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The Critical Reception of Hudson Valley Dutch Architecture, 1670–1840

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The Critical Reception of Hudson Valley Dutch Architecture, 1670–1840 CHAPTER TWO ERASING THE DUTCH: THE CRITICAL RECEPTION OF HUDSON VALLEY DUTCH ARCHITECTURE, 1670–1840 Joseph Manca Before the mid eighteenth century, attitudes toward Hudson Valley Dutch architecture were generally positive and from the second half of the nineteenth century, the “Dutch Colonial” developed a broad follow- ing in America. However, during a crucial period from the middle of the eighteenth century to the mid nineteenth century—under the in] uence of Georgian classicism and the subsequent neoclassical movement—the Dutch building style was widely disparaged. This was when much early Dutch architecture was demolished or left to fall into ruin. Looking at the critical reception of early Dutch architecture throws light on the declining critical fortunes of traditional—indeed medieval—architecture in the face of the rising taste for classical forms. During this negative period, there was also a growing distaste for the persistent clannishness and perceived peculiarity of the Dutch Americans themselves, who seemed to set themselves off from other Americans. Ethnic resentment existed on both sides, and this colored the perceptions of non-Dutch observers, who regarded Hudson Valley Dutch buildings as disturbing architecture by an odd and separatist people. All of these early com- ments call attention to the cultural aspects of the ethnic tensions that occurred between the Dutch and the English populations in America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and help to account for the loss of so much early Dutch architecture. Long after the English took over rule of New Netherland, the Hudson Valley Dutch retained certain aspects of their own customs, including language, religion, patterns of social intercourse, and diet.1 The charac- 1 For the continuity of Old World Dutch culture into the New World context, see Alice Kenney, Stubborn for Liberty: The Dutch in New York (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1975), passim; Roderic Blackburn, “Transforming Old World Dutch Culture in a New World Environment: Processes of Material Adaptation,” in New World 60 joseph manca teristic components of Hudson Valley Dutch interiors, including jamb- less replaces, spoon racks, cabinet beds (bedsteden), and other features, attest to the continuation of the essential styles and forms of the patria (fatherland). New World Dutch architecture was based on Old World models, which underwent some evolution and adaption in America but remained recognizably distinct from British traditions. As the English visitor Thomas Pownall noted when traveling in Albany in 1755: “The Whole Town except a Few New Houses, is intirely built after the Dutch mode.”2 This “Dutch mode” was the conservative style of the fatherland, not the classicism found in architecture of the Netherlands in the sev- enteenth-century and later. Extant structures or artistic representations of early buildings in New York, Albany, and elsewhere show building forms that are derived from medieval European Dutch styles (Figs. 1 and 2), including the use of raised parapets, steep roofs, elbowed or stepped gables, “mouse-tooth” and other peculiar brickwork, narrow facades with gable fronts, and other forms that had ourished in the Netherlands.3 It is these buildings, with origins in another time and place, that Anglo-Americans and other non-Dutch observers singled out for their comments. Dutch Studies: Dutch Arts and Culture in Colonial America, 1609–1776, ed. Roderic Black- burn and Nancy Kelley (Albany: Albany Institute of History and Art, 1987), 95–106; Roderic Blackburn and Ruth Piwonka, Remembrance of Patria: Dutch Arts and Culture in Colonial America, 1609–1776 (Albany: Albany Institute of History and Art, 1988); Joyce Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664–1730 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); and Joseph Manca, “On the Origins of the American Porch: Architectural Persistence in Hudson Valley Dutch Settlements,” Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture 40, nos. 2–3 (Summer-Autumn 2005): 91–132. 2 Thomas Pownall, A Topographical Description of the Dominions of the United States of America, ed. Lois Mulkearn (Pittsburgh: The University of Pittsburgh Press, 1949), 38. 3 For some literature on the building forms of the Dutch in America, see Helen Reynolds, Dutch Houses in the Hudson Valley before 1776 (New York: Payson and Clarke, 1929; repr. New York: Dover Publications, 1965); Rosalie Bailey, Pre-Revolutionary Dutch Houses and Families in Northern New Jersey and Southern New York (New York: William Morrow, 1936; repr. New York: Dover Publications, 1968); Charlotte Wilcoxen, Seventeenth Century Albany: A Dutch Pro le (Albany: Albany Institute of History and Art, 1984), 87–96; Roderic Blackburn, “Dutch Domestic Architecture in the Hudson Valley,” Bulletin KNOB [Nieuwnederlandse Studiën: Een Inventarisatie van recent Onderzoek; New Netherland Studies: An Inventory of Current Research and Approaches] 84, nos. 2 and 3 ( June 1985): 151–165; Henk Zantkuyl, “Reconstructie van enkele Nederlandse huizen in Nieuw-Nederland uit de zeventiende eeuw” (“Reconstruction of Some seventeenth-century Dutch Houses in New Netherland”), Bulletin KNOB, 84, nos. 2 and 3 ( June 1985): 174–175. Clifford Zink, “Dutch Framed Houses in New York and New Jersey,” Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture 22 (Winter 1987): 265–294; Kevin Stayton, Dutch .
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