Dutch Framed Houses in New York and New Jersey

Dutch Framed Houses in New York and New Jersey CliffordW. Zink DUTCH AMERICANtimber framing is a heavy floorjoists and have begun to address types unique vernacular building technology of floor plans, but no researcher has adequately and a keyelement in defininghouses built examined and identifiedDutch American timber in America by the Dutch. While Dutch American framing. timber houses today appear to be less common The particulartimber-framing system used by than masonry ones, they were the commonest the Dutch colonists came from the Netherlands, structuresin the seventeenthand eighteenthcen- and that,in turn,had its originsin earlynorthern turies. The evolution of timberframing through- European building types. The systemfollowed a out the Dutch American period (from 1624 to structurallogic-a conceptualizationof handling early in the nineteenthcentury, years in whichthe space, structuralforces, and aesthetics.This logic influenceof the Dutch remained discernible)illus- determined the formof both timberand masonry tratesboth the transferenceand the adaptation of buildings because the spatial parameters were European material culture to the New World, es- based on the physical limitationsof timber.The pecially the process of acculturationas expressed earliest American houses show that the Dutch in traditionalbuilding practices. Scholars have usu- transferred their seventeenth-centurybuilding ally defined Dutch American houses by outward technologyto the New World in simplifiedforms forms,such as a gambrel roof with a spring eave, that relied on their rules of constructionyet met or by certain interior details, such as a jambless the need for expediency in settlinga new land. fireplace. Some have noted the Dutch systemof Since New Amsterdamwas establishedas a trading post by a privatecompany, there was littleimpetus CliffordW. Zink is a consultantin the restorationof historic to give its structures the elaborate decorative buildingsand is workingon a historyof industrialarchitecture. treatmentcommonly used on buildings in seven- He is a partner in an architecturalfirm and executivedirector Netherlands; instead, the builders of that teenth-century a nonprofitcorporation is planningthe preservationand elementsof the Dutch redevelopmentof the John A. Roebling's Sons Co. historicin- employed only key concep- dustrialcomplex in Trenton, N.J. tualizationof building,some of whichbecame sym- This articleis based on the author's 1985 master'sthesis for bols of the colonists'cultural heritage. The refine- the Columbia Graduate School of University Architecture, ment of the key elements over the 200 years Planning, and Preservation.Many people have contributedto this research, including several with whom the author first followingthe initialDutch settlementillustrates the learned to look at timberbuildings while restoringGlencairn, transformationof a parent culture in a colonial an early eighteenth-centuryfarmstead in Princeton, N.J.: builders their Old Zink, Elric Alexander and setting: immigrant adapted Stephen Endersby, Greenwood, World traditions to new Richard Hunter. Others who helped him to understandtimber environmentalrequire- framing include Yun Sheng Huang, Joseph Hammond, ments, material sources, and building ideas and, Richard Harris, and Karen Peterson. Persons who provided following the English conquest of 1664, assistance include Henk Zantkuyl and Piet van Wijk in the merged Netherlands; Neil Larson, Bill McMillen, Ruth Piwonka, and their timber-framingpractices with those of Ken Walpuck in New York; GwendolynWright; Frank Matero; Anglo-Americans. They eventually created hy- Gordon Loader; Leslie Goat; ShirleyDriks; and Theo Prudon, brids that demonstratea cross-cultural of the thesis reader; and especially his thesis adviser, Catherine melding Lynn, Columbia University. European-based house-building technologies in America. ? 1987 byThe Henry Francisdu Pont WinterthurMuseum, This studyidentifies the timber-framing Inc. All rightsreserved. oo840-416/87/22o4/ooo3$o4.oo characteristicsthat define Dutch American houses This content downloaded from 173.61.96.147 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 21:59:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 266 WinterthurPortfolio and traces their evolution over time. Floor plans, survivingbuildings have been altered or expanded roof types,and other details will be discussed only and have become even less noticeablewith the sub- in relation to framingcharacteristics.1 urbanizationof the region. Among the major European buildingtraditions Students of Dutch American material culture brought to the New World, that of the Dutch has have always faced the problem of defining who received comparatively little attention.2 Most were the "Dutch" in America. New Netherlandwas Dutch American buildings were vernacular struc- a polyglotsettlement from the beginning: besides tures. There are no landmark or monumental the Dutch, there were Flemings, French Hu- houses that epitomize Dutch American design, as guenots, and French-speakingBelgians. For the Paul Revere's house and Westover represent En- purposes of thisarticle, Dutch will be used to refer glish seventeenth-and eighteenth-centuryhouse to people from the Netherlands and adjacent types.Unlike the Netherlands,where thousandsof countrieswho were of Dutch birthor who became seventeenth-centurybuildings survive, nearly all commonly identifiedwith the Dutch during the the early buildings in New Netherland have long colonial period and retained thatidentity even af- since disappeared. Most settlersin New Nether- ter the establishmentof New York.4 A "Dutch land built timberhouses for expediency,knowing house" is one that exhibits,in form and fabric, that these could be replaced by more permanent those architecturalfeatures commonly found in masonry structuresas time and prosperityper- the Netherlands or adjacent Lowlands regions. A mitted.3That, combined withthe continuingpres- "Dutch American house" is one constructedin the sure for new developmentin the region whichhas New Netherland area by "Dutch" colonists,using occurred since the beginning of European settle- architecturalprecepts that were transferredfrom ment,has contributedto the destructionof houses the Netherlands. and most other evidence of the early Dutch cul- Initially the Dutch settlers built houses they ture,except forplace names and road layouts.The perceived as suitable to the type of settingthey were in their In New Amsterdam Restoration and of houses creating colony. 1 moving eighteenth-century and other urban builthouses that and barns in the centralNew Jerseyarea, where both Dutch and settlements,they English settled,has provided the opportunityto studydistinc- resembled those in small citiesin the Netherlands tions between their building traditionsfirsthand. These build- while in the areas of the lower and othersrecorded in like the HistoricAmerican (fig. i), agricultural ings, surveys Hudson River such as and north- Buildings Survey (HABS), are in Mercer,Somerset, Middlesex, valley, Brooklyn Morris, Monmouth, Hunterdon, and Bergen counties in New central New Jersey,they built houses resembling Jerseyand in Brooklyn,Staten Island, and Rockland,Dutchess, farm the in and Columbia counties in New York. The research has also dwellings.Following English conquest the urban settlements ab- included early archival documents of New Netherland,studies 1664, colony's rapidly of Dutch and English houses in America, published drawings sorbed English culture, and Dutch-style urban of houses in the and field and photographs Netherlands, trips buildingsbecame increasinglyscarce, except in the to open-air museums and to sites in England and the Nether- lands that have historictimber houses. upper Hudson region near Fort Orange (now Al- in- 2 Scholars have studied English American timber houses bany) where the English culturaland economic for years in New England, Maryland, and Virginia, but with fluence remained weak. Thus, in the upper Hud- little Abbott Lowell The comparative analysis. Cummings, son urban Dutch buildings influencedthe Framed Houses of MassachusettsBay, 1625-1725 (Cambridge, region, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress, Belknap Press, 1979), is the design of farmand village houses in the surround- most comprehensive study of traditional timber framing in ing areas well into the eighteenthcentury, as the America to date. For New see also Frederick England, J. Kelly, Dutch clung to earlier, and often obsolete, ar- Early DomesticArchitecture of Connecticut(1924; reprint, New York: Dover Publications,1963); and Norman M. Isham and chitectural symbols of their cultural heritage. Albert Brown, Early ConnecticutHouses: An Historicaland Ar- chitectural New York: Dover Publications, Study(1900; reprint, 4 Many of these settlershad firstmigrated to the Nether- 1965). For early timber buildings in the Tidewater area, see lands to escape religiouspersecution. Other settlerscame from Cary Carson, Norman F. Barka, William M. Kelso, Garry Germany, Scandinavia, and even Poland and Hungary. For Wheeler Stone, and Dell Upton, "ImpermanentArchitecture in Flemish origins,see Wertenbaker,Founding of Civilization,pp. the Southern American Colonies," WinterthurPortfolio 16, nos. 35-36, 67-68. Peter Wacker has observed: "This diversityof 2/3(Summer/Autumn 1981): 135-96. Studies in Quebec focus ethnic origins is reflectedby the fact that Demarest, Zabriskie, on the traditionof elaborate roof trusseson masonrybuildings and Banta are good and common 'Dutch' names in New Jersey. and on colombage,the Norman-derived

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