tour guides of the Gibson House Museum, in a rather performative gesture, it was important for him to leave books written by himself openly and demonstratively on the reading tables in order for visitors to notice his works and perhaps pick up a copy. Considering that his works were never published it seems as though his books remained in their place. The beginning of the Library paper markedly describes the way the Library looked and also how he expected it to be kept once the house became a museum. The entire Library was apparently kept in a blue color in which the upholestry on the chairs were a blue gold pattern and the wallpaper a dark blue velvet pressed pattern.153 In a footnote he goes on to give the future curator of his house musem specific instructions on making sure that the Library remain blue even if furniture needs to be updated.

152

Gibson, Recollections of My Life For My Children, 22, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

153

Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., The Library at Gibson House, 137 Beacon Street, 1938, 1, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

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“If this paper is ever replaced it should be hung with a blue damask paper, as it was in 1859, to harmonize with the blue furniture which is still there. And the sofa and chairs should all be covered in blue.”154 Figure 40: This photograph of the library was taken in 1954, after Charles, Jr.’s death, and shows the space as it was left by the last resident of the house. The room is also rather dark and the furniture is kept in blue tones, as he had demanded in his paper.

The Gibson House Museum, “Library,” 1954, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

Apparently, the red sofa that stood in the Library shortly after Charles, Jr. passed away and which still stands there today does not seem to be quite according to the demands in his paper, but must have been an exception that gained his approval. Other features of the Library include the large window that can be seen from the front of the house and which, when opened, allows light to enter the otherwise also very dark room. The library is connected by a hallway to the Music Room and it was these two rooms that the Gibsons would withdraw to after a dinner party. The Music Room, or also Drawing Room, was the female sphere of the house, and the Library was the male sphere of after dinner

154

Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., The Library at Gibson House, 137 Beacon Street, 1938, 1n1, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

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entertainment. In an interview with Lester Beck who knew Charles, Jr. well, he describes his mentioning having people over and how the house looked and felt. “Once Mr. Gibson wrote me [a letter] in which he said ‘[…] I had friends over – I had friends in. The house was ablaze with light. It was just like old times.’”155 It seems as though there was more entertaining going on in the nineteenth century, when the older generation of Gibsons was still healthy and vivacious. Charles, Jr. enjoyed these gatherings, but in his own time he did not seem to have many aquantinces to invite to the house. Overall, the Gibson house experienced a time of great festivities and a down time that came with the dawning of the twentieth century. One of the reasons for this decline was the strict rules set up by Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr., who wanted to keep the house as unaltered as possible, causing a strain on some of his family members that still lived in the house. He was very adiment about his idea of opening a Victorian house museum and things had to be exactly the way they were. In the interview Mr. Beck makes this clear by reiterating that, “The house was his passion. His whole life was in this house.”156 The attempt was honorable and from a twenty-first century perspective it seems as though he has succeeded. The house allows one a detailed observance of the manner in which upper-class Back Bay residents decorated their homes and also lived their lives. The dining room and the Library, the two rooms that have been changed the least, really give an accurate indication of what he was trying to achieve. Based on the Library alone, the description in his paper fits the contemporary interior quite well and brings Victorian life back to twenty-first century Boston. The house was a one of a kind undertaking and full of premieres. It was one of the first houses to open the new upper-class neighborhood, the Back Bay, it was part of the beginning of the Victorian phase of domestic architecture, it was among the first of three houses built by Edward Clarke Cabot as a solitary commissioned architect, and it sprouted the idea of opening a Victorian house museum, which also became a first in nineteenth-century Boston. Interiors are the soul of the house, which are planned, decorated, and redesigned by each of their successive owners. Each owner of a house breathes new life into it when decorating the interior according to his or her taste. Elite Bostonians were intent on giving each of their homes an upper-class soul that would be respected and admired. In accordance with the exterior elevations, the interiors

155

Lester Beck, interview by Eileen Sharpe, October 29, 1988, Courtesy of the Gibson

156

Beck, interview, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

House Museum/Gibson Society Inc.

300 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

were designed and ornamented in the trends of the day. The Otises implemented a hierarchy of luxury that, although the grandeur of the room décor decreased with the lowering of importance given a room, they stopped at no expense to embellish even the most secluded areas of their house. Colburn had the house built and assimilated his interiors accordingly, whereas Prescott makes it visible that the soul of the house can change when a new owner from a different era takes over. The Gibsons obeyed Victorian life through and through in their interiors and it became not only a symbol of upper-class trendsetting in the Back Bay, but also transcribed itself into the soul not only of the house but also its last true owner. Domestic interiors were the transitory aspect of domestic architecture that could be changed and updated numerous times within a house’s life span. This also made interior design vulnerable to emulation by the middle class and upper-class families had to ensure that the right people were entertained in their halls so as to avoid the magnificence of their design from spreading to the wrong classes.

Conclusion

The houses on the American domestic architectural landscape must be perceived in two ways. On the one hand, the owners, the architect, and the guests that came to visit were responsible for shaping the house and giving it form and life. The outside and inside of the house came to be through these different personas and their influence on society and current trends. On the other hand, the house was responsible for shaping those who lived there and future generations of inhabitants. The house could be held responsible for elevating families into higher ranks of the social order and making sure that the family was not only comfortable in their environment, but also comfortably situated in the greater societal environ. In this sense, the American home is a fundamental part of people’s lives and various people are also a part of a house’s life, which in the majority of cases outlives each of its successive owners. The built structures of homes and their ornamentation on the inside and outside are objects that persevere throughout history, making them an ideal medium with which to observe social, cultural, and political changes and the effects that these had from an urban and also national perspective. Domestic architecture and interiors became a part of urban as well as national history. It commenced in more centralized and condensed spaces, in this case the urban center of Boston, and evolved into a national style of building. The late eighteenth and nineteenth century city of Boston was the ideal focal point in that revolutionary thought began here and was always looked to with regard to the progress within society, culture, and politics, which also extended to the field of architecture. The domestic architecture in Boston, seen through the three case studies presented, was socially established through the neighborhood, the architect, and the style of architecture, which catered to the owner who was building this abode for him and his family and their respective place in the social order. Culturally, Bostonian homeowners and architects looked to the trends around the world, but more substantially to those in Europe, in order to elevate the cultural

302 | ORNAMENTING THE “COLD R OAST ”

stronghold that Boston maintained and put a large emphasis on. Politically, the domestic architecture reflected contemporary situations as they arose and built their cities and their homes in a manner that directly expressed a reaction to the on goings at each respective time. These phenomena that occurred in Boston were also significant and influential to the national architectural and political landscape. The American Revolution brought about a new nation that wanted to excel and be exceptional in all respects. The domestic architecture that developed as a result and that grew with the nation became a miniature statement of the true sentiment that Americans felt and which they had the freedom of declaring. In a national sense, this declaration of Americanness through domestic architecture was also threefold. Socially, the considerations of a classless society were refuted in that there was a clear demarcation between the domestic architecture and interior ornamentation of the upper class and that of the middle and lower classes, even after numerous emulation attempts. Culturally, the common man principle was also refuted in that often times there was nothing common about the style of domestic architecture that the upper class opted to implement for their home construction. Instead, they chose European principles on which they based their influences and created their national domestic landscape. Politically, although secession from England may have been settled on paper, the economic and cultural reliance did not cease. Even during the times and long after the Revolution the commodity dependence on England continued and shaped American society as a whole. A consumer culture developed throughout the nineteenth century and beyond that was heavily reliant on the British goods that made their way over the Atlantic even during times of war and boycotts.1 These decorative dependences during a time of declared political independence can be seen in historical domestic architecture and the interiors that adorned the founding fathers of a liberated nation. The upper-class domestic architecture and interior design is the epitome of national design because it was created and then copied. Every class compares itself to the next highest social class and attempts to copy their styles and manners. Seeing as this process only occurs in one direction, namely upwards, it can be demarcated that this emulation, throughout all classes, is constantly and reputedly an imitation of the upper class, because they are situated at the top.2 American domestic architecture and design can thus be traced back not to the common man, but instead to the elite upper class. Domestic architecture and 1

See the case study of James Smith Colburn, an American merchant who made his fortune importing British goods during the turbulent War of 1812.

2

See Veblen, The theory of the leisure class, 42.

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interior décor resulted from a conglomerate of instances in which international culture and politics played a significant role. The architecture of the colonies and the United States was created by the influences from abroad and spread throughout the nation during its time of expansion through middle-class imitation, mass production, and the processes of commercialization and industrialization. A truly American architectural culture is thus none other than an upper-class culture. They created the basis for the architecture that was spread to vast areas of the new nation that were slowly beginning to surface and left their fingerprint through the middle class. Although it was always seen as a threat, their culture was ultimately the national culture because of their influence on the trends within domestic architecture and the spreading of it through their emulators. The architects, homeowners, and trends within architecture and interiors were all the requirements that were necessary for belonging to this nation-building style. The theme of politics and controversies were small obstacles that stood in the way of the decisions that the elite made concerning their home structures. Although politics may have influenced ideologies, the influence on the reigning class and their domestic spaces remained so that they were not restricted to allies, but could choose the styles that masked the nation even if it meant borrowing from controversial sources. Those who had the power were therefore also those who had the possibility and legitimacy of having a Georgian, Victorian, or Federal Style house. The style of homes and their interiors should not be reduced to class-based objects that were entirely dependent on upper-class tastes of refinement. The middle and lower class certainly also left their mark, especially on urban architecture. Often times their domestic lives and their households have gained them a victimized position in cultural history and it was their poorly constructed, cramped abodes and tenements that granted them more attention among historians. However, when speaking of a national architecture it is without a doubt possible to term this an upper-class undertaking. The ideas and trends were developed for them and by them and merely copied at a later point by the middle class and never achieved by the lower class. When looking into the domestic architecture of the upper class it is thus also inevitable to parallel the discussion with that of the national American architecture of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The definition of the main term here, domestic architecture, can be reduced to the built structures that were defined by the upper class and the influences that made them build their homes the way they did, and how this has spread into a national art through the process of emulation. The advocates of these trends, which also spread to the scene of interior design, were the elites, whether with

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regard to the homeowners or the architects and designers. Otis, Colburn, Prescott, Gibson, Bulfinch, Benjamin, and Cabot had a high standing in society and in each of their respective professions and could therefore reliably be given the task of nation building. No one of lesser stature would be given the great responsibility of erecting these houses and determining the style guidelines behind the American dream. As leaders and elites that were also in charge of political decisions that changed the face of the nation so, too, were they able to reconfigure a nation according to the domestic landscape that it portrayed. The homes in the United States that are seen as those expressing republican ideals vary across the Continent. Even in Boston, the three homes differed greatly in their general structure and their style, not only because of their being constructed during different time periods. This variation must be taken into consideration and seen as a constant progression within the upper class, which had political underpinnings guiding it. Politics, culture, and social life were the central forces behind the domestic architecture and design that spread throughout the United States in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These ambiguous aspects of everyday life led to the fact that styles did not evolve equally or in the same manner in each household, but overall the development of this specific art can be followed through the political events that took place in the colonies and the United States and through the tastes that defined the upper class. A central part of the American dream and of family life, which was highly rated in the growing nation, was the household that was home to all of the members of the unit and housed and shaped the virtuous citizens of tomorrow. This domain had to follow the rules of the republic and stand as an example for those who looked in from the outside. Domestic architecture and interior design then is at the heart of the nation. It defines and is defined by current affairs and nurtures and forms citizens according to a contemporary political plan. In addition, the houses lining American streets that have managed to survive the test of time and act as relics for historians from different disciplines, delivering information about the time in which they were built, the people that they provided luxurious shelter to, and the style that important elite Americans saw necessary and exemplary of their worth. The upper class declared the path that architecture had to go down and subtly implemented their taste among even the remotest areas of the new nation. The use of domestic architecture as an instrument in recreating and reevaluating history from an upper-class point of view is a new method of combining architectural and social history to interpret nationhood. In the American architectural sphere the influence that was felt in the eastern colonies and the urban center of Boston were used as influences and also as opposing forces as westward

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expansion progressed. As time also advanced, new styles came into fashion and architecture and design are a constant that express the new dynamic of each generation. This tool of using architecture as a historical text is not restricted to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but has been an important part of past generations and nations throughout the world. The Greek and Roman architectural styles, which also left a mark on the American scene, portray the impact that architecture can have on a political dimension within a country. Their architecture became the epitome of a democracy and served as the symbolic of their state. The same holds true for the architecture and designs that were analyzed in eighteenth and nineteenth century upper-class Boston. The context of this particular architecture was social, cultural, and political and although it was influenced by and imitated European styles, amongst others, it was and still is an American connotation.



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Rohe, William M., Quercia, Robert G., and Shannon van Zandt, “The Social-Psychological Effects of Affordable Homeownership.” In Rohe and Watson, 215-232. -- Vale, Lawrence J. “The Ideological Origins of Affordable Homeownership Efforts.” In Rohe and Watson, 15-40. Rudé, George. Hanoverian London, 1714-1808. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. Rudé, G. Hanoverian London 1714-1808 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971): 144. Quoted in Leonore Davidoff, The Best Circles: Society, Etiquette and the Season. London: Croom Helm Ltd., 1973. Salinger, Sharon V. Taverns and Drinking in Early America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell. Boston’s Back Bay in the Victorian Era. Portsmouth, NH: Arcadia Publishing, 2003. Sarson, Steven. British America, 1500-1800: Creating Colonies, Imagining an Empire. London: Hodder Arnold, 2005. Scacchi, Anna. “American Interiors: Redesigning the Home in Turn of the Century New York.” In Public Space, Private Lives: Race, Gender, Class, and Citizenship in New York, 1890-1929, edited by William Boelhower and Anna Scacchi, 15-38.Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2004. Schafter, Debra. The Order of Ornament, The Structure of Style: Theoretical Foundations of Modern Art and Architecture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Scharnhorst, Gary. “William Dean Howells 1837-1920.” In The Heath Anthology of American Literature: Late Nineteenth Century, 1865-1910, edited by Paul Lauter, 256-279. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. Hermeneutics and Criticism And Other Writings. Translated and edited by Andrew Bowie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Sciortino, Giuseppe, ed. American Society: A Theory of the Societal Community. (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2007). -- Parsons, Talcott. “Some Highlights of the Historical Background.” In Sciortino, 90-139. -- Parsons, Talcott. “The Gemeinschaft Complex II: Kinship, Religion, Style of Life, Education.” In Sciortino, 334-385. Scobey, David. “What Shall we do with our Walls? The Philadelphia Centennial and the Meaning of Household Design.” In Fair Representations. World’s Fairs and the Modern World, edited by Robert Rydell and Nancy Gwinn.

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Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1994: 111. Quoted in Astrid Böger, Envisioning the Nation: The Early American World’s Fairs and the Formation of Culture. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2010. Seippel, Ralf-Peter. Architektur und Interpretation: Methoden und Ansätze der Kunstgeschichte in ihrer Bedeutung für die Architekturinterpretation. Essen: Verlag Die Blaue Eule, 1989. Shand-Tucci, Douglass. Built in Boston: City and Suburb, 1800-2000. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. Sharples, Niall. Social Relations in Later Prehistory: Wessex in the First Millennium BC. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Sheumaker, Helen and Shirley Teresa Wajda, ed. Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life. (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2008). -- Carso, Kerry Dean. “Architectural History and American Architecture.” In Sheumaker and Wajda, 36-40. -- Dean, Pamela Dorazio. “Cellars and Basements.” In Sheumaker and Wajda, 79-80. -- Denenberg, Thomas Andrew. “Colonial Revival.” In Sheumaker and Wajda, 107-109. -- Graf, Rebecca S. “Antiques.” In Sheumaker and Wajda, 33-35. -- Joselow, Evie T. “Queen Anne Style.” In Sheumaker and Wajda, 377378. -- Macaluso, Laura A. “Classical Revival (Neoclassicism).” In Sheumaker and Wajda, 101-102. -- Obniski, Monica. “Furniture.” In Sheumaker and Wajda, 203-206. -- Tyson, Janet. “Bathrooms.” In Sheumaker and Wajda, 62-63. -- Tyson, Janet. “Dining Rooms.” In Sheumaker and Wajda, 151-152. -- Wajda, Shirley Teresa. “Bedrooms.” In Sheumaker and Wajda, 63-65. -- Wajda, Shirley Teresa. “Eastlake Style.” In Sheumaker and Wajda, 165-166. -- Wajda, Shirley Teresa. “Georgian Style.” In Sheumaker and Wajda, 214-216. -- Wajda, Shirley Teresa. “Parlors.” In Sheumaker and Wajda, 335-337. -- Wajda, Shirley Teresa. “World’s Fairs and Expositions.” In Sheumaker and Wajda, 478-482. Slautterback, Catharina. “Building an Architectural Collection.” In The Boston Athenaeum: Bicentennial Essays, edited by Richard Wendorf, 193-230. London: University Press of New England, 2009. Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985.

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Soja, Edward. “Vom ‘Zeitgeist’ zum ‘Raumgeist’. New Twists on the Spatial Turn.” In Spatial Turn: Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften, edited by Jörg Döring, 241-262. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2008. Taylor, Alan. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. New York: Penguin Books, 2001. The Athenaeum Centenary. The Influence and History of the Boston Athenaeum From 1807 to 1907, With a Record of its Officers and Benefactors and a Complete List of Proprietors. Boston: The Boston Athenaeum, 1907. Todd, Pamela. William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Home. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2005. Totten, Gary. Introduction to Material Boxes and Guarded Interiors: Edith Wharton and Material Culture, edited by Gary Totten. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2007. Unidentified source. Quoted in Thomas H. O‘Connor, The Athens of America: Boston, 1825-1845. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006. Upjohn, Everard M. Introduction to the reprint of the first edition of The Country Builder’s Assistant: Containing A Collection of New Designs of Carpentry and Architecture, Which Will Be Particularly Useful to Country Workmen in General, by Asher Benjamin. 1797. Reprint of first edition. New York: De Capo Press, 1972. Volo, James M. and Dorothy Denneen Volo. Family Life in 19th-Century America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007. Wala, Michael. “From Celebrating Victory to Celebrating the Nation: The War of 1812 and American National Identity.” In Celebrating Ethnicity and Nation: American Festive Culture from the Revolution to the Early Twentieth Century, edited by Jürgen Heideking, Geneviève Fabre, and Kai Dreisbach, 74-90. New York: Berghahn Books, 2001. Whiffen, Marcus. American Architecture since 1780: A Guide to the Styles. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. White, Samuel G. The Houses of McKim, Mead & White. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1998. Whitehill, Water Muir and Lawrence W. Kennedy. Boston: A Topographical History. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 2000. Who Was Who in America. Historical Volume 1607-1896, A Component Volume of Who’s Who in American History. Chicago: Marquis-Who’s Who, Inc., 1963.

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Wilentz, Sean. The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005. Wilson, Richard Guy, Eyring, Shaun, and Kenny Marotta, ed. Re-creating the American Past: Essays on the Colonial Revival. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2006). -- Bradley, Betsy Hunter. “Reviving Colonials and Reviving as Colonial.” In Wilson, Eyring, and Marotta, 167-179. -- Casto, Marilyn. “The Concept of Hand Production in Colonial Revival Interiors.” In Wilson, Eyring, and Marotta, 321-335. -- Miller, Rod A. “Jens Fredrick Larson and Colonial Revival.” In Wilson, Eyring, and Marotta, 53-66. -- Rhoads, William B. “The Long and Unsuccessful Effort to Kill Off the Colonial Revival.” In Wilson, Eyring, and Marotta, 13-25. -- Wilson, Richard Guy. Introduction. In Wilson, Eyring, and Marotta, 110. Wood, Gordon S. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 17891815. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Wood, Gordon S. The American Revolution: A History. London: Orion Books, Ltd., 2002. Wright, Gwendolyn. “On the Fringe of the Profession: Women in American Architecture.” In The Architect: Chapters in the History of the Profession, edited by Spiro Kostof, 280-308. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. House Manuscript Collections Harrison Gray Otis House. Historic Structure Report, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, edited by Richard Nylander (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1998), Courtesy of Historic New England. -- Grady, Anne. “Section III.A.” -- Grady, Anne. “Section IV.A.2.” -- Grady, Anne. “Section V.A.” -- Grady, Anne. “Section V.C.2.” -- Grady, Anne. “Section V.E.d.” -- Grady, Anne. “Section V.E.6.b.” -- Grady, Anne. “Section V.E.6.H.” -- Grady, Anne. “Section V.E.6.i.”

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Seiberling, Catherine L. A Study Report of Gibson House Museum, 137 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts. Boston: The Gibson Society, 1991, Courtesy of the Gibson House Museum/Gibson Society Inc. Shoemaker, Linda. Women, Servants, and Domestic Life at the Otis House, 1797-1801. Boston: The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 2002. The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Asher Benjamin (1773-1845): “The How-To Architect”. William Hickling Prescott House Papers. The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Paper on 55 Beacon Street. William Hickling Prescott House Papers. The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Some Architectural Notes on #55 Beacon Street . William Hickling Prescott House Papers. The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859). William Hickling Prescott House Papers. Journals Bridenbaugh, Carl. “The High Cost of Living in Boston, 1728.” The New England Quarterly 5, no. 4 (October 1932). http://www.jstor.org/ stable/359334 (accessed August 7, 2010). Goodman, Paul. “Ethics and Enterprise: The Values of a Boston Elite, 18001860.” American Quarterly 18, no. 3 (Autumn 1966). http://www.jstor.org/ stable/2710847 (accessed August 7, 2010). Rich, Robert. “‘A Wilderness of Whigs’: The Wealthy Men of Boston.” Journal of Social History 4, no. 3 (Spring 1971). http://www.jstor.org/ stable/3786703 (accessed July 16, 2009). Robinson, Raymond H. “The Families of Commonwealth Avenue.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, vol. 93 (1981). http://www.jstor.org/stable/25080889 (accessed July 16, 2009). Rorabaugh, W.J. “Alcohol in America.” Organization of American Historians Magazine of History 6, no. 2 (Fall 1991). http://www.jstor.org/ stable/25162814 (accessed September 4, 2011). Theroux, Alexander. “Henry James’s Boston.” The Iowa Review 20, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 1990). http://www.jstor.org/stable/20153016 (accessed August 7, 2010).

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Wickersham, Jay. “The Financial Misadventures of Charles Bulfinch.” The New England Quarterly: A Historical Review of New England Life and Letters 83, no. 3 (September 2010). Internet Sources American Meteorological Society. “The House at 45 Beacon Street: Third Harrison Gray Otis House on Beacon Hill.” History of the House at 45 Beacon Street. http://www.ametsoc.org/aboutams/house.html (accessed September 5, 2011). City of Boston. Beacon Hill Architectural Commission. “Historic Beacon Hill District, Architectural Guidelines.” http://www.cityofboston.gov/ environment/pdfs/beaconhill_guidelines.pdf (accessed July 1, 2009). City of Boston. “Beacon Hill.” City of Boston. http://www.cityofboston.gov/ landmarks/historic/beaconhill.asp (accessed March 17, 2011).



Appendix I: Glossary

The following definitions are intended as a reference aid to the architectural terms that were used. Some of the following were not mentioned, yet are listed in order to help gain a better understanding of architectural and design terminology. All of the definitions below are direct citations of, Steven J. Phillips, OldHouse Dictionary: An Illustrated Guide to American Domestic Architecture (1600-1940) (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), 1994. The page numbers of each respective citation are listed at the end of the definition.

G LOSSARY Alcove: A small recessed space that opens into another larger room; an ornamental seat in a garden, a bower. (p. 16) Architrave: In classical architecture and its derivatives, the lowest of the three main parts of the entablature […]. Also, the ornamental moldings around doors, windows, or other openings. (p. 18) Balloon Framing: A system of framing a building in which the studs extend in one piece from the top of the foundation sill plate to the top plate; floor joists are nailed to the studs and are supported by ledger boards (horizontal boards). Balloon framing was introduced in the early 1830s and quickly replaced timber framing as the preferred framing method due to its ease of construction and lower material and construction costs. (p. 22-23) Baluster: One of a series of short pillars or other uprights that support a handrail or coping. Balusters are often lathe-turned and vase-shaped in appearance, although they are also quite often simple square posts or cut outs. (p. 23)

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Banister: A corruption of the word baluster; the term now generally refers to the balustrade of a staircase. (p.24) Base: The lowest part of a column or architectural structure. (p. 25) Baseboard: A plain or molded board that covers the gap between an interior wall or partition and the floor; also serves as a means of protecting the base of a wall from mopping, scuffing, kicking, etc. (p. 25) Base molding: A molded strip that runs along the top edge of a baseboard. (p. 25) Bow window: A rounded bay window; a window forming the segment of a circle. (p. 30) Brownstone: A predominantly brown sandstone used early on in American architecture for general construction. (p. 41) Capital: The upper decorated portion of a column or pilaster on which the entablature rests. (p. 44) Cartouche: An ornamental panel that is circular, oval, or scroll-like in shape. (p. 44) Column: A pillar, usually circular in plan. The parts of a column in classical architecture are the base, shaft, and capital. (p. 51) Cornice: The projection at the top of a wall; the top course or molding of a wall when it serves as a crowning member…Also, the upper projection of the Entablature in classical architecture. (p. 56) Dado: The middle portion of a pedestal between the base and surbase […]. In modern usage, dado refers to the part of the finishing found on the lower portion of an interior wall or partition; may be plain, or decorated with paneling or the like. When wood paneling or other facing material is used which differs from the material used on the rest of the wall, the dado is often referred to as wainscot or wainscoting. (p.61) Dentils: Small square blocks found in series on many cornices, moldings, etc. (p.63) Dormer: A vertical window projecting from the slope of a roof; usually provided with its own roof. (p. 64) Eclecticism: As it pertains to architecture: the free use and mixture of forms and details from any historic style; especially prevalent in the latter part of the nineteenth century in the United States. (p. 69) Ell: An extension that is at right angles to the length of a building. (p. 70) Entablature: In classical architecture and derivatives, the part of a building carried by the columns; consists of cornice, frieze, and architrave. (p. 71) Frieze: In classical architecture, the member between the architrave and the cornice. Also, any plain or decorative band, or board, on the top of a wall

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immediately below the cornice; sometimes decorated with festoons or other ornamentation. (p. 84) Guilloche: An ornament, used most frequently as an enrichment on molding, that resembles twisted bands; the spaces between bands are often filled with round elements. (p. 92) Mansard roof: A roof having two slopes on all four sides; the lower slope is much steeper than the upper. (p. 108) Mantelpiece: The fittings and ornamental embellishment surrounding a fireplace. (p. 108) Modillions: Ornamental blocks or brackets used in series to support the corona (overhang) in the composite or Corinthian orders. (p. 111) Molding: A continuous decorative band; serves as an ornamental device on both the interior and exterior of a building or structure; also often serves the function of obscuring the joint formed when two surfaces meet. (p. 111) Pediment: A triangular section framed by a horizontal molding on its base and two raking (sloping) moldings on each of its sides; used as a crowning element for doors, windows, over-mantels, and niches. (p. 121) Pilaster: A rectangular column or shallow pier attached to a wall; quite frequently decoratively treated so as to represent a classical column with a base, shaft, and capital. (p. 123) Portico: A covered walk or porch supported by columns or pillars; a colonnaded porch. (p. 127) Quoins: Large stones, or rectangular pieces of wood or brick, used to decorate and accentuate the corners of a building; laid in vertical series with, usually, alternately large and small blocks. Besides their decorative purpose, some quoins actually serve the more functional purpose of reinforcing the corners of a building. (p. 131) Stucco: An exterior wall covering consisting of a mixture of portland cement, sand, lime, and water; or a mixture of portland cement, sand, hair (or fiber), and sometimes crushed stone for texture; this term is often used synonymously with cement plaster. (p. 165) Trim: The interior decorative finish around a door or window; the architrave or decorative casing used around a door or window frame. (p. 172) Vestibule: A small entrance room leading into a larger living space; a foyer; an anteroom. (p. 177)



Appendix II

H ISTORIC B EACON H ILL D ISTRICT Architectural Guidelines The historic Beacon Hill district, the oldest historic district in Massachusetts, originated in 1955 by an act of the Massachusetts General Court (Chapter 616 of the Acts of 1955, as amended). It has since been extended to include virtually all of the Hill. The purpose of the law is: •

•

to promote the educational, cultural, economic and general welfare of the public through the preservation of the historic Beacon Hill district, and to maintain said district as a landmark in the history of architecture and as a tangible reminder of old Boston as it existed in the early days of the commonwealth. To achieve this purpose, the statute authorizes the Beacon Hill Architectural Commission to review proposed changes to the exterior architectural features of buildings within the historic district before any alteration is undertaken and before a building permit is issued. The relevant section of the law states: The commission shall determine whether the proposed construction, reconstruction, alteration, change in exterior color or demolition of the exterior architectural feature involved will be appropriate to the preservation of the historic Beacon Hill district for the purposes of this act…. In passing upon appropriateness, the commission shall consider, in addition to any other pertinent factors, the historical and architectural value and significance, architectural style, general design, arrangement, texture, material and color of the exterior architectural feature involved and the relationship thereof to the exterior architectural features of other involved structures in the immediate neighborhood.

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Owners contemplating changes to the exterior of any building within the Historic Beacon Hill district should be aware that no alteration will be approved that is inappropriate to the historical character, architectural design, and materials of the building or its setting. Furthermore, changes over time to buildings are evidence of the history of individual buildings and the neighborhood; some of these changes resulted in major modifications to the style and character of a building and shall be considered part of its historic integrity. Other changes, although not altering the dominant style of the building, may have acquires significance due to age, quality, and irreplaceability, and, if so, shall be considered part of the historic fabric of the building. For individuals without a detailed knowledge of architectural history, it is often difficult to recognize which details are appropriate to which buildings or architectural styles. Anyone filing an application for a Certificate of Appropriateness is, therefore, encouraged to read these guidelines carefully, to consult in advance with the staff of the Environment Department or to refer to the books and articles listed at the end of these guidelines. Applications are available from either the Environment Department, City Hall, Room 805 (617-635-3850) or the Beacon Hill Civic Association, 74 Joy Street (617227-1922). Each application is considered on its individual merits, but the Beacon Hill Architectural Commission will act in accordance with the following guidelines: Introductory Guidelines 1. Original or historically significant materials and/or architectural features shall be maintained and repaired whenever possible rather than replaced. 2. In the event that replacement of existing materials or features if necessary, the new materials shall match the materials being replaces in composition, design, color, texture, and other visible qualities. 3. Replacement of missing architectural features shall be based on evidence of original features, substantiated by physical or pictorial information. Proposals for new work shall be based on evidence of appropriate detail with regard to size, shape, material and design. 4. All architectural changes shall be appropriate either to the original style of the building (if it has not been significantly altered) or to its altered style (if it has been significantly altered to reflect characteristics of a later style).

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5. Contemporary design for new buildings may be considered if such design is of excellent quality and is compatible with the size, scale, color, materials, and character of neighboring buildings and environment. 6. All proposals shall show evidence that work will be executed with the highest quality material and workmanship. 7. No new openings in facades shall be allowed, and no changes shall be made to existing window and door openings (unless they involve restoration of original features). 8. All elevations and floor levels on a building should have a unified treatment and changes should occur simultaneously throughout a building. This applies in particular to buildings with multiple ownership. 9. All roof-top HVAC and other mechanical/electrical installations should be located out of public view. Parabolic, “dish” or other directional or similar communications antennae should be installed in such a manner that they are not visible from a public way. 10. The Commission will not formally review an application until all zoning issues have been resolved through the Board of Appeal. 11. A Certificate of Appropriateness is valid for two years. If work has not commenced after two years, a new application must be filed. Specific Guidelines Masonry 1. Cleaning of masonry if often discouraged because the darkening over time of building facades tends to produce a distinctive and uniform appearance and because inappropriate cleaning practices may cause irreversible damage to the masonry. Masonry facades should be cleaned only when necessary to halt deterioration. The most gentle cleaning method possible shall be used and shall be tested on an inconspicuous area to be certain that it will not damage or change the material. All proposed treatments shall be field tested and reviewed. Brick and stone shall not be sandblasted (because abrading the surface with dry grit or hydrocilica blasting or dissolving the surface with inappropriate chemical cleaners will expose the soft interior core of the masonry to the elements).

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2. The application of water-repellent coatings or other treatments is discouraged, and samples of any proposed treatment shall be tested before application. 3. Masonry facades shall not be painted unless there is evidence that the building was painted originally. 4. Brownstone may require special treatments involving replacement materials and coatings; each situation will be considered individually based on the existing condition of the material. Any replacement material must approximate brownstone in composition, appearance, and texture. 5. Repointing should avoid the visual conflict between new mortar and aged brick and maintain the continuity of surface due to age and weathering. Repointing is in many cased unnecessary, but when necessary, the following general rules shall be followed. •

• •

•

No mortar of a mixture stronger than 1 part cement to 2 parts lime to 7 to 9 parts sand shall be used (to allow for the expansion of bricks during freeze/thaw cycles). Mortar used for spot pointing shall match the adjacent mortar. The color of all mortar should come from the aggregate and not from the binder. Mortar used for total façade repointing shall match the original color of the mortar used when the building was built or altered to achieve its present architectural style; or it shall match aged or weathered mortar color. Joints shall be struck to match the original mortar joints, if apparent, or shall be struck to a slightly concave joint, or raked back at least 1/8-inch, or finished to a weathered profile which slopes inward from top to bottom or the reverse. Smeared (or “buttered”) joints and flush joints are inappropriate. Upon completion of the repointing, all remaining mortar and residual film shall be cleaned from the façade of the building.

Roofs and Roof Structures 1. Original or historic rooflines, including dormer windows, chimneys, parapets end walls, and firewalls shall be retained. 2. If, under special circumstances, alterations are permitted, they shall be contingent upon:

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•

• • • •

•

Ensuring that adequate architectural or photographic documentation, sufficient to permit the alteration to be reversed, is submitted with the application and deposited with the Beacon Hill Architectural Commission Preserving the roof slope unchanged at each side of the alteration. Retaining sufficient structure of any existing dormer window so that its original profile is evident. Materials used for roofing repairs shall duplicate the original or appropriate existing materials. Roof decks and deck enclosures that are visible from a public way are discouraged. Opaque screening fences on roofs shall not be allowed. New roof access structures should consist of counter-weighted hatches or low-profile headhouses which are not open to public view (or are minimally open to view only at a great distance). Unpainted mill-finished aluminum is inappropriate to the historic district and shall not be used for flashing, gutters, or downspouts.

Windows, Sash and Shutters 1. Original or historic material shall not be removed; existing openings, sash, glass, lintels, sills, shutter hardware, frames, and surrounds, shall be retained or duplicated in the same material and style if beyond repair. 2. Removal of historic window sash in discouraged. Replacement sash must exactly match the existing in appearance and material (including through-glass muntins). Simulated muntins (including snap-in, surface-applied, or betweenglass muntin grids) shall not be permitted. Vinyl-clad and metal-framed sash are inappropriate; no metal panning of the wood frame is allowed, and no changes shall occur to the dimensions of brick openings, jambs or sashes. 3. Only single-paned sash is appropriate for multi-light replacement windows; in multi-light windows with insulating glass, the exaggerated width of the muntins and the reflectivity of the aluminum foil spacers are inappropriate details. 4. Only clear-paned, non-tinted glass shall be used (except to replace original stained glass). Mirrored and tinted heat-reflective glass are not appropriate. 5. Window blinds (shutters) are not permitted on buildings on which they are inappropriate. Where replacement blinds are installed, they shall be woodconstructed and match the height and one-half the width of the window opening and replicate a traditional blind. Contemporary, vinyl, or metal builds are prohib-

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ited. All blinds shall be properly secured with shutter hardware, including pintles and propeller shutter dogs. 6. Exterior combination storm windows may be acceptable provided the installation has minimal visual impact upon the original fenestration. Storm windows shall have narrow perimeter framing (which does not obscure the glazing of the primary window). The meeting rail of the primary window must align with that of the storm sash. The painted finish on the storm window frame must match the color of the window trim. Exterior storm windows will not be approved from windows with arches, leaded glass, faceted frames, or bent glass. Interior storm window panels may be an appropriate alternative to exterior combination storm windows. Doors and Entries 1. Original or historically significant entries (including reveals, doors, surrounds, vestibule sidewalks, transoms or fanlights, sidelights and other features) may not be altered. 2. New doors shall be appropriate to the existing surround in style, material and proportions. 3. Only paneled doors of appropriate design, material and assembly shall be permitted; flush doors (with or without surface molding) and metal clad doors shall not be permitted. 4. Storm doors (aluminum, or wood-framed) shall not be allowed unless evidence is presented that they were originally in use in the building. 5. Replacement door hardware should replicate the original or be of an appropriate design. 6. Exterior lighting shall be in traditional locations (e.g. suspended from vestibule ceilings). The design of these fixtures should be of an appropriate size and not imitate styles earlier than the building. 7. Buzzers, key keepers, and intercom panels shall be flush-mounted onto the brick face of the building. Such panels should be of brass and not of brushed aluminum or of gold anodized aluminum. Individualized buzzers are more appropriate than large panels.

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Trim 1. Architectural elements including but not limited to cornices, brackets, window lintels and sills, oriels or bay windows, balconies, grilles, grates, lamp brackets, scrapers and handrails shall not be removed from buildings. 2. If any element of architectural trim has deteriorated beyond repair, it shall be replaced to duplicate the original in every way. 3. If any element of architectural trim is known to be missing, its replacement is strongly encouraged. Paint 1. When painting is necessary, discovering and reapplying paint colors based on evidence of an original scheme or using colors from the historical collections or various painting companies shall be encourages. Paint color shall be appropriate to the period of the building. Off-white paints are preferable to brilliant white. 2. Materials and features that have never been or were not intended to be painted (e.g. copper, granite, brick, sandstone, and lintels, sills stoops) shall not be painted. 3. Masonry reveals in window and door openings shall not be painted. 4. Allowing existing paint on a masonry surface to weather is in most cases preferable to repainted. Removal of paint from masonry surfaces should occur only after careful evaluation of a sample test patch. Inappropriate paint removal procedures (e.g. wire brushing, sandblasting) cause irreversible damage to the masonry and are prohibited. 5. Particular attention should be directed to routine painting of decorative pressed metal cornices. When painted, pressed metal cornices should correspond in color to the natural stone of window lintels on the lower elevations. Ironwork 1. Original or early architectural ironwork shall be compatible with the style of the property on which they are to be installed. 2. New or replacement iron features shall be compatible with the style of the property on which they are to be installed.

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3. Window grilles shall be mounted within the window reveal and secured into mortar joints (not into the masonry and not onto the face of the building). 4. Window grilles for most buildings should have pierced horizontal rails or butt-welded joints. 5. Fire escapes on street facades of buildings will be permitted only when required for safety and an alternative egress route is clearly not possible. Fixed diagonal stairways are discouraged. Sign Guidelines 1. In addition to design review, all signs shall conform with the requirements of the Boston Sign Code (as amended). The term “sign” shall include flat board signs, applied letters, projecting signs and display boxes. 2. Applicants shall prove sufficient evidence and documentation of a proposal to permit an informed decision by the commission and a subsequent review of compliance. This may include photographs, drawings, samples of materials and paint colors, a summary of other signs on the building, exterior lighting conditions and other appropriate considerations. 3. Approval of a given sign shall be limited to the owner of the business or building and shall not be transferable; signs shall be removed or resubmitted for approval when the operation or purpose of the advertised business changes. 4. Antique signs or faithful replicas may be considered favorably. Documentation of the historical appropriateness of a proposed sign may consist of early photographs and similar sources. The historical appropriateness of a sign for a building should be considered. 5. The commission will consider: the appearance of a proposed sign on the building and on nearby buildings; the effect of the sign on decorative and other architectural details; and ancillary structures (e.g., supporting brackets) required for installation. 6. Materials and workmanship should be of excellent quality and durability.

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7. The number of signs, their location, and their method of attachment are significant design considerations and each should relate to the size of the shop-front and to the scale of the building. 8. Projecting signs and display boxes shall be considered appropriate in some locations. 9. Graphics shall be limited to a single sign and/or display box per business, except for one additional projecting sign per building. 10. Exterior walls may not be used for display of merchandise or temporary advertising boards. 11. Existing signs of particular historic or architectural merit should be preserved. 12. Neon and back-lit signs are not permitted within the historic district; illumination of signs is discouraged. 13. Freestanding signs are not permitted.

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Sources of Additional Information The following publications may be considered part of these guidelines: An Act, Chapter 616 of the Acts of 1955, Establishing the Beacon Hill Architectural Commission, By-Laws The Boston Sign Code. Revised Ed. Boston: Boston Redevelopment Authority, 1981. The following publications are not officially part of these guidelines but may be helpful: Hume, Gary and Weeks, Kay, Ed., The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation. Revised Edition. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, 1983. Preservation Briefs. National Park Service. Respectful Rehabilitation: Answers to Your Questions about Old Buildings. Washington, D.C.: The Preservation Press, 1982. Weinhardt, Carl J., Jr. The Domestic Architecture of Beacon Hill, 1800-1850. Boston: The Bostonian Society, 1973.

Source: City of Boston, Beacon Hill Architectural Commission, “Historic Beacon Hill District, Architectural Guidelines.”

Appendix III

Figure 41 and 42: Harrison Gray Otis Log Book

Harrison Gray Otis, Log Book, Historic New England, Boston, Massachusetts. Courtesy of Historic New England.