Architectural Change in Colonial Rhode Island: the Mott House As a Case Study’ DELL UPTON

Architectural Change in Colonial Rhode Island: The Mott House as a Case Study’ DELL UPTON

he history of vernacular architecture site.4 Once the successive strata of the in early New England was a history fabric had been removed, it became clear T of local, then regional, synthesis. In that the history of the house was more the seventeenth century, New England’s complex than was at first apparent. The builders transformed a heterogeneouscol- earliest surviving portion of the building, lection of provincial English building types dating from the third or fourth quarter of and technologies into several relatively the seventeenth century, was possibly the homogeneous local American architec- oldest timber-framed structure standing in tures, still firmly based in English tra- Rhode Island, but the house had achieved ditions but imitating no one of them nor its final form in two further builds in the each other exactly.2 These intensely local early and mid eighteenth century, and also forms were gradually supplanted by re- through innumerable minor alterations gional ones in the eighteenth century. which continued until it was abandoned in Nowhere is this process of synthesis and 1%9. Systematic disassembly provided a replacement more evident than in Rhode rare opportunity to study this structural Island. There a local tradition based on complexity. plank framing, a principal-rafter-and-purlin roof structure and a single-cell additive I plan flourished briefly in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, only The Motts came to Portsmouth at the to give way to a New England-wide system time of its establishment in 1638and were characterized most strikingly by the fami- freemen of the town and colony from the liar double-pile, central chimney mass with beginning. The town was founded by out- a five-bay, symmetrical facade. This article cast Massachusetts Bay merchants who will illuminate that change by examining a hoped to see it become a thriving port, but a single building in the context of Rhode splinter group usurped that role for New- Island vernacular architecture between the port. Portsmouth thereupon sank into a middle of the seventeenthand the middle of quiet agricultural existence which per- the eighteenth centuries. sisted through the remainder of the seven- The Mott House (fig. I) was located on a teenth century. In this insular atmosphere, IOO-acretract of land on the west shore of the Motts evolved from a family unable to Aquidneck Island in Portsmouth, Rhode care for its patriarch (who became a town Island. The original 130-acre holding as- sembled by Adam Mott, Sr. and his de- Dell Upton is architectural historian for the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commissionand scendants between 1640and the final divi- has taught at Brown University and George sion of the Portsmouth town lands in 1713/4 WashingtonUniversity. He recently completed remained in family hands until 1895 and his Ph.D. thesison the early vemaculararchitec- was undivided until 1909, when the U.S. ture of southeasternVirginia for the American Civilization programat Brown University, and Navy purchased thirty peripheral acres has published articles and reviews in Folklore from the southern edge of the farm.3 Forum, APT Bulletin, AIA Journal, Southern In 1973, the house was moved from its Exposure, and otherjournals.

18 Architectural Change in Colonial Rhode Island 19

FIG. 1. THE MOIT HOUSE FROM THE EAST, 1973. The two southwindows (left) mark the seventeenth-centurysection. (Photograph by Jan Armor.)

charge), to one whose head served as a representative to the colonial legislature.5 Adam Mott, Sr. (d. 1661)probably built a houseon his new farm in 1640,the year that he received a grant from the town, subject to the customary stipulation that a dwelling be built on it within one year.6 During the next halfcentury Jacob Mott I(1635171 U2) built a single-room, story-and-a-half structure about sixteen feet square adjacent to the original house, possibly for the use of one of his sons (fig. 2).’ This small building was demolished in the early eighteenth century and replaced FIG. 2. FIRST STAGE OF THE MOTT by a two-story structure, but enough evi- HOUSE, BEFORE CA. 1680.This tiny house dence remained to suggestits form and to was demolishedin the early eighteenthcentury, indicate that it had been a stone ender, a but enoughevidence remained to determine its distinctive Rhode Island house type with a size and the locationof its chimney. Here and in figures 3 and 6 only those door and fireplace projecting end chimney similar to those openingsfor which evidence survived in 1973 found on the extant Clemence-Irons and have been indicated, and all window openings Thomas Fenner houses.* have been omitted. (Drawing by author.) 20 Old- Time New England

A large addition, the earliest surviving part of the house, was built about 1680(fig. 3). It was a two-story building framed with studs. Like its predecessor,it originally had a single large room in each story, and an enormous stone end chimney. At first there was a second-story jetty, or overhang, twenty-one inches deep on the east end. This was an unusual but not unknown feature in early New England. In most jettied houses, the overhangswere on a long side, or on both a long side and the gable ends.9 - Significant portions of the original roof framing of this 1680 section were intact in 1973 (fig. 4). There had been four principal-rafter trusses, with thirteen closely spaced purlins (members lying in the plane of the roof FIG. 3. THE MOT-I HOUSE, CA. 1680.A and connecting the trusses) let into chan- large stone-endhouse (solid lines) has been added to the south of the original structure (hol- nels in the backs of the rafters. The apex of low lines) and the principal entrance is now on its the one complete truss had been uncoupled south side. Dotted line indicates location ofjetty. and the rafters declined from their original (Drawing by author.) 52-degree pitch to the lesser 49-degree pitch of the south slope of an eighteenth- century roof that they then supported. Other pieces also helped to support the that is, with the exterior and interior finish newer roof.iO Inside, each room was deco- attached to light vertical members posi- rated with vertical sheathingand had elabo- tioned at intervals between the major struc- rate moldings along the leading edgesof the tural posts, the new wing was plank-framed exposed structural members in the ceiling (fig. 7). Closely setvertical planks about 1% (fig. 5).ii A winder stair, supported on the inches thick and 12 to 18 inches wide, and chimney, ascendedin the southwestcomer extending from top to bottom of the frame, of the chimney bay of the new house. were peggedat intervals to the major hori- Between approximately 1725 and 1730, zontal framing members. No studs were the secondJacob Mott (1661-1736/7)under- used, and the interior and exterior cover- took drastic alterations to the family house. ings were attached directly to the planks. A mature man when he inherited the farm In the entrance of this newest section a in 1711 or 1712, he had to accommodate stair with flat sawn balusters was installed. several of his eight children and probably It was needed to replace the one in the his mother in the small building. Ultimately chimney bay of the 1680 house, for, when he demolished the original section of the he built his addition, Jacob Mott II made house (fig. 2) and replaced it with a two- extensive changes to that section as well. story, single-room ell, a formally up-to- He tore down the massivestone chimney at date version of the earlier house to which it its west end and set off the chimney bay as was attached, and built a kitchen lean-to at a separate room. The other stone chimney the rear of the new room (fig. 6). base (belonging to the demolished original Structurally this latest section was very room) was reworked, its flues rerouted, different from the earlier portions of the and a replacement fireplace provided for house. Where they had been stud-framed, the 1680 hall.i2 The stack was rebuilt in Architectural Change in Colonial Rhode Island 21

FIG. 4. ROOF STRUCTURE OF THE MOTT HOUSE. Within the mid-eighteenth-centuryhipped roof, a complete 1680truss with its thirteen purlin mortises(center) survives,along with a rafter from the 1725addition (lower left). (Photographby Jan Armor.)

brick from the second-floor level to allow which distinguished much American for fireplaces in the upper chambers. A domestic architecture in the eighteenth and large brick kitchen fireplace in the new nineteenth centuries.t3 With the exception leanto was attached to the older base. Fi- of minor alterations and the addition of a nally, the jetty was removed and the new kitchen ell in the mid nineteenth century, wing tied to the old by two twenty- no other changes were made to the Mott one-inch-long, inch-and-a-half-thick iron House until it was demolished. spikes, driven through the adjacent postsof the two sections at second-story level. The house stood in this form for only II twenty or twenty-five years. The next Few American houseshave had so com- owner, Jacob Mott III (16!20-1781),enlarged plex or so rapidly changing a history or it still further. He removed the kitchen have incorporated such varied plan forms lean-to and its adjacent open shedand put a and structural systems into one building. two-story, full-length addition across the Yet on the surface of it there is little about rear (fig. 8). A new roof with a hip at the the Mott House that seems surprising. south end covered the whole, and the new With the exception of the plank frame principal (east) facade took the five- every feature of the house can be identified opening, central-entry “Georgian” form as English vernacular building.t4 Old- Time New England

FIG. 5. 1680HALL. The molded summer beam and joists are visible at the top of the photograph. In the center is the central chimney, with the door to the 1725entry at the right. (Photographby Jan Armor.)

The earliest settlersin Rhode Island, like housing experienced extensive campaigns those elsewhere in the American colonies, of new building and the rebuilding of many brought with them a variety of local English older structures. At that time house forms building practices, all drawn from a single like the three-unit (hall-parlor-service) tradition. The most recent work on English dwelling, which had formerly been concen- vernacular architecture makes this unity trated in the wealthier southeast of En- clear. In most instances new forms tended gland, began to appear in numbers to appear in all parts of England at about throughout the country. Even men who the same time. Regionalism owed less to occupiedone-room houseswere frequently geographicaldeterminism or to prehistoric able to build fine ones. ethnic origins than to the coincidence of an In many ways, the transfer of British available form with local social and eco- traditions to America can be thought of as nomic conditions that permitted extensive part of this rebuilding: as an introduction of building among the middling sortsof people new forms into the outlying British prov- at a given time in any one region.i5 inces. But there were significant differ- The seventeenth century was an era of ences. The English settlersin New England great building activity in many parts of were building entirely from memory, with England, and areas which had formerly only their knowledge of folk traditions in been too poor to support much substantial their home regions to guide them. The sub- Architectural Change in Colonial Rhode Island 23 tle but powerful restraints which affect that trees were impediments to other uses men building in physical proximity to old of the land, especially agriculture. As early housesconstructed in a traditional manner as 1622 one tract writer suggestedthat in were relaxed in the New World. Elements America “wasting of Woods is an ease and from diverse British localities were re- benefit to the planter.” Extensive use of shaped into a group of local American ar- lapped-board surfaces, both interior and chitectures not exactly like any in Europe. exterior, a practice which appeared in the That is, English vernacular practices were first decades of settlement in New En- selectively retained, deleted, and amalga- gland, Canada, and Virginia, was one man- mated in a process more radical than any ifestation of the lavish use of wood which involved in the contemporary English re- was the Europeans’ response both to the building. Many factors were at work to need for tightly built houses and to the facilitate this Americanization, New En- mixed blessing of the North American glandization, and Rhode Islandization of forest.is English peasant building, but it was the Some local English forms were probably underlying conceptual unity of the appar- employed only because many of the resi- ently disparate English forms, the unity of dents or the craftsmen of a particular set- “the formal laws which order all possible tlement happened to have come from that combinations of elements,” that made this area of England. The use of many small radical reworking possible.16 purlins let into the backs of the rafters is Much of the regionalization processwas reminiscent of roofing traditions stemming the result of positive selection based on from the north and west of England. Possi- geographical and environmental factors. bly its use in the Mott House and a few Stone building was possible only in Rhode other seventeenth-century Rhode Island Island and adjacent parts of Plymouth Col- buildings could be traced to a group of ony and Connecticut because there were carpenters from the north or west of En- no suitable deposits of stone elsewhere in gland. But choices such as these remain of southern New England. Similarly, some merely incidental interest unless they can minority practices in England tended to be shown to be more than happenstance;it become dominant here because they were is their stability or alteration when chal- preadapted to the new environmental con- lenged by other forms that is significant. ditions, and appeared to serve their The Mott House, where the purlins were functions better than more conventional set at twelve-inch intervals, suggeststhat building practices did.” The use of lapped the English system of structural purlins let boards for covering buildings, for example, into the backs of the rafters was combined was occasionally found in England but it conceptually with the thatch-purlin idea. was early on perceived as the most conve- The latter were light poles spiked to the nient means of cladding surfaces in backs of rafters and used to tie on the America. It was also a way of ridding the bundles of reeds that comprised the thatch land of trees. Coming from a country where itself. The result of this meld was a useful timber was becoming scarce, English way of fastening the long wooden shingles settlers in North America first saw its to create a tight roof.i9 But this roof, forests, containing the “goodliest Woods,” though tight, was not as cheap or as easy to as a source of great potential wealth, and frame as another kind which was later im- timber was one of the first products ex- ported from eastern Massachusetts, ported from each colony. Soon however whereupon multipurlined roofs ceased to unmixed enthusiasm for timber as a re- be built. source was tempered by the recognition The importation of this new roof framing 24 Old- Time New England

FIG. 6. JACOB MOTT IIS’ HOUSE, CA. 1725. The originaldwelling (fig. 2) has been demolished and replaced by a new parlor and a kitchen leanto (both shown with solid walls). (Drawing by author.)

style illuminates another aspectof the crea- new forms and often reducedthe likelihood tion of a local Rhode Island architecture. of the reemergence of the neglected ones. Local and regional environmental factors In the case of Rhode Island, initial settle- as well as circumstantial ones filtered En- ment by Massachusetts and the use of glish vernacular tradition, eliminating or building forms popular there gave way to downplaying certain aspects of it and em- other ties with neighboring Plymouth Col- phasizing others. These shifted emphases ony. and altered preferences were often rein- This is evident in the roof and wall fram- forced by accidents of subsequent settle- ing of the successiveportions of the Mott ment patterns and regional economic de- House. The initial settlement of southern velopment. The new contextual circum- New England from MassachusettsBay instances contributed to the generation of troduced into eastern Connecticut and Architectural Change in Colonial Rhode Island 25

Rhode Island the building systems used in techniques which Rhode Island builders the earliest section of the Mott House. chose to adopt as solutions to problems of Subsequent connections with Plymouth climate and labor conservation. Colony resulted in the introduction of different structural systems which were employed in later additions to the house. The III former connection is evident in the multi- Rhode Island’s distinctive vernacular purlined roof, which was also familiar in building tradition had as its structural basis Connecticut. But in the late seventeenth these two new systems-the plank frame century the simpler system that then domi- and -the principal-rafter-and-purlin roof- nated eastern Massachusetts came to and, when the Mott House was rebuilt by Rhode Island by way of Plymouth Colony. Jacob Mott II, both were used. Because It consisted of principal rafters with three Rhode Island builders continued to work in to five large through purlins (purlins that a version of the unified Anglo-American did not break at each rafter) set into chan- tradition, and because new craftsmen con- nels in the backs of the rafters as in the Mott tinued to emigrate from England through- House roof.20Roofing boardsrunning from out the seventeenth century, the architec- ridge to eaves were nailed to the purlins, tural mixture was never stable.24 Local and the shinglesto the boards. A roof with preferences were only preferencesand any another insulating layer was thus achieved new idea was subject to examination and and at the same time the necessity of align- acceptance or rejection. This is particu- ing and cutting 104separate purlin mortises larly evident with respectto houseplanning was eliminated. and design, the third element of the Rhode The framing of the earliest sectionsof the Island vernacular. Mott House showed similar strong af- As a poor colony, early Rhode Island finities for the building practices of Con- inclined toward small houses.25 In devising necticut in its use of a studded frame them, however, the colony’s settlers could downbraced from the posts to the sills in a draw upon a rich English strain of one- manner resembling the framing of many room dwellings. The evolutionary Connecticut houses. This was in contrast paradigm (from single-room to five-room- to the vertical-planked, upbraced system of plan houses), formulated in the late framing which was the predominant system nineteenth century by Norman Morrison of structural reinforcement in Plymouth Isham and propagated by other important Colony until the nineteenth century.*’ The students of early New England building closer ties with Plymouth Colony, from like J. Frederick Kelly, is no longer ac- which much of Rhode Island was settled,22 cepted in its simplest form, but continues resulted in the introduction of plank fram- to obscure the existence of this English ing into the northern Providence Planta- tradition in seventeenth- and eighteenth- tions early in their history. In the late seven- century New England.26 Common teenth and early eighteenth centuries the throughout England and Wales, as well as use of plank framing extended southward the American colonies, one-room-plan and came to dominate Rhode Island.23 housesranged from “inferior accommoda- Once again, expensive joinery was tions” through fine dwellings. Raymond minimized and a continuous bracing sys- Wood-Jones, in his study of the Banbury tem created by the use of the planks, which region of England, has drawn attention to stiffened the frame from plate to sill, was the large number of well-built and architec- introduced. In the instances of both roof turally sophisticated single-cell houses in and house framing, geographical and his- his area. They seem not to have been poor torical connections made available building people’s residencesor surviving fragments 26 Old- Time New England

FIG. 7. SHELL OF THE MOTT HOUSE FROM THE EAST. The 1680section at the left is sheathed with horizontal boards nailed to its vertical studs. The survivingportions of its original roof are visible at the top. To the right is the plank-framed 1725section. There are no studs underthe verticalboards. (Photographby Jan Armor.)

of larger buildings but the dwellings of cause of the frequent use of striking ex- middling people with limited spatial needs. posed stone end chimneys that exploited This is also true of most of the surviving the colony’s supplies of usable building American examples. Like the Mott House stone-did not necessarilyhave stone ends they are skillfully constructed and often or a one-room plan, but they were all well appointed.*’ variations of the single-cell concept.*8 These houseswere not portions of larger When a Rhode Island stone ender was en- buildings, intended for possiblecompletion larged before c. 1725(and occasionally af- at a later time, as many eighteenth-century terward, as at the brick-ended Greene- variants of the five-room-plan house truly Bowen House in Warwick), the expanded were, but independent dwellings. They had house normally had individual cells added their own rules for enlargement. An analy- to the far end or to the rear of the original, sis of Rhode Island’s single-cell houses creating a house that was roughly square in (figs. 9, IO) illustrates this. At the Mott plan, or one that was rectangular, and House, both of the early structures(figs. 2, deeper than it was wide.*9 The resultant 3) were stone enders, a version of the one- plan contradicts a suggestedderivation of cell house peculiar to Rhode Island and the single-cell dwelling from the larger especially prevalent in the northern part of two-room central-chimney house, with or the colony. “Stone enders”-so-called be- without rear service rooms, which is often Architectural Change in Colonial Rhode Island 27

u__ 2

i I

I I

FIG. 8. THE MOTI HOUSE IN 1973.The solid black areasare seventeenth-and eighteenth-century work, and illustrate Jacob Mott III’s mid-eighteenth-century house. The dotted lines show missing eighteenth-centurywalls, and the hollow lines are nineteenth- and twentieth-century additions. Areas are identified as follows: I. 1680hall (JacobMott II’s “great lower room”); 2. chimney-bay room; 3. 1725 entry with sawn-balusterstair; 4.1725 parlor; 5. mid-eighteenth-centurykitchen (“A” indicateslocation of door from kitchen to chimney-bay room); 6. mid-eighteenth-centurychamber; 7. mid-eighteenth- century pantry; 8. former entry, later closet; 9. mid-nineteenth-centurykitchen; 10. porch. (Measured and drawn by author, checked against and supplementedby drawings by Richard Rice Long.)

associated with colonial New England. If stone end house epitomized the processof the latter model were operant, one would localization that reachedits peak in the late expect an addition to be made at the chim- seventeenthand early eighteenthcenturies. ney end of the house. These houseswere distinctly Rhode Island Built with plank frames and principal- products. When the no longer extant one- rafter-and-purlin roofs, the single-cell room ell and the 1680 section of the Mott Old- Time New England

House were built, the localization process was well underway but it was not complete. The Rhode Island style, however, was the product of several coincident, discon- nected patterns of continuous change, and, by the time the early eighteenth-century remodelling was undertaken, the colony T was already beginning to lose its local architectural character. Near the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century, novel planning ideas began to interest Rhode Island builders. They became available as the isolation of seventeenth-century agricultural life gave way before the town’s efforts to expand its commercial ties and colonial and imperial attempts to centralize administration and FIG. 9. A LOCAL-MODEL RHODE IS- economic control in Rhode Island and in LAND HOUSE: THE GREENE-BOWEN HOUSE, WARWICK, RHODE ISLAND North America, respectively. (EARLY MID EIGHTEENTH CENTURY). Like other Rhode Island towns, This additive house grew toward the rear. The Portsmouth was running out of land to fuel originalwork is drawn in solid black; all else was its agricultural expansion. Foreseeing the added. The dotted line marks the division be- end of the common land supply, which tween the first and second eighteenth-century additions; the western section dates from the came in 1713/4, the town turned outward nineteenth century. (Measured and drawn by for further economic development. Begin- author, checked against drawings by Zane An- ning in 1694it initiated the first of a seriesof derson. Anderson’s much more detailed drawing generally unsuccessful attempts to estab- shows that this house is now far out of square.) lish a trading center within the town to augment its growing trade in surplus live- stock.30 At the colonial level efforts were made to behind more cosmopolitan English and draw together the localities which made up New English building styles. It opened to the tiny, contentious colony through the them as well many aspects of an Anglo- centralization of political control and American vernacular architecture that was through attempts to improve transportation itself in upheaval. Aesthetically and tech- within Rhode Island. Consolidation and nically, the changesthat Isham and Brown greater political control were increasingly called the “dilution” of English traditions matters of imperial concern as well. At- in America were mirrored in England by tempts to make Rhode Island and the other the replacement of local architectural American colonies more sensitive to the modes by national forms. To some modern needs of the empire met with varying de- observers these changes suggest the grees of success. But to whatever extent “death” of vernacular building and to they fulfilled the Crown’s purposes, they others “confusion” and a “decline in the could only add to the forces which militated standards of carpentry.“32 against the isolation of rural Rhode The Motts’ reworked early eighteenth- Islanders.31 century housereflected this fluid situation. Political and economic expansion did not In the seventeenth century, the house was simply expose to the citizens of designedfrom the clear, single-cell additive Portsmouth and their neighborstheir “lag” model. The 1725Mott House (fig. 6) repre- Architectural Change in Colonial Rhode Island

more, they carried it in their heads. Changes influenced by economic or environmental considerations were ultimately matters of reasoning and choice from among several alternatives. The builder learned from his teachers not specific models or prototypes but abstract conceptsof designand construction. These were susceptible to being taken apart and put back together again in new ways, of being deleted selectively or of being combined with ideas from other sources. The result was a building which was neither the unique product of an individual’s utilitarian FIG. IO. A REGIONAL-MODEL RHODE ISLAND HOUSE: HOUSE AT USQUEPAUG, ingenuity nor a tract-house copy of a single RHODE ISLAND (LATE EIGHTEENTH model.33 CENTURY). This is avery regular version of the Accustomed to the additive Rhode Is- “five-room-plan” model that Jacob Mott III land way of doing things, Jacob Mott II was used. Compare especially the juxtaposition of attracted to the central-chimney, double- chamber and pantry or buttery in the northwest and northeast comers of this house with the pile idea newly available to him. He didn’t northwest comer of Jacob Mott III’s house in completely understand how it worked, figure 8. (Drawing by author.) though. Consequently he built a house which was the result of a mental effort to combine two separate ways of expanding from one room. His old additive local model called for the formation of a square sented an intriguing mixture of old and new cluster with the chimneys arranged around models. JacobMott II’s new housewas still the periphery. The new regional one set recognizably part of the Rhode Island ver- forward a primary file of rooms with nacular tradition. It was plank framed and secondary rooms behind them and the it had the eastern Massachusetts roof. It whole was clusteredaround a singlecentral held a cluster of square cells, but with a chimney. Jacob Mott II was familiar with difference: they were grouped around a the visual effect of the new model but not central stack. Mott was adding the old cells with the interrelation of spaces which it in a new way. He might, after all, have enclosed. His transformed house was extended the 1680 chimney and added to massedin a novel way, but the spaceswere the house in the manner of the earlier the old familiar units. The local ways were Eleazar Arnold or the contemporary still strong in his mind.34 Greene-Bowen houses. Instead, a great When Jacob Mott III disposed of the amount of work was devoted to demolish- house according to his father’s will he was ing the great end chimney and reworking left with the northeast parlor, the chamber the smaller one in order to group the rooms above it, and a lean-to kitchen. It is not clumsily around a central stack. surprising that he should build. What he We can understand this strange house built showed the extent to which the new best by thinking of it as a human product. ideas had penetrated Portsmouth. If styles Vernacular builders worked out of a locally are a basis for “group awarenessand iden- sensitive yet unitary Anglo-American tra- tity,“35 then in his redesignedhouse Jacob dition, but it was neverthelessavaried one, Mott III affirmed his allegiance to the and they carried only part of it. Further- broader Anglo-American community and Old- Time New England

his understanding of its characteristic ar- highly localized world that the Motts of the chitectural expressions. fifty years after 1675 inhabited. Though By the time he rebuilt the house the provincial in the most restricted sense, symmetrical, five-opening Georgian facade their seventeenth-century house was ar- had transformed the central-chimney chitecturally a fine one, well built, well house elsewhere in New England into the designed, and handsomely decorated. But familiar five-room-plan, two-story building the local moment was a brief one. The which marks the landscape of the region eighteenth-century Motts lived in a tran- today (fig. 8).36 It reached Rhode Island in sitional era when the distinctive Rhode Is- force only at mid century and most of the land modes were gradually replaced by a earlier houses which now have that appear- New England version of the Renaissance ance were reworked in the middle of the houses of Anglo-America. The more re- eighteenth century. Jacob Mott III was well stricted system ultimately succumbed to aware of this new fashion and he went to the regional one and the small houses great lengths to make his new house reflect which formed the core of the seventeenth- it. But he was not a rich man, and it appears century Rhode Island vernacular were re- as though he did most of the work himself. placed in the eighteenth-century builders’ The craftsmanship is crude, and it betrays repertoire by partial or one-story “Cape an inexperienced hand. The roof is Cod” versions of the New England Geor- haphazardly rigged. No two joints in the gian house. For the Motts, the final change frame are alike. Everything is hacked and occurred between the 1720s when Jacob patched. Yet in the end he had created a Mott II rebuilt his house, and the middle of more or less stylish and modem house. It the eighteenth century, when the third had five bays of openings, a central chim- Jacob Mott made his alterations. ney and even a hipped roof. Mott reshaped The relatively young Rhode Island tradi- his Rhode Island vernacular house to ac- tion was a strong one; it did not collapse in commodate the novel plan and fashionable the face of the Georgian challenge. But like facade of the eighteeenth-century New all traditions it was created in a specific England Georgian house. context and it was subject to constant revi- Late seventeenth-century Rhode Island- sion, piecemeal alteration, and outright re- ers fashioned from English vernacular jection in the face of changing circum- building a local architecture which, though stances. Through these means a varied, centered around plank framing, a seventeenth-century Rhode Island house principal-rafter-and-through-purlin roof, became an eighteenth-century New En- and an additive planning system. This ver- gland one. nacular architecture characterized the Architectural Change in Colonial Rhode Island 31

NOTES

I. I am grateful to Stephen Tyson, who super- 6. Town of Portsmouth to Adam Mott, Sr., vised the disassemblyof the Mott House, for his Feb. IO, 1639140,Portsmouth Town Records, I contribution to the interpretationof the physical (1639-1700): 15, Office of the Town Clerk, evidence. In addition, helpful criticisms of ear- Portsmouth,R.I. The stonecellar to the north of lier drafts of this paper were offered by Mary the standinghouse, excavatedby Marley Brown Beaudry,Cary Carson, Edward Chappell, Susan in 1973-74,may have been that first house. No Geib, Stephen Tyson. John Vlach. Camille portion of the surviving Mott House was built Wells, and-especially by Fraser Neiman. that early. 2. Anthony N.B. Gatvan has described this 7. The Jacob Motts are numbered in chrono- processin Connecticut (Archifecfure and Town logical order. Planning in Colonial Connecticut [New Haven: 8. Antoinette F. Downing, Early Homes of Yale University Press, 19511)and James Deetz Rhode Island (Richmond, Va.: Garrett and Mas- has constructeda model of the regionalizationof sie, 1937), pp. 4, 6, 26, 29-31; Henry-Russell Plymouth Colony ceramics in “Ceramics from Hitchcock, Rhode Island Architecture (1939; Plymouth, 16351835:The Archaeological Evi- reprint ed., Cambridge: MIT Press, l%8), pp. dence” (Ceramics in America, Ian M.G. 9-10; Isham and Brown, Early Rhode Island Quimby, ed. [Charlottesville:University Pressof Houses, pp. 31-5. Virginia, 19731.) See also Norman Morrison 9. Norman Morrison Isham and Albert F. Isham and Albert F. Brown, Early Rhode Island Brown, Early Connecticut Houses: An Histori- Houses: An Historical and.Ar&tectural Study cal and Architectural Study (Providence: Pres- (Providence: Preston and Rounds, l895), pp. 13, IS. ton and Rounds, 1900).pp. 18, 29, 31; Norman Morrison Isham, Early American Houses (1928; 3. Dell Upton, “Mott Farm Land Title,” MS., reprint ed., Watkins Glen, N.Y.: American Lie Plimoth Plantation, Plymouth, Mass., 1973. A Foundation, l%8), pl. 9. minor exception to this statementwas the sale of IO. One entire truss, most of the second, and a peripheral six-acre parcel as a mill site in 1813. parts of a third survived. The absence of the The Motts bought it back in 1864. fourth, the twenty-one-inch difference between 4. The structure was dismantled part by part, the east bay and the other, longer structural after each portion was fist numbered and re- bays, and the obviousrebuilding of the east wall corded in drawings and photographs.(Most of were amongthe clues to the former existence of the measureddrawings were made by Richard a jetty. Rice Long and the photographswere taken by I I. Cyma (S-shaped)moldings were usedon the Jan Armor.) This nine-week processallowed for first floor and ovolo (quarter-round)ones on the careful scrutiny of the building in a manner akin second. to the archaeologist’s method. 12. This fireplace was reduced in size by the 5. Bernard Bailyn, The New England Mer- insertion of two successivebrick fireboxes, one chanrs in the Seventeenrh Cenrury (Cambridge: inside the other, during the course of the follow- Harvard University Press, 1955). p. 40; John ing century. Ultimately the opening was closed Russell Bartlett, ed., Records ofthe Colony of altogether and a stove pipe was fitted into the Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in flue. New England, IO vols. (Providence: A.C. Greene and brother, 18561865), 1:300; 4:67; 13. For a discussionof the Georgian facade see Sydney V. James, Colonial Rhode Island-A Henry Glassie, “Eighteenth-Century Cultural History (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, Process in Delaware Valley Folk Building,” l975), pp. 25-6; Librarian of the Rhode Island Wimerthur Portfolio 7 (Charlottesville: Univer- Historical Society,ed., The Early Records ofthe sity Press of Virginia, 1972),pp. 35-8. Town ofPorfsmouFh (Providence:E.C. Freeman 14. The origins of plank framing are not certain. and Sons, 1901),pp. 58, 66. “Ould John Mott” For discussionsof the issuesee Richard Candee, was boarded at the houses of several “Documentary History of Plymouth Colony Ar- townspeople until 1652, when an effort was chitecture, 1620-1700,”Old- Time New England made to send him to Bermuda where the climate 59 (1%9): 39-45; Ernest Allen Connally, “The was milder. Nothing seems to have come of this Cape Cod House: An Introductory Study,” plan. Journal of the Society of Architectural Histo- 32 Old- Time New England

rians. 19 (1960): 53; Walter R. Nelson, “Some Houses, pp. 5, 25. There are many surviving Examples of Plank House Construction and downbraced (tension-braced)houses in eastern Their Origin,” Pioneer America, I, no. 2 (1%9): Connecticut and southwestern Rhode Island, 18-29. although the norm there, as elsewhere in New 15. Eric Mercer, English Vernacular Houses: A England, was the upbraced(arch-braced) frame. Study of Traditional Farmhouses and Cottages (Isham and Brown, Early Connecticut Houses. (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, p. 215; Isham, Early American Houses, pp. 1975). 24-5.) The English regional distribution of the two styles is treated in J.T. Smith, “Timber- 16. Marc Gaboriau, “Structural Anthropology Framed Building in England: Its Development and History, ” in Introduction IO Structuralism, and Regional Differences,” Archaeological Michael Lane, ed. (New York: Basic Books, Journal. 122(l%5): 146-49 and figs. 8-10;Mercer, 1970) p. 160. English Vernacular Houses, pp. 120-21. 17. The conceptof preadaptationis derivedfrom 22. John Demos, “Families in Colonial Bristol, Milton B. Newton, “Cultural Preadaptationand Rhode Island: An Exercise in Historical De- the Upland South,” in Man and Cultural Heri- mography,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d tage: Papers in Honor of Fred B. Kniffen, ed. ser., 25 (l%8): 40-57. H.J. Walker and W.G. Haag (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University School of Geosci- 23. Isham and Brown, Early Connecticut ence, 1974). Houses, p. 248; idem, Early Rhode Island Houses, p. 79. Plank framing was never univer- 18. Cecil A. Hewett, “Some East Anglican Pro- sal. The Eleazar Arnold House at Lincoln, RI., totypes of Earlv Timber Houses in America.” and the Greene-Bowen House at Warwick, R.I., Post-Medieval Archaeology, 3 (1969): I IO-11; are both stud-framedbuildings, although the last Dell Upton, “Board Roofing in Tidewater addition to the latter had planked walls. (Russell Virginia,” APT Bulletin, 8, no. 4 (1976): 37-9; Hawes Kettell, “Repair and Restoration of George Percy, Observations Gathered out of A Eleaxar Arnold’s Splendid Mansion,” O/d- Time Discourse of the Plantation of the Southern New England, 43 [1952]: 29-35.) Colony in Virginia by the English, 1606, ed. David B. Quinn (Charlottesville: University 24. Hewett, “East Anglican Prototypes,‘* pp. Press of Virginia, l%7), p. 19; Edward 100-l. Waterhouse,A Declaration of the State of the 25. James, Colonial Rhode Island, pp. 25-6. Colony andAffayres of Virginia (London, 1622), 26. Isham and Brown, Early Rhode Island quoted in Carl Bridenbaugh, Vexed and Trou- Houses, ch. 2 and fig. I; idem, Early Connecti- bled Englishmen 1590-1642 (New York; Oxford cut Houses, p. 6; Kelly, Early Domestic Ar- University Press, l%7), p. 101.Charles Carroll chitecture, ch. 2. has considered the implications of the abun- 27. For examples see Mercer, English Vernacu- dance of timber in The Timber Economy of lar Houses, pp. 28-33; Peter Smith, Houses of Puritan New England (Providence: Brown Uni- the Welsh Countryside: A Study in Historical versity Press, 1973). Geography (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery 19. Mercer, English Vernacular Houses, pp. Office, 1975).pp. l75-76,456; J.T. Smith, “The I I I-12. These purlins may also relate to the laths Development of the English Peasant House to used to hang slates and tiles. Writers in the the late SeventeenthCentury: The Evidence of seventeenthcentury tended to think of shingles Buildings,” Journal of the British Archaeologi- as substitutesfor tiles. The author of A Perfect cal Association, 3d ser., 33 (1970):fig. 5d; Isham, Description of Virginia (1649),for instance, de- Early American Houses, p. 4; Raymond B. scribed housesthere as “covered with Shingell Wood-Jones,Traditional Domestic Architecture for Tyle.” (Peter Force, ed., Tracts and Other of the Banbury Region (Manchester: Manches- Papers Relating IO the Origin, Settlement and ter University Press, l%3), p. I65 and ch. 8. Progress of the Colonies in North America, 4 28. The similarity of so many of the English vols. [Washington, D.C.: Peter Force, 1836 regional houses to the Rhode Island ones is 18461,2, no. 8: 7.) significant, for the stone-end house is a striking 20. J. Frederick Kelly, Early Domestic Ar- example of the creation of a regionalhouse type chitecture of Connecticut (New Haven: Yale from elements of a unified British tradition. It is University Press, 1924), pp. IO, 47, 48; Hitch- a mistake to try to find a single local English cock, Rhode Island Architecture, p. 9; John model: the Rhode Island houses were one ex- Hutchins Cady, “The Thomas Clemence House pressionof a pan-British tradition of single-cell, (ca. 1680) 38 GeorgeWaterman Road, Johnston, end-chimney houses made of local materials. RI.,” Old-Time New England. 39(1948): 17-24. 29. The expansion of single-cell houses in this 21. Isham and Brown, Early Connecticut manner is also typical of other areas, e.g.. Architectural Change in Colonial Rhode Island 33

Virginia, where the rear lean-to was the most as well. At his death in 1736d7Jacob Mott II left common form of extension. the use of “my great lower room where I now 30. Upton, “Mott Farm Land Title,” pp. 3-4.9; dwell” and “the Southernmost bed room and James, Colonial Rhode Island, p. 259; Joanne Porch Chamber” to his three daughters until Bowen, “Probate Inventories: An Evaluation they were married. This indicated that, in the from the Perspective of Zooarchaeology and Ag- traditional style, Jacob Mott was still sleeping on ricultural History at Mott Farm,” Historical the first floor of his house, a habit which was as Archaeology, 9 (1975): 14-5. slowly broken in America as it was in England. 31. James, Colonial Rhode Island. p. 167; (Will of Jacob Mott II, dated Mar. 5, 1729/30 and Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of proved March 1736/7, Portsmouth Town Council American History, 4 vols. (New Haven: Yale Records, HI: 182; Barley p. 192.) University Press, l934-1938), 4: chs. 3-6, I I. 35. Stylistic elements function “by providing a 32. lsham and Brown, Early Connecticut symbolically diverse yet pervasive artifactual Houses, p. 32; M.W. Barley, The English Farm- environment, promoting group solidarity and house and Cottage (London: Routledge and serving as the basis for group awareness and Kegan Paul, l%l), pp. 268-69; Cecil A. Hewett, identity,” according to Lewis R. Binford. (“Ar- “Seventeenth-Century Carpentry in Essex,” chaeology as Anthropology,” American An- Post-Medieval Archaeology, 5 (1971): 77. tiquity28 (1%2), reprinted in Man’s Imprintfrom 33. My thinking here has been shaped by James the Past: Readings in the Methods of Archaeol- Deetzs’ analysis of the structure of artifacts in ogy, ed. James Deetz (Boston: Little, Brown, Invitation to Archaeology (Garden City, N.Y.: 1971), p. 253. What this means is simply that Natural History Press, l%7) and by Henry Glas- people speak the language of those with whom sies’ pioneering explorations of the mind of the they wish to communicate. traditional builder, especially in his “Structure 36. Isham and Brown, Early Connecticut and Function, Folklore and the Artifact,” Houses, p. 33; idem, Early Rhode Island Semiotica. 7 (1973): 313-51, and Folk Housing in Houses, p. 15; Henry Glassie, Pattern in the Middle Virginia: A Structural Analysis of His- Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United toric Artifacts (Knoxville: University of Tennes- States (Philadelnhia: Universitv of Pennsvlvania see Press, 1975); cf. Gaboriau, “Structural An- Press, i%9), pp. 124-25; Glassie, “Eighteenth- thropology,” p. 160. Century Cultural Process,” p. 37. 34. His house was used in a customary manner