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The Architectural Precedents and Context of Carlyle House

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The Architectural Precedents and Context of Carlyle House Carlyle House September 2014 D OCENT D ISPATC H Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority The Architectural Precedents and Context of Carlyle House By Susan Hellman This article first appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of expensive houses were built of log construction. the Carlyle Connection. Do you know the difference between a log cabin and a log house? A log cabin was a temporary structure built of rounded logs for speed of construction. Settlers built log cabins to get a roof over their heads as quickly as possible. Although laymen refer to “log cabins,” architects and architectural historians prefer the term “impermanent architecture.” A log house was built for permanence, with hewn (squared off) logs. While it is likely that many log houses survive from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is doubtful that any log cabins survive. Most individuals of middling means constructed frame You all probably learned at some point that Carlyle 3 House stands out as Alexandria’s only Georgian- dwellings clad in weatherboard or clapboard. Palladian mansion, but what exactly does that mean? More expensive dwellings were brick. Builders Where did this architectural design originate? How did used stone based on its availability and proximity we get from basic temporary shelter to stone mansions? to the building site. Most considered stone a very Completed in 1753, Carlyle House embodies the high-quality and high-status building material. Georgian style of architecture in the United States, Stone was so desirable that many early Americans which gained ascendancy in Virginia circa 1700. By with wood frame houses scored the wood boards most measures, Georgian is the first European “style” of to look like stone blocks, and added sand to the architecture popularized in Virginia. Pre-Georgian exterior paint to mimic the textured appearance of stone. George Washington did this at Mount structures tend to be vernacular, although there are a 4 handful of extant seventeenth-century examples of Vernon. By building Carlyle House in stone, John Gothic design.1 In Virginia, Georgian was a natural Carlyle proclaimed his wealth and social status to outgrowth of the existing vernacular, yet it also all. Stucco served as weatherproofing, adding a represented something more. Those who built in the layer of protection from the elements. Georgian style proclaimed their elite status. They were By the early eighteenth century, settlers began not backwards colonists; they were just as refined and constructing dwellings more expansive than a cultured as those they left behind in Europe, especially single room, many based on the British hall-parlor England. plan, which came to dominate Virginia domestic Georgian architecture did not appear in Virginia overnight. The majority of Virginia’s earliest European immigrants built crude and simple dwellings,2 usually CARLYLE HOUSE one- room affairs, often with dirt floors, thatched roofs, Susan Hellman, Site Administrator and “catted” chimneys made of tiny logs. Construction Helen Wirka, Site Specialist Vanessa Herndon, Education Assistant materials varied according to means. The least Page 2 Docent Dispatch construction for centuries. A hall-parlor plan consists a bedchamber. of two rooms, placed side by side, under a continuous The addition of a passage between the hall and the roofline, with a fireplace at either or both ends.5 In parlor created the “I-house,” which ultimately this type of arrangement, the main room, known as became the most common floor plan in the country. the hall, was the more public of the two rooms. The This simple, one-room-deep, layout pervades time hall normally contained the primary entrance, the and place. In eighteenth-century Virginia, most I- principal fireplace, and the stair or ladder to the upper houses had exterior end chimneys and a high cellar. floor, if there was one. This room often had a second The I-house represented the earliest form in this smaller entrance. The hall had higher-quality country of the Georgian plan house, and was often embellishment than the inner chamber, or parlor. The referred to as the “poor man’s Georgian.” The parlor, generally used as a sleeping chamber or American Georgian plan derived directly from the private sitting area, had a smaller fireplace, although English Georgian plan, which looked to the Italian it was not unusual for Renaissance and Baroque periods for inspiration.7 In a parlor to be unheated general, seventeenth century Virginians did not pay in Virginia, Maryland, much attention to architectural style. By the and parts of Delaware. eighteenth century, however, the Virginia gentry had The parlor had no achieved a comfortable level of status and wealth. exterior entrance, and They began to heed architectural rules and was accessed from the conventions as one way to demonstrate social hall by a door in the equality with their English counterparts. dividing wall. Now John Carlyle built his Alexandria house at the height you know why we use of Georgian popularity. The Georgian period in the term “passage” Virginia began around 1700 with the Wren Building instead of “hall” in at the College of William and Mary, and ended circa Carlyle House tours. 1780, when Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia State Hall had a specific connotation in John Carlyle’s Capitol ushered in the Federal period. The Wren time, very different from today’s use of the term. Building was the first structure in this country to In the first quarter of the eighteenth century, even the employ sash windows instead of casements. More wealthiest families resided in hall-parlor dwellings, importantly, the Wren Building, attributed to Sir with their slaves and indentured servants housed Christopher Wren or one of his apprentices, separately. By mid-century, prosperous gentry introduced Wren’s design style to the American expanded the hall-parlor plan, adding rooms and colonies. After the 1666 Great Fire of London, Wren features to accommodate their changing needs and to rebuilt fifty-two churches in the city over the next proclaim their prestige.6 Around 1720, the passage forty-five years. Wren looked to the Italian Baroque came into general usage, providing circulation and period for inspiration, and his churches put an end to entertainment space between the hall and the parlor. medieval-style architecture, setting a new The passage served as the primary entrance, often architectural precedent in England and the American with a door at each end. It provided flexible colonies. After the construction of the Wren Building, entertainment space, especially during the hot wealthy colonists rejected medieval and vernacular summer months when both doors could be open to design in favor of this newer style, the basis for catch breezes. The introduction of the passage created American Georgian design. a higher level of privacy for the hall and the parlor, Carlyle House has a very typical full Georgian allowing for a new hierarchy of space. The passage domestic floor plan, as it is two rooms deep, not one became the public space; most visitors who came to like the I-house, and is two stories tall with stairs in the door could enter. Only those of sufficient status the center passage. Most Georgian dwellings have were permitted into the hall, and only family or very five to seven bays, or openings, across the front close friends were admitted to the parlor, now usually elevation on each floor. Carlyle House does not Page 2 Docent Dispatch exactly fit this criterion, as it is five-bay on the first the socially acceptable and elite architectural norms floor and six-bay on the second, although the center of his time. His house and his entire property in two windows on the upper floor are centered on the Alexandria served to place him on level with his door below. This is not particularly unusual, as English peers. But where exactly did Carlyle find American builders rarely got English architectural inspiration for the design of his house? And with all details perfectly correct. Carlyle House has several this talk of Georgian, where does Palladian fit in? other imperfections in its design.8 Other typical Teaser: I don’t really think it does. I’ll explain why Georgian characteristics include rigid exterior next time. Tune in to the spring issue for the symmetry, river and land entrances with the passage conclusion of this tale! running the full depth of the house, stone quoins9 and lintels, painted pine paneling in important public Endnotes: rooms, interior broken pediments to display oriental vases, simple fireplaces without a mantel shelf, a 1. Two examples include Saint Luke’s Church in Isle space above the fireplace for a landscape painting, of Wight County, which is the only surviving Gothic and detached outbuildings. In more elaborate building in the United States, and Bacon’s Castle in dwellings, hyphens10 sometimes connected the main Surry County. house with wings and/or outbuildings. The addition of hyphens and wings was more 2. You will note that I do not use the term “home” in common in rural areas, which had fewer site this article. That word did not exist in John Carlyle’s constraints than urban areas. Mount Vernon follows day. It came into common usage after the Civil War, this trend, with colonnaded hyphens connecting the and should not be used in reference to houses built mansion to the outbuildings. In many instances, prior to ca. 1865.3. The best source for information hyphens are enclosed, creating additional interior on early Virginia architecture is Cary Carson & Carl space. As you know, John Carlyle did not add L. Lounsbury, eds., The Chesapeake House: hyphens and wings to his city house. Instead, his Architectural Investigation by Colonial Williamsburg outbuildings stood apart from the house. Although a (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, great deal of archaeological evidence was lost during 2013).
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