Monographs Archives - Page 11 of 13

Architectural Monographs: Forgotten Farmhouses on Manhattan Island

Posted on August 9, 2013October 21, 2021 by Jeff Easterling

21st century Manhattan is one of the most thoroughly urban places in the world, its relatively small land area packed with an astonishing number of high-rise buildings. So, it’s easy to forget that farmhouses once stood on famous streets like Broadway. By 1923, when this volume of the historic White Pine Architectural Monographs was written, just a few Colonial houses remained in Greater New York, and there are even fewer today (two notable examples being Dyckman Farmhouse, now a museum, and the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage in The Bronx.)

At the beginning of the 19th century, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Bowery, Harlem, Murray Hill and other neighborhoods were just small individual settlements with a dozen or so farmhouses each, plus stores, churches, blacksmiths and doctors. It wasn’t until the 1880s that these farmhouses began to disappear. The author of this article reports that “enormous, ugly brownstone ‘flats’ were rearing their galvanized cornices in the air on every hand. The few scattered farm lots that remained seemed to be waiting in a sullen kind of way for the time when they too should be absorbed in the mad rush of flimsy, unsanitary Jerry-building.”

In 1923, the last of Manhattan’s farmhouses were among the only wooden structures in the city. Some of these homes dated back to the mid-1700s. Many were left in a state of disrepair, so it’s not surprising that they were torn down without regard for historical preservation. Check out Volume IX, Issue I of the White Pine Monographs for details and photographs.

Wrote Daniel Denton in 1670 of these homes, “Though their low-roofed houses may seem to shut their doors against pride and luxury, yet how do they stand wide open to let charity in and out, either to assist each other, or to relieve a stranger.”

Architectural Monographs: Competition for an Unusual Lakeside House

Posted on July 26, 2013October 21, 2021 by Jeff Easterling

In 1918, an owner of a lakeside lot in New York sought plans for the perfect vacation home, to be built for no more than $5,000 in a design that would blend in with a nearby village. The White Pine Series of Architectural Monographs sponsored a competition for plans that include a spacious living room, a grand fireplace, recreational space, a sleeping porch and a boat dock, inspiring dozens of architects to participate.

But the resulting entries, as noted in Volume IV, Issue IV of the Monographs entitled ‘Vacation Season,’ were largely disappointing because they ignored the call to design a house that isn’t in the typical cabin or lakeside bungalow style. Apparently, the architects got lost in daydreams about what they would like in their own vacation home on a lake, rather than addressing the needs of the homeowner (and can we blame them?)

The jury’s description of the entries reflects what they call “an almost painful absence of direct, synthetic, logical thought.” Though several designs – which ultimately won first through fourth places – clearly stood apart, others had to be excluded “on account of a perhaps small but significant indication of a blind spot in the brain.” The first prize-winning entry is simple, direct and logical, but also beautiful, and artfully rendered.

“It is rare that artistic skill of such a quality is combined with such practical good sense as is shown by the floor plans,” they write of the winner, Richard M. Powers. “Most of the practical solutions were painfully deficient in any sense of purely aesthetic values, while the ‘snappy’ drawings too often served only as cloaks for flagrant architectural sins.”

Read more about the winning entries, and see more images, at the White Pine Architectural Monographs Library.

Architectural Monographs: The Bristol Renaissance of Rhode Island

Posted on July 19, 2013October 21, 2021 by Jeff Easterling

In a period of what was otherwise homogenous ‘Early Nineteenth Century Work’ in architecture, a particular cluster of homes and other structures stand out: those uniquely ornamented buildings constructed during the so-called Bristol Renaissance in Rhode Island. This architecture is not just notable for its carved details, ornamented parapet rails, elliptic stairways and intricate garden gates. It came about as a direct result of an influx of wealth from slave trading.

As we’re well aware today, these circumstances were not at all unusual, and the casual account of them written in Volume III, Issue V of the historic White Pine Architectural Monographs is an encapsulation of the views of the times. Author Joy Wheeler Dow writes, in 1917, “How does it affect us now, used as we are to the harrowing details of present-day war, to be told that out of this unholy traffic in flesh and blood grew many charming Bristol houses?”

“But let us not look upon an unavoidable circumstance too gloomily, nor yet uncharitably. Have you not come to believe that the man with the axe, standing before his rude cabin, vignetted on the five-dollar bills, has arrived at about as high a state of civilization and comfort as he can, unless, indeed, he goes in for a little genteel privateering and slave-trading – in gentler words, a little robbing of Peter to pay Paul?”

This issue shows details of the homes, explaining their architectural influences and how they differ from the more common building styles of the time. There’s also a special section on Eastern White Pine and how its price and availability was affected by the first World War. Give it a read at the White Pine Monograph Library.

Architectural Monographs: Design for a Roadside Tavern

Posted on July 12, 2013October 21, 2021 by Jeff Easterling

In 1920, the Fifth Annual Architectural Competition conducted by the White Pine Series of Architectural Monographs challenged architects to design a roadside tavern and its grounds, to be built of Eastern White Pine. The tavern was to include a restaurant and living quarters for the operators, with a 750-square-foot public dining room that could also serve as a dance floor in addition to a private dining room for men only.

One hundred designs were submitted in a variety of architectural styles, with the majority being “so good that they could not be readily or quickly eliminated,” a result that the Jury took as a sign of American architectural progress in general.

The first prize winner is an L-shaped design close to the road with parking in the back, making the most of a stream and apple orchard on the front of the site. “Simple and dignified, it is yet distinctly a tavern and not a private house, and the use of differing materials on the outside expresses very cleverly the main public parlors and the service wing.”

The second prize winner was right on this design’s coattails, with a plan that includes a hooded entrance and portico with sparing but effective wrought-iron details. Images of the plans for these two submissions as well as many more, and details about the competition, can be found in Volume VI, Issue IV of the White Pine Architectural Monographs.

Architectural Monographs: Houses of the Middle and Southern Colonies

Posted on July 5, 2013October 21, 2021 by Jeff Easterling

In the latter eighteenth century, American architects rediscovered the simple and classic Colonial style found in the earliest architecture of New England, and brought it to the middle and southern colonies of the United States. Written in 1916, Volume II, Issue I of the White Pine Series of Architectural Monographs explains how this revival came about, and shows off examples throughout Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and other modern-day states.

A personal account of travels to these homes by architectural historian Frank E. Wallis, this monograph is an ode to what Wallis deems the true American typology of architecture. The buildings in which many of our nation’s most important historical events have occurred, including the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was Colonial.

Fresh from a trip to Europe, Wallis drew comparisons between the venerated architecture of the Old World and the unpretentious Colonial style, nothing that “architecture does catch some of the characteristics of those people who create it; the manners and customs of the people, who must necessarily express themselves in brick, wood, and stone and color, must be and are reflected in the buildings.”

Virginia gets special attention in this historical record. “The streets in the little villages of the South are lined with these charming and restful homes, and you will also find in the type which we will call the outhouses of the great mansions, the same care in design and the same restraint in composition and ornament which are illustrated in the charming Williamsburg, Falmouth, and Fredericksburg examples: all of them supreme in their place, and all of them creating a restful atmosphere such as you may find between the covers of ‘Cranford,” writes Wallis.

Architectural Monographs: The Boston Post Road

Posted on June 28, 2013October 21, 2021 by Jeff Easterling

Connecticut’s earliest settlements were made not along the water, like most, but inland, in the center of the state. This fact may seem surprising at first, but it’s because the first outsiders to arrive there came not from the sea, but overland from Massachusetts to found a small group of colonial communities in the fertile bottomlands along the Connecticut River. Smaller towns that cropped up around it were often found along the Boston Post Road, the route between Boston and New York City.

Written in 1920, Volume VI, Issue I of the White Pine Architectural Monographs examines the homes in these towns. “Where in the big and prosperous cities the proportion of old houses is almost negligible, and the absolute number very few, in the small old towns one could almost fancy one was miraculously returned to the Colonial period, so many old wood-built houses remain.”

The houses along Boston Post Road are described as “alike as beads on the string – beads of the same pattern and the same color.” Each little town was centered around the “green”, which was dominated by a church. The houses are simple square boxes with low-pitched gable roofs. Architectural details in cornices, doorways and windows were sparingly deployed, resulting in homes as unfussy as the English names of the towns. Yet one one looks closer, there is still variety to be found.

Read more at the White Pine Monograph Library.